Shadows and Reflections on the web

Becoming a little transfixed by the "gadget" I added on the right bar of my blog with a shadow and reflection picture and sketching some of them, led me to Google Shadows and Reflections Photography. This site has beautiful photos, very relaxing and peaceful and each a piece of art to contemplate in a zen moment.

Shadows and Reflections: Pictorial Photography by Wilbur H. PorterfieldJanuary 19 - May 30, 1999

Pictorialism, a style of photography characterized by soft focus and artistic composition, dominated the realm of serious amateur photography from the early 1890s until the First World War. Hundreds of photographers, both amateur and professional, worked in the new style. Wilbur H. Porterfield (1873-1958) of Buffalo, New York, was a devoted practitioner of pictorialist photography throughout his life.

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At Porterfield family gatherings, Wilbur H. Porterfield, a well-known photographer, often refused to take pictures of his relatives.
"He liked photographing things which were strongly natural. He did not want to be associated with portraiture -- he was an artist first and a photographer second," said Neil H. Porterfield, dean of the College of Arts and Architecture and Wilbur H. Porterfield's great-nephew. This from this site.

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The Flatiron, 1904Edward Steichen

(American, born Luxembourg, 1879–1973)

Gum bichromate over platinum print

Steichen added color to the platinum print that forms the foundation of this photograph by using layers of pigment suspended in a light-sensitive solution of gum arabic and potassium bichromate. Together with two variant prints in other colors, also in the Museum's collection, The Flatiron is the quintessential chromatic study of twilight. Clearly indebted in its composition to the Japanese woodcuts that were in vogue at the turn of the century and, in its coloristic effect, to the Nocturnes of Whistler, this picture is a prime example of the conscious effort of photographers in the circle of Alfred Stieglitz to assert the artistic potential of their medium.