That Looks Nice

This Assignment Hated Me...

Susan Sontag Reading Response

This reading was very well thought out and encouraged me to look at images through an even more expanded lens. Susan Sontag brought up many points that I appreciate about photography, such as the power of photography in itself. Photographers have the ability to visually prove that some experience happened, or that some individual existed. Authenticity and truth are seen in an image, along with phoniness and deceit. An image tells all. She referred to photography as a "narrowly selective transparency."Even though some photographers are capturing an authentic experience or reality, there are still aesthetic choices that are made to create an image such as composition, the subject's expression, the lighting. All of these things contribute to making a strong image, but is modifying an image still displaying the transparency of an experience?

Chapter 7 and Reading Response

In The Photograph as Contemporary Art, chapter seven talks about the revival and transformation of culturally recognized and popular imagery in contemporary art. I enjoyed a lot of the work mentioned in this chapter, but specifically speaking, I found Cornelia Parker's Avoided Objects series very interesting. Parker used microphotography to transform historical relics such as Albert Einstein's equations that were chalked onto a blackboard to expose the "physical manifestations" of important events of the past. The chapter said that Einstein's equation looked similar to "molecular-like structure" because of how close the photos were taken. The abstraction made these photos something more than Einstein's equation on a blackboard (which would be amazing in itself). Narrowing in on the fibers of each mark and smudge is capturing something equally as profound as the meaning and significance of the equation. The zoomed in marks exposed everything that is, and puts the tiny things in focus.

Canton's Junk Yard

The Tree Ladies

Woosterfest

Metal on Metal on Metal

A Very Drunk Bottle

It's Very Nice Out

A Nice Spot in My Room

Project #3

My Condensed Vitamin Collection

A Nice Evening in Wooster

Fragmented on Skype

My Tree Tapestry in the Flesh and a Photograph of My Computer Processing the Image

Tiny Boys

Pet Co.

Peak of the Setting Sun

:D!!!!

The Photograph as Contemporary Art Chapter 1 Reading Response

          I really enjoyed today’s reading because I enjoy learning about the history of photoconceptualism. I was particularly pleased with knowing about photographers who took the direction of the grotesque, or other thought provoking attitudes. The Bread Man, Gillian Wearing, Erwin Wurm’s idea of challenging the disruption of daily life is an intriguing approach.  I think that Wearing had a particularly interesting body of work. She asked people in London to write something about themselves on a piece of white card, and then she would photograph them. The result was the portrayal of different personal issues were captured in a photograph. I also enjoyed learning about the photographer versus subject relationship. For instance, Bettina von Zwehl’s work involved photographing subjects in a three part series which “portrays subjects when their appearance is not controlled by them” (23). For the first part of the series, her subjects were asked to sleep in white clothes and they were photographed after being awoken. The second part of the series involved the subjects wearing blue an they were asked to do something physical before being photographed. For the third part, the subjects were asked to hold their breaths while be photographed, which made them feel strained. Zwehl was able to capture the essence of these feelings in her photographs, which I find very compelling. 

Project #3 Proposal

I plan on recreating my persona in several different ways for this project by including emotional elements or feelings, along with a sense of my personality...which often involves overromanticizing things and also being a day dreamer/schemer.  I want to avoid using objects to convey my sense of self because I have done projects before where I relied solely on objects that symbolized how I perceive myself, and although they are accurate representations of myself, I think that pushing the idea of ‘the self’ be delving into the complexities of the mind are an important step in an individual. I am really excited about this project because I hope to delve into a part of myself that I choose not to express, however it is a large part of me. My goal is to photograph a representation of my thoughts because who I am genuinely is reflected through my quiet thoughts.

I enjoy dreamlike qualities and surrealism, thus I want to discover a way to recreate my thoughts in that way. I want to reconstruct the feeling over allowing an object to define a feeling for me. Although I have always strived to challenge myself through my photographs, and put myself in situations of discomfort, I have not pushed myself in this way before and I do hope that I will learn to be braver as a photographer. This project will hopefully give me a good foundation to build on my ideas. 

Mystery Tree

Bits and Bobs

Shots, Man.

Things I Spied on September 12 2013

Take Me Up, Please.

A Couple Passages I Enjoyed in Practices of Looking

I found the reading very intriguing and a good source to reference in the future. I was happy to hear about surrealist painter Rene Magritte's The Treachery of Images, not only because I enjoy his paintings and the surrealism, but also because I enjoyed the fact that Magritte's intention was to challenge the viewer to "examine the process of representation". I agree with the author in that people do in fact take this process for granted. If it were more natural for us to delve deeper into the true meaning of an image, then our exposure to the unique qualities that are expressed through images would be never ending. It is easy to overlook things, but taking the time to let an image soak in could be an incredibly inspiring moment.

Another section I enjoyed was the one talking about how we perceive photography as an art that tells the truth. Photographs have been used to prove historical events, to prove that someone did in fact exist,     and to prove that memories happened. I like the fact that photography is magical. The author talks about Robert Frank's photographic essay The Americans, which he created in the 50s. The image shows a segregated group of white and black passengers who are riding in a trolley in New Orleans. This image both portrays segregation in the past and examines how far we have come today, which is rather special in itself.

Pretty Little Deaths

Octopi Sushi Roll

Wayne County Fair

The Sweetest Sow There Ever Was

Negative Space

Party on the Green

The Discovery of Two Agents of Pollen

A Castle With Trees

Bridge vs. Lightroom

Here are the reasons in which Bridge differs from Lightroom:

There are many differences between Bridge and Lightroom. For one, they both see and store information about images differently, in that Bridge is considered a file browser. The reading says that you cannot access work on removable media devices because Bridge cannot display "off-line" files. Another difference is that Bridge is more complex than Lightroom. Lightroom is a much simpler application and caters more towards photographers specifically speaking. Bridge does not have

Rollin' With My Homies

Peering Out

Charlotte Cotton Introduction Summary

Charlotte Cotton's introduction begins by explaining how the book is set up form start to finish. She says that the most important aspect of the book comments on how art photography exists today in contemporary art. She says that William Eggleston and Stephen Shore's exploration of colour photography over black and white is of extreme importance, and definitely shapes how photography remains today. Cotton also claims that Eggleston and Shore's commitment to making image-maing a more freeing experience in art photography has been particularly important. She also stresses that there is still a place for black and white photography such as in Bernd and Hila Becher's photographs of their grids of architectural structures. Conceptual and emotional elements are not celebrated and expressed in art photography, such as in Ralph Eugene Meatyard's series called The Family Album of Lucybelle. The incorporation of both old and new ideas and techniques have transformed contemporary photography into a more liberated and experimental field of art.

A Delicious Red