Awesome Portraits

250 Random Photos 9.30

These are a few of the photos that I shot in the past week.

Current Event for 5th week

Future photographers may adjust focus during post processing: This year at Nvidia's gpu technology conference, Adobe demonstrated how photographers will soon be able to adjust the focus of their photos after taking the photo. 100s or thousands of Plenoptic lenses are used to take the photo so that it could be altered in the special software. From what I understand, the special lenses take in the picture at slightly different perspectives so that virtually all the information possible that is in front of the camera can be recorded. The image that is produced from all those lenses looks a lot like what a fly would see, and the computer software allows you to focus through all the different perspectives to allow you to choose how exactly you want your photo to look. I kind of think it is a little ridiculous to go though so much trouble (and probably money too) just to fix something that would be so easy to fix while in the field. Yes, it is a terrible feeling to see a great picture be unusable because of a soft focus but I really believe that is fundamental to being a photographer. It is something that everyone must deal with and work at. I think it is a little unreasonable to buy a million lenses and waste a lot of money on something that could be fixed by simply practicing and shooting more.

http://www.petapixel.com/2010/09/23/future-photographers-may-adjust-focus-during-post-processing/ 

Art 21 videos

I could never find the 15 minute Art 21 videos, so I watched segments from the 53 minute Art 21 episodes.

Eleanor Antin:

In her interview Antin said that she way heavily influenced by history, such as Greek mythology and sculptures. The video showed her work "The last days of Pompeii". She talked about how she was a dictator when she was producing her photographs, which you could really tell from the video. Even though there was another person taking the picture. Antin did all the work setting up the shot, posing the models and their surroundings, and telling the photographer when to close the shutter.
She also had a project called '100 boots' where she placed 100 boots in different locations and different patterns. My favorite was "100 boots out of a job" which showed the boots somewhat scattered in a field with smoke stacks in the background. 

http://video.pbs.org/video/1239552786

Cai guo-qiang:

Cai works a lot with gun powder and says it is like the poppy flower, it has a romantic side yet it also represents a poison. He talks about how uncontrollable gun powder is, and how he enjoys working with something so unstable. He works with the flow of the material, he lets it guide him where to go. Cai makes his artwork by first laying down paper in his desired shapes and sprinkles gunpowder along the edges of the paper. He then removes the paper and begins sprinkling colored powder in areas. Then him and his assistances place heavy paper and rocks on top of the powder to control the explosion and the end result is his artwork. It is amazing how he uses the unpredictability of gun powder in his artwork.
The video also shows how Cai records his thoughts in his fold out sketch book. He mentions how in Chinese they say "read a painting, photo.. ect." A lot of his other work seems to center around pain, objects sticking out of another object and the beauty of destruction. Such as his sculptures of tigers with arrows sticking out of them and the airplane with confiscated sharp objects protruding out of it.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1239603151

Roni Horn:

Roni does a lot of photography of water. One of her works included many pictures of the Thames river. She puts a lot of thought into water and why she is drawn to it. She was fascinated by the Thames river because it was so dark, both physically and metaphorically.
Roni also made a book that consisted of portraits of one woman's face. It was not about the woman though, but her expressions as she came out of water numerous times. Horn tried to give the audience a sense of location by looking at the woman's face. I love how much of Horn's work has a constant theme of water and how people interact with it.
Horn also did Portraits of her niece. The portraits were taken over a span of 3 years and were taken in sets about 3-5 seconds apart. She allowed her niece to perform for the camera and it shows how the girl matures and changes over the years.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1239615688

Krzysztof Wodiczko:

The video begins with a video of hands being projected on to a building in St. Louis. Krzysztof organized an event where criminals would speak into a mic and tell their story while the video only showed their hand gestures, which fit perfectly on the structure of the building. He says that it is a way for people to open themselves up to the public and share matters that would normally be kept private. He has had many events like this. All centering around making private human emotions public. I think it is very unique how Krzysztof is making art out of architecture, the human body and voice, and emotion.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1239603151

Alfredo Jaar:

In the beginning of the video, Jaar states that he approaches art as an architect. He is inspired by the lack of sympathy people have to others suffering and other injustices. He began working on the Rwanda project because he saw that over 30,000 bodies were recovered floating in a river after the disaster and the story was on the 7th page of the newspaper, barely getting any attention at all. He decided to make his art inform people about the tragedy and life outside their own. To raise awareness about the vast number of deaths that occur Jaar created the 1 million slides piece. It consists of I million slides that is a photograph of a person's eyes. It is meant to give an identity and hopefully make people understand the huge amount of people that were lost. I think that Jaar does a great job raising awareness to the worlds problems through his artwork. Especially in "1 million slides".
http://video.pbs.org/video/1239788836

