phinster

phineas had a birthday a while back. i shot some fun pictures of him. here he models his present's wrapping paper. i had just purchased an off-camera flash unit and was learning how to use it.

optics

i've been taking lots of pictures lately, but sorry, none for this post. david hockney has my imagination lately, priming me with ideas about photography, painting, art in general. i read a book by lawrence weschler over the holidays titled "True to Life: 25 Years of Conversations with David Hockney". i feel as if i've been through art history all over again, and this time am excited about it. a while back, hockney began to think that old masters had used optical techniques to achieve their works, a controversial view even today. his investigations are fascinating. his point isn't that the works are any less compelling because the old masters may not have created everything on the canvas with their own eye, but that artists of that time used all the tools available to them to explore, almost like scientists. i love that idea.