Digital Photography and Everyday Life


Book Description

Digital Photography and Everyday Life: Empirical studies on material visual practices explores the role that digital photography plays within everyday life. With contributors from ten different countries and backgrounds in a range of academic disciplines - including anthropology, media studies and visual culture - this collection takes a uniquely broad perspective on photography by situating the image-making process in wider discussions on the materiality and visuality of photographic practices and explores these through empirical case studies. By focusing on material visual practices, the book presents a comprehensive overview of some of the main challenges digital photography is bringing to everyday life. It explores how the digitization of photography has a wide-reaching impact on the use of the medium, as well as on the kinds of images that can be produced and the ways in which camera technology is developed. The exploration goes beyond mere images to think about cameras, mediations and technologies as key elements in the development of visual digital cultures. Digital Photography and Everyday Life will be of great interest to students and scholars of Photography, Contemporary Art, Visual Culture and Media Studies, as well as those studying Communication, Cultural Anthropology, and Science and Technology Studies.




What Do Pictures Want?


Book Description

Why do we have such extraordinarily powerful responses toward the images and pictures we see in everyday life? Why do we behave as if pictures were alive, possessing the power to influence us, to demand things from us, to persuade us, seduce us, or even lead us astray? According to W. J. T. Mitchell, we need to reckon with images not just as inert objects that convey meaning but as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, demands, and drives of their own. What Do Pictures Want? explores this idea and highlights Mitchell's innovative and profoundly influential thinking on picture theory and the lives and loves of images. Ranging across the visual arts, literature, and mass media, Mitchell applies characteristically brilliant and wry analyses to Byzantine icons and cyberpunk films, racial stereotypes and public monuments, ancient idols and modern clones, offensive images and found objects, American photography and aboriginal painting. Opening new vistas in iconology and the emergent field of visual culture, he also considers the importance of Dolly the Sheep—who, as a clone, fulfills the ancient dream of creating a living image—and the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11, which, among other things, signifies a new and virulent form of iconoclasm. What Do Pictures Want? offers an immensely rich and suggestive account of the interplay between the visible and the readable. A work by one of our leading theorists of visual representation, it will be a touchstone for art historians, literary critics, anthropologists, and philosophers alike. “A treasury of episodes—generally overlooked by art history and visual studies—that turn on images that ‘walk by themselves’ and exert their own power over the living.”—Norman Bryson, Artforum




Your Family in Pictures


Book Description

From leading photography expert Me Ra Koh, "The Photo Mom," comes the book for parents with little to no photography experience who want to capture better portraits and photos of their families using any camera. What parent doesn’t want to capture the perfectly imperfect joy of family life through photos? From holidays and vacations to portraits and shared moments, celebrated photographer (and mom) Me Ra Koh not only helps moms and dads take better photos, but inspires them to discover photography as a way to connect with, cherish, and celebrate their family. With forty beautiful “photo recipes” anyone can follow—with any camera—preserving your family’s story has never been easier!




A Beautiful Mess Photo Idea Book


Book Description

Ready to show your photos some love? Whether it’s of your sister’s smile, your morning coffee, or your new puppy, photos are a way to connect on Facebook and Instagram, keep a visual diary of our lives, and create momentos for future generations. Elsie Larson and Emma Chapman, creators of the mega-popular DIY style blog A Beautiful Mess, are in love with photographing everyday life. Here, they share that love with 95 all-new tips and photo challenges that will inspire you to style and snap better photos and then transform them into simple yet stunning projects and gifts. You’ll learn how to: • Take the most flattering self-portraits • Be your own stylist to turn dull, cluttered photos into pretty lifestyle photography • Capture adorable couple portraits • Turn everyday moments, hobbies, and rituals into amazing photos • Show off your favorite photos by turning them into handmade jewelry, home décor, and gifts Packed with Elsie and Emma’s happy spirit and unique style, A Beautiful Mess Photo Idea Book will inspire you to capture your days, your friends, and your dreams in beautiful photos!




