Newsletter:
June, 2009
Photograph of the Month
NEWS
"KODACHROME IS DEAD."
Actually, this isn't really news--Kodachrome has been toast for years. Six years ago, when I was a photo magazine editor and film was still king, nearly all the landscape images that came across my desk were shot on Fujichrome Velvia, and this was true for both amateur and professional submissions alike.
Still, I was among the relatively few "holdouts" shooting Kodachrome when I switched to digital photography in 2002. I always preferred Kodachrome's more natural tonality to Velvia's, and now that it's gone, I can't help but think of all the images I made with it, especially in the deserts of the Southwest. Perhaps in a future newsletter or a blog (I've been thinking of adding one to my site), we'll have a go at some scans from the old days...

*** CLASSES: FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY***
If you missed my Basic or Advanced Flash Photography classes at Denver's Working with Artists, I have recently arranged to make those offerings more permanent, with a Basic class every quarter, and an Advanced class twice yearly. The next Basic session is coming up in August!
** Check out the class descriptions or enroll by clicking HERE.
Image of Murphey's Drug Store
Image: "Photo of the Month"
Image of Saguaro
Image of Morning Glory
If you saw my posts on Facebook or Twitter a few weeks back, you heard about my crazy session photographing peonies here in Denver while our region was under a Tornado Warning. (I don't particularly like tornadoes, but the light was great and the air was very still for the better part of 90 minutes, so I shot until the breeze picked up.)
This is one of the images to come out of that session, and I'm very excited about it--I feel that it follows my aim of looking at a familiar subject in a new way. There are more pictures from this session to follow, but given their unusual look and feel, they have been challenging to print--I'll share more of them with you in the future.
Until then, though, here's an answer to a question some of you are bound to have: The colors you see are primarily a product of the way the photo was shot--especially the lighting--and not an effect contrived in Photoshop. If anything, that software was used to keep the color from becoming more extreme than it already is... (Here's a question for YOU, then: Would it have really mattered if it WERE a Photoshop effect? Something to think about...)
Fine-art photographer Zachary Singer has had a camera in hand since childhood—more than three decades now. He came to fine-art photography through his experiences in photojournalism: While shooting for Greenpeace and other environmental groups, as well as Native American tribes in the Southwest, Zach learned to quickly capture the essence of his subjects.
Zach has written dozens of articles on photography for magazines such as Outdoor Photographer, PCPhoto, and Digital Photo Pro, and has taught photography at California’s Santa Monica College. When time permits, he works with a select group of commercial clients.