Author Archives: Cheryl Machat Dorskind

Cheryl Machat Dorskind, a professional photographer for over twenty years, shares her passion for photography through her books, teaching, fine-art, and commissions. The author of two best-selling books, The Art of Handpainting Photographs — considered the definitive guide to traditional darkroom photo painting — and The Art of Photographing Children — the ultimate guide to creating cherished photographs of children — Cheryl Machat Dorskind has also written approximately seventy-five articles for her newspaper column “Picture This” for The Southampton Press. As an adjunct professor, Cheryl Machat Dorskind instructs and mentors students at colleges (Long Island University, Southampton Master Photography Workshop) and art institutions (Maine Photographic, Guild Hall, Huntington Art Museum, Nassau County Museum of Art) and currently teaches photography at Suffolk County Community College and online at the Perfect Picture School of Photography. High-end portrait sessions by Cheryl Machat Dorskind embody the gorgeous natural Hamptons’ light. Whether the setting is at the beach, a park, or a home, the lifestyle posed-but-not-posed images are fluid and rhythmic. Noted internationally for her ethereal misty coastal handpainted photographs and her playful self-portrait Photopaintings, her critically acclaimed fine-art photographs are exhibited regularly, commissioned for book jacket cover art (Ann Beattie’s Chilly Scenes of Winter, Falling in Place, Secrets and Surprises, and Distortions) and are included in many public and private collections. Her corporate clients include Epic Records, Random House, Hamptons magazine, The Southampton Press, and The New York Times.

“Time smiled, touched my shoulder, and told me things I’d never heard before” ~Gordon Parks

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Gordon Parks By Cheryl Machat Dorskind I was so happy to read the announcement about the upcoming photography exhibit at the International Center of Photography in midtown New York City celebrating Gordon Parks’ 100th year anniversary of his birth. The ICP is taking the show to [...]

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“In•tu•i•tion guides the photographer’s inner light” ~Cheryl Machat Dorskind

In•tu•i•tion by Cheryl Machat Dorskind © 2012 All Rights Reserved www.cherylmachatdorskind.com In•tu•i•tion — The ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning (Webster’s Dictionary). Intuition guides the photographer: Where to look, How to frame, What to see is the photographer’s internal, intuitive dialogue. I am re-reading Britt Salvesen’s wonderful book, Harry Callahan: [...]

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Ten Suggested Buddhist Readings

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com   READING CORNER Ten Suggested Buddhist Readings Artists, writers, and photographers have been influenced by Eastern philosophy for centuries. One could argue that Henri Cartier Bresson’s famous coinage, The Decisive Moment, is the quintessential essence of Zen philosophy. “To take a photograph means to recognize — simultaneously and within a fraction of a second [...]

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Friday Quote: Intuition – A Sixth Sense

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com Intuition by Cheryl Machat Dorskind Intuition: Some call it a “sixth sense,” an “urge” a “feeling”, “knowing,” “pulling,” “drawing” us to pay attention, to create.   Harry Callahan, one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century, was also a devoted photo instructor, chairing the photography department at Rhode Island School of Design [...]

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Yellow

Yellow by Cheryl Machat Dorskind © 2012 Cheryl Machat Dorskind www.cherylmachatdorskind.com Sunshine, daffodils, forsythia, lemons, butter, bananas, and taxis. Jaundice, malaria, faded, worn, and chicken-out. Few colors have yellow’s ambivalence. Sometimes it evokes happiness and warmth, and other times we’re reminded of sickness and loss. Yellow, the lightest of colors, has long been enamored by [...]

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Friday Quote: Intuition: “Art takes wing”- Ansel Adams

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com Friday Quote will focus on intuition for the next few weeks. We will begin with the pithy words from a master. “Art takes wing from the platform of reality. We observe reality; we may or may not feel anything about it. If we do feel something, we may have a moment of recognition of [...]

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Friday Quote: Truth ?¿? “The power lies with undeniable reality? ~Arnold Newman

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com From the blog series: Friday Quote: Truth ?¿? “The power of photography lies with the power of undeniable reality of the image…What is real about the medium of Photography? Photography is very unreal. You take a three dimensional world and reduce it to a two-dimensional world. You take color and reduce it to black-and-white. [...]

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Friday Quote: Truth ?¿? “Photographs Furnish Evidence” ~Susan Sontag

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com Friday Quote: Truth ?¿? “Photographers are always imposing…” ~Susan Sontag “Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it. In one version of its utility, the camera record incriminates…In another version of its utility, the camera record justifies. A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that [...]

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Friday Quote: Truth⸮? “Photography never lies or…” ~Roland Barthes

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com “Photography never lies: or rather it can lie as to the meaning of the thing…never to its existence.” ~Roland Barthes Camera Lucida Below Barthes remarks on his experience as subject: “In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think [...]

