Holiday DVD gifts for photographers
by Frank Lovece
Rating: 9 / 10
The 12 Days of Photography DVDs - by Frank Lovece
Altogether now! Let's sing! "On the shopping days of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
* seven DVDs a-teaching
* six documen'tries
* fiiiiiiive photography filllllms
* four outdoor videos
* three combat journ'lists
* two women shooters
* and a photo buff who's really happp-pyyyyy!"
OK, so maybe we've been hitting the hot buttered rum a wee bit early. But the point remains: Whomever you're gifting -- from amateur hobbyist to advanced semi-pro, from fine-art photo lovers who've never held a camera to friends with whom you'd like to share some photography exposure -- we've narrowed down 12 categories that will help you be sure to please.
1) For Beginners
Digital Photography for Dummies
DVD and book bundle
For Dummies Publishing, $21.99
Digital Photography Crash Course by Michael Andrew
http://michaelthementor.com/
$19.95
If they can teach dating for dummies, grant writing for dummies and stock investing for dummies – which Wall Street clearly didn't read this year – then why not Digital Photography for Dummies, a DVD bundled with a 256-page book. It covers photo-class basics for cameras ranging from point-and-shoot to SLR, and using Adobe Photoshop Elements to get the red out of subject's eyes and such. Hey, it's not like it's rocket science for dummies. Alabama wedding photographer and photography teacher Michael Andrew offers a modestly titled 90-minute DVD that uses his experienced yet simplified approach to teach the basics of both the technical end of digital photography (exposure, white balance, focal length) and more right-brain stuff like composition. He also provides practical tips on what to keep in a camera bag, and something called "What to Do if You Don't Have Enough Light." I'm thinking, "Flip a light switch," but then, even I know it's more involved than that.
2) For Outdoorsy Types
Steve Kossack: Photographing the Great American Landscape
http://www.stevekossack.com
$29.95 each, all four for $109.80
Tony Sweet's Visual Literacy: Photography Workshop
http://www.tonysweet.com/page_store.html
Two-disc set, $39.99
Ansel Adams admirers can get in the zone with this landscape-photography series from veteran American Southwest photographer and workshop organizer Steve Kossack. His four titles – Yosemite; Death Valley; Canyonlands-Arches; and the back-east Great Smoky Mountains – are step-by-step guides with maps and locations for planning out photo expeditions. We don't know what it is about the Great Smokey Mountains, but the well-known nature photographer Tony Sweet likewise takes you there in his 4 1/2-hour, two-disc set respectively subtitled In the Field and In the Studio. The former section treks from the evocatively named Sparks Lane to Clingmans Dome, and not just panoramically – it even includes a segment on outdoor macro shooting. The latter section features not just technical tips, but also the ins and outs of submitting to stock-photo houses and building one's own photography business.
3) For Studio Photographers
Light Like a Pro
http://www.jerryday.com
$49.95
This 50-minute, self-described "crash course" in lighting techniques covers not just photography but also video and the ever-encroaching field of 3D graphics animation. Taught by longtime photographer, videographer and video producer Jerry Day, the instructional DVD additionally provides a section on lighting for interviews, and how to achieve what he calls "masculine, feminine, dramatic and conservative interview lighting styles." He also promises to give a hobbyist photographer's work "the snap, sizzle and dreaminess of the pros" – and, well, how many instructors promise to teach you dreaminess?
4) For Action Photographers
Digital Sports Photography Made Simple
http://www.vortexmedia.com/SportsDVD/SPORTS1.html
$30.00
New England-based photographer / videographer Doug Jensen, owner of Vortex Media, is often where the action is for such clients as ESPN, NASCAR Images, NBA Entertainment and the big-three broadcast networks. His pitch (so to speak) is that "taking great sports photos isn't about equipment; it's about learning professional techniques and then putting them into practice." And with this 70-minute DVD's chapters on using sun and weather conditions to one's advantage, positioning yourself around a field for the best angles, focusing on fast moving athletes, anticipating action to capture the most dramatic moments and more, your giftee might just wind up batting 1 .000.
