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The Five Most Essential Camera Settings and How to Use Them A Post By:  David Shaw Modern cameras, from phones to high-end DSLRs, are designed to make decisions for us. And for the most part, they do a pretty darn good job of it. Slap your SLR into AUTO mode and more often than not you’ll get images that are sharp with decent exposure. If you are just looking to document your world, then go for it, snap away. The drawback is that images taken in AUTO tend to look similar to one another, with a uniform depth of field and exposure. If you want to move beyond the automatic camera settings, you need to understand your camera, how to use it, and most importantly, what impact changing those settings will have on your final image. Here are five of the most essential camera settings, what they mean, and how they impact the photograph. ISO This night image required I use a fast shutter speed to retain detail in the flame, so I had to use a high ISO (3200). In the next deta...

AMERICAN BEAUTY: JASPER JOHNS, ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, AND THE CASE OF THE MISSING FLAG BY  Greg Allen  POSTED  05/10/16 11:18 AM   1495     266     15     1944 Robert Rauschenberg at his retrospective exhibition at the National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C., 1976. GIANFRANCO GORGONI/WWW.GIANFRANCOGORGONI.IT/COURTESY ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG FOUNDATION R obert Rauschenberg kept only one major example of his earliest, most influential body of work, the Combine paintings he made between 1954 and 1961.  Short Circuit  (1955) is similar to other works from the period; it incorporates sculptural elements with both painting and drawing and combines abstraction with images and objects plucked from the young artist’s world. But it was not included in his breakout exhibition, in 1958 at Leo Castelli Gallery. And though it was published in a couple of catalogues, Rauschenberg didn’t loan it to his 1976 or his 1998 retr...

If you’ve been to Paris or seen it in photos, you’ll recognize the swirling, plant-like gates, with their distinctive lettering, that serve as entryways to the city’s subway system, or  metro , as it’s known there. Of the many terms for  Art Nouveau  in France,  Style Metro  remains one of the most persistent, thanks to  Hector Guimard ’s enduring design for the entrances. Unveiled during the Paris World’s Fair in 1900, the design would become a symbol of the Art Nouveau movement. But it had begun years earlier. From the 1880s until World War I, artworks, design objects, and architecture in Western Europe and the United States sprouted with sinuous, unruly lines. Taking cues from  Rococo  curves, Celtic graphic motifs, Japanese masters  Andō Hiroshige  and  Katsushika Hokusai , and  William Blake ’s  Songs of Innocence (1789), Art Nouveau artists took the plant forms they saw in nature and then flattened and abstracte...