Flash...Whoahhh oh...

I am not a professional photographer. I am instead a graphic designer with some preparation in photography (my undergrad degree required me to do a minimal amount of coursework in film photography). I know the tasks of photography from the art-direction end.

I do, however,  have many friends and acquaintances who are professionals. Two acquaintances are  our adjunct instructors at Gateway: Michael and Kevin.

We got to talking at a meeting a while back, and one of the topics was the use (or non-use) of the flash in photography by our students. Before we even approach a flash unit or "off-of-the-camera" flash, we were discussing how integral it is for students to know how to control even the "on camera" flash.

You should know how to shut it off, and how to control it when its on (its power, and manipulate the direction). 

Of course, flash is not the only issue. You should walk away from your basic course knowing all your camera's shooting modes, white balance, focus, aperture controls, exposure value settings, shutter speed, iso, and many more items). But in our brief conversation, it became clear that on-camera flash control was one issue that sometimes gets overlooked.

Many of you may also be familiar with Photojojo. It is a "cool things" photo site, with tips, techniques, and a lot of cool doo-dads and gadgets. (Photographers of all stripes seem to be subject to the same  affliction as woodworkers, golfers, and fisherman: gadget-itis)

Photojojo had a cool graphic on their page in the promotion of a flash bounce product. I am not endorsing this necessarily, (it does look neat, but you can get similar effects with a small mirror or a
3x5 index note card) but they have some particularly neat graphics showing the dramatic effects of using a simple flash-modifier. 

(see one of the graphics below, and you can click on the optional link to check out Photojojo)

Photojojo site

Branding Cleverness...

Graphic Designer and Art Director Ben Pieratt has created a brand. That alone isn't news, since visually articulating a brand is at the heart of what most designers working in Marketing Communications (or Advertising, or  Brand cultivation, or whatever pseudonym for Advertising you care to use) do regularly.

More interestingly, Pieratt is exploring the concepts and constructs of branding itself. He has taken the  very definition of brand, and flipped it upside-down. He has worked from the visual end, and created the roots for a brand and put it on the free-market auction block.
To me, this is more of an exercise in brand development—the equivalent of taking the design adage of "form follows function" and turning it on its ear...creating the form first and then finding the function for it.

While the pragmatism of creating and cultivating a visual brand beforehand, then later matching it with a product or service is intriguing and an exercise in "purposeful vagary," it can also be viewed as the equivalent of off-the-rack fashion—something unheard of in the early twentieth century, yet the preferred mode by mid-century.

On a personal note, Pieratt's brand reminds me of the bright, geometric design of the mid-eighties (as used by brands like Letraset at the time). I love the retro, yet very hip'n'cool feel.

Check out Pieratt's HESSIAN brand!
(link image below)

COMPOSITION FROM A MASTER

There's a lot of chatter about the difference of things, but not so much about the commonalities.

"The discipline of design is basically about solving a problem within the construct of a field...that field may be the blank canvas of a space (product design), an entire environment (architecture), or a flat page (graphic design.)"1

I find a lot of students groaning/musing on our college's facebook group about "photography" versus "illustration," or even "page layout." While it is certainly valid to group items by their media for mass assessment  or comparative evaluation, you can easily loose fact that they share the common thread of VISUALLY COMMUNICATING ( a term that has gone out of vogue, and seems to be making a comeback).

The goal for both is to communicate something VISUALLY on the plane of 2d. The other commonality that they share is the fact that the message communicated needs to have a hierarchy... the thread that binds all of the 2d disciplines is composition.

That's why this article on COMPOSITION by the  great HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON is such a good (and IMHO essential) read! Click on the link below (photo) to go to PETA-PIXEL for an amazing compositional lesson–whether your medium is Photography or Gouache – it's worth the time.

photo © magnum

1 P. Pham 2005