Collier Schorr:

Schorr has done a lot of work that deals with people who are alike, but essentially are very different. She begins the video by talking about photographing boys who look like girls and girls who look like boys. Basically photographing people who are peers, yet capturing what makes each one an individual. She decided to go back to her high school to photograph the wrestling team. She wanted to define and show people that men indeed had a wide range of emotions. She found that the bond between the men on the team was very strong and a rich part of masculinity, that they would push themselves to do their best and beat their teammate/sparing partner yet still pull back and make sure that no real damage had been done. She also explored the life of soldiers and how boys pretend to be grown soldiers. She often used role playing in her photographs and explored both sides of being male or female, or being a jew or a german. I really like how different she sees people and how simplistic her thinking is towards people and their emotions and how it is incorporated in her work.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1237723563

Janine Antoni:

The video begins with Janine describing a rope that she had made. Each part is made out of different fabrics and materials from many different places and people and everything comes with its own story. It is a way of showing how everyone and everything is connected. She likes to use her body in her works. In one work, she dipped herself in a tub of lard. She was inspired by Archimedes discovering how his body displaced water in the bathtub. She uses her body so that the audience, who also has a body, can emphasize and understand what Antoni had to go through to do the work of art.  I really love how Antoni incorporates her body into her work and connects to her audience.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1237723563

Maya Lin:

Lin was offered to make an art piece to be put in an area of the city, instead she took that somewhat mundane task and made it into a great opportunity for her as an artist. She decided to make a park that would be centered around the three stages of water: solid, liquid, and gas. The project made her broaden her horizon and forced her to become somewhat of an architect and landscaper. I think it is amazing how versatile she can be as an artist and morph her artistic mind to the task at hand. Lin gets most of her inspiration from nature and how things happen naturally. I also think it is really awesome how she can combine her artwork and architecture.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1237561998

Is your face symmetrical? Ummm. No... Not in the least.

 Hooray Symmetry! Just kidding. Symmetry is a cruel mistress and makes you look really messed up. Or it could just be a lack of photoshop skills that would make you look messed up. I will let you decide! 

Normal Ashley

This is the incredibly messed up Ashley 

So... I'm thinking I'm just really... really terrible at photoshop which accentuates my unproportional self.  

Alphabet Project!

This alphabet is made up of long exposures where I had my mom write the letters with sparklers in the air. 

This is my theme alphabet. I took the majority of the pictures at the Fort Worth Stockyards and tried to keep a rural/country feel to them. I also converted the photo as a whole to black and white with Photoshop. 

This last alphabet is from pretty much everywhere I went and saw letters. Many of them were taken with my small cannon point n shoot camera so I could carry it everywhere... Including Garden Ridge. No so sure if it is frowned upon. Too late now! 

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Current Art Events

Chase Jarvis Road Tests Video on Nikon D7000. This is a pretty short article about how Nikon gave photographer Chase Jarvis their new D7000 before it has been released to the public to test. I think it is awesome that he was offered to test drive a camera that isn't even on the market. The majority of the article is a behind the scenes video of him and a group of friends and people he works with going on a road trip to test the camera. I'm also really glad I saw this article because I had never heard of Chase and he has some really awesome photography.
http://pdnpulse.com/2010/09/chase-jarvis-road-tests-video-on-nikon-d7000.html

Kodak Introduces New Professional Portra 400 Film. Awesome! Its so good to know that film is still being made and different kinds are still being invented. The film is said to have the finest grain of any 400 speed film. Also, that your portraits would look "sexy smooth". It will take the place of Portra 400 VC and 400 NC. The film will be available in October of this year. http://www.pdngearguide.com/gearguide/content_display/news/e3i776b1668d474ee36af28a3d8da0881d3

Photokina 2010 Opening Report. Oh man. It would be so awesome if we could go to Photokina. This article is just an overview of the first day of the convention and some of the new products and cameras that are being unveiled. I have actually never heard of this convention until I was looking through photography news websites.
http://www.adorama.com/alc/news/Photokina-2010-Opening-Report

Five Photojournalists Win Getty Images' Latest Grants. This is so cool. When I was first learning about photography, my teacher taught us how to have a more journalistic style and I have always been interested in photo essays and such. The winners of this competition got 20,000 grants to pursue their photo journalism projects, which is so amazing. Although, this does make me understand more how Vaughn was telling us how the gap between good photographers and great photographers lengthens when the great ones begin winning contests. I will definitely be looking up the photographers who won this contest.
http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/features/pdn-online/e3i70ba82a0840c6bbfd1c1d27a06e6452b

Portrait Pictures (First assignment!)

Pictures for our first assignment. Edited in Lightroom.

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Self Portrait Project

These are some of my self portraits! I edited them in Lightroom3.

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