Lens Blog: Autochrome's Enduring Allure

Via the New York Times' Lens blog, a cool little story about the turn-of-the-century color process known as autochrome:


Looking through a loupe at the grain that makes up the gossamer colors of an autochrome is like looking at a pointillist painting, a miniature Georges Seurat.

Autochrome is a process developed in 1903 by the Lumière brothers in which glass plates were coated with a layer of potato starch mixed with color dyes that filtered light before it reached the emulsion. It yielded a grainy, positive image of muted pastels on a glass plate: a stained-glass window of the recent past. 

Read the rest here, and check out the entire National Geographic autochrome exhibit's website at the Steven Kasher gallery in New York.

-Jason Reimer

The Green Book Materials: Phos Pictures

It's been a few weeks since I've posted anything here, but you can thank a crazy couple of weeks of final exams and portfolio-making for that. I'll try to make up for it with some good stuff, though.

Today I ran across this short film on the New York Times' Lens Blog, and really enjoyed the work these guys produced, part of a new wave of creative stuff being unleashed by the new video dslr's. My one quibble is that they lean a little too heavily on the shallow depth of field stuff sometimes, but that's minor, because the film is beautiful, moving, and full of empathy. (Phos Pictures is Jason Wood and Eliot Rausch doing the producing, directing and editing, with camera work by Luke Torver and Matt Taylor.) I've embedded it below, take a look.


The Green Book Materials from phos pictures on Vimeo.

I also enjoyed this one on their Vimeo page, about Phos producer Jason Wood telling the story of his dog that he's having to have put to sleep after a long battle with cancer. Again, some powerful storytelling..


Last Minutes with ODEN from phos pictures on Vimeo.

-Jason Reimer

Joey Lawrence (no, not that one): Transcendent Environmental Portraits

A friend recently forwarded me this link from Graphic Exchange. Lawrence does some stunning work with available light and some strategically placed strobes, with amazing results. His work totally floored me, take a look.

-Jason Reimer