5) For Very Advanced Photo Buffs
HDR Photography Made Easy
http://www.masterphotodvd.com/
$24.99
You don't have to be a cowboy to ride the high dynamic range, but it helps to be an experienced shooter. HDR, as you might know, is a set of digital imaging techniques that allows for a broader-than-usual band of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene, capturing as much of the real-life look as you can in a place of widely ranging light and shadow. Where might such a place be? Well, this 126-minute DVD was taped at Philadelphia's historic, decommissioned Eastern State Penitentiary. Photographer Tony Sweet (who also did one of the outdoor-photography videos above – and, no, he didn't pay us, honest) offers sections on traditional HDR, pseudo-HDR, and double-image processing. A very new release, this comes out December 15.
6) For Renaissance Men/Women Who Photograph and Paint
Finishings - A Basic Guide to Digital Print Embellishment
https://www.createspace.com/Store/ShowEStore.jsp?id=253473
$69.95
Print-on-demand specialist CreateSpace and Reno, Nev., psychologist, portrait photographer and "digital painter" Anne Carter-Hargrove have created a 90-minute DVD that teaches how to take photographic or inkjet-canvas prints and apply acrylic gels and paints to add brushstrokes that give the art the texture, highlights and shadows of a conventional painting. The result is an oddly futuristic-Impressionist amalgam that, depending on your skill, can look either velvet-Elvis-y or cutting-edge-ten-years-from-now. Pretty amazing either way.
7) For Your Hipster Friend
Blow-Up (1966)
Warner Home Video
$19.98
The 'Imp'probable Mr. Wee Gee (1966)
Something Weird Video
$10
You can't be young, hip and au courant without having an appreciation for both high art and low. You'll impress your porkpie hat-wearing, goateed or soul-patched, Korean-pop-music-listening friends from San Francisco to Soho when you present them with these two photography-inspired movies, both coincidentally from route 1966. Director and co-writer Michaelangelo Antonioni earned two Academy Award nominations for Blow-Up, a stylish existential thriller some consider the finest movie about photography ever made. David Hemmings stars as a photographer in 1960s Swinging London, who in the course of things snaps a young couple in a park. Circumstances lead him to enlarge a resultant image, searching for he knows not what, until the grainy near-abstraction that results ma y or may not show a man with a gun – and a half-hidden body. Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, '60s supermodel Veruschka and others help complete and add to the mystery. On the completely off-the-wall end, we have The 'Imp'probable Mr. Wee Gee (sometimes rendered The Imp-probable Mr. Wee Ge e), starring, believe it or not, legendary crime photographer Arthur "Weegee" Fellig playing a loose version of himself. A quaintly crazy "nudie cutie" film of the era, probably playing in burlesque houses more than movie theaters, it weaves a dream-logic plot involving a suicidal Wee Gee (as spelled here) falling in love with a mannequin while strolling through Europe. It's absolutely crackpot – and will keep wiseacres in wisecracks for its full 75 minutes.
8) For Your Armchair Warrior
Under Fire (1983)
MGM Home Video
$14.98
Salvador (1986)
MGM Home Video
$14.98
War Photographer (2001)
First Run Features
$29.95
There's nothing quite so romantic as the though t of being a foreign correspondent or a combat photographer – at least until reality sets in. The space in-between gets aptly filled with director Roger Spottiswoode's Under Fire, starring Nick Nolte as a fictional U.S. news photographer in Nicaragua, who famously proclaims, "I don’t take sides, I take pictures" – to which the narrative basically answers, "Yeah, good luck with that." Oliver Stone's Salvador, written by real-life photojournalist Richard Boyle, takes place next-door in El Salvador, with James Woods, as Bo yle, giving the performance of his career. But those movies drama, terror and ethical anguish pale next to Christian Frei's Oscar-nominated and Peabody Award-winning feature documentary War Photographer, which follows the extraordinary – and extraordinarily harrowing – career of James Nachtwey, whose horror-uncovering photographs from Kosovo to Indonesia to the West Bank has made him one of the most honored of those who carry camera to combat.
9) For Women Photographers Seeking Inspiration and Role Models
Double Exposure: The Story of Margaret Bourke-White (1989)
Turner Home Entertainment
VHS only; out-of-print
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens (2007)
Warner Home Video
$19.98
Talk about the glass ceiling: With all the crap available on DVD, no one's issued this well-regarded TV-movie Double Exposure, starring Farrah Fawcett as the legendary female photographer Margaret Bourke-White – whose photographs in the 1930s and '40s helped define Life magazine. Adding insult to injury – not only is this available only on VHS, but there's no documentary at all about the real-life Bourke-White! (At least she got played by Candice Bergen in the 1982 Best Picture Oscar-winner Gandhi.) To give your distaff friends wants some non-fiction inspiration, try Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens, which originally aired as a 2006 edition of PBS' American Masters documentary series. How big a portrait photographer is she? The interviewees range from Gloria Steinem to Arnold Schwarzenegger – with stops along the way at Julia Roberts, Mikhail Baryshnikov and, among others, our next Secretary of State.
