NOI Features » Portfolios

Pinhole Photography

NOI Pictures — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:23:28 +0000

We would like to highlight the pinhole photography.

A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperture — effectively a light-proof box with a small hole in one side. Light from a scene passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box. The human eye in bright light acts similarly, as do cameras using small apertures.

Up to a certain point, the smaller the hole, the sharper the image, but the dimmer the projected image. Optimally, the size of the aperture should be 1/100 or less of the distance between it and the projected image.

A pinhole camera’s shutter is usually manually operated because of the lengthy exposure times, and consists of a flap of some light-proof material to cover and uncover the pinhole. Typical exposures range from 5 seconds to hours and sometimes days. (source wikipedia. Complete article here)

As the fine art photographer Ralph HOWELL states, « virtually anything can be turned into a pinhole camera: a coconut, a muffin pan, a cowboy boot, a fishing float, etc. If a chambered object can be light-proofed, it can be transformed into a pinhole camera. I’m excited by the fact that pinhole cameras don’t restrict my creativity with a light meter, a clicking shutter, or a viewfinder. In particular, the absence of a viewfinder turns the process of pre-visualizing a shot into a serendipitous process where I can “point and shoot “ from the hip. I enjoy improvising the content and composition of the photo and risking unexpected and playful outcomes ».

Here some examples from this photographer

Eight O’Clock Coffee / © Ralph HOWELL

Mirror Reflection: Shoe as Pinhole Camera / © Ralph HOWELL

In 1998 Ann HAMILTON initiated a style of work by holding a canister containing a strip of film in her mouth and using her lips as an aperture to create each exposure.

Face to face / © Ann HAMILTON

Nice interview and video on Art:21 website

Justin QUINNELL with Mouthpiece also made a great set of pictures using this container

Dentist / © Justin QUINNELL

Bathtime / © Justin QUINNELL

What about capturing the world through a truck ? Shaun IRVING done it and the results are stunning.

© Shaun IRVING

If Pinhole photography is a good way to experiment various containers, it is also a way to experiment very long exposure. Justin QUINNELL made a great work with his serie of ’slow light’ in which he made photographs with 6 months exposure.

SS Great Britain / © Justin QUINNELL

Various containers, long exposure… What else ? We could talk about perspectives. John FOBES have some great photographs that show how you can play with distorsion.

Pittsburgh Pinhole Serie / © John FOBES

Pinhole Dreams Series / © John FOBES

We could end this post by focusing on an other great aspect of Pinhole photography : Colors. The great work of Imre BECSI drives us in a dream-like journey.

Alexa / © Imre BECSI

Protuberencia / © Imre BECSI

Let’s focus a bit on the work of a NOI Pictures’s friend, Albin MILLOT

New York. USA. 2007 / © Albin MILLOT

Pyramide of Gizeh, Cairo. EGYPT. 2008. / © Albin MILLOT

We’ll finish this non exhaustive overview of Pinhole photography by posting some Polaroïd 59 of Boris ZULIANI, one of NOI Pictures pool’s photographer

Essawira, Morroco / © Boris ZULIANI / NOI Pictures

Albatre coast, Normandie, France / © Boris ZULIANI / NOI Pictures

For those who appreciated this post, notice the nice blog of Chris Keeney who use to highlight every month a different Pinhole photographer.

And for those who feel handyman, a rough tutorial to build your pinhole camera is available on this website !

Hans Van Der Meer

NOI Pictures — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 05:02:14 +0000

We would like to share the work of Hans Van Der Meer.