My Life in Pictures


Book Description

Fans of Amelia’s Notebook and Judy Moody will love this friendship story bursting with doodles and pictures Bea Garcia is an artist. She draws anywhere and everywhere—but mostly in her own notebook. When Bea’s first and only best friend Yvonne moves to Australia, not even drawing makes Bea feel better. And things only get worse when a loud, rambunctious boy moves in next door. He’s nothing at all like Yvonne! But with a little imagination and a whole lot of doodles, Bea Garcia might just make a new friend. This first book in a brand-new chapter book series is a must-read for doodlers everywhere.




You an Orchestra You a Bomb


Book Description

Cig Harvey's third monograph, You An Orchestra You A Bomb , is a vibrant and bold book; possibly her most beautiful to date. It explores the photographer's relationship with life itself. It is a book about paying attention to and appreciating the fragile present. You An Orchestra You A B omb captures moments of awe, makes icons of the everyday, and looks at life on the threshold between magic and disaster. Cig has always experienced the world viscerally but after a traumatic event, a raw heightened awareness of temporary nature of life permeates this new work. Through breathless moments of beauty, her images propel us to fathom the sacred in the split seconds of everyday. Cig's photographs are interwoven with her int imate poetry in this hauntingly beautiful book.




The Best Camera Is The One That's With You


Book Description

A beacon of creativity with boundless energy, Chase Jarvis is well known as a visionary photographer, director, and social artist. In The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You, Chase reimagines, examines, and redefines the intersection of art and popular culture through images shot with his iPhone. The pictures in the book, all taken with Chase’s iPhone, make up a visual notebook—a photographic journal—from the past year of his life. The book is full of visually-rich iPhone photos and peppered with inspiring anecdotes. Two megapixels at a time, these images have been gathered and bound into a book that represents a stake in the ground. With it, Chase underscores the idea that an image can come from any camera, even a mobile phone. As Chase writes, “Inherently, we all know that an image isn’t measured by its resolution, dynamic range, or anything technical. It’s measured by the simple—sometimes profound, other times absurd or humorous or whimsical—effect that it can have upon us. If you can see it, it can move you.” This book is geared to inspire everyone, regardless of their level of photography knowledge, that you can capture moments and share them with our friends, families, loved ones, or the world at the press of a button. Readers of The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You will also enjoy the iPhone application Chase Jarvis created in conjunction with this book, appropriately named Best Camera. Best Camera has a unique set of filters and effects that can be applied at the touch of a button. Stack them. Mix them. Remix them. Best Camera also allows you to share directly to a host of social marketing sites via www.thebestcamera.com, a new online community that allows you to contribution to a living, breathing gallery of the best iPhone photography from around the globe. Together, the book, app, and website, represent a first-of-its-kind ecosystem dedicated to encouraging creativity through picture taking with the camera that you already have. The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You—shoot!




Borrowed Time


Book Description

An intriguing exhibition of documentary photography and micro-essays highlighting the growth and evolution of one of Canada's most interesting, and complicated, cities. Shortly after completing university and starting work in 1975, a young George Webber borrowed a camera and took a stroll in downtown Calgary. From that point on, he discovered how his affection for the city could be transformed and harnessed through photography. For 45 years now, George has documented the theatre of the street: people playing, arguing, flirting, celebrating, regretting, eating, praying, and hugging. Through his sensitive and masterful lens, he has thoughtfully preserved images of men and women, wrestlers, businessmen, cowboys, waitresses, truckers, street performers, priests, and night clerks. Set against ephemeral backdrops of newspaper boxes, gas stations, trailer parks, billboards, hand-painted signs, abandoned streets, motels, bulletin boards, and pawn shops, George Webber's latest portfolio preserves much of Calgary's recent past and immediate present through a colourful kaleidoscope of intimate glimpses that will endure for decades to come.




Quilts in Everyday Life, 1855-1955


Book Description

The history of quilts, their makers, and usage is an important part of our country's heritage presented here in full detail through 330 vintage photographs. Books on quilt history have, to date, included only a few photos of quilts. This in-depth collection, most of which has never been seen before, date from 1855 to 1955. Each vivid image provides commentary on quilting specifics, photography, costume, and American cultural history, especially toward the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Photographic formats and a glossary of quilting terms are included to aid the reader in dating their own vintage photographs. This book is a wonderful resource for all quilters, historians, and photographers.




How to Photograph Your Life


Book Description

Offers a guide to capturing everyday moments using an amateur camera, including tips on do's and don'ts, phtographic techniques, special effects, and candid photographs.