Sunday, February 27, 2011

Blog Prompt #19 & #20

19. Can you think of anything that:

1) should not be photographed? Why?


Anything dealing with pornography and gore because they are the most disgusting things and should never be on film. They are just wrong.

2) cannot be photographed? Why?

The Present because once you take the picture its the past we can only capture the moment not the time.
3) you do not want to photograph? Why?

I sometimes don't like photographing scenes that are set up or staged because they just seem fake and I don't like fake  a lot of the time.

#20 Describe at least one photograph that you could take for each of the following “place” prompts.
  • An image of a synthetic “place” such as Disney World, Las Vegas, a Hollywood set, a diorama, etc.
I want to take a picture of the Mountains ranges that were used in the Lord of the Rings trilogy the ones that Viggo Mortensen rides in front of in Two Towers New Zealand is just so beautiful and in Lord of the Rings the Sets were just breath taking.
  • An image of a fantasy/fictitious environment concocted from your imagination.
An image from my fantasy that I'd want to take a castle at night with spot lights hitting the building and Fireworks bursting overhead in multiple colors the sky is clear and the Moon is full its peaceful and joyous.
  • An image of a placeless space such as the Internet, cell phones, e-mail, e-bank, surveillance, etc.
 Multiple screens on my computer just because its an insane amount of multi-tasking and 12 screens open at once is nuts.
  • An image of a public space.
 The Akers Cafeteria at dinner time around 5:00 when the sun is just starting to set and the room is full of an orange color that just envelops the whole place reflecting off from everything.
  • An image of a private space.
 The hey loft in my barn when its half full and the stacks of hey look like a throne and stairs.
  • An in-between space that brings to mind one of the following ideas: nomadic lifestyles, displacement, rootlessness, out-of-placeness, boundaries, movement, expansion, etc.
Shipsaewana in Ilinonis at the flea market where there are  tons of people and and its midday for its every sinn.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Blog Prompts #16-#18

Please respond to three of the following quotes.


“I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody's face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways.” Duane Michals

1) Sure photographs should make the viewer is the world in new ways but in some ways just taking a picture can make the viewer see things differently. Looking at a photo that hasn't been altered in any way just striaght from the negative can have an affect on people emotions, thoughts, being able to relate to whats going on in the photograph thats the magic.

“Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer—and often the supreme disappointment.” ~Ansel Adams

“I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.” Duane Michals

2) The power of imagination its what gives our lives hope and something to believe in to give us meaning. To me imagination is everything and at times I get lost in it trying to escape from my reality and find the world I belong in. For the world that is my reality is dismal and depressing and a place I keep running away from To beleive in something thats not there that is what gives us hope.

“Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world.” Arnold Newman

 

“Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” Berenice Abbott

3) Once the shutter closes it becomes the past thats how a photograph works it doesn't represent the present as much as it represents the past. But photography is like our memory it captures moments in time and preserves them so that we look back on our pasts and remember what has happened.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Historical Photogaph artist


148. CARLETON E. WATKINS. Cathedral Rock, 2,600 Feet, Yosemite, No. 21, published by I. Taber, c. 1866.
Albumen print. Metropolitan Museum of An, New York; Elisha Whittelscy Collection, Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1922.

Carleton E. Watkins

Contemporary Landscape Photographer


View of Rooke House, Looking Towards Highgate

Scott Mcfarland
 Born a Canadian in Hamilton, Ontario in 1975 he now works and lives in wonderful Vancouver. He studied at the University of British Columbia were he earned his bachelor's degree in visual arts. Scott combines both analogue and digital processes which in his work creates a fabricated yet truthful reality.  He takes several shots of a scene in different areas then reworks them making the shots superimposed before combining them all together. Scott as well as others are using the Characteristics of Documentary Photography to figure out the idea about of art and the Document. His themes seem to be things such as zoos, Private Gardens, and relationships between people as well as the history of art. I think though what cought my eyes was the way he captured the sky I'm constantly taking pictures of the sky and when I found his work ( the  Hampstead)
 the way in which he captued the shy I just loved it.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Assignment 2 Portraits

 Light angles

 Daylight

  
Large depth of field

  
Recreate of Nancy Davenports Apartments

 Teststrip

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Blog Posts #11-15


#11____Memory of a Place: Try to imagine a place from your past. Do you have pictures of this place? Describe this place as you remember it. What might a photograph look like of this place if you were to go back and photograph it? What would it look like in the past? What would it look like to you today? Where are you standing in this place? What other items are in this place? What colors do you see? Are there other people or are you alone? Make a “written photograph” of this place using words/description.