European fields / The Landscape of Lower League Football

Hans Van Der Meer is a dutch citizen born in 1955. He’s a professional photographer since the 70’s. From 1995, he starts taking photographs of low division amateur-football games. He went out looking for football in its original form, as it had started more than hundred years ago: a piece of land, 22 players, and no spectators around the pitch, just a horse in the next meadow. The image is far away from the image we know from professional football. About the idea behind this project he says: ‘Football is a part of our culture and football fields form part of our landscape. There are proportionately more grounds in Holland then in any other country in the world. Even in the smallest municipality you will find at least one club. Taking photographs for my album HOLLANDSE VELDEN I visited over 350 locations all over the country. I was looking for those situations where I could make a combination of a field with players and an interesting landscape in the background. I needed the world outside the field to show literally that football is part of our culture.’ (source official website)

First edition of this work came out during the world cup in France 1998. Hans kept moving all arround Europe and in 2006, an other book came out : ‘European Fields‘, 85 photographs in colour of amateur-football in twenty-two different European countries. Book available on Amazon.

ALL PICTURES © HANS VAN DER MEER

Frauenhagen/Germany © Hans Van Der Meer

Warley/England © Hans Van Der Meer

Bartkowo/Poland © Hans Van Der Meer

Budapest/Hungary © Hans Van Der Meer

Midgley/England © Hans Van Der Meer

Dublin/Ireland © Hans Van Der Meer

See the official website for a wide range of his work

David Doubilet

NOI Pictures — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:15:52 +0000

We would like to share the work of the photographer David Doubilet.

David Doubilet is a well known underwater photographer known primarily for his work published in National Geographic Magazine. He was born in New York and started taking photos underwater at the young age of 12. He started with a Brownie Hawkeye in a rubber anesthesiologist’s bag to keep the water out of the camera. During his summer holidays, he spent his time along the New Jersey coast. He later worked as a diver and photographer for the Sandy Hook Marine Laboratories in New Jersey. He also spent much time in the Caribbean. While a dive instructor in the Bahamas he found his motivation to capture the beauty of the sea and everything in it.

His goal is to « redefine photographic boundaries » every time he enters the water. This has helped him achieve some of his greatest shots. In order to capture all the underwater wildlife, he takes several cameras with him on each of his trips. The main obstacle in underwater photography is the impossibility of changing lenses or film underwater.

Doubilet’s ingenuity lead him to the invention of the split lens camera. This allowed him to take pictures above and below water simultaneously. This worked by having a separate focus point on the top half and bottom half of the scene. When the picture is taken, it is recorded onto the same negative.

He has shot well over sixty stories for National Geographic and published numerous books on his own. His most recent was a photo shot in Cuban waters entitled « The Last Caribbean Refuge. »

His education has helped him in his writing. He is well known for his reports on the sea and has written many books in recent years, one of which includes Australia’s Great Barrier Reef by National Geographic. He has received many awards for his works, such as The Explorers Club’s Lowell Thomas Awards and the Lennart Nilsson Award for scientific photography (2001).

Doubilet lives in Clayton, New York. Life in this small town near the St. Lawrence River is about old wooden boats, a nature studio to further his passion of the water. His second home is the small coastal town of Dekolder, South Africa. (source : Wikipedia)

ALL PICTURES @ David DOUBILET

© David DOUBILET

See the official website for a more complete range of his work

David Lachapelle

NOI Pictures — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 11:06:17 +0000

We would like to share the work of the famous photographer David Lachapelle…

ALL PICTURES © David Lachapelle

« Referred to as the Fellini of photography, his ability to create scenes of extreme reality using rich and vibrant colors makes his work instantly recognizable and often imitated. He continues to be inspired by everything from art history to street culture, creating both a record and mirror of all facets of popular culture today. »(official website)

See his biography on wikipedia
See the official website for a wide range of his fabulous work

Elton John

Madonna

Sylvester Stallone

Angelina Jolie

Sharon Gault

Skyy

Maybach

Flaunt / Inflatables

Milla Jovovich

Marilyn Manson

Richard Avedon

NOI Pictures — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:50:01 +0000

We would like to remind about the very famous Richard Avedon…
Avedon has won many awards for his photography, including the International Center of Photography Master of Photography Award in 1993, the Prix Nadar in 1994 for his photobook Evidence, and the Royal Photographic Society 150th Anniversary Medal in 2003.

