Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Professional Photographers of America magazine has published a review of the Booksmart Fine Art Metal’s.

To the the full article online visit the link here.

Below see the text excerpt only.

Booksmart Studio Metal Media Adds Shine, Depth, and Unconventionality

By Stan Sholik

As photographers strive to set themselves apart from their competition, many find offering a unique look to their clients for their prints is a brand-enhancing way to stand out. Booksmart Studio is providing just such an option with inkjet printable aluminum. Photographers with a compatible inkjet printer can create samples, portfolio pieces, and final prints for clients as easily as they create inkjet prints on common media. The look is unique, often three dimensional, and is sure to set your work apart from your competitors.

The five available surfaces of inkjet printable media are, left to right, Satin White, Matte Silver, Satin Silver, Brushed Silver, and Satin Gold.

Five different surfaces are available for the fine art media aluminum sheets that are coated to accept most dye and pigment inks. Satin White has the look of smooth luster paper and is best for images with high detail and saturated colors. Satin Silver has a very fine grain structure that also lends itself to detailed images, and the surface reflects light back through the image making it almost three dimensional when viewed from certain angles.

The Satin White media has the look of smooth luster paper with
high sharpness and saturation. I muted the saturation somewhat
when making this print.

The surface of Satin Gold media is similar in reflectance to Satin Silver, but has an appearance somewhere between brass and 24k gold. This tends to mute saturated colors, and I found it perfect for a bridal portrait where softness is a virtue. Booksmart’s Matte Silver media also provides a muted look, but without the three dimensionality of Satin Gold. Matte Silver also appears somewhat yellowish under certain lighting conditions, but far less so than Satin Gold.

This photo doesn’t begin to do justice to the Satin Gold print that
is far more beautiful. As light reflects from the print at different
angles, the depth of the photo changes from two dimensional
to three dimensional.

Brushed Silver is the final surface option and it is my personal favorite. With the texture of brushed aluminum sheet metal, it’s probably not the choice for romantic portraits or for weddings. But the infrared landscape photo I printed on it is just amazing, as is a commercial still life. The illusion of depth is outstanding, as is the ability to hold a deep black and clean white.

An infrared image printed on Brushed Silver appears positive in
some areas and almost negative in others while retaining the
surface pattern of a brushed aluminum sheet metal. Blacks are
deep and rich, and whites are clean with good detail.

All of these media have an adhesive backing protected by a peel off sheet. This makes mounting easy. Two different thicknesses are available, 0.005 inch foil or 0.020 inch sheets. Any printer that has a straight pass-through will print on the media. I printed 8.5×11-inch sheets of the 0020 inch media on an Epson Stylus Pro 3880 and a Canon imagePrograf iPF6400 using ICC profiles provided by Booksmart Studio. The Epson printing was totally straightforward.

The 24-inch Canon isn’t designed to print on media this small loaded from the front. A quick call to Canon tech support brought the suggestion to tape the metal to an 11 x 14-inch sheet before feeding it into the printer and that worked perfectly. Prints from both printers are gorgeous, each with its look even with the same image.

Satin Silver has a very fine grain surface that results in an accurate color reproduction of the original image with excellent detail. As with Satin Gold, light reflects back through the inkjet layer producing a three dimensional look at certain angles.

The Matte Silver media has a slight yellow cast that adds warmth
to the image. The same file is used for this print that is used for
the Satin Silver print. Differences in reflectance account for the
variation in density, but the color difference is a result of the
different color casts of the media.

Care is required in handling the metal sheets, both before and after printing. To avoid oily fingerprints that would interfere with printing, cotton gloves should be used when loading the printer. Gentle handling is also required to avoid bending corners or warping the sheet, which would prevent it from feeding properly through the printer.

After printing, the surface should be coated or laminated after allowing the print to dry for 20 minutes. Booksmart Studio recommends two or three coats of Clearstar AFA Semi-Gloss coating followed by two to eight coats of Clearstar AFA Gloss coating to reach your desired gloss level.

