Friday, August 28, 2009

Link

If you like great photography you will love this....
O. Winston Link is a photographer that is known for his night time train photographs. Think about it.... try and photograph a train as it steams down the tracks at night with a 4x5 camera. Link's photographs bring back childhood longings of wanting to grow up and be an engineer.
the Link Museum has a collection that is worth the trip. On their website they have this biography about Link:

Winston Link was born on December 16, 1914, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the second of three children. His father was a public school teacher and exerted a strong influence on his children, escorting them around New York City to see the sights, from battleships at harbor to airplanes in the sky. The elder Link taught his son the use and care of tools and introduced him to photography. Winston developed a lifelong love of tools, becoming a skilled woodworker and a meticulous craftsman. As a teenager, he built his own photographic enlarger and went to work for a local photo store.

Link attended Manual Arts High School in Brooklyn and later the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. He played hockey and was a very popular student, serving as class president all four years in college while majoring in civil engineering. He worked as photographer and photo editor of the school newspaper and, upon graduation, was offered a job as a photographer by a public relations firm, Carl Byoir Associates, in New York City. He worked for Byoir from 1937 to 1942. He never did pursue a career in engineering.

With the onset of World War II, Winston left Byoir and went to work for Columbia Institute Laboratory in Mineola, Long Island, where he performed secret war research for the United States Government. The Long Island Railroad operated tracks right behind the lab. Link had always been fascinated by steam locomotives, and the proximity of the LIRR rekindled his interest, and he started taking pictures. He recognized there was one great problem in shooting photos of locomotives --- lighting. He once said, "You can't move the sun, and you can't move the tracks, so you have to do something else to better light the engines." He went on to custom build his own flash equipment required for his large scale railroad photos which he preferred to shoot at night.

After the war, he was invited back to work at Byoir but declined, deciding instead to become an independent, professional photographer. He soon became known for his skillful photos of complicated factory and industrial interiors. In 1955, Link traveled to Staunton, Virginia, to do an industrial shoot. He knew that the Norfolk & Western Railway passed in nearby Waynesboro and that it was the last large steam-powered American railroad. Link went to observe it. Granted permission to access the tracks by R. H. Smith, president of the N & W Railroad, Link returned the night of January 21, 1955 with his equipment and began photographing the trains.

In the next five years, Winston Link made twenty trips to N & W's tracks in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina, producing 2,400 images. Most of the images were produced on 4 x 5 film with a Graphic View Camera.

The last of the N & W's steam locomotives was taken out of service in May 1960, and Winston returned to New York, where he continued his work as a commercial photographer. He documented construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York harbor, photographed for Volkswagen of America as well as a number of advertising agencies.

Link, as much historian as artist, employed his technical skill as a means to document his subjects rather than as a means to fame or fortune. Indeed, he discovered shortly after starting his visual documentation of the railroad that no one was interested in photos of an old technology. However, Winston had also recorded the sounds of the steam engines and found that his high quality sound recordings were quickly gaining recognition. He released the first of six recordings, "Sounds of Steam Railroading," in 1957, years before his N & W photographs began to garner attention. It was only in 1983 that his photography began to receive recognition as works of art. That same year, Link closed his New York City studio and moved to rural South Salem, New York.

Steam, Steel & Stars, published in 1987, represented Winston Link's first collection of his railroad photos in book form and dramatically increased recognition of his work. The Last Steam Railroad in America, published in 1995 sealed his status as America's premier photographer of steam railroading. Exhibitions of his work have been seen throughout the United States, Great Britain, Europe and Japan.

In 2000, Winston Link agreed to creation of the O. Winston Link Museum to be located in the historic Norfolk & Western Passenger Station, in Roanoke, Virginia. The station was restored and refurbished by famed industrial designer, Raymond Loewy, and the museum opened in 2004, with Mr. Link actively involved the planning.

O. Winston Link died of a heart attack on January 30, 2001, near his home in South Salem, New York.




Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Something Great


This is a link to an organization that is trying to do something nice for those men and women in uniform that are currently overseas. I hope that if you know any one in the military you will take a moment to look at this website.
Portraits of Love

Friday, August 7, 2009

The Future is Here!!!!!!!

Nikon is really pushing the limits with the S1000pj. At a price tag of $429.95 it may seem pricey, but the possibilities for this camera are limitless. Imagine this camera in the hands of an interior designer. The designer could take a picture of some of their work with the 28-140mm lens (35mm equivalent) at 12.1 mega pixels and then take the camera to a prospective client and project the image on the wall. That is just one in the endless list of possibilities for the S1000pj.

The following is a list of feature from Nikon's website.

  • 12.1 Megapixels for stunning prints as large as 16 x 20 inches.
  • 5x Wide-angle Zoom-NIKKOR Glass Lens has a versatile zoom range that gets you close to the action while capturing expansive landscapes.
  • World’s first camera with an ultra-small, built-in projector provides new ways for enjoying your pictures anytime and anywhere.
  • 5-way VR Image Stabilization System:
    • Hybrid VR Image Stabilization combines Optical and Electronic VR Image Stabilization to minimize the effects of camera shake.
    • Motion Detection automatically detects moving subjects and adjusts shutter speed and the ISO setting to compensate for camera shake and subject movement.
    • High ISO up to 6400 capability helps give you sharper results when shooting in low light or capturing fast-moving subjects.(ISO 300 and ISO 6400 are available at 3MP or lower resolution.)
    • Nikon’s original Best Shot Selector (BSS) automatically takes up to 10 shots while the shutter is pressed and saves the sharpest image.
  • Incredible, Bright 2.7-inch High Resolution LCD makes it easy to compose and share your pictures with anti-glare coating and brightness adjustment.
  • Scene Auto Selector automatically recognizes the scene in your picture and adjusts camera setting.
  • Nikon’s Smart Portrait System:
    • New Skin Softening smoothes skin tone at three different levels for optimal portraits.
    • In-Camera Red-Eye Fix™ automatically fixes most instances of red-eye in the camera. You may never see red-eye again.
    • Face-Priority AF Nikon’s face-finding technology that automatically focuses on up to 12 faces.
    • Smile Timer, Blink Proof and Blink Warning makes sure you’ll always catch the decisive moment when your subject smiles and Blink Proof function shoots two pictures and automatically saves the one in which the subject’s eyes remain open. Blink Warning, when activated alerts you that the subject may have blinked and allows you to retake the photo.
    • D-Lighting rescues dark or backlit images by improving brightness and detail where needed.
  • Quick Retouch adjusts contrast and color vividness automatically and automatically activates D-Lighting
  • 16 Scene Modes
  • Record movies at 640 x 480 resolution at 30 fps
  • Macro shooting as close as 1.2”
  • Available Colors: Black

We are definitely planning on stocking a few of the bad boys along with the ac adapter and remote. Please check back latter this next month to see if we have them in yet!