See his biography on Wikipedia.
See the official site of The Richard Avedon Foundation.

Italy #8, Sicily, 1947.

Brandenburg Gate #1, Berlin, Germany, New Year’s eve 1989.

In 1944, he began working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly discovered by the fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar. In 1946, Avedon had set up his own studio and began providing images for magazines including Vogue and Life. He soon became the chief photographer for Harper’s Bazaar. Avedon did not conform to the standard technique of taking fashion photographs, where models stood emotionless and seemingly indifferent to the camera. Instead, Avedon showed models full of emotion, smiling, laughing, and, many times, in action. In 1966, Avedon left Harper’s Bazaar to work as a staff photographer for Vogue magazine. He proceeded to become the lead photographer of Vogue.

George Wallace, former Governor of Alabama, with his valet, Jimmy Dallas, Montgomery, Alabama, July 31, 1993.

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr with his father and son, Atlanta, Georgia, March 22, 1963.

In addition to his continuing fashion work, Avedon began to branch out and photographed patients of mental hospitals, protesters of the Vietnam War, and later the fall of the Berlin Wall. Avedon was always interested in how portraiture captures the personality and soul of its subject. As his reputation as a photographer became widely known, he brought in many famous faces to his studio and photographed them with a large-format 8×10 view camera. His portraits are easily distinguished by their minimalist style, where the person is looking squarely in the camera, posed in front of a sheer white background. Avedon would at times evoke reactions from his portrait subjects by guiding them into uncomfortable areas of discussion or asking them psychologically probing questions. Through these means he would produce images revealing aspects of his subject’s character and personality that were not typically captured by others.

Marlon Brando, New York, April 19, 1951.

Maurizio Cattelan, artist, New York, July 8, 2004.

He is also distinguished by his large prints, sometimes measuring over three feet in height. His large-format portrait work of drifters, miners, cowboys and others from the western United States became a best-selling book and traveling exhibit entitled In the American West. Avedon was drawn to working people such as miners and oil field workers in their soiled work clothes, unemployed drifters, and teenagers growing up in the West circa 1979-84. When first published and exhibited, In the American West was criticized for showing what some considered to be a disparaging view of America.

Jean Shrimpton, evening dress by Cardin, Paris Studio, January 1970.

Passante du Siècle Portfolio: the 1990s, Stephanie Seymour, in Chanel, Paris, April 1995.

Jens Olof Lasthein

NOI Pictures — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:30:33 +0000

We would like to share the work of Jens Olof Lasthein, a swedish photographer.
Click on the picture to visit his website.
ALL PICTURES © Jens Olof LASTHEIN

Skane, Sweden, 2003.

Jens Olof Lasthein is a swedish photographer born in 1964. He has been educated at the Nordic Photo School of Stockholm. He primarly works with reportages and portraiture and already received several awards. Some of his major projects, such Moments in Between, pictures taken before, during and after the wars in former Yougoslavia attempted to understand life in the shadow of war. White Sea, Black Sea, is a travel along the eastern border of the European Union during seven years, exploring the transition of the borderlands in Europe.

Grigoriopol, Transnistria 2006.

Uzhgorod, Ukraine, 2004.

Sardinia, Italy, 2006.

Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany, november 1989.

Bernd & Hilla Becher

NOI Pictures — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:54:15 +0000

The Bechers first collaborated on photographing and documenting the disappearing German industrial architecture in 1959, and had their first Gallery exhibition in 1963 at the Galerie Ruth Nohl in Siegen. They were fascinated by the similar shapes in which certain buildings were designed. In addition, they were intrigued by the fact that so many of these industrial buildings seemed to have been built with a great deal of attention toward design. Together, the Bechers went out with a large format camera and photographed these buildings from a number of different angles, but always with a straightforward « objective » point of view. The images of structures with similar functions were then displayed side by side to invite viewers to compare their forms and designs. These structures included barns, water towers, storage silos, and warehouses.
The Bechers also photographed outside of Germany, including buildings from the United States and other areas of Europe. Bernd taught at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and influenced students that later made a name for themselves in the photography industry. Former students of Bernd’s included Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, and Candida Höfer.