More information is available from the Booksmart Studio website. A sample pack of 8.5×11-inch sheets of 0.020 inch thick media is available from Booksmart Studios for $49.30. Packages of sheets of a single type are available in sizes from 8.5×11 inches to 20×80 inches. Visit the Booksmart Studio site for pricing.

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Coming in January along with our “In-Habitation” Exhibition we will be showing a series of photographs by Joel Wellington Fisher entitled “Washington to Washington”. This series deconstructs distinctly American landscapes of significance to the D.C. Sniper shootings that took place in 2002. Fisher’s landscapes show seemingly mundane spaces that give a feeling that something has gone terribly wrong and in a post 9/11 world this work is a look into fear and terror in our recent history that hits close to home and has become a common element in today’s society.

Tacoma Washington

Bowie, MD, Location of Shooting Victim # 20

We are very excited to show this body of work along with our “In-Habitation” exhibition which is focused on looking at different aspects of the American landscape and the cultural society within it.
We hope you can all make it out for the opening!

Gallery Opening will be January 7th from 6-9pm

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We had a great turnout at our openings for “A Life Reviewed: George Eastman Through the Viewfinder” and “Eat a Peach”  last Friday!  Thank you to everyone who came!  If you missed the show it will be up in the galleries at Booksmart until January.

The Galleries looked great! Both Emma and Lisa worked hard all week to get everything together by Friday.

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The First Friday of November will consist of two different shows in both of our galleries.

Gallery Kunstler will house Emma Powell’s work “A life Reviewed: George Eastman through the Viewfinder”.  The Rochester Pin Up Gallery will house Lisa Adamucci’s work “Eat a Peach”.   Emma and Lisa are both current graduate students at Rochester Institute of Technology and both galleries will be showcasing their thesis work here at Booksmart Studio.

“A life Reviewed: George Eastman through the Viewfinder”

Photographs by, Emma Powell

“A life Reviewed: George Eastman through the Viewfinder” is an exhibition of photographs that look back on the life of Kodak’s founder George Eastman. The show consists of 25 color photographs by Emma Powell that cover different facets of Eastman’s life and legacy. This work serves as both photographic biography as well as an artistic gaze into the past.  “I wanted to find a way to look back in time, through a window into the past, to visualize temporal distance,” Powell said. “I needed a turn-of-the-century device that could speak to the technological advancements of the industrial revolution. I needed a time machine. Instead, I used cameras.”

“Eat a Peach”

Photographs by, Lisa Adamucci

” I have to be a mean son of a bitch so you kids don’t miss me when I’m gone.”  My father didn’t bother to explain this comment as I sat in the passenger seat waiting for some gesture to indicate that he was just kidding. I stepped out of his truck, smiled, and watched him go.

For the past three years I have been developing a project that focuses on the members of my immediate family and each individual’s relationship to our small southern New Jersey peach farm.

Growing up, I never gave the farm much thought, treating it as a place where my family lived and nothing more. Being a girl excused me from doing just about anything one could think of on the farm. Almost daily one of my brothers: Carmen, Tony, Tommy, or Mikey would vehemently demand my parents to answer the same incriminating question, “But why doesn’t Lisa have to do anything?” When I was five, my dad pretended to spank me just so my four brothers could listen from the other side of the bathroom door: he would clap his hands together while I pretended to cry.

When I began photographing the members of my family the farm took on a life of its own, like a long-lost family member I wanted to get reacquainted with. I became more curious about the business, history, and daily routines of the farm. I wanted to understand it, to uncover the reason for its allure. And now, it has captured me as well, becoming a near obsession.

