31st Annual Spring Photography Contest

I told Dave I would post about this because it is a great opportunity.  It is an annual photography contest through Photographer's Forum Magazine.  Winning photos are published in the November 2011 issue of the magazine and are exhibited at one of the Brooks Institute Galleries.  There are also cash prizes and all of the finalists are published in the hardcover book Best of Photography 2011.  It only costs around $5.00 per photo entered, which is pretty inexpensive for juried contests.  Take a look at the link below.

Photographer's Forum Entry

Creeppppyy!!!

I know that I have posted about my favorite photographers before, but I think they fit in well with the "pretty creepy" assignment that we have. Google: Robert and Shana Parkeharrison .. their work might help inspire to think of something creepy or things to keep your eyes out for while shooting for this assignment! :)

Jason Travis - Persona

This is an Atlanta based photographer I came across on Flickr and a series of diptychs he did juxtaposing a person to their day to day items.



Website
Blog

Jeffrey Vallance on Regis Philbin

He is not a photographer but he is a really good artist. His name is Jeffrey Vallance and this is a clip of him teaching Regis to paint. He also curated an exhibition of Thomas Kinkade's paintings.

Animal Portraits With a Holga

I haven't posted in quite a while cause I'm not that great at researching before I go out shooting photographs. For this newest assignment on "Pretty Creepy" with the Holga camera, one of the topics I am interested in is animal portraits. Here are some pics I found online.

Source: http://blog.czona.com/page/7/

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nana817/358223318/in/photostream/


Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/canderson/27661471/

Salt Lake City

The Power of Paper and Glue

I found this interesting, check it out.

JR, a French street artist, uses his camera to show the world its true face. He makes his audacious TED Prize wish: to use art to turn the world inside out. A funny, moving talk about art and who we are. Learn more at insideoutproject.net.

Lamp, bowl and shadow

Isn't It Ironic

I found an article on Matt Stuart a street photographer who looks or waits for his subject matter to happen. You can check it out at London, Very Dry, With a Twist: The Work of Matt Stuart - NYTimes.com and see great examples of juxtaposition and irony.

Some of his images are obvious.

Some are funny.

Some are poignant.

Check out his website at http://www.mattstuart.com/ to see more of his work.

Since nothing is happening here, I thought I would put up a snap I shot this in Southern California. I consider this to be one of my best images. There is no end to the fascinating photographs nature has to offer. Before I fell into photography, I foolishly thought I could be a commercial artist. I look for lines and light when I shoot. When I learned this business, I was told, "if you can shoot good black and white, color will be easy." In those days, "serious" photographers shot B&W. In the early seventies, art photographers, at least within the world of commercial shooters, were looked down on. The real photographers shot advertising for money. Thankfully, I have abandoned that idea. Photographs are a means of taking a moment and freezing it forever. Does not matter whether it's a wine bottle or people walking in the park.

ColorMount

I spent $17.62 on a pack of dry mount tissue and don't need it. If you want to buy it from me let me know. 25 sheets of 8" x 10".

Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison

I have always been intrigued with Robert and Shana. They are married and are great pair together, their work is awesome and I just want everyone to check out their stuff. Enjoy!!!

Here is their website

still fooling with shiny surfaces

Dayanita Singh

Dayanita Singh is a photographer from India who focuses her attention on photographing middle and upper-class families in her home country. Her photos show a unique perspective of Indian life that isn't often shown.

This is another effort at a shiny surface. Again, I use digital for exposure, then shoot film. Since my background is commercial work, I tend to think in those terms when solving a problem.

shiny thing

Piotr Uklanski

122 culled photos of American and European actors portraying nazis displayed in identical dimensions.

Non-Traditional Portraits

I discovered this artist after talking with one of my co-workers about the recent assignment. She suggest that I check out Jeremy Cowart He started out as a designer and would take photographs that he could use as textures in his work. He began to fall in love with the world of photography. He does a lot of portrait work. A lot of his work deals with shooting famous people but some of the other categories on his website deal with different subject matters. Below I have posted some of the images that have captured my eye for this assignment... Enjoy!

Photo within a Photo.

 Here are two examples of photographs within photographs.  The first is by William Eggleston.

The second is by Stephen Shore.

I hope that helps a bit.

Photomontage

I was having a little trouble finding examples of photographs within photographs so I decided to post examples of photomontage artist Scott Mutter. I've always found his work interesting and I didn't know his name up until now.

http://www.photographymuseum.com/mutter/scottmutterNewGallery.html

http://1x.com/photos/still-life/2075/

Hopefully, the above link will give you a taste of what I have in mind for shiny surfaces. This image was shot on digital so I could determine my exposure. This is indicative of where I am going with shiny surfaces.

Missy Gaido Allen

I feel like Allen's low camera angle in Iowa spring creates a sense that the flowers are actually bigger than what a flower should be. They feel almost like trees due to the low angle, like the viewer is standing below them looking up at these huge beautiful flowers.

Dirk Mai Portraits

Apparently, Dirk Mai has moved on to include even more famous celebrities over time like Hey Monday, Lights, Demi Lovato and 3OH!3. I love his portraits. There's something very raw about his work. I found him on myspace a couple years ago. I am not sure but I think he got more and more famous through the social networking sites. I might be wrong about this but it seems to be pretty good logic.

http://www.myspace.com/dirkmai

http://www.dirkmai.com/

Lee Friedlander

Click for more photos!!

Robert Frank: The Americans

Frank found a tension in the gloss of American culture and wealth over race and class differences, which gave Frank's photographs a clear contrast to those of most contemporary American photojournalists, as did his use of unusual focus, low lighting and cropping that deviated from accepted photographic techniques.

My first assignment deals with isolating your object using shallow depth of field which is a great method of creating a concentrated focus within an image. I have the luxury of endless possibilities which can sometimes make it a challenge to narrow down your conceptual ideation.

Check out this site :

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/Collection/Resources/40Photos

This is a great recourse to view some historical imagery, creating somewhat of a timeline of photography. You will recognize many photographs but some were new to me and possibly to you.

I was personally drawn to the image above by Chris Killip who is well known for shooting in North East England during the industrial decline in the 70's and 80's. Obviously a great example of a shallow depth of field along with other compelling aspects.

Curtis Mann

Here is his website, click on me!

Mark Peckmezian

Mark Peckmezian is a photographer living in Toronto.  He works with black and white film and darkroom processes a lot.  It seems that he experiments with papers and chemicals to achieve interesting effects.  Check out his site for a lot more images.

markpeckmezian.com

These are a few of Frank Gohlke's photographs

Welcome

Welcome to our new blog Art 341 students.  Let's get started.  The image above is from Bas Jan Ader's "I'm Too Sad to Tell You".