From Wikipedia

Figure 3: Gas Tanks 1982-1992

from left to right and top to bottom:
Wittingen, Niedersachsen, Germany, 1979
Verviers, Belgium, 1983
Crailsheim, Germany, 1979
Ilsede, Hannover, Germany, 1984

Grube « Caerau », Caerau Südwales, Großbritannien, 1966, Silbergelatine

Reparation Plants, 1966-1976.

Steven Klein Studio

NOI Pictures — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 09:18:28 +0000

We would like to share the work of Steven Klein, an american fashion photographer based in New York.
Click on the pictures to visit his website.
ALL PICTURES © Steven KLEIN

Steven Klein (born 1961) studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, then moved into the field of photography. Klein shot high-profile advertising campaigns for various clients including Calvin Klein, D&G, Alexander McQueen and Nike and is a regular contributor to magazines including American and French Vogue, i-D, Numéro, W and Arena. His work has featured in numerous exhibitions, most recently at the Gagosian Gallery, California and the Brancolini Grimaldi Gallery in Florence. Klein is well known for his W Magazine editorials with Madonna, Tom Ford, Brad Pitt and numerous others. He often works with Lighting Director David Devlin. Klein is represented by Todd Shemarya Artists for photography and Station Film for commercials.

Marco Vernaschi

NOI Pictures — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 04:44:10 +0000

We would like to share the work of Marco Vernaschi, an italian photojournalist and writer.

Marco Vernaschi was born in Turin, Italy, in 1973. He began his long-term project to document the major illegal activities behind terrorism with his project “West Africa’s New Achilles’ Heel”, on cocaine trafficking, with the overall goal of showing how unaware consumers in the West support international terrorism.

His work with the Pulitzer Center documents the effects of cocaine trafficking in West Africa, showing how criminal networks led by Hezbollah and Al Qaeda destroyed a whole country in just a few years.

During this coverage, Marco spent a considerable amount of time with an African organization of drug traffickers affiliated with Islamist terrorists, documenting their criminal activities, the assassination of the president of Guinea-Bissau and the devastating social effects on local people, including crack addiction and prostitution.

In 2007 Marco documented in Bolivia the early stages of President Evo Morales’ new policy on coca crops, showing how the indigenous people living in the region of Chapare are forced by the circumstances, and by increasing demand in Europe and the United States, to deal with cocaine trafficking and smuggling, under constant blackmail and threat by the counter-narcotics police. The resulting story, “Bolivia: Broken Promises”, documented the involvement of children in cocaine smuggling, will be the focus of Marco’s upcoming video documentary.

In 2006 Marco covered the tin war in Bolivia’s Altiplano documenting the fratricidal conflicts among miners and its aftermath. The result was his story “Condemned to Repeat” and the photo essay “The Bitter Taste of Salt,” on the daily struggle of the Quechua salt-miners living in the northwestern salt flats of Argentina who are exploited by the international salt industry.

In Madagascar he documented child prostitution among the forgotten Tanala people, their struggle against a devastating wave of AIDS and the environmental problems related to their primitive form of agriculture, resulting in the story “Tales of Hope.”

Marco worked on other stories in Indonesia, India, Nepal, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Belize. His work is published internationally by major magazines such as Newsweek, National Geographic, GEO and The Sunday Times Magazine. He’s currently working on his first book, The Legacy of Cocaine.

Marco received a grant from the Pulitzer Center in 2008-09, and was named among the 10 winners for the ODP Award for Human Values. He was awarded the FUJIFILM Prize for Photojournalism in 2006 and was named Young Photojournalist of the Year in 2004 by the Italian Photography Foundation. He has also received grants from the Nando Peretti Foundation, in 2004-05.