Most people who do not study arts don’t understand it. It’s pretty simple, art has become extremely sophisticated and people who are not into the whole art movement can have a very hard time understanding what art really is. It’s not for fuckin happy campers anyways. To make a long story short: “The engine for art is innovation.”

You can paint a pretty picture? You can draw your grandma perfectly? You can create some abstract art? Been there done that. As long as you can’t deliver something new, please head over to the applied art section of the world. You might find a job in the design industries. After all, the last thing that art is about, are beautiful pictures. Let’s take Marcel Duchamps Pissoir, most people simply don’t get it, that’s sad enough. Art is simply one fucked up and sophisticated process, that has to be questioned, who are the people who say what art is and what is not? What can art do and what can’t art do? Art should not please you. It has to be a challenge. And it has to be something new. Something unqiue. Something that has yet to be done.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

Start with Duchamp to see the first glimpse of real art, then visit the conceptual artists of the 60’s to see radical concepts and then, once you arrive in our time start hugging street art, as it is the purest art right now.

Screw it, most modern artists don’t draw well… don’t ask someone who calls himself an artist if he can draw or paint well, just shut up and ask what he does. You can determine now if he is an artist, or even worse, a faker.

A lot people who never worked with an SLR and decide to get one with a couple of lense think that they can change the lense anywhere and any way they want. This is only partially true. In case you change your lense everywhere without thinking about it you are prone to dusting your sensor, and there is nothing more irritating than cleaning it every few weeks. Once there is dust on it you will see the dust in every picture you take. Dust happens, if you use your camera a lot and change your lenses a lot, you have a higher chance that a few flocks of dust, pollen or something else that flies around in the air, will hit your sensor. Once it happend you can only clean it, either by yourself, which I was too scared to do myself, or you can pay someone else about 15-30$ to do it for you, which I decided was cheaper than a new sensor in case I fuck it up.

Practical tips to keep the dust away

1. Change your lenses in a save environment, which means inside of something, weather is is your car, home or just some simply wind protection like your jacket. It will not keep the complete dust away, but you can reduce the danger.

2. Turn your camera down when changing the lense. It protects the opening of your camera and makes it harder for dust to enter it. Changing your lense quickly in this position takes some training and an additional set of hands helps wonders

3. Use a small air blower(no compressed air as it can damage your camera) regularly. Just get the dust out of your camera before it hits the sensor, you don’t have to go into sensor cleaning mode, you just want to reduce the dangers of the dust that is already in your camera, but not on your sensor.

Taking pictures has to do a lot with technique, but after all, everything that matters is that you add your own point of view to a picture. It does not matter if there is grain, motion blurr or a strange perspective, all that matters is that you are doing something that will move others. There are a lot of different ways how you can achieve this, just look at those 6 examples:

1. Take a picture noone has seen yet

2. Take a picture of someone in a unique pose

3. Take a picture that offers stunning beauty

4. Take a picture of a place that makes people want to be there

5. Take a picture of a place where people are afraid to go to

6. Take a picture with that tells an amazing story

7. Just make sure that you take a picture someone else wants to reproduce, getting ripped off means you are doing something right!

Let’s run this down, first of all you have to know what you want to do, you can either do this by trial and error, plan out whatever you are doing and arrange it, or get a concept of randomness. If you strive for a concept shooting, you should be sure that every tiny aspect of your picture turns out perfect, so you have to be sure that you know what you are doing. A good place to start your education of digital photography is the digital photography school or browsing dslr forums.

Photos of the same subject in the same angle without another perspective are simply a waste of time, they might be beautifully crafted, but after all they are nothing more than another picture that will not change the world. Rather be crass and hated by half the people who watch the picture than end up in the mediocre world, at least that is what I think about this .

It’s been another good Friday for art, so check this out
Clemens Behr – Installations & Illustrations
byroglyphics.com – Loads of fresh Content here, illustrations & paintings
encastrable – Home improvement rebel art
Erwin Olaf – Beautiful ugly Photography
BUFFdiss – Masking Tape Streetart
Theo Junior – Tiny Sculptures
Carl Krull – Danish Artist, I do not know if that makes any difference to another country, but some slick works
Beardsmith – Beard contests photoshooting project
TFDC – pretty cool stuff, even it’s not that extraordinary
Kyle Bean – loads of “cheapass” typo

This week has been a bucket full of inspiration. Those links are mostly traditional art as usual. Loads of Photography this time, but it does not stop there. Just follow the links and check out those great works.
no promise of safety .com – tresspassing photography, be sure the browse the whole blog
Ram!’s Photostream – unique style to take photos, found his portfolio here
Shinichi Maruyama – Photographer
Tilt Shift Photography Tutorial 1
Tilt Shift Photography Tutorial 2
Fake “Natural” Furniture
Stickfort – Illustrator
Chris Vector – Vector Illustrations
Photoworkers – Photography
Jim Fiscus – Photography
Mark Holthusen – Photography
Maurizio Cattelan – collection of his artworks, interesting to know he had no classical training in arts
Aeschleah – Photography with a personal touch
Ero Una volta – Photography with a personal touch
Chirstophe Gilbert – Photography, we are just animals
The Motorless City – Photo’s of an abandoned City… sad beauty
eDsanca – Photostream of stunning portraits
Hakan – uber solid Photography
Max Dworkin – Photography with a gritty touch
aksel – furniture and more
Chow Martin – black & white art
Jason Thielke – Drawing Art
Simone Decker – Virtual Sculpture suggestions
Ofer Wolberger – Clear Photography, those works simply work
Zenvironments – “just” illustrations & design
Dina Goldstein – How do childhood idols age? Photography