P. H. Fitzgerald Blog 55 great books under 200 pages Having no time doesn’t mean you have to stop reading. Just pick up the shorter book. Half Price Books, one of America’s favorite independent booksellers, asked their customers to recommend books under 200 pages that would be a perfect companion of a book lover. The image below displays top 55 recommendations. What book under 200 pages would you add to your reading list? Click or tap on the image below to see it in full resolution. Top article Best short books you can read in less than three hours. More infographics to check out: About Ola Kowalczyk Collecting bits and pieces about books and libraries in digital age. The Art of Sandra Chevrier - Sandra Chevrier currently lives in Montreal, Quebec. She is a gaze collector, an idea chaser and a full time single mom. Her work takes her traveling over a broad range of fluctuating emotional enigmas and concepts that have set the standard of our modern communication. Working in a home studio, Sandra produces her work at a full-time scale, aggressively pursuing a common thread until it is worn away, leaving her to begin on a new path. She exposes the limitations within our world, our self-imposed expectations and the cages we have allowed to bar us from fullness of life’s experience. Her work is shown in Canada as well as in the United States, United Kingdom and in Norway. The series "cages" is about women trying to find freedom from society's twisted preconceptions of what a woman should or shouldn't be. Sandra uses collage or loose and heavy textures of paint that make the woman seem to be emerging from the surreal world within the canvas. Sandra Chevrier's Webpage
Surreal Photo Manipulation By Photographer Dariusz Klimczak EmailEmail Polish photographer Dariusz Klimczak composes dreamlike landscapes that hypnotize with their surprise and weirdness. The photographer’s digital photo manipulations open the door to his imaginative world, where a desolate desert is brought to life by quirky and playful characters. Everyday items clash in odd compositions with animals and humans, conflicting with gravity and the other physical laws without which our common sense would collapse. Dariusz Klimczak has been a professional photographer for 30 years, a few of which he spent creating photo manipulations. Source: kwadrart.com | behance | 500px | Facebook
"In all men evil is sleeping; the good man is he Learn How to Design a Charming Collage Composition Learn How to Design a Charming Collage Composition Today we’re going to learn how to create a super creative collage effect, using a range of photo manipulation, blending and compositional techniques. You’ll learn how to correctly extract your images, layer up various effects to create a sense of depth and detail, and create a cool sketchy hand-drawn effect for your photos. Final Image As always, this is the final image we’ll be creating: Step 1 Create a new file with a width of 1500px and a height of 2000 px at 100 dpi (Dots per Inch). Step 2 To start off we’ll use various textures to create a subtle distress background. Reduce opacity to “30%” Now add “8.jpg” as a new layer within the same folder, then hit Command/Ctrl + T and resize to cover the canvas and name it “Texture 2″. Change the Blend Mode to Overlay and lower its Opacity to 65%. Place “2.jpg” from the “source” folder as a new layer within the same folder. Change the layer mode to “hard light” and reduce opacity to “45%” Step 3 Step 4
YOUNG GALLERY Michael Eastman is a self taught photographer who has spent thirty years capturing the essential nature of his subject. During this time he has photographed a wide variety of subjects, and is best known for his Cuba and Horses series. He draws inspiration from photographers Eugene Atget and Walker Evans. Like these great documentary photographers before him, Eastman holds the authenticity of the image as his highest goal. He shuns the use of artificial light and uses long exposure times instead, waiting as long as it takes for the natural illumination of the room to expose his film properly. His photographs are in the collections of Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum, San Francisco Museum of Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The High Museum, Kemper Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum, St. Color C-Print Signed and Numbered by the Artist on Verso. Small 86,4 x 114,3 cm ; Medium 121,9 x 152,4 cm ; Large 182,9 x 228,6 cm ;
tatt idea New Amazingly Surreal Portraits by 19-Year-Old Alex Stoddard One of our favorite young photographers, Alex Stoddard, continues to expand his collection of creative images, offering an endless source of inspiration for his peers. The 19-year-old photographer manages to produce engaging narratives with each image he shares through his Flickr account, inviting viewers to get lost in their surreal nature. His latest additions are no exception as they provide visions of unconventional beauty in the bodies of frail individuals engulfed in smoke, limp figures writhing on a beach, and the haunting presence of a man soaked in blood. Never short on ideas, Stoddard's portfolio is constantly growing with brand new visuals. Alex Stoddard on Flickr via [iheartmyart]
Hauntingly Beautiful Portraits Combine Clever Photoshop Techniques and Ethereal Imagery While there certainly is no shortage of surrealist photographers these days, its widespread practice as both a theme and style makes it difficult to stand out. Just like any movement that becomes common, the challenge increases as it becomes more difficult to be noticed in sea of parroted artistic expressions. This however cannot be said of the mystical photography of Brooke Shaden. Shaden makes use of a combination of clever digital Photoshop techniques and ethereal imagery to uproot us from reality. Shaden was born in March of 1987 in Lancaster, Philadelphia, and grew up near the “Amish Country”. She began creating self-portraits to have total creative control, and has since evolved into a notable self-portrait artist. Brooke’s images which attempt to create other-worldly places uses painting-like techniques as well as the aspect ratio of the seldom seen square format. See Shaden’s self-portrait work here.
coquinabeach This Landscape Body Art Lit Up By Black Light Is Insanely Cool This is a collection of Black Light Bodyscapes by artist and photographer John Poppleton. John paints these landscapes onto female models and lights them with a black light. As you can see, the black light really makes them pop! Also, if you try really hard and believe in yourself, you can see some serious side boob, too. See videos of the blacklight body paintings at John’s Youtube pager HERE. Via: My Modern Metropolis
The stunning photographs which put everyday selfies to shame Paul Zizka's long-exposure photographs place him in the context of Canada's awe-inspiring wilderness By Damien Gayle Published: 13:06 GMT, 14 January 2014 | Updated: 13:14 GMT, 14 January 2014 These beautiful long-exposure photographs offer a novel twist on the too-often shamelessly narcissistic trend for 'selfie' pictures which is sweeping the internet. Paul Zizka, 34, has put his own slant on the celebrity-led photographic genre, made popular by photo-sharing website Instagram, by including his silhouette in these dramatic shots of the Canadian wilderness. Rather that a vainglorious attempt to propel himself to 15 minutes of internet fame, his inclusion of himself in the shots is an attempt to show the relationship between a mere man and the awesome natural world surrounding him. Communion: Canadian photographer Paul Zizka stands waist-deep in Lake Minnewanka, in Alberta's Banff National Park, in this twist on the trend for 'selfie' photographs