I finally caved and bought this gorgeous magazine, because I’ve resisted long enough.
This magazine is one of the best examples of book / magazine design I have enjoyed. It combines black and white fine art photography (most of architecture and urban landscapes), color photographs centering on one topic (coffee enjoyment) which are laid out with plenty of white space, and concisely written passion articles about coffee.
It’s… perfect, really.
I have purchased books purely for their design in the past (because: of course I did), but this magazine is consistently gorgeous. Lots of blank space. Good contrast. Uncluttered. Consistent in its themes. I struggle to think of it as a coffee culture magazine alone, because its design is so lovely and the photography sells it for me. It’s so well designed that I fear I would have bought it even if it wasn’t about a city I adore and a drink I adore EVEN MORE.
I recommend it if you like: black and white photography of cities with saturated black and fine midtones (WHAT A PRINTER THEY HAVE!), and casual conversation about the coffee culture of wonderful cities.
“You must REALLY like coffee,” said the gentle bookseller. Yes, yes, I do, and we also talked about how much coffee I like because so much of it is good around here, how fabulous fancy espresso drinks are, plus the Bay Area’s Jazz Station (which we both love: I broadcast this by wearing their jacket).
My favorite handmade photographic process has its own day of appreciation!
My friends at alternativephotography.com, my favorite alternative process website, have a gallery of submissions to share. It’s fun to see how people are using this vivid blue photographic printing process.
World cyanotype day – last Saturday in September
Once a year the cyanotype gets special attention. Since 2015 the cyanotype is celebrated on the last Saturday in September in the yearly event World cyanotype D
I don’t update my photography site very often: galleries and art shows don’t want art that has been shared previously! (Darn it!) But I shared three posts there this month, and plan to post more in coming weeks.
In the order they went up:
Medium Format Brick Wall Portrait in Red – Words About Images
As the most pandemic restrictions lifted and I could leave my neighborhood in spring, I committed to getting out of the house WITH CAMERAS.
This post is about an image that is completely typical for me.
Pinhole Photography (with fancy technology) – Words About Images
Pinhole photography has a long and honorable tradition as a school project, as something photographers do for fun, and as a way to linger by creating long exposures in places where you want to hang out. There have been impressive works made with pinholes, but people usually choose it for the fun an…
I tried pinhole photography in one of the least DIY methods possible.
Analog and Digital (Not Versus) – Words About Images
(Image: medium format film shot of China Basin scaffolds, taken on Lomography Purple.)
This post explains why I use both film and digital technologies, for practical purposes and special effects!
It seems obvious to ME – the right tool for the right job! – but people who don’t make images require an explanation whenever I use film, regardless of context. (I was last asked by a non-photographer to explain my choice again this week, so this post is likely evergreen.)
When Google+ shut down, I migrated my posts over to my smartphone photo weblog (a Blogger blogspot site) with some fan-made software, and it seemed to go well enough… but it really didn’t. A hundred or more posts were just error symbols, and they’ve been that way since 2019, to my enduring (but mild) shame.
I’ve finally purged all the broken posts. I can hold my head up a little higher now.
Mobilelene
Weblog by A. Elizabeth Graves. iPhone photography and links to science-y and foodie topics.
It’s “just” phone photos and migrated link-based posts from Plus account, but I want it to be clean. It has more than 3,500 posts (even after all the deletions from the 2011 – 2019 plus posts that were merged in), and I’ve been working on it since 2008, so tidying up seemed like a small investment of time relative to what I’ve already put in!
(While reviewing the older posts, I learned that I’ve been taking photos of our antique streetcar collection for even longer than I remember. 🙂 I am so… Consistent. Predictable. Both.)
However, I have a smartphone photo blog, where I sometimes post photos of monotype prints. (Pretend that is meta.)
This is just a reminder that I post images at mobilelene.blogspot.com more frequently than I post book reviews and rambles about coffee here. I’ve been posting there since 2008 with my fancy new iPhone 1, exported my Google+ posts there (buggily) when that service shut down, and then kept on keeping on.
You may already know that I like skies, flowers, and buildings, but that blog provides PROOF.
Monotype morning in yellow (31 January 2021)
Weblog by A. Elizabeth Graves. iPhone photography and links to science-y and foodie topics.
My Cousin had an issue loading a satellite image of the Nevada desert. He showed me a glitchy version of an image that looked like the same image wallpapered across the screen. He said the land looked painted; that he wondered if what he’d seen was being censored; and he showed me a dark screen grab of what looked like an open pit mine.
My brain went down several different paths.
