Continually exploring new techniques is essential for capturing your best images, especially in landscape photography. The practice of exposure bracketing, a technique of taking multiple photographs of the same scene at different exposure levels, is one of those valuable tools for photographers seeking to achieve perfect exposure in their images.
Coming to you from Park Cameras, this helpful video tutorial will show you how exposure bracketing is particularly beneficial in high-contrast scenarios, such as landscapes with bright highlights and dark shadows. By capturing multiple exposures, photographers can blend these images in post-processing software of their choice, ensuring that all areas of the photograph are correctly exposed. This is a crucial technique, as even the best modern sensors are outmatched by the dynamic range of some scenes. Exposure bracketing addresses this by allowing the photographer to take multiple shots – typically one underexposed, one at what is considered the correct exposure, and one overexposed, which are then mixed into one final shot. This technique reduces the need to push the shadows or highlights too far in post-processing, which can often lead to noise or loss of detail. It’s an approach every landscape photographer should know. Check out the video above for the full rundown.
And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out our latest tutorial, “Photographing the World: Japan With Elia Locardi!”
Photographer Kristen Joy Emack’s Wellington neighborhood in Cambridge is changing right before her eyes.
“I didn’t realize what was happening to my community until buildings were beginning to be stacked around me,” she said, sitting in the living room of her family’s apartment. She nodded a few blocks away, toward Cambridge Street.
“That whole view has changed. That was an open view. And now you see tall buildings.”
Emack’s exhibition at Gallery Kayafas, “Book of Saints,” documents her community — one she sees as at risk.
“The city is really not sustainable,” she said. “For many, many families.”
Cambridge Community Foundation’s 2021 Equity & Innovation Cities: The Case of Cambridge report documents effects of the rise of the city’s innovation economy before the pandemic, with some data about COVID-19’s impact in 2020. Emack has photos in the report.
The study, building on 2019 Brookings Institution research, surveyed 25 cities nationwide with tech-powered economies
“Family households declined and were replaced by the millennial population, a population with more income, and less connected with geographic communities,” CCF president Geeta Pradhan told the Globe.
Fifty-six percent of Cantabrigians in the lowest economic bracket, or quintile, pay 50 percent or more of their income for housing, according to the report. “With an average income of $13,280, households in the first quintile earn nearly $330,000 less than households in the top quintile,” it states. Black homeowners and renters are the “most cost-burdened,”spending more than 30 percent of their gross income on housing.
“The stresses of gentrification or growth Cambridge was facing were much greater,” than the other cities, said Pradhan.
Emack said she lives in federally subsidized Section 8 housing. It’s where she raised her two children, Niko, 28, and Apple, 16.
“I have a lot of skin in the game,” she said.
For “Book of Saints,” she took portraits of ordinary people who make a community, even when the tide is against them: Manny, whom she met at a Black Lives Matter gathering after George Floyd’s murder; an undocumented friend Emack photographed with her back to the camera (titled with a pseudonym); best friends Clara and Rafa, whom Emack photographed separately in 2021 in front of a tree and a building.
The tree, the photographer said, “is now pulled up, unrooted and discarded. This building has been gutted.”
Rafa died last August of liver cancer, at 16. Emack said she wants to write about the medical racism she saw Rafa encounter before she received a proper diagnosis.
“Book of Saints” follows Emack’s series “Cousins,” published in November by L’artiere, featuring images of her daughter and three nieces. Emack is white; her daughter, Apple, is mixed race, and her nieces are Black. The series depicts the close bond among the four girls.
“There is a marketed style of commercial photography of Black girls,” Emack said, “and they don’t relate to that.”
“I knew and they knew that we were creating imagery that wasn’t out there in the world,” the photographer said.
“The trope about girls is that they start out innocent and as they get closer to the teenage years, they care less about the grown-ups in their life, they care less about each other, they care more about dating, and they are distracted by phones and beauty and et cetera,” Emack said. “That’s not what happened with their relationship.”
The project was in many ways a collaboration between artist and subjects.
“The subject is the girls, but sometimes the exploration is Kristen’s and sometimes it’s theirs,” said independent photography curator, educator, and podcaster J. Sybylla Smith, who lives in Cambridge.
“‘Cousins’ expands a narrative about coming of age and girlhood into young women of color becoming themselves,” she added.
The project lasted for 13 years. In 2021, they prepared to wrap it up.
“When I talked with my oldest niece about it, she got really sad and said, ‘I feel like if the work ends, then I end, too,’” said Emack.
Both Pradhan and Smith used the word “soulful” when describing Emack’s portraits.
“I think I spent a huge part of my early life not feeling seen,” said Emack, who grew up in Madison, Conn.. “So it’s valuable to me to help people feel seen. And I do it with my camera.”
The success of “Cousins” led the artist to a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship, which helped fund “Book of Saints.” Emack also works as family liaison for the Cambridge Public Schools, helping with resources.
“I sent out a reminder for families that if they wanted to apply for fuel assistance in the city of Cambridge, here’s the link and here’s how they do it,” she said.
But then someone emailed who was helping a refugee family “from a tradition of oral language, not written language,” Emack said. For a family that doesn’t read, clicking a link wasn’t so simple.
“That’s the hidden reality of being someone who’s under the poverty level in a place like Cambridge,” Emack said. “The resources people think come easily to lower-income families are really complex to get. They help, but they don’t solve the problem.”
She believes gentrification is changing her community in other ways.
“Cambridge is always recognized as a very progressive city, a liberal city. But the social-justice model that Cambridge has embraced for such a long time, that’s starting to shift,” she said. “It’s going to slip out of our fingers eventually, I think.”
