Information Technology

Archive for the ‘Art Photography’ Category

HughesNet is a great option for broadband Internet connectivity. Find out HughesNet which deals are offered in your hometown and enjoy the fast accesses HughesNet is the brand name of the one way and two ways satellite broadband internet technology and service in US and Europe owned by Hughes network systems. The service was originally called DirecPC and was only available as a one way satellite internet option, as uploading was accomplished with a dial up modem connection.

HughesNet uses the latest in Hughes satellite Internet technology to deliver an exceptionally fast broadband connection. Typical dial-up connections download at 53 Kbps. An Internet satellite connection from HughesNet downloads at 1.0 to 5.0 Mbps – that’s 50x faster than dial-up.In Florida, the Florida internet deals was really easy just visit the online website and make the deals with the easy way. It was really different with the last internet that I deals before, it really complicated I complicated ways of deals.

It is only recently that I have dipped my toe into the waters of fine art photography, and even more recently that I have tried my hand at capturing the female body in photography.  I have been reluctant to do so at least in part because I didn’t feel I had much to contribute to that genre.  It is hard to think of subject more photographed than the female form…sensual or otherwise.  From nudes in the woods to the naked female form on motorcycles…it seems it has all been done before, and yet, as an artist, I have always felt compelled to explore, shall we say, tasteful photography of the female body.

It took me some twenty-seven years, but I have finally started a series of photographic studies of the human body, not just women but men too, that I feel does offer something new.  And in the process I have found that creating such studies, even when they aren’t something totally new and different, can also be fulfilling work.

What got me interested to begin with was a series of images I created of city lights using long exposure times…usually in the range of a second, while moving the camera.  I was sitting at an outdoor café in Vietnam late at night with several friends and idly shooting long-exposures of the streetlights across the avenue from where we were sitting.  The combination of blinking neon bar lights along with the movement of my camera resulted in a kind of “Liquid fireworks” feel.  From that night on I have been hooked on shooting city lights in that manner.   As I started to develop a body of work I was struck at the lyrical and even sensual nature of some of the images…and how some of them seemed to take on the form of the female body. 

It was the sensual feel of some of those light images that first led me to decide to shoot the human body.  I decided to shoot some nude photographs (of both men and women) and combine them with my long-exposure light photos, using Photoshop, to create a series of images that explore combinations of color, light, and nudes.  In some cases I have the models take on poses that work with the lights…and other times I will start with the pose and look for lights that match the pose…or that I can manipulate in Photoshop to better enhance the photograph of the model.  In some cases the lights take on the appearance of meridians and chakras…while in other cases the lights lend a sense of motion and or energy.  Adding the light images can also add and enhance sensuality, mystery, and glamour to the final image.

I combine the images primarily by using clipping paths to create a tight, accurate selection of the body, then adding it as a new layer into the light image.  I can then duplicate various layers re-arrange them, and use layer masks to create the impression of the light wrapping around and sometimes going through the human body.  I can use adjustment layers with their built-in masks to add dimensionality to the bodies and or add color, intensity or de-saturation to specific areas of the composites.  Hue and Saturation controls also allow my to intensify and/or change the colors of the light streaks. Some images can be very simple with only three or four layers, while others become quite complex.  I have had some of these images reach up to seventy layers!

It was while combining those forms that I also began to take the nude body, photographed in my studio, and use Photoshop, again, to put the body into other environments…primarily cloudscapes.  These I have done in a photo-realistic manner so that a casual examination would leave anyone believing the nudes had actually been shot in those environments.  By shooting the bodies in my studio I can closely control the lighting enhancing the curves and musculature.  By stripping the bodies into cloudscapes I can dramatize the sense freedom, expansion and just plain beauty of the photograph.

Now, whenever I travel, I always look forward to creating more of my long-exposure light studies.  I have created those images using city lights from Hanoi, to Buenos Aires, to Mumbai to New York. I have long made it a habit to capture interesting cloud forms…and now I also visualize how they might work with the human body. When I get tired of my usual conceptually oriented stock photography projects I give myself a “reward”…permission to play with creating new combinations of the human body juxtaposed and interlaced with the light images from my library of lights and/or clouds.  Playing with these images restores my energy and fires up my creativity.  It gives me a change of pace and renews my sense of exploration, and instills in me the joy of creating beauty for beauties’ sake!

People generally agree that the nude female form is more beautiful than the male. The arguments generally cited for this include that women have more curves and less obvious musculature, or that male bodies are more ‘functional’. Whatever the reason, couple it with the fact that (particularly historically) most artists are male, and you have a large preference in photography for nude photographs of women rather than of men.

But what makes a good nude female photograph? There are three main principles.

#1: It should be interesting to look at

Nude photography is synonymous with that branch of photography known as ‘fine art’. Fine art photography can be defined as ‘photography created for no other purpose than because it’s interesting to look at’. As such, nude female photography is about presenting the female form in a way that is interesting.

In order to make an interesting image, nude female photography tends to favor black-and-white images that are full of light, shadow, shape, and contrast. There are usually carefully composed and lit in order to achieve this.

#2: It should be anonymous

Nude photography is not ‘about’ the person that is in the photo – in fact, the face of the model is often not even included in the frame. Contrast this with portrait photography, where the idea is to reveal or display something about the subject’s life or (more often) their personality. Nude photography is really the opposite of this, because it’s about the female form in general, not this person in particular. In nude photography, the person in the photo really serves only as an example of a category, with the category being ‘women’s bodies’.

#3: It should be non-sexual

While any heterosexual man would enjoy looking at nude photographs of women for reasons that not entirely dispassionate, there is still a difference between nude photography and erotic photography. While the difference might be a slight one, it’s all about intent. Nude photography fits that fine art definition of intending only to produce ‘something interesting’. Erotic photography, on the other hand, is intended to titillate or arouse the viewer, and might not be all that interesting.

Given that what is ‘non-sexual’ to one person might be sexual to another, it is of course impossible for a photographer to know whether their intent to produce a nude photograph rather than an erotic one will be recognized by the audience. For this reason, at least in Western countries, certain conventions (such as leaving the genital region in dark shadow) are followed to provide an indication of the intent behind the photograph.