______________________________________________________________________________

“A Life Reviewed: George Eastman through the Viewfinder” & “Eat a Peach”

Opening receptions
Friday, November 5th, 2010
6-9PM

Gallery Kunstler & The Rochester Pin Up Gallery
(inside Booksmart Studio)
250 North Goodman St.
Rochester, NY 14607

www.booksmartstudio.com

Emma Powell
info@emmapowellphotography.com
www.emmapowellphotography.com

Lisa Adamucci

lisaadamucci@yahoo.com

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THE WORST IS YET TO COME
The Unfortunate Decay of Communication & Culture
New works by Mark Penxa and Don Pendleton

1975 Gallery, in conjunction with BookSmart Studio’s Gallery Kunstler, presents THE WORST IS YET TO COME,collaborations between Don Pendleton and Mark Penxa, two artists/designers highly regarded for their work in the skateboard industry with companies including Alien Workshop, Element, DC Shoe Co., and Girl skateboa…rds.

THE WORST IS YET TO COME explores the modern decay of interpersonal communication and a culture in overall decline. Both artists will be in attendance.

THE WORST IS YET TO COME
September 3 – 25, 2010

Opening reception
Friday, September 3, 2010
6-9PM

1975 at Gallery Kunstler
(inside Booksmart Studio)
250 North Goodman St.
Rochester, NY 14607

For more information:
www.1975ish.com
www.theworstisyettocome.net

Artist Sites:
www.elephont.com
www.markpenxa.com

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In Process opened in the Kunstler gallery last Friday, August 6th.  In Process is an exhibition of the employee’s at Booksmart Studio, Dylan Knapp, Mark Nacey, Sean Dyroff, David Ohl and Alex Broderick.  We had a good turn out and want to continue to invite guests to come check the show out!  It will be up for a month until Friday September 3rd and we are open Monday-Friday 9-6 every week.  Here are some images from the opening.

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 Last month Bill McDowell was in our studio printing out his show and helping us hang it.  We had two openings, one in conjunction with the Book Art’s Symposium at VSW (Visual Studies Workshop) on Thursday, July 1st, night and Bill McDowell’s opening Ashes In The Night Sky in Gallery Kunstler for First Friday on Friday night, July 2nd.  Elisabeth Tonnard, a book artist, also had her work up in the Rochester Pin Up gallery showcasing some of her bookwork.  Here are some images from printing, hanging and the actual events.

 

[View with PicLens]

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Ashes in the Night Sky, an exhibition of an artists’ book and inkjet photographs by Bill McDowell, will open at the Gallery Kunstler, 250 N. Goodman St., on Thursday, July 1 with a reception from 5:00- 7:00 p.m. The exhibition is being held in conjunction with the Photo-Bookworks Symposium at Visual Studies Workshop.

McDowell’s book consists of 48 inkjet photographs, and it was printed, hand sewn, and bound in a limited edition by Booksmart Studio. The exhibition includes 20 large (36” X 45”) and 20 smaller (17” X 22”) photographs, also printed at Booksmart Studio.

“Ashes in the Night Sky” is based on the idea that when one looks at a celestial sky, the astronomical objects seen are representations of the past. McDowell used his father’s cremated ashes to simulate stars, nebulae and galaxies, scanning them on a flatbed scanner. Later, he re-worked the images on a computer.

The photographs in the exhibition are arranged in four related series: Galaxies, Night Skies, Negative Prints, and Fragments.

In Galaxies, McDowell often relied on using source images found in astronomy books. “I would work with one of these astronomical photographs by my side, replicating its composition by using my fingers and various sieves and screens to sift and drop the ashes on the scanner glass. The denser the accumulation of ashes, the brighter the image they recorded. Fine, dust-like particles often appeared as distant stars or gaseous clouds against the background’s inky blackness. I didn’t try to copy the astronomical photographs too faithfully; they served as starting points. I was more interested in the chance-determined relationships that developed from my inability to precisely control the fall of the ashes. It was in the translation from the document that fortuitous things happened.”

Other images in the Galaxies series depended more heavily on computer manipulation, where McDowell selectively blurred areas in an image to alter depth relationships, and in others to create a gaseous or nebulous region.

In Night Skies, McDowell worked sequentially. Each sequence began with ashes spread on the scanner to simulate a star-laden sky. After viewing the first scanned image, he would respond to the arrangement, which was still on the scanner, add more ashes and rescan. He continued adding ashes in this way, producing up to 20 consecutive scans per sequence.

