Photographing a New City

As I write this post, I am venturing in the beautiful city of Budapest Hungary. This old historic city has so much to offer with the culture, the people and the mystique of a place so vastly different from the one I live in. The textures, colors, the varied terrain and spendid architecture allow so many incredible stimuli for pictures. I just keep shooting and the pleasure is surreal.

It is so important as an artist to stay inspired. One of the greatest skills an artist can have, I believe, is the ability to do this. Travelling is a good way to find the "new", always so rewarding for the eyes.

Alex Webb, a great Magnum photographer, has produced a wonderful set of images of the city of Istanbul and displays them in a video presentation attached here. I hope you enjoy this interpretation as much as I have. This video comes to us via Youtube.

Podcasts for The Creative Mind

Photo by Ralph Gibson

When I discovered photography podcasts a little over 2 years ago, my passion and inspiration for photography reached new heights. Some that I really enjoy are podcasts by Brooks Jensen from "Lenswork", Jeff Curto's "History of Photography", Ibarionex Perello's "The Candid Frame" and Craig Tanner's podcasts on "The Radiant Vista" website, now "The Mindful Eye". All of these are accessible from the itunes store or from their respective websites. I highly recommend them to anyone interested in the creative side of photography.

Just recently, I came across a site hosting some outstanding podcasts entitled "Podcasts for the Creative Mind". These are really great and are in the form of interviews featuring some truly gifted artists, from painters to photographers, musicians to designers, chefs to architects. In this series of podcasts, they share their passions.
Ralph Gibson, one of my favorite photographers for instance, discusses topics like "Art & Vocation", "Originality" and "The Making of a Photograph".

You can play these directly off the site or download them for listening later.

Check them out here

My photo critique from "The Mindful Eye"

"The Mindful Eye", founded by Craig Tanner, previously with "The Radiant Vista", is an online photo community where you can go to gain inspiration and knowledge about the photographic life. One feature available there, which I love, is the Daily Critique. Members are encouraged to upload photos, and if selected, have the opportunity of getting a video critique by Craig Tanner. This critique is then posted on the site and YouTube for others to learn from, comment on and generally enjoy.

Today, one of my street photography portraits was chosen for critique.
"Smoker" is the title of the photograph.

Check out "The Mindful Eye" here.

Getting your work out there!

The world wide web has generated unprecedented opportunities for photographers wanting to promote their work. The video link attached here is an example of how I was able to get my work critiqued and then published online. This was presented by Craig Tanner on the "The Radiant Vista" website. This site was a great resource for uploading images daily for potential critique. Craig would select an image a day and create a quicktime video evaluating the selected piece. In this case , my series entitled "Alleys of Hope" was discussed as a series and presented on the site.



Craig Tanner is a phenomenal photographer, teacher, podcaster and writer. His teachings through podcasts and critiques have been invaluable to me as a photographic artist and I highly recommend visiting his amazing new site named "The Mindful Eye". Here, Craig has continued the tradition of supplying photographers with an awesome resource for learning and sharing.

The site can be accessed at: http://www.tmelive.com/index.php/index.html.

Graffiti Photography

Hi!
A couple of years or so ago, I completed this series of photographs incorporating figures against some remarkable graffiti art in downtown Toronto. The project is called "Alleys of Hope". These images were made late at night and I used a flash light to paint areas of the scene. I also used extensive photoshop post processing techniques to bring out color saturation and detail.
The entire series can be viewed on my site at: www.carminegroe.com

I am curious what you think about the images and if you're interested in this technique?
Cheers, Carmine