“Book of Saints” captures her city now, “so that 100 years from now, 50 years from now, 20 years from now, when Cambridge has morphed into whatever it’s going to become,” Emack said, “we will have an archive of who was here, and who most likely was not able to stay.”
KRISTEN JOY EMACK: Book of Saints
At Gallery Kayafas, 450 Harrison Ave., through Feb. 10. 617-482-0411, www.gallerykayafas.com/book-of-saints
Cate McQuaid can be reached at catemcquaid@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram @cate.mcquaid.
Nev Dennard’s photographs could be mistaken for the sets of an apocalyptic zombie movie.
The urban photographer specialises in taking pictures of abandoned buildings and landmarks around New South Wales.
He’s snapped a variety of long-forgotten places around the state.
“It’s free. I can go on and explore, learn some history about the places I’m visiting. It’s exciting,” Mr Dennard said.
Photos posted by Mr Dennard this week of a closed shopping arcade along the Hunter Street Mall in Newcastle have been among his most popular.
“Everybody was commenting. It evokes some kind of memory for a lot of people,” he said.
The photos featured graffiti, broken shopfront windows and rubbish strewn throughout the site.
“It almost evokes apocalyptic sort of scenes of what it would be like if human beings didn’t walk through there for 20, 30 years,” he said.
The post has been shared more than 1,000 times and received more than 1,500 comments, most from locals reminiscing about the centre’s glory days.
“I get a lot of people saying that [their] childhood was spent here,” Mr Dennard said.
“So it’s great I can evoke that sort of memory with people and they get something out of it.”
The image of a battered sign from a much-loved takeaway shop struck a chord.
“What I really learned about the [centre] is they had the best roast beef and gravy rolls,” he said.
“I’m sorry I missed out on it. It sounded like it was fantastic.”
The building Mr Dennard photographed closed last year and is set to be redeveloped into a new complex with shops and luxury apartments.
Mr Dennard puts a lot of work into his hobby.
He said pinpointing these derelict and forgotten structures required preparation and planning.
“I’ll do my research and try and look for some old buildings, old farmhouses, places like that,” he said.
Mr Dennard travels NSW visiting structures that are ailing, vandalised and overgrown, but has found plenty of interesting sites in his own backyard in Newcastle and the Central Coast.
“There’s so many places, World War II bunkers. You’ve got Fort Wallace at Stockton Beach,” he said.
A favourite from further afield was a recent trip to an old aquarium at Manly.
“That was a bucket list [item] for a few years; walking through there [was] very dark, very creepy,” he said.
He strongly advised anyone wanting to try urban exploration to play it safe, recalling a mishap at a flooded bunker in Rathmines at Lake Macquarie.
“I actually put the scuba gear on and went through, and I got stuck,” Mr Dennard said.
“I worked my way out of it, but don’t do that, you should not dive alone.”
He said he did not advocate taking risks for a photograph.
“This whole conversation comes with: Don’t do this at home,” he said.
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Phillips Showcases ‘New Terrains’: A Landmark Exhibition of Contemporary Native American Art
Phillips, the esteemed auction house, is ushering in a groundbreaking exhibition, ‘New Terrains’, a landmark showcase of contemporary Native American art in New York. The exhibition, running through January 23, is a grand spectacle of over 120 works spanning painting, sculpture, photography, video, jewelry, pottery, and weaving. More than 60 Indigenous artists from mid-20th century to the present day have their works on display, reflecting the creative diversity and artistic prowess of the Native American tribes.
Bruce Hartman, former executive director of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, curated this exhibition alongside Tony Abeyta and James Trotta-Bono. Together, they have assembled a diverse collection that mirrors the multifaceted creative responses of Indigenous artists to modernism, post-war, and pop art movements. Their artistry is interwoven with their social and political experiences, lending the exhibition a uniquely resonant depth.
The exhibition features revered artists like Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Fritz Scholder, while also spotlighting emerging artists such as Navajo weaver Calvin Toney. Scholder’s ‘Sitting Indian, 1972’ and Monkman’s ‘Death of Adonis, 2010’ are among the notable works. These masterpieces reflect the rich tapestry of Native American art and offer a profound commentary on their societal context.
‘New Terrains’ seeks to be inclusive of various tribes from the U.S. and Canada and crosses boundaries of gender and tribal affiliations. This broad representation has already piqued the interest of museums and private foundations, marking a significant moment for the recognition and market appreciation of contemporary Native American and Canadian First Nations art. Artwork prices at the exhibition range from approximately $8,000 to nearly $1 million, suggesting a promising future for Indigenous art in the global art market.
Throughout January, Rutherford Library in South Bristol shows a selection of black-and-white photographs of local residents taken in the mid-1970s. The photos are the work of Ann Hillis, whose family had a home in Christmas Cove in the 1940s. The photos are on loan from the South Bristol Historical Society.
Hillis studied under Craig Stevens at Maine Photographic Workshops in Rockport, according to a 2006 Lincoln County News article. She exhibited in the Farnsworth Museum, Bowdoin College, Westbrook College and in New York with photographers from Rockport’s Maine Photographic Workshops. This group of South Bristol photographs was the result of an overnight assignment by Stevens for students to take pictures of people in their hometown and print them for class. With his encouragement, Hillis continued taking pictures of the people of South Bristol at work and at leisure, throughout 1976 and 1978. Hillis’ prints were also shown at Round Top Center for the Arts in 1998 and she was quoted in the program: “I am most grateful to the people of South Bristol for letting me intrude upon their lives at all hours. This study is a record of how things were back then. It is in the nature of things to change. These pictures are of a moment in our illusion of time, a bit of modern history. I hope the townspeople enjoy seeing some old friends and remembering how things were not so long ago.”
