How to Make Good Pictures How to Make Good Pictures Since starting photography at 15, observing others making and taking photographs has always been a fascinating endeavor with the camera. The ubiquity of the cell phone as the camera of choice has almost eliminated the album on the shelf, replaced with streams filled by Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and others. At one point while on assignment at a book fair, a seller gave away a browned copy of Kodak’s “How to Make Good Pictures.” The book is also ubiquitous, as no one — not even Kodak — really knows how many editions have been printed since first published in 1912. Artist Zoe Leonard created an installation with the same title comprised of 429 copies of the book. It segues ways into copies made after 1981’s title change to “How to Take Good Pictures.” This seems apropos as picture making has changed so much in the intervening years, from analog film to digital cameras to slim smart phones. No matter the device, it is the image that matters. An outdoor plaza makes a good setting for a selfie as a woman snaps herself. A Jersey Barrier makes for a good vantage point. Saturday in New York on the Booklyn Bridge. Picture taking and posing tourists gather around the bull on Wall Street in Manhattan. A woman creates a selfie panoramic image in the Jackson Pollock gallery of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, N.Y. Pollock’s mural-like painting “One: Number 31, 1950” is considered one of his masterpieces and helped usher in the age where American art became dominant, replacing the European scene. The Yashica TLR film camera used by artist Ed Ruscha draws the attention of Jaclyn Swanson, a University of Texas student, as she tours the Ransom Center in Austin. Ed Ruscha: Archaeology and Romance is the first major exhibition drawn from the Ransom Center's Edward Ruscha Papers and Art Collection. A woman mimics the pose of the Fearless Girl, a bronze sculpture by Kristen Visbal, as she is photographed on Wall Street. In March 2017 the small statue was placed on Wall Street near the much larger Charging Bull statue. Inside Adrian Piper's "What It's Like, What It Is #3 (1991), an installation piece at the Muesum of Modarn Art.