10) For Traditionalists
National Geographic: The Photographers (1994)
National Geographic: Through the Lens (2003)
National Geographic
$24.95 each
Of all the many programs offered by the venerable publishing and exploratory concern, these two may well hit closest to the heart of any photography lover. The Photographers, which cover-features Steve McCurry's Afghan-girl picture – one of the world's most recognized images – is a 55-minute tour of National Geographic photographers on assignment throughout the world. Not just a fascinating travelogue, it also shows how famous photogs set up and shot some of their well-known works. Through the Lens offers more of the same, but stresses the adventure aspect – shooting while skydiving and the like. Kids, don't try this at home. And who has to, when these photographers do it for you.
11) For Fine-Art Photographers
Contacts, Vol. 1: The Great Tradition of Photojournalism
Contacts, Vol. 2: The Renewal of Contemporary Photography
Contacts, Vol. 3: Conceptual Photography
Arte Video, distributed by Facets Multimedia
$39.95 each
The title of Volume 1 might make you think this would make a good gift for history buffs, and well it might. But this 156-minute collection of short films, in English and French with English subtitles, takes such fine-art photojournalists as Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, Robert Doisneau, Marc Riboud, Helmut Newton and others has them tell in their own words how the creative process works for them. Ditto for different varieties of photography in Volume 2 (143 minutes, featuring Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Sarah Moon, Thomas Ruff and others) and Volume 3 (130 minutes, featuring Bernd and Hilla Becher, Roni Horn, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans and others).
12) For the Photography Lover Who Has Everything
Who Are You Polly Maggoo? (1966)
Criterion; as part of the three-disc set The Delirious Fictions of William Klein
$44.95
* seven DVDs a-teaching
* six documen'tries
* fiiiiiiive photography filllllms
* four outdoor videos
* three combat journ'lists
* two women shooters
* and a photo buff who's really happp-pyyyyy!"
OK, so maybe we've been hitting the hot buttered rum a wee bit early. But the point remains: Whomever you're gifting -- from amateur hobbyist to advanced semi-pro, from fine-art photo lovers who've never held a camera to friends with whom you'd like to share some photography exposure -- we've narrowed down 12 categories that will help you be sure to please.
1) For Beginners
Digital Photography for Dummies
DVD and book bundle
For Dummies Publishing, $21.99
Digital Photography Crash Course by Michael Andrew
http://michaelthementor.com/
$19.95
If they can teach dating for dummies, grant writing for dummies and stock investing for dummies – which Wall Street clearly didn't read this year – then why not Digital Photography for Dummies, a DVD bundled with a 256-page book. It covers photo-class basics for cameras ranging from point-and-shoot to SLR, and using Adobe Photoshop Elements to get the red out of subject's eyes and such. Hey, it's not like it's rocket science for dummies. Alabama wedding photographer and photography teacher Michael Andrew offers a modestly titled 90-minute DVD that uses his experienced yet simplified approach to teach the basics of both the technical end of digital photography (exposure, white balance, focal length) and more right-brain stuff like composition. He also provides practical tips on what to keep in a camera bag, and something called "What to Do if You Don't Have Enough Light." I'm thinking, "Flip a light switch," but then, even I know it's more involved than that.
2) For Outdoorsy Types
Steve Kossack: Photographing the Great American Landscape
http://www.stevekossack.com
$29.95 each, all four for $109.80
Tony Sweet's Visual Literacy: Photography Workshop
http://www.tonysweet.com/page_store.html
Two-disc set, $39.99
Ansel Adams admirers can get in the zone with this landscape-photography series from veteran American Southwest photographer and workshop organizer Steve Kossack. His four titles – Yosemite; Death Valley; Canyonlands-Arches; and the back-east Great Smoky Mountains – are step-by-step guides with maps and locations for planning out photo expeditions. We don't know what it is about the Great Smokey Mountains, but the well-known nature photographer Tony Sweet likewise takes you there in his 4 1/2-hour, two-disc set respectively subtitled In the Field and In the Studio. The former section treks from the evocatively named Sparks Lane to Clingmans Dome, and not just panoramically – it even includes a segment on outdoor macro shooting. The latter section features not just technical tips, but also the ins and outs of submitting to stock-photo houses and building one's own photography business.
