Monthly Archives: July 2011

Diptychs and Triptychs

Paintings, Photographs

Giotto did these a while back, too.

A friend having recently decorated a room, asked for something Big, Wide and Green for the wall, so I suggested the idea of a triptych.

Once we agreed on the snap I suggested some variations. The tool used to make the red outlines is Xtralean’s ImageWell.

In case you think this is original, that old dauber Giotto was doing this sort of thing some 700 years ago:

Giotto c. 1320.

A related use of multiple images is to show two or more taken a brief moment apart. In this diptych I have used the Print->Custom Package function in Lightroom 3 to place two similar images next to one another, ready for printing on 13″ x 19″ paper. This is the serenely beautiful young woman I snapped the other day and wrote about here:

Diptych ready for printing in Lightroom 3.

Lightroom 2 could not place different images on one sheet, but if that is what you use search the web and there are simple code changes to the print template which will permit this, easily conferred with any text editor like TextEdit, which comes with every Mac.

Shadows

Photographs

A passing moment.

This one was quite literally over in the blink of an eye. I saw the runner coming and there was but one chance for the snap.

24th Street shadows. G1, kit lens @45mm, 1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 320.

Lennart Nilsson

Photographers

A Swedish master.

Lennart Nilsson (b 1922) is best known for his endoscopic photographs of the early stages of development of a human fetus. They remain as startling today as when he took them for LIFE in 1965.

Click the picture for his web site. The pictures are pure magic.

Click the picture.

Devorah Sperber

Paintings

An unusual digital artist.

Mention of the Stein show at SF’s MOMA prompts me to add that a far more interesting show, with insights into Stein’s collecting, writing, sponsorship of artists and friendships with photographer, is to be seen at SF’s Contemporary Jewish Museum.

The size of the show is far more manageable than the overblown offering at MOMA and you come away with a better understanding of the woman and her work. While her writing is pure, undiluted crap, we owe her a debt of thanks for sponsoring so many struggling artists and photographers.

The fact that Stein continues to inspire contemporary artists is seen in the last of the five rooms of the CJM show and one of the pieces on display there is quite startling.

Detail View: “After Picasso,” 2006, by Devorah Sperber, 5,024 spools of thread, stainless steel ball chain
and hanging apparatus, clear acrylic viewing sphere, metal stand (104″-122″ h x 100” w x 60”- 72″d)

Sperver has done nothing less than recreate, on a large scale, Picasso’s famous 1906 portrait of Gertrude Stein. Her choice of pixels is ….5,024 spools of thread! Viewed though the small magnifying glass some feet in front of the spools, the compressed and right-way-round image of Stein is a perfect reproduction of Picasso’s masterpiece.

It’s easy for me to say that anyone could do this. Simply create a look-up table for the colors of each pixel on your computer then order $30,000 worth of spools of thread. Tell your nine year old to assemble it according to your table and there you have it. All you need add is a $5 magnifying lens. And just imagine the image taking to life as your child gradually assembles it!

Simple to say because I didn’t think of it and neither did you. This is a different kind of digital imaging.

You can visit Devorah Sperber’s web site here.

Toni Frissell

Photographers

A pioneering woman photographer.

Along with Lee Miller, the patrician and equally beautiful Toni Frissell (1907-88) worked for Harper’s and Vogue before and during WW2, moving onto a then new Sports Illustrated in peacetime. Fearless, like Miller, she saw action at the front and made huge contributions to photography and to the cause of women photographers. Credited with moving models out of the studio to her beloved outdoors, Frissell was well connected, lovely to look at and was what we would today call a ‘jock’.

Frissell donated her collection of 300,000 pictures to the US Library of Congress where it remains, largely unknown. This fine book, available inexpensively used, displays a small fraction of her work:

During and after the war years she photographed Winston Churchill and his family often and one of the most striking portraits in the book is of Clementine Churchill, WSC’s wife. It shows her beauty, directness and warmth as no other picture of this exceptional woman does.

Her work – whether striking fashion work, portraits of the famous or sports photography is as good as it gets.

Forget new copies – they are way overpriced. I paid Alibris $25 for a mint, used copy. Abe Books also has it.