My old front yard at the house I lived in till I was 10. I'm not sure if I have a picture of it my family's photos are all over the place, but I still remember bits and pieces of it. It was summer the grass was bright green and there were five tall trees, one was a pine, two were up by the road near the ditch they weren't pines but they would always drop the most leaves in fall. The pine tree was near the house it had a huge base my sister and I would hide under there and play collecting pine cones. The last trees were by our driveway they weren't as tall as the other trees but at age 10 I couldn't reach the lowest branches and these trees followed down the drive 15 paces apart from each other and started with one of the tall trees near the road and ended with our fake wooden wishing well that covered the pipe that stuck out of the ground. My Tepee is out there too not far from the front door and cement front porch. The Tepee is made of large wooden boards my Dad gave me and a blue painters tarp all held together with twine and rope. I'm standing by the Tepee with my arms outstretched showing off my Tepee to my Mom who's standing behind the camera. I spent many hours outside in that yard and now I hardly set foot outside.
#12____Memory of a Photograph: Which photograph from your past do you remember most? Describe this photograph. Describe how it makes you feel when you remember/think about this photograph. How have you changed? How has the place in this photograph changed? What would a reenactment of this photograph look like? Would you act or look differently if you reenacted this scene today?

Oh its kind of embarrassing but I remember this photo the most maybe not in details like what age I was but what I was doing. I was little maybe 7 to 9 I only in my panties and a red airplane pilots vest that I stole off one of my big teddy bears. On my face I have his goggles over my eyes my knees are bent and my arms outstretched like I'm flying in the background is the teddy bear and my sister laughing while in her PJs. We're at our old house in the living room and there's a lamp on a table with a glass top. Today I don't do that I'm too timid to even dress up for Halloween and went I see that photo I laugh and think why did I act so weird as a kid. If I were to redo this memory it would look so inappropriate now that I'm older if redid it exactly but if I were to reenact this photo to be appropriate I'd dress up in one of my cosplay outfits that I wear of anime conventions.
#13____Human-Made Space: In the past, photographers who were interested in how humans impacted the natural landscape grouped together to form the New Topographics. “"New Topographics" signaled the emergence of a new photographic approach to landscape: romanticization gave way to cooler appraisal, focused on the everyday built environment and more attuned to conceptual concerns of the broader art field.”http://www.lacma.org/art/ExhibTopo.aspx
In addition, at the same time in history artists created (and still do create) “land art” in which they use materials found in the landscape to make sculptures that remain in the landscape. Many of these works now only exist as video recordings and photographic documents.
Pay attention to the number of ways in which you encounter humans’ interaction with nature and the physical land. Write these down. Using these as inspiration, describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might create that would be documented by a photograph. Describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might make in a man-made landscape that would be documented by a photograph.


#14____Unknown vs. Familiar Space: When photography was invented, it became a way to document and reveal the specific aspects of both familiar and faraway places. Imagine a familiar place. Imagine a faraway place. How would you use photographs to convey the difference? Can you imagine any places that have been “touched” very little by humans? How might you photograph them?

For a familiar place photo I choose my town hall everyone sees it and I pass it every time I'm home. And a faraway place would be the woods back behind my house. They convey difference by how one is a scene of a man made building in a town with people while the other is a wooded area with no people and lots of trees. Places that have been touched very little by man would be like the forested and small lakes that not many people know of cuz they are out of the way. I could photograph them by taking shots of areas of grow in plants or if the is stuff that man has left show them interacting with the land.
#15____In-Camera Collage: Collage brings together two or more items that were previously separate. The resulting piece usually visually references the fact that they were once separate entities. Imagine an important place in your past. Imagine an important place in your present. Imagine who you were in both of these past and present places. Describe how you might use a slow shutter speed and/or double exposure to capture two moments in one image that tell a new narrative about these important places and how they relate to who you are and were.