Negative Prints were inspired by the practice of astronomers printing a photograph as a negative to access greater information in the image. By reversing the tonal scale, McDowell was reminded that all of his pictures began with the elemental particle of ash.

In Fragments, he scanned individual pieces of cremated bone. The respective fragment (each less than an inch in length) revealed a particular coloration and architecture depending on the bone’s mineral content, the temperature of the fire, and the crematorium’s grinding of the skeletal remains. These photographs presented the bone fragments in a straightforward manner, much like a forensic or archeological document.

Of  “Ashes in the Night Sky”, McDowell stated, “This work is a meditation on my father’s passing, but also an exploration of the interconnectivity of life on Earth and in the Universe. I’ve read that on a clear night the unaided eye can see five planets, ten thousand stars in the Milky Way, and the glow of three other galaxies. That over one hundred times more stars fill the sky than sand grains on all the beaches of our world. That the nitrogen atoms we breathe on Earth are identical to the nitrogen atoms on Mars. That the laws of physics really are universal.”

“Intellectually I know all this and yet, in the everyday, my world is small and my cosmology is shaky. Often, I’m as oblivious to the brilliance of the night sky as I am to those I love. The phase of the moon, the paths of the stars and planets, they move above me unnoticed. And too often, like those I love, I neglect the sun’s warmth and radiance until it’s gone, its light faded to darkness.”

Bill McDowell is the Chair of the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Vermont. He has also taught at Texas A&M University-Commerce, and Rochester Institute of Technology. McDowell received a M.F.A. in Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology, and took classes at Visual Studies Workshop.

He is a recipient of the Artist Fellowship in Photography from the New York Foundation on the Arts (NYFA), an Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, the Texas Photography Society Grant, as well as several artist research grants from the University of Vermont and Texas A&M-Commerce.

His selected solo exhibitions include Jan Kesner Gallery, in Los Angeles, Houston Center of Photography, Robert  B. Menschel Gallery at Light Work, Kenyon College, St. Lawrence University, and the University of Vermont. His group shows include the Dallas Museum of Art, Blue Sky Gallery, Society for Contemporary Photography, in Kansas City, and the Triennial of Photography at the Deichtorhallen Museum, Hamburg.

His work is represented in collections at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Deichtorhallen Museum, St. Lawrence University, and the University of Vermont.

His photographs have been published in Light Work’s Contact Sheet 96, Art in America, Art Issues, The New Yorker, Spot, and Exposure.

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Learn about Nik Software’s latest photo enhancement plug-ins and filters for Photoshop, Aperture and Lightroom with former Nik Software Product Specialist, Sean Dyroff.

 
Sean worked for Nik Software for several years and played a major role in the development of every current major Nik Software plug-in including Dfine 2.0, Viveza 2, Color Efex Pro 3.0, Silver Efex Pro, and Sharpener Pro 3.0. He also created many of the educational materials related to the plug-ins while traveling the country to teach photographers about the newest releases of the plug-ins and how the integrate into different photographic workflows. 
 

Nik Software Workshop Topics

• Dfine 2.0— A thorough look at how to reduce noise and maintain photographic detail
• Viveza 2.0—Using Color Control Points to make enhancements and adjustments in no time
• Advanced Viveza 2.0—Using Control Point Groups to control several areas at once
• Color Efex Pro 3.0—Getting the most out of all 52 filters in the Color Efex Pro 3.0 Complete Edition to bring the most out of your images
• Silver Efex Pro—The ins and outs of Silver Efex Pro – everything you could ever want to know about Silver Efex Pro and more… from the guy that wrote the product 
• Sharpener Pro 3.0—Sharpening your images for print, web or the lab
• The Entire Workflow—Putting it all together, Sean will go over how and when to incorporate the plug-ins together to edit an image from start to finish

Cost for Workshop

$125/person for the 5-hour workshop

Date of the Workshop

July 10th  2010
10am – 4pm (1 hour for lunch)

Registration for Workshop

Please register for the workshop here: Register for Nik Software Workshop

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