A very cool show opened last night at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in LA. Curated by Kent Williams, The Human Eclectic explores the question “What is becoming of the ‘us’ – the ‘each of us’?”

From the show:
Maybe it’s our detachment from the reality of mass human destruction, or the invited dehumanization of our existence through computers and online interactions. It could be our growing desensitization to cruelty, to violence and to suffering through the television invasion. Whatever it is, it appears we have stopped celebrating, or even acknowledging, the very thing that defines our entire race – our humanity. We are offering it up, as though sacrificially, to the machines we create and worship.

Because of this almost inevitable crisis of self, we find it important again, maybe now more than ever in the history of art making, to cling to our most basic possession – the human form. Call it a quiet revolution – the lone artist embracing the representation of man again – slowly and deliberately turning himself back around to look at himself again. Through the idiosyncratic self, the artists in this show collectively identify the masses: the every man, the other men, the always woman and the sometimes child – their existences, their truths, their triumphs and their failures. These artists remind us that we, the family of man, must not allow ourselves to disappear.

The show runs through November 7, and features work by a number of artists, including: Peter Liashkov, Barron Storey, Jon J Muth, Kent Williams, Aaron Smith, Dean Karr, Mari Inukai, Chris Anthony, Jennifer Poon, Jason Shawn Alexander, Kevin Llewellyn, Sara Escamilla.

Gallery Info

Merry Karnowsky Gallery
170 South La Brea Avenue
(in the Art 170 Building),
Los Angeles, California 90036
323.933.4408
Contact person: Merry Karnowsky
E-mail:
mkgallery@att.net
Website:
http://www.mkgallery.com
Gallery hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 12-6pm

Here’s a technique for removing unwanted color cast using a targeted Adjustment Layer.

Photo55
We talked about creativity in photography and how to “find the shot”. We took a look at some of the work of brilliant Australian wedding photographer Jerry Ghionis. Jerry is a master at posing and dramatic lighting, using very little gear. If you liked what you saw, don’t forget that you can attend a very special Jerry Ghionis all-day workshop for only $100.00, courtesy of the folks at fotografosdecorazon.com. Tix for the event are available on their site or at jerryghionisinla.com. One of the questions in class was about using the SmugMug plugin for Lightroom. Rather than post a tutorial, we’ll go over the installation and usage next time in class.

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In The Art of Compositing, we started assembling the “Zen Road” image and took a more detailed look at using Smart Objects in our composites. The key to working with Smart Objects is to remember this: edits made to a Smart Object in the document layer palette are non-destructive BUT, if you double-click the Smart Object and edit it directly (you’ll see the “.psb” file extension in the tab title bar), those changes are permanent because you are editing the source object, NOT the Smart Object (virtual copy). This week, we’re continuing on with Zen Road and also taking a look at how to create our own dirty pictures.
You can read a brief primer on using Smart Objects in Photoshop CS4 HERE.

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Fantastic session in The Web for Photographers. Those who came out, give yourselves a pat on the back. You’re learning some tough stuff and we got through quite a bit. We got an entire page layed out, sized and prepared for images using HTML and CSS. Very well done. The great thing about learning a bit of CSS is that it prepares you to customize not only your own sites, but also your blogs, such as Wordpress and Blogger. This week, we’ll get those images in and add some more pages to our dev site.
There are a number of sites online to help you learn web development, but one that I read quite a bit is Web Appers. They offer a ton of information on development, plugins, components and all sorts of cool bits of code to customize and use in your own projects.

Thank you everyone for continuing to come out each week.

Over the weekend, we took to the streets for the third Faded & Blurred photo walk. It was a gorgeous afternoon with 60 or so of our closest friends, walking through the Playhouse District of Pasadena. After the walk, a group of us met up at the Yard House for lunch (and to give Frank a chance to Tweet his beer…sort of a tradition). We also talked about the upcoming Help Portrait project that Faded & Blurred is so honored to be involved in. Not wanting to let the beautiful late afternoon light go to waste, we made our way to the Pasadena City Hall where we happened upon Miss Panamerican, who was kind enough to let us photograph her in an impromptu session. All in all, it was another great walk. I’m really looking forward to the next one in Griffith Park on the 25th. Also, mark your calendar for next month’s walk: Downtown After Dark. We’ll be walking and shooting in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, November 21st. Meeting time and location will be posted on fadedandblurred.com in the next couple days…Stay tuned.