3) For Studio Photographers
Light Like a Pro
http://www.jerryday.com
$49.95
This 50-minute, self-described "crash course" in lighting techniques covers not just photography but also video and the ever-encroaching field of 3D graphics animation. Taught by longtime photographer, videographer and video producer Jerry Day, the instructional DVD additionally provides a section on lighting for interviews, and how to achieve what he calls "masculine, feminine, dramatic and conservative interview lighting styles." He also promises to give a hobbyist photographer's work "the snap, sizzle and dreaminess of the pros" – and, well, how many instructors promise to teach you dreaminess?
4) For Action Photographers
Digital Sports Photography Made Simple
http://www.vortexmedia.com/SportsDVD/SPORTS1.html
$30.00
New England-based photographer / videographer Doug Jensen, owner of Vortex Media, is often where the action is for such clients as ESPN, NASCAR Images, NBA Entertainment and the big-three broadcast networks. His pitch (so to speak) is that "taking great sports photos isn't about equipment; it's about learning professional techniques and then putting them into practice." And with this 70-minute DVD's chapters on using sun and weather conditions to one's advantage, positioning yourself around a field for the best angles, focusing on fast moving athletes, anticipating action to capture the most dramatic moments and more, your giftee might just wind up batting 1 .000.
5) For Very Advanced Photo Buffs
HDR Photography Made Easy
http://www.masterphotodvd.com/
$24.99
You don't have to be a cowboy to ride the high dynamic range, but it helps to be an experienced shooter. HDR, as you might know, is a set of digital imaging techniques that allows for a broader-than-usual band of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene, capturing as much of the real-life look as you can in a place of widely ranging light and shadow. Where might such a place be? Well, this 126-minute DVD was taped at Philadelphia's historic, decommissioned Eastern State Penitentiary. Photographer Tony Sweet (who also did one of the outdoor-photography videos above – and, no, he didn't pay us, honest) offers sections on traditional HDR, pseudo-HDR, and double-image processing. A very new release, this comes out December 15.
6) For Renaissance Men/Women Who Photograph and Paint
Finishings - A Basic Guide to Digital Print Embellishment
https://www.createspace.com/Store/ShowEStore.jsp?id=253473
$69.95
Print-on-demand specialist CreateSpace and Reno, Nev., psychologist, portrait photographer and "digital painter" Anne Carter-Hargrove have created a 90-minute DVD that teaches how to take photographic or inkjet-canvas prints and apply acrylic gels and paints to add brushstrokes that give the art the texture, highlights and shadows of a conventional painting. The result is an oddly futuristic-Impressionist amalgam that, depending on your skill, can look either velvet-Elvis-y or cutting-edge-ten-years-from-now. Pretty amazing either way.
7) For Your Hipster Friend
Blow-Up (1966)
Warner Home Video
$19.98
The 'Imp'probable Mr. Wee Gee (1966)
Something Weird Video
$10
You can't be young, hip and au courant without having an appreciation for both high art and low. You'll impress your porkpie hat-wearing, goateed or soul-patched, Korean-pop-music-listening friends from San Francisco to Soho when you present them with these two photography-inspired movies, both coincidentally from route 1966. Director and co-writer Michaelangelo Antonioni earned two Academy Award nominations for Blow-Up, a stylish existential thriller some consider the finest movie about photography ever made. David Hemmings stars as a photographer in 1960s Swinging London, who in the course of things snaps a young couple in a park. Circumstances lead him to enlarge a resultant image, searching for he knows not what, until the grainy near-abstraction that results ma y or may not show a man with a gun – and a half-hidden body. Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, '60s supermodel Veruschka and others help complete and add to the mystery. On the completely off-the-wall end, we have The 'Imp'probable Mr. Wee Gee (sometimes rendered The Imp-probable Mr. Wee Ge e), starring, believe it or not, legendary crime photographer Arthur "Weegee" Fellig playing a loose version of himself. A quaintly crazy "nudie cutie" film of the era, probably playing in burlesque houses more than movie theaters, it weaves a dream-logic plot involving a suicidal Wee Gee (as spelled here) falling in love with a mannequin while strolling through Europe. It's absolutely crackpot – and will keep wiseacres in wisecracks for its full 75 minutes.
