Music and Portraits

This video is brought to you by Squarespace. Welcome back everyone. I have some viewer mail that I want to share with you guys today. I'm going to go ahead and kick things off with this, which is this beautiful magazine called Soulful Photography. This comes to us from Kater Misani. And while there is no note here, I have emailed back and forth a little bit. And this is a beautiful little magazine that is published by monthly. And each one of these issues has some kind of theme to it. So sometimes it's an element, sometimes it's a place. This one is called Silence. This is a collaborative effort of various photographers that submit images that support the theme of the magazine issue. This is really well done. I'm very impressed with this. The photography in here is absolutely beautiful. I love seeing the interpretations of the theme over various styles and aesthetics that people are doing. The black and white work in here is absolutely gorgeous. The color work is amazing. And this is a really nice variety of different voices that make up this compilation supporting this theme of silence. The other thing that I love about this is that Kadar takes an approach to this that I really would like to see more people doing, which is taking the idea of a Zen from more of a curatorial standpoint and rather than promoting one's own work is to actually promote other people. And I think this is really awesome. Like I said, it's a collaborative effort and there's some really nice stuff in here. And this is a great way to discover photographers you've never heard of before. Highly recommended. This is extremely well produced and I think you guys would really get a kick out of this. Anyway, Kadart, you should be very proud of this. Thank you for sending. All right, so next up is this beautiful book that comes to us from Timothy Schmall. This is called In a Certain Light: Improvised Portraits. Says a really cool music tie-in. He included a note, and I'm going to share this with you. He writes, "Hello, Ted. Enclosed you will find my first shot at a photo book. What started as a 16page Zen wound up being a year-long project with 200 pages of photos and essays by some of the musicians that I admire. I got a camera during co as an excuse to get out and walk Chicago while trying my hand at some street photography. Once the quarantines were over and we resumed some semblance of normaly, I attempted to bring that style indoors and see what I could do in poor light using vintage lenses and moving subjects. The entire process was incredibly rewarding. I understand that these may not be technically good photos, but I feel I captured a bit more than the standard concert shots. None of the images were posed. It wasn't a secret that I was there, but I did my best to keep my distance and not be obvious. I plan on continuing this project in similar increments and focusing more on concept than personality. I would love your feedback and any recommendations as I move forward. Thanks, Tim. Okay, so Tim, let's talk about this a little bit. First of all, this is absolutely outstanding and I think for somebody who is fairly new to photography, you certainly have a very high grasp on what it is that you're doing. Not only is the photography good in here, it's well collected, well presented, well laid out, and the printing on here is beautiful. And the only thing I'm going to tell you on this, which I say in videos a lot, you write in here, "I understand that these may not be technically good photos. My friend Tim, we have a rule here at the Art of Photography. We do not apologize for our work. " That aside, you really are doing some great stuff. And I will give you a few things that I really love about this. I love the deconstructed idea where you have a portrait of the bass player and then we kind of have these like detailed images on the side here. The layout's great. One thing that I say a lot in these critique videos is that it is possible to put too many images on the page, especially when you've got more than two or three. In this case, you have four, but they all support one another. These act as a group, which all support the main image. That's where it works. And that's when you can break the rules on that. You do it again here with a four up, but it all supports itself. And it works. It's awesome. Another thing that I really love that you're doing is you're balancing between using borders and then full page bleeds on here. One of the things that I see a lot of people do is they will just give me all full page bleeds in a book. There's zen that they sent in and after a while it kind of loses the effect. But I think when you vary it up like that, you've got some really strong material and I never get tired of looking at this. I think it's really well done. I think the black and white tonality is very consistent. It's very good. And man, you're doing some awesome stuff. So I will link up to Tim's little project here below. The other one last thing I want to say about this is you did mention that this was going to start as a 16-page zen and I love that was the starting point because that's the magic and the beauty of doing zenes is you can kind of see where it's going to lead and if it deserves to be more or longer and it certainly does in this case. Um this obviously speaks to me too being a uh having a big music background. I really love this idea. Uh I think using vintage lenses is a bold move in very low light like this because a lot of times they just don't perform as well wide open. But man, you've done an outstanding job on this. Um, I'm really fascinated with this and there's not enough good things I can say about it. So, you guys should check out Tim's work. Support the man. Uh, dude, you're doing some great stuff, man. I really appreciate you sending. All right, so next up, I've got some street photography as well as a really cool book with a boxing theme to it. But real quick, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor this week, who are the awesome folks over at Squarespace. How easy is it to build an amazing website in a matter of minutes? Squarespace has you covered. It's dead simple. Head over to Squarespace, hit get started. You can start by using Squarespace blueprint AI