Satellite images of resource extraction: I wanted to know if he had also been looking at mining or drilling sites more generally, because many of them don’t make sense to me. The day before, I’d been looking at oil wells I used to pass on 101 north along the Salinas river. I’ll never really understand why the wells are where they are (it looks like many sites are high up, though I was led to believe the oil they are looking for is quite deep, so this would be making their drilling job harder, I would think.) That image happened to be on my desktop:
Art depicting open pit mines: there are some interesting (and extremely unfortunate) open pit mines around the world with remarkably colorful soil. My Cousin mentioned that he might have been looking at images of the Goldstrike Mine. So I went looking for images of Goldstrike, and wound up asking him if he had been looking at this geometry-themed site and open pit mine ART (you read that right) by Antonio Gutierrez:
Goldstrike Mine, Betze-Post Open-Pit mine, Nevada, Open Pit Mining Art.
Art depicting Nevada bombing ranges: my mind turned to an art book about the government’s destruction of wide swathes of Nevada, including the contamination of private land, and the documentary photography project on this theme by Richard Misrach (fraenkelgallery.com). Yes, of course I have this book.
Bravo 20: The Bombing of the American West | Fraenkel Gallery
In 1952, the U.S. Navy began illegally testing high-explosive bombs on an enormous expanse of public land near Fallon, in northwestern Nevada. The land had long been sacred to the Northern Paiute Indians, who called it the “Source of Creation.” The Navy called it “Bravo 20.” Here is the dramatic st…
Art depicting toxic Landscapes (including mines): Another photographer based in my area, David Maisel (davidmaisel.com), has a body of work and a book called The Lake Project, which I never managed to obtain. It is one of several by him on similar themes, and includes extraordinarily vivid images of toxic waste that are beautiful and abstract. It’s painful to know what they depict, however.
His website is lovely:
David Maisel
In his latest photographic series, Desolation Desert, David Maisel brings his focus to the massive mining operations in the vast territory of Chile’s Atacama Desert. The highest and driest desert on the planet, this sensitive eco-region of the Atacama is being transformed at an unparalleled pace and…
There is a great article with many illustrations from several of Maisel’s toxic landscape projects in the Design Observer (designobserver.com), so I shared this article with my Cousin, since it was also on this theme.
David Maisel’s Photographs of the Apocalyptic Sublime
David Maisel’s photographs are visions of the Earth as we have never seen it full of beauty and terror.
Eventually, my Cousin was able to find the satellite image he wanted, and showed me the painted-looking ridge that had captured his attention, which is visible if you zoom into the center of this Google map:
Google Maps
Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
He is an EXCELLENT Cousin, so he both shared the ridge when he finally relocated it AND hadn’t minded the speculative, mine-and-art-themed detour I took him on. It’s good to know that my Cousin ALSO wanders through the deserts of the American West virtually.
Now I’ll wait until he starts also wandering the most remote islands of the Pacific Ocean, and take him on another tangential virtual adventure. 😀
Gorgeous cover of the gorgeous through and through book by Bernhard Edmaier
Earth: Bernhard Edmaier Colors of the Earth by Bernhard Edmaier published by Phaidon 2013
Edmaier’s aerial photography work is justifiably famous; Phaidon is my favorite photography book publisher; this oversized photography book combining what I appreciate about each is a fantastic work, especially for those of you who enjoy geology.
This book is FULL of geology. Geology which is composed beautifully and makes me think of the abstract paintings I am so fond of.
This isn’t JUST a book of beautiful photography which happens to be organized by color: it is also filled with scientific explanations for the colors and forms in the images. I hereby give a special shout out to iron oxide, for all the magic it does around the world!
Before you ask: OF COURSE there are images of volcanoes, volcanic cones, and LAVA. And oceans, and coral reefs, and icebergs that have just turned over and are glassy and clear, and glowing blue pools of meltwater, and…
One of countless remarkable images of the natural world, so skillfully captured by Edmaier.
You’ll learn something new about how crystals or mountains formed; you’ll want to fly to remote islands and volcanoes to see their remarkable textures; you’ll have a new appreciation for all the colors a glacier can feature. My tiny, low-resolution teaser images won’t do this heavy, beautifully produced book justice, but I can say that I recommend it with great zeal.
You likely could have guessed this, but Bernhard Edmaier has a fantastic website, which reveals that he did study geology, and which features other books of his, some of which I don’t yet own. (Oh-oh.)
Enjoy the beauty of the natural world, and especially its geology, through the work of this talented photographer.
We had a dark day on September 9th, and I’m still seeing amazing photos of it. My own neighborhood was covered in fog, so I couldn’t see far in the orange twilight that dominated the day, caused by smoke high in our atmosphere.
Others beyond the fog line did a lot with the view! I’ll share some of their great work, linked back to the source.
If you are interested in keeping up with ALL of my sites (pretend, okay?), I’ve made about five new posts in the last week or so to my WordPress site for photography. You can go visit it a few thousand times. I’ll wait.
