Judge - The Art of Photography Volume 2

By Al Judge

Sedona, Arizona

Copyright 2014 by Al Judge

Unless otherwise stated, all images and illustrations in this book are copyrighted and the property of Al Judge.

Photos by other artists have their copyright at the lower right corner.

Photos in this book that are licensed from iStockPhoto.com and DollarPhotoClub.com will have that attribution with the name of the source after it.

All the images in the Featured Artists sections are the property of the featured artists and are copyrighted by them.

Throughout this series of books there are some images that have been taken from the Wikipedia Commons. These images are in the public domain and free to anyone to use in books, magazines, and brochures as long as the source is attributed and the images arent sold. I will place the note Wikipedia Commons on or under each of these images.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Featured Artists

The chapters of this book are separated by a series of 2-page features which showcase the work of a number of very talented photographers. Each of these artists was invited to participate in this project because their work inspires me and encourages me to continuously challenge myself. They have all contributed out of the goodness of their hearts and a genuine desire to share what they know. There is no monetary compensation involved. I am forever grateful for their contributions to this project.

The artist s range from pure amateurs to highly accomplished professionals. The love of photography is evident in all their work.

Art is a very personal and subjecti ve endeavor. Every photographer will have a unique style and approach to this form of art. My images alone cannot even come close to conveying the scope of this subject, and so I have asked others to contribute and have used numerous stock photos to illustrate key points. I felt that variety and diversification are more important that showcasing my own work. I have however included many of my own images when they adequately illustrate the concept being discussed.

I would like to tell you a little about each of these artists and why I wanted them to be a part of this project.

Robert Albrecht is a local Sedona photographer with many years of experience in commercial photography. He has worked with many well known models and his work has been published in some of the worlds top fashion magazines.

A few months after we moved to Sedona, there was a weekend open-studios tour. My wife and I visited 17 of the 19 studios that were on the tour and had an amazing experience. For me, the most amazing thing was meeting Robert Albrecht. Roberts wife Shirley is also an accomplished artist and her studio was one of the stops on the tour. As we were leaving her studio I noticed a large image in another room. I told my wife that I was certain that there was no camera in the world that could have produced that image but it didnt look like a painting either. As I stepped into the room to have a closer look, Robert joined me from his office. Although he was not actually on the tour, he spent close to an hour with me explaining what he had done and demonstrating photo editing techniques.

That visit changed my life in many ways. I had many years of experience with film photography but was indifferent to digital photography until he showed me its potential. Photography has been a joyous and fulfilling aspect of my life ever since. Roberts willingness to freely share his love of the art inspired me to do the same through my books.

Darlene Jansen is someone that I met through my books. She read one of my books and was kind enough to send me a personal email. I thanked her for taking the time to write and told her that I would love to see some of her images. She sent a link to her site and I was totally blown away by the consistency and the high quality of her images.

A few months later, I asked her permission to use a few of her images in Book 1 of this series and she graciously granted me that honor. I often visit her site for a mini-vacation when I need a break from writing. I am always inspired, humbled, and rejuvenated.

When I first joined Flickr, I had trouble dragging myself away from the computer. There were so many great images and so little time. Through the thousands of images that I reviewed, there were just a few photographers that I chose to follow. I have included three of them in this book.

Dana Deskiewicz loves patterns and architectural details. He is always finding new ways to highlight and bring attention to what most of us miss when we are in public places.

Greg Chen currently lives in China although he lived in the US for more than 10 years. His images of China are captivating and capture the essence of daily life. Some of his more artistic images of the Chinese countryside remind me of ancient scroll paintings.

Michelle Ettelson is a professional landscape photographer currently living in New Hampshire. I had been following her photostream for some time when she added an image of mine to her favorites.

The image is one of my personal favorites but she is the only person to ever comment on it. It took me hours to capture and numerous attemp ts. It is of new growth on a bush. The bush was on the side of a hill in shade on a windy day next to a dry creek bed. Because of its location, I couldnt use my tripod and because of the wind I needed a very fast exposure time. Just knowing that such a talented photographer appreciated this image made my day.

Joel Grimes came to my attention about a year ago when I saw a portrait that totally captivated me. I studied it for hours trying to imagine how it was created. I thought that if I could ever find a way to meet the artist, I would learn something of great value. When I learned that he would be teaching several classes at the Photoshop World Conference 2013 in Las Vegas, I jumped at the chance. I was not disappointed.

The experience was further enhanced by his humility and genuine desire to help others . He freely shares his techniques and experience and is open to discussing his ideas with anyone. I am very honored that he agreed to participate in this project.

Elaine Belvin is a very talented photographer who recently joined the professional ranks. Sedona is a city of artists and particularly photographers. It is difficult to stand out in this environment, but she does. I first saw her work at the Sedona Art Center and had a very nice conversation with her. Her husband is also an accomplished photographer and their work was on display side-by-side that weekend. Everyone that I knew who had attended the show was talking about their work.

Richard Lar ssen is an amateur photographer living in Norway. He exhibits his work on a number of photo sites. I saw his images on Pixoto.com.

Pixoto .com is a site where you can test your images to see what others think. If you submit images for dueling your image will be displayed next to another image in the same category. Pixoto members review and select the better of the two. Eventually you earn points and recognition for winning duels. To date, he has posted 115 images and won 409 awards. This is no small accomplishment.

Richard uses Sony Cameras. Although I usually talk about Canon and Nikon since they dominate the DSLR market, Sony has a sensor with a wider tonal range than the other brands. This expanded tonal range creates better images when there are very dark and very bright items in the same image. This is particularly noticeable in night scenes with reflections Richards favorite genre.