What does a caricaturist and photographer have in common with cutting edge technology? This blog has shown my growth in practicing digital photography in both professional and personal projects. The tech behind these new cameras has really advanced passed analog/film technology. Not long ago, this was not the case. There is a place still for film photography as an artistic choice in fine art and other personal work.
For me and most photographers, it is digital for client work. At ballroom dance events, we are able to send digital files to iPads for dancers to flip through themselves. They are not completely finished files, but they are good enough to show content. Also, it gives them a good preview of the images. We also have a running slideshow of our best images right out of the camera that can be viewed by many from afar. This has helped our business immensely! The immediacy of the photos means that dancers are excited to come back to the proofing website to view their images after the event has passed.
Tysons Corner Center
In a similar fashion, I photographed a caricaturist at Tysons Corner Center that was making drawings of people in the mall using a new Microsoft Surface Pro. The tablet is compatible with more than just your finger, you can also control with a stylus. This allowed him to draw directly onto the tablet making it a very similar action to drawing on a pad of paper. With the tablet, Microsoft directly connected the tablet to a very large TV monitor. The monitor was a mirror of the tablet which allowed people walking by to see how the drawings were made in real time!
This made for a much larger projection of the drawings – and it drew quite a crowd. Just this little change allowed the artist to reach a much larger audience. There is only a few that can see him working on a traditional pad and easel, the large TV brought in more eyes, and thus, more portrait subjects! After the drawings were completed, the subjects could just enter their email address into the same tablet, and they were sent their drawing in a few seconds. Amazing! For these artists, though, I think there is still much more value in analog tools than with photography. I wonder what my architect father could have done if he had access to a tablet!
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