and SEO tools, which will give you an impressive website in no time. Something unique because, you know, you're not like other websites. Give your site a name. Next, you can build your homepage. We'll start with a few preset layouts just to get us going. Want to sell products like prints, books, maybe you make a zen. Well, you can feature those on your homepage. Create a few more sections if you want. Let's also give it a color palette. There's a whole bunch to choose from. Then just get us started. We can change this all later. Next, let's select the typography choices. Welcome to your website. Everything is set up and it's all ready for you to customize. Squarespace is built on Fluid Engine, the next generation of website design. Select edit and Fluid Engine allows you to drag, place, and resize any element on the page. You can snap these to a grid. You can make them float on top of one another. You can free form however you like. You can even preview and adjust how the site looks on either desktop or mobile. The layouts are independent. Of course, you'll want a portfolio for your work. Creating an image gallery is as easy as dropping a folder of images on your web browser. Once uploaded, you can drag to resort, customize the look, and Squarespace writes all of the code for you. Everything just works, and it looks fabulous. Want to sell your own prints, books, or zenes? Flexible payments allow you to make the checkout process absolutely seamless when you sell products or services. You can accept credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and in eligible countries, you can offer customers the option to buy now and pay later with Afterpay and Clear Pay. You should try Squarespace for yourself. It's absolutely free. No credit card required. Just go to squarespace. com/aop. Sign up for that free trial. If you decide Squarespace is right for you, I can save you an additional 10% on your order by using offer code AOP on checkout. That's right, the code is AOP. So, stop procrastinating. Go build your website today. And I want to give a special shout out and thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. All right, so next up is this lovely little Zen that comes to us from Ian Mirror. He is from Australia and he enclosed a note I'll share with you. He says, "Hi, Ted. Greetings from Perth, Western Australia. I've been a longtime fan of your channel, especially the mail time segment. Such a great idea, and I never thought I'd be sending something for you to critique. I wasn't even planning to make a zen. The idea was 5 days of exploring Melbourne in late June of 2025 on my own, taking photos of anything that caught my attention and then sharing on Instagram. It was only afterwards that I thought of making the zen that you're holding in your hands. These are all shot on my Google Pixel 8, and the zen was printed at a local print shop. I had 10 printed and you have copy number six. These are all shots that I love and if anyone else gets anything from them, then well, it's a bonus. I've loved the process now that I have a template for future scenes. I have a couple in mind, but there's no rush. I hope you enjoy this and I'd love your feedback. I have a zero photography tuition or guidance. This is all me. Okay, Ian, my man, this is very good. And one of the things that I love about it is that you talked about doing this just with a cell phone and having it produced at a local printer. and it just shows you how much you can do with very little equipment. And I wouldn't have known this was all phone images if you hadn't told me. Um, I really like that about it. I think the colors really good on here. I think the black and white pictures are really good. I think your balance between the two is really nice. And I love the fact that you took a trip that you did and just recreated the experience and put something together. And as I've said before in videos, this is what kind of separates people out when you're actually thinking about your work as a unit like this and not just phototo. Anyway, really nicely done. And uh if you guys want to get copies of this, I will share his Instagram handle in the links below as with everyone else in this video. So Ian, thank you for sending this is really cool. Okay, so next up is this wonderful book called Grace and Grit, which covers the subject of boxing. This comes to us from Jane Cohen. And Jane, I will share a little of her note here. She writes, "Hello, Ted. I self-published Grace and Grit Boxing at Scheler's Gym in July of 2024. It was designed by Jeannie Aboud and printed at the highest quality by Brilliant Graphics. The photos were taken from 2015 to 2020 to showcase a popular classic boxing gym in West Philadelphia. The subject is an intimate look at a community of people who participate in a violent highintensity sport. Willie Williams, curator of the photography collection and professor at Hford College, has praised the book, saying it's not really about boxing, but about relationships and a sense of history. My co-author John De Santo is a well- reggarded historian of Philadelphia boxing history and for the book he wrote about the history of the gym during the years before I came on the scene. Jane, this book is very lovely. I love that you did it at Brilliant. I know Bob Tersk very well. I featured a lot of work that was done on Brilliant at this show. They really are one of the best printers in the country and that is reflected in your book here. I also love the fact that you worked with a historian who wrote the text on here and what you've given us is very much a wonderful sample of documentary photography with a specific subject. I

like the subject of boxing. I don't feel like it's overdone at all. In fact, probably does need to get more attention than it does. And I love the fact that you tell this story through a bunch of images of a specific gym in mind and how this comes into the actual performance in the ring towards the end of the book. And I think this is very well done and you've obviously gotten some awards for this which are very welld deserved. So, uh, if anybody is interested in getting a copy of this, I will link Jane's, uh, details below. This is really, really well done. And, uh, I love that you're in Philadelphia. Brilliant is up there, too. So, it totally makes sense. And, uh, you guys show Jane some support. Thank you for sending. And, of course, I would love to know what you guys think as well. So, drop me a comment below. I will see you guys in the next video. Until then