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“As The Fog Rolls In My Vision Clears” ~Cheryl Machat Dorskind

© 2012 Cheryl Machat Dorskind ALL RIGHTS RESERVED www.cherylmachatdorskind.com As The Fog Rolls In My Vision Clears By Cheryl Machat Dorskind As the fog rolls in, my vision clears.Its ethereal mist contrasts the ordinary and awakens my camera. Clicking away, I celebrate. At f/22 (optimal for great depth of field), fog slows the shutter. I [...]

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Friday Quote: Truth?⸮

© 2012 Cheryl Machat Dorskind www.cherylmachatdorskind.com This week’s Friday Quote begins a mini series: Truth?⸮ Photography’s credibility aura will be explored. “A failed attempt to photograph reality. How foolish of me to have believed that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearances of trees and automobiles and people with reality itself and [...]

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Reading Corner: March 21, 2012

© 2012 Cheryl Machat Dorskind www.cherylmachatdorskind.com This past week’s New York Times Sunday Review (3/18/12) had a couple of interesting columns. As an author, photographer, and educator, I was especially focused on the articles about reading. Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, in her column “My Life’s Sentences, “likens writing a sentence to taking a [...]

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Friday Quote: Art is about correpsondences, making connections” ~David Hockney

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com “A lot of the early modern artists believed that art could change the world. A lot of artists today don’t’ believe that. Well, I do…The urge to depict and the longing to see depiction is very strong and deep within us. It’s a 5,000 year old longing — we see it all the way [...]

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Friday Quote: “I had some wild concept that you can change space” ~Jan Groover

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com “Technical prowess, I know just as much as I need to know and no more. I am interested in seeing the thing. I could tell you how a view camera works, I could probably explain it to you, but I only know that from experience. I knew nothing about it before I bought one. [...]

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Friday Quote: “Compose and Wait” ~ Sam Abell

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com “Compose and Wait” ~Sam Abell   “One of the things that I most believe in is the compose and wait philosophy of photography. It’s a very satisfying, almost spiritual way to photograph. Life isn’t’ knocking you around, life isn’t controlling you. You have picked your place, you’ve picked your scene, you’ve picked your light, [...]

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Friday Quote: “Why hire a photographer?”

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com I was not surprised to see the cover of the New York Times Sunday Arts section (2/19/12) feature a rare non-costumed Cindy Sherman self-portrait for its lead article. And I thought, of course, “Why hire a photographer when she can photograph herself…best…as she wants to be seen?” Once again Cindy Sherman makes front page [...]

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I made many, many mistakes and learned

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com “Andre Kertesz has two qualities which are essential for a great photographer: an insatiable curiosity about life and a precise sense of form.” ~Brassai~ Born in Hungry in 1894, Kertesz was self taught. When asked what interested him most, he replied, “Everything….The camera is a sketchbook…I made many many mistakes and learned…Everything I did [...]

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Friday Quote: Eggleston’s democratic camera explores “only one”

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com According to Alan Yentob (Creative Director BBC, Producer, “Imagine” – the attached video clip)  William Eggleston “dragged color — kicking and screaming into the world of art photography.” Born in 1939 in Sumner, Mississippi – Eggleston continues his work in what he describes as  “banal and everyday.” “I do have a personal discipline of [...]

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The photographer watches and waits

“The photographer watches and waits” www.cherylmachatdorskind.com “Photographing children requires total attention to their state of mind—a state that changes constantly from smiles to tears to wonder. These glimpses of magic slowly unveil, but illusively disappear the moment the photographer tries to capture them. Like an audience engrossed in the subtle character shifts of an actor, [...]

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Friday Quote: “Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement” ~Jackson Pollock

www.cherylmachatdorskind.com “I don’t work from drawings or color sketches. My painting is direct. I usually paint on the floor. I enjoy working on a large canvass. I feel more at home, more at ease in a big area. Having the canvass on the floor, I feel nearer, more a part of the painting. This way [...]

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Friday Quote: Play when you practice, practice when you play

“There is an old adage in music: “if you play when you practice, you practice when you play.” ~Ansel Adams~ Over 50 years ago Ansel Adams, feeling restless, made a career choice, forgoing the life of a classical concert pianist for that of a photographer. He was encouraged by family and friends to stay the [...]

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Friday Quote: Close enough?

Friday Quote: by Cheryl Machat Dorskind “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” ~Robert Capa~ Have a great weekend, Cheryl  

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Friday Quote: If they were willing to give, I was ready to photograph

Friday Quote: If they were willing to give, I was willing to photograph “It doesn’t matter if you use a box camera or a Leica, the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing. What I have tried to do is involve the people I was photographing. To have them realize without saying [...]

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Red sits on top of the rainbow and the Adobe Color Picker

                        This holiday season was wrapped in red heart colored ribbons instilling messages of love and good will. Red, both a pigment and light primary color, sits on top of the rainbow and the “Adobe Color Picker.” At its digital purist, red is 255 [...]