I would try to take the photo so that in the center in a diagonal line across it would be blurry and one side would have the past and the other side the present slowly coming back into focus I not sure what the images would be I really don't have any special places or anything I can't choose but they would tell what happiness I had gone thought as a child and the hardships as an adult.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Blog Prompts #8, #9, #10

#8 “My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.” ~Richard Avedon.

Basically we're not just taking photographs of random people we're taking photos of people we find interesting in places we also find that interest us. They may be doing something unexpected that we want to capture and remember or show off to others. It's all about what we are into that we take photos to capture them. 

#9 “You don't take a photograph, you make it.” ~Ansel Adams



We aren't just snapping the shutter to take a photo. We're looking for that right light, searching for that perfect position, seeking out that one scene that fits our mood. We don't just snap, we create that's what makes photograph art.

#10 “All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.” ~John Berge

I agree with Mr. Berge photos are what we forget and help us to remember what we have forgotten but with paintings its not always what we remember but what we see too. Paintings can be two things where photos are only one and that is a memory of what is forgotten. And that forgotten memory can be interpreted in many ways by many different people for example when two people are sitting on a bench in a park one person may say they are on a date another may say they're waiting for someone to come and that neither person knows the other. Photographs are open to interpretation that's what makes them interesting as well.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Contemporary Portrait Photographer: Nancy Davenport


#4 still from "Weekend Campus" DVD. 2004

Still from WORKERS (leaving the factory), multiscreen installation, DVD continuous loop, 2005-08(blast-off animation)

The Canadian photographer Nancy Davenport was born 1965 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada but now resides in NYC (New York City, New York). She studied at York University in Toronto, Canada where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree she later got her Masters degree at the School of the Visual Arts in  New York. She teaches at Bard College, the School of Visual Arts NY and Yale University and first appeared in 1992.
Her work is well know for its digital manipulation where the photo has been computerly-manipulated to create an illusion within the photo that looks real.  She creates these works by taking multiple scenes/images and digitally combines them together. In her piece from the Workers (leaving the factory) she combined pictures of both the Norwegian blue-collar workers and the out-sourced Chinese these are separate stills that have been digitally cropped together and set to a factory background to show the outsourcing of jobs. In some of her works the amount of manipulation is small in others its the whole still as in the three above but she trys to make the scenes look natural to add realism to them.
I chose Nancy because her work was different and at first I didn't know that the work was digitally altered some I could tell but others looked so real I never would have thought they were changed. That's what I like about her work but in some of her work the Weekend Campus series the amount of digital alteration she does is too much and looses the illusion feel that the others series has like the Workers.

#3 still from "Weekend Campus" DVD. 2004

"Library", 2004, c-print, 44X31"

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Recreation 2

original
 
The Picture Book, 1903  by Gertrude Kasebier

Gertrude Kasebier
Born 1852 in Fort Des Moines ( Now Des Moines), Iowa lived in Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York and finally New Jersey. She  attended Pratt Institute of Art and Design at the age of 37, after her husband died, where she learned about Friedrich Fröb's work with motherhood which would late be her main focus. Gertrude is recognized for her photography of Native Americans and themes of Motherhood but also for push for Photography as a career for women. She tends to center her subject in the middle of the frame and work more with portraits than anything.  What I like about her work is that its simple and very eloquent. I like how in the above picture that the light is coming from behind the mother and child and that they are in the lower right of the scene instead of centered. It just helps show that this is a mother and child outside on a sunny day you can tell where they are at.

 Recreation

In my recreation I wanted to update the scene in Gertrude's The Picture Book where a mother and child are looking at a book together. In my photo I had it be a mother and daughter looking at a laptop together. It looks more like a future scene really because the daughter is older and they're using a laptop also the daughter appears to be teaching the mother instead of the mother teaching the daughter. I used the naturally light that was coming in the window to show it was day time just like in the original.