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I posted this photo years ago on a photo forum. It was the cover photo from a maquette of 'Shadows in Time' which was an artist's book I was working on. I chanced upon the old thread years later. I don't always have the time to get back to all the threads I start. I'm on many forums and just too busy outside of the forums. I started with online forums way back in the BBS days. Even before that, we had snail mail forums, where someone printed out the forum contributions on a dot matrix printer, Xeroxed them and snail mailed them to all the members. Anyway, the forum person said they didn't like the shadow and liked the deer scene only. The subject of the thread was photographers' shadows in photos. I thought, goddamn, this was a photo forum, the shadow is what makes the photo, why don't they see it? But zir is entitled to their opinion. My opinion is; you can't force talent or an 'eye' on anyone. Some may be able to improve, but generally speaking, either you got an eye for this stuff or you don't. The genius produces outstanding work with little or no effort, whereas the non-genius may struggle to produce something mediocre. If we could all be geniuses at what we aspire to be by going to class or cracking a book open...we would. In the early 1970's I had a friend that went to Art Center College in L.A. (Old location) He studied photography. I would sometimes go to class with him to sit in on classes. I could not afford to go there, so that was as close as I got to Art Center. (I would also sneak in to use their dry mount press until they caught me and kicked me out.) Anyway, I noticed in the critique sessions for weekly assignments the same students would produce more or less outstanding photos for each assignment. Some would produce OK photos and maybe a great one once in a while and some would produce low end stuff as their general output. Later on with my work as an art director I noticed a similar thing with artists I would hire or do portfolio reviews on. Some had good technical abilities, but poor creativity. Others had creativity but poor technique. Others had both technique and creativity, but were flakes. Back in the 1980's I interviewed a gal for an art job. She was in her 40's and had retired from business. She was well off selling her business for millions and lived in a mini-mansion in San Marino, CA. Her new 'hobby' was she wanted to be an artist. She said she had taken some art classes and showed me her portfolio. The draftsmanship was poor and creativity was poor. And her prices to do jobs were very high. Her background as a successful business owner tainted her realistic conception of what is paid for art jobs. Her work smacked of someone with little art talent that struggled to put it down on paper or canvas. It wasn't in her, she had little talent and just studying art in school did not do much for her...she had no natural talent for art. Now someone with natural talent bangs it out with little or no effort, whereas she struggled just to produce sub-par work. That is what separates the genius from the non-genius. In my own case I tried to learn some creativity with book cover design. I used to produce lots of artist's books. Designing the cover has always been hard for me. I am not a creative person in that area. I bought a number of books on cover design. I studied and studied them over and over again. The best I could do with my creativity for cover design would be to try and copy off of other people's covers I liked in the book. It just wasn't in me. When I first started with photography in 1969 / 1970 I wanted to be a fashion / studio photographer. After a few years it sunk in I had no talent for that type of work. Eventually I stopped forcing things and moved to another area of work that I do have talent in...but it was just by chance. I could have dedicated my life to forcing myself to work in an area I was not suited for. We all have different abilities; we each have to decide how much of us we want to spend on areas we work in. Sometimes a thing clicks in the mind and you are ready to go. That is what happened to me after working on infrared flash for 4+ years and failing. Something clicked. But I could have easily given up after 4 years of failure. Sometimes it is just a crapshoot! Staten Island Ferry NYC, 2016 (Candid) Selection from The American's...60 years after Frank artist's book. by Daniel D. Teoli Jr. <><><><> Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Small Gauge Film Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Advertising Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. VHS Video Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Popular Culture Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Audio Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Social Documentary Photography

Hi there, 15 years ago me an some friends of mine worked on a corny little fantasy project (http://www.candlekeep.com/library/articles/tdod.htm) that was never really finished. I am now working to restore one scene of that project to use it a a template for my film music compositions. Although I am making good progress in re-cutting and dubbing that scene, I am still lacking a visual fire effect for one very short sequence and don't how to implement that kind of vfx. Here is that short sequence: Do you know any small tool/program (best free- or trialware) to quickly create some kind of a ray of fire (until 0:04) and some gout of flame (from 0:04 on) around these little monsters? It doesn't has to look particularly good, it just has to be recognizable. If you want to try it yourselves, I've uploaded the sequence to dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/s/op1crkcjxkv1ezi/Feuerzauber-Effekt.avi?dl=0 Best regards and many thanks in advance Dustin

Hi all, i am heading to the Patagonia in a couple months to start production on an installation piece i am working on - i am shooting film footage on a 16mm Krasnogorsk-3 movie camera and wanted to get some tips or advice on what colour films that you might suggest for such a project. i am taking landscape shots which i plan to project and play on loop in slow motion to the point where the movie footage will appear to be a 'moving photograph' I'm based in Sydney and have done a small amount of research and have found a lab in victoria that offers Aviphot 200asa at 100' for $45au. does anyone have any experience with this film? or would you recommend it for landscape shots? any advice on this would be really greatly appreciated. thanks very much.