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Friday Quote: “Perhaps every culture leaves markers for the future…”

“Perhaps every culture leaves markers for the future, a means of connecting the dots of linking the past to what is yet to come. The “frozen moment” of photography provides a possible answer to the problem of Heraclitus, that one cannot step into the same river twice. Perhaps one can look at the same photograph [...]

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Friday Quote: Equipment should fit like a good pair of jeans

“Equipment should fit like a good pair of jeans, moving, adapting, and forming to the moment with comfort and ease.” Cheryl Machat Dorskind From the book The Art of Photographing Children

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Friday Quote: “I begin by not photographing” ~Jeff Wall

“I begin by not photographing” ~Jeff Wall “I developed that phrase because it just described something I really do. If I see something on the street, lets say, I don’t photograph it. So I could be looking and hunting for things…but I just don’t photograph them.  It’s only a small difference, really. The actual event [...]

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Friday Quote: Philippe Halsman

“Most people hide behind a socially attractive mask. Others lose their composure in front of a camera. Lighting and photographic equipment are less important to the portraitist than psychology and conversation. If he uses them effectively, sometimes in the short span of a sitting a miracle happens. A fragment of evanescent truth is captured and [...]

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Friday Quote: Contact Sheets

“The contact sheet is like the analysts’s couch. It’s also a kind of seismograph, recording the instant. It’s all there, what surprises us is what we catch, what we miss, what disappears. Or else an event that fulfills itself as an image.” ~Henri Cartier Bresson~ Contacts 1 Contacts, Vol. 1: The Great Tradition of Photojournalism [...]

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6 Tips for Photographing Children

Photographing children looks easy, but children typically do not want you to photograph them—at least not on your terms. Photographing your own children can be especially challenging. Here are some tips that might help. 1.    Be Prepared, Plan Ahead Children require complete focus; be-here-now must be the motto. Determine the camera settings beforehand so you [...]

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Friday Quote: Maurizio Cattelan at the Guggenheim

Have you noticed that art critiques (photography, films, and book reviews as well) can be awfully opinionated? Art criticism is supposed to be about detailing, explaining, and educating the public. But sometimes art critics get carried away with their editorial perspective. “Abigail Solomon-Godeau views her chosen critical agendas as one of asking questions: Primarily, all [...]

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Friday Quote

Hear-See “What are the first sounds you hear in the morning, before you open your eyes? The loud insistent beep of an alarm clock? The voice of a news announcer or loud rock music on your radio? The “noise alarm” of a crying baby or honking horns and other traffic noise outside your window? Or [...]

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Friday Quote

Snowdon English photographer, inventor and designer On Portraiture….. “Being photographed is a bit like being in the electric chair; nobody likes it. I think the only way you can learn about taking pictures is to be photographed yourself so you can see what an awful experience it is… I like to direct my subjects and [...]

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Friday Quote

“We all measure ourselves every day by other human beings, by everyone we meet. I’m interested in people who do things and the hardest-working people I know are creative people: artists, musicians, writers. The motivation of these people and even the drive of the top business executive is exciting to me. I love to interpret [...]

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Friday Quote

“Some researchers used to believe that people had different learning styles — that some people are right brain and some are left brain: some are auditory and some are visual learners. There’s almost no credible evidence to support this view. Instead, we all flip back and forth between different methods, depending on context…. Within weeks, [...]

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Friday Quote

Kairos is a Greek word describing the opportune moment, the right occasion, or as poetically described in Wikipedia, “a moment of indeterminate time in which something special happens.“  Henri Cartier Bresson coined this blink-of-an-eye photo recognition The Decisive Moment. “Clear sightedness” and “a good eye” are phrases that come to mind.  Kairos is the opposite [...]

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Friday Quote

“I’ve said a million times that the best thing for a young photographer to do is to stay close to home. Start with your friends and family, the people who will put up with you. Discover what it means to be close to your work, to be intimate with a subject. Measure the difference between [...]

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Friday Quote

Friday Quote Today begins a weekly series on my blog called “Friday Quotes.” “I would tell a young photographer today to be a student of the humanities, to be able to think, to be able to observe, to take advantage of what you see around you—you should do that before you click the camera.” ~Yousuf [...]

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A Personal Touch

A Personal Touch by Cheryl Machat Dorskind   Let’s face it, photography is competitive. Anyone can call themselves a photographer; so the essential question is, “How are you any different than the typical guy or gal with the expensive camera gear?” The answer lies in what you are communicating and how your style sets you [...]

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Some Things Blue

Blue is arguably the most popular of colors and evokes a vast range of meaning culturally and personally.  Blue moon, the blues, blue morning, blue sky, blue jeans, bluebells, blue bonnet, perhaps Picasso’s Azul Period (1901-1904) best characterizes the melancholy and poetic power of blue.   Blue conveys trust, dependency, and intellect. That is why [...]

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