Jeff Curto's Camera Position

As photographers, we translate our ideas into objects. In this episode, we look at how we can get our work “off the wall” by using the print on demand service MagCloud to get our photographs under viewer’s eyes.  MagCloud – I’ve linked to the “Create” section here where you can find out how to make … Continue reading Camera Position 133 : Off The Wall #1 – MagCloud →

Learning photography is like learning a language. As we assimilate photographic vocabulary, nuance and the like, we wind up being interpreters or translators of our ideas, interpreting those ideas into objects. I’ve realized that as I progress, my interest in photography as an artistic practice is in the learning of more visual languages and in … Continue reading Camera Position 132 : I am a Translator →

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” is a phrase attributed to  psychologist Abraham Maslow, but I’ve always thought it had application to photography and its practice, too. In this episode, I discuss how the small Panasonic GX-1 has energized my photography and brought me to new ways of seeing.

Not long ago, I saw an article by Nicholas Day on Slate.com about babies and pointing. The article discussed how babies point at things to help them create meaning in their world and to share their experiences with someone else. It immediately made me think of what photographers do. We use our cameras to point; … Continue reading Camera Position 130 : Babies, Pointing and Photography →

I’ve long loved the detail image; the photograph that shows just a snippet of the larger world. In this episode, I look at an image of mine that has that sense of detail and also look at the historical referent of images by Ansel Adams that brought me to that place. Think about the way … Continue reading Camera Position 129 : Finding Meaning in Details →

Photographer Carol Golemboski has taken the idea of an electronic book – or any sort of electronic presentation of photography, farther than any I’ve yet seen. Her iPad app Psychometry combines images, text, video, interactive panoramas, extensive background on how the images were produced, a virtual darkroom experience and myriad other amazing details. It is … Continue reading Camera Position 128 : Carol Golemboski’s Psychometry App →

I had lots and lots of great ideas from podcast listeners about Camera Position 125, “Thinking in Monochrome.” Several listeners suggested a digital tool that I’d not thought of before and that was to set the camera for B&W, but to also set “Raw + JPEG” as the file format. Other listeners talked about the … Continue reading Camera Position 127 : Monochrome Followup →

We all try to spend time with photographs by photographers whose work we admire. We spend time trying to figure out how to emulate their work, then produce work that is similar in style to what they do. But here is the rub; our problem is that once we get to a point where those … Continue reading Camera Position 126 : Arno Says “Stay On The Bus” →

I grew up making black and white photographs. It’s what I love the most about photography and the way I have long thought about the photographic image. But the digital revolution has spawned a dilemma; the digital camera sees in color, and I have to shift my mind to think in black and white. I’m … Continue reading Camera Position 125 : Thinking in Monochrome →

The word “photography” comes from a combination of two Greek words; “photos” (light) and “graphos” (writing or marking). So, “photography” means to “write with light” and light has a counterpart, shadow, something for light to play off of. I’m giving Camera Position listeners an “assignment” to work with these two fundamental building blocks of photography. … Continue reading Camera Position 124 : Light and Shadow →

When’s the last time you printed a photograph of your best friend, your child or your parents? Now that the holiday season is concluded, we all likely have a lot of photographs of friends and family and places we visited. Make sure you spend some time printing those photographs of the things that matter to … Continue reading Camera Position 123 : Print The Small Stuff →

Photographer Jerry Uelsmann once said something like, “while you can memorize the dictionary, it doesn’t mean you have anything to say afterwards.” The idea of course is that craft is not content. While the mechanics of photography can be a point of refuge for many image makers, photography’s power exists in an image’s message.Ansel Adams … Continue reading Camera Position 122 : Craft Is Not Content →

At what point do photographers manipulate their images? Does it happen when we choose a camera, lens and field of view or does it happen afterwards, in post-production? When it comes to manipulating your photographs, is there such a thing as “too much”? This episode of Camera Position looks at one photographer’s confession of “over … Continue reading Camera Position 121 : The Raw and The (over)Cooked? →

As the greatest photographer of Modernist architecture, Julius  Shulman’s images stand as icons of the  architectural boom in mid-20th Century America. This podcast is a quick and enthusiastic review of a wonderful movie entitled Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman, which is available as a DVD or as streaming video at the locations linked … Continue reading Camera Position 120 : Visual Acoustics →

A photographic project is a wonderful thing, but a single image is powerful too in a wide variety of ways. Single photographs can be fulfilling all by themselves and they can also be harbingers of bodies of work yet to come. JM Colberg’s Conscientious Blog Post: The Single Photograph Jeff’s Italy Photography Workshops: Full for … Continue reading Camera Position 119 : The Power of the Single Photograph →

How much do you know about the subjects you photograph? Granted, you may just be encountering them for the first time when you first make pictures, but for a body of work, knowing the “backstory” about a subject and what makes it significant can be an important part of investing yourself in the image.

In their book The Color of Hay, photographer Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin and her author husband H. Woods McLaughlin take us to a little known part of the world and show it to us with extraordinary grace and care. Many of my photo book recommendations have been old classics, but this one is what you might … Continue reading Camera Position 117 : Photographer’s Bookshelf – “The Color Of Hay” →

Turn it upside-down! Turning your photographs upside-down is a great way to help you evaluate the composition of your photographs by helping to remove the importance of the subject of the photograph and concentrate more on its structure.  

Although I have been giving assignments to students for years and years, I sometimes forget that I can give myself an assignment, too. So, this summer, I gave myself the task of photographing a stretch of lakeshore 150 feet long and 10 feet in either direction from where the water meets the land. It was … Continue reading Camera Position 115 : The Self-Assignment →

Feeding yourself with as many photographs as you can possibly see is one of the great ways to stay fresh in photography. The more you see, the more full your visual history becomes and the more you can take with you to make your own new statements about the world. Links for this podcast: Greg … Continue reading Camera Position 114 : Feed Your Eyes →