8) For Your Armchair Warrior
Under Fire (1983)
MGM Home Video
$14.98
Salvador (1986)
MGM Home Video
$14.98
War Photographer (2001)
First Run Features
$29.95
9) For Women Photographers Seeking Inspiration and Role Models
Double Exposure: The Story of Margaret Bourke-White (1989)
Turner Home Entertainment
VHS only; out-of-print
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens (2007)
Warner Home Video
$19.98
Talk about the glass ceiling: With all the crap available on DVD, no one's issued this well-regarded TV-movie Double Exposure, starring Farrah Fawcett as the legendary female photographer Margaret Bourke-White – whose photographs in the 1930s and '40s helped define Life magazine. Adding insult to injury – not only is this available only on VHS, but there's no documentary at all about the real-life Bourke-White! (At least she got played by Candice Bergen in the 1982 Best Picture Oscar-winner Gandhi.) To give your distaff friends wants some non-fiction inspiration, try Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens, which originally aired as a 2006 edition of PBS' American Masters documentary series. How big a portrait photographer is she? The interviewees range from Gloria Steinem to Arnold Schwarzenegger – with stops along the way at Julia Roberts, Mikhail Baryshnikov and, among others, our next Secretary of State.
10) For Traditionalists
National Geographic: Through the Lens (2003)
National Geographic
$24.95 each
Of all the many programs offered by the venerable publishing and exploratory concern, these two may well hit closest to the heart of any photography lover. The Photographers, which cover-features Steve McCurry's Afghan-girl picture – one of the world's most recognized images – is a 55-minute tour of National Geographic photographers on assignment throughout the world. Not just a fascinating travelogue, it also shows how famous photogs set up and shot some of their well-known works. Through the Lens offers more of the same, but stresses the adventure aspect – shooting while skydiving and the like. Kids, don't try this at home. And who has to, when these photographers do it for you.
11) For Fine-Art Photographers
Contacts, Vol. 1: The Great Tradition of Photojournalism
$39.95 each
The title of Volume 1 might make you think this would make a good gift for history buffs, and well it might. But this 156-minute collection of short films, in English and French with English subtitles, takes such fine-art photojournalists as Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, Robert Doisneau, Marc Riboud, Helmut Newton and others has them tell in their own words how the creative process works for them. Ditto for different varieties of photography in Volume 2 (143 minutes, featuring Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky, Sarah Moon, Thomas Ruff and others) and Volume 3 (130 minutes, featuring Bernd and Hilla Becher, Roni Horn, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans and others).
Who Are You Polly Maggoo? (1966)
Criterion; as part of the three-disc set The Delirious Fictions of William Klein
$44.95
William Klein is not obscure. The highly influential Vogue staff photographer from 1955 to 1965 is a legend who nine years ago was awarded the Medal of the Century by the Royal Photographic Society in London. Yet his directorial feature debut, Who Are You Polly Maggoo? has been one of the most obscure gems on the planet. Bootlegged for years, it was a cineaste cult item nonpareil before finally, in May 2008, coming officially to video on the Criterion Collection label, bundled with Klein's subsequent satires Mr. Freedom (1969) and The Model Couple (1977) – the latter prescient in its anticipation of TV reality shows. Made in France, where Klein lived as an expatriate American, Who Are You Polly Maggoo? casts a caustic eye on the worlds of fashion and media, with real-life model Dorothy McGowan as the titular model whose every word and looks gooses the Zeitgeist. Film critic Maitland McDonagh describes Klein's film as "crammed with ravishing B&W images that range from on-the-fly Paris street scenes to the kind of glossily artificial spectacles he shot for fashion magazines." Philippe Noiret and Grayson Hall (Dark Shadows) also star in this avant-garde romp that's as much a love letter to the world of photography – at least of a certain kind – as it is a stinging zing. Amazing.
Rachel Scheer
31-03-2009
A holiday-gift perennial. Thanks for this article!Len C.
20-05-2009
Good, good article. Great style and inspired, creative picks. Saves a lot of time and effort tracking down "that one perfect gift." Thanks, TGP!