Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Resembling a broken infinity symbol, the ampersand reminds us that nothing truly lasts forever and there is always an AND…—from Pinterest
National Ampersand Day is observed annually on September 8th. Who doesn’t love the fun & functional ampersand? From jotting a shorthand “and” to corporate names, this little character is ubiquitously useful. To acknowledge & applaud this great little glyph.
Did you know that..
- It is a ligature of “e” & “t”? That’s “et” in Latin, meaning “and”?
- The word “ampersand” is a slurring of “real words” that have been run together over time?
- The plus sign is actually an ampersand?
To acknowledge & applaud this great little glyph, National Ampersand Day is observed annually on September 8th because its funder, Chaz DeSimone, noticed that several of the characters in “September 8” can be cleverly disguised as ampersands when certain fonts are used,
How I made this portrait: Since it’s National Ampersand Day today’s feature image is in black & white! For the high key look of a close-up portrait like this one, I sometimes like to use Savage’s Translum background that looks like frosted glass & is available in rolls of 54-inches wide by 18-feet. Translum is made from Mylar and can be framed or hung on a background stand like the Savage Economy Background stand that I used for this portrait session with the always amazing Pam Simpson.
For this casual but naked portrait of Pam I placed a 24×32-inch softbox with Westcott D5 florescent head at camera right & close to the subject. Then I placed a small, circular silver reflector atop a Savage Air Flow Tech Table she was leaning on to kick some light back under her chin & add to the overall soft look of the portrait. There was a second D5 head placed placed behind the Translum background to emphasize the high key nature of the shot but if I had used a solid color background, only one light would have been required for this shot.
To make the portrait I used my Panasonic Lumix GH4 & image-stabilized Lumix G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens with a Program Mode exposure of 1/60 sec at f/5.6 & ISO 800. After very light retouching, the original JPEG image file was converted to monochrome using Exposure Software’s Exposure X4 topped of with a layer of the Glamour Glow filter from the Color Efex plug-in.
#AmpersandDay
Copies of my book Creative Digital Monochrome Effects is available from Amazon with new copies selling for $313.04 with used copies starting around two bucks, way less than your next coffee at a Starbucks drive-through. No Kindle version is currently available, sorry.