2-28-15

2-27-15

Documentation of another art project 

Project Proposal Questions

1. Conceptual Basis- The value of portraits, eyes are something we seek out the most/ are used to identify someone, what is the value of a portrait with no eyes? Eyes are the window to the soul, etc.
Or breaking up a portrait to make it inhuman
2. Primary Subject Matter- Humans
3. Prime artistic inspiration- Julie Cockburn
4. This project will challenge me to break apart the subject I photograph most and work with space
5. Vision of final prints- 3, 17" X? prints, black and white on semi-luster, suspended from ceiling? Eyes damaged in some way or face reconstructed and pasted on black paper?
6. Is the space still open? Can I hang something from the ceiling or do I need to think of something else?

2-24-15

2-23-15

On Photography by Susan Sontag

On Photography

Susan Sontag’s essay, “On Photography” explains how photography is the most real and unobstructed form of art. Sontag also explains how photography isn’t just an art form, but a way of life, in the way that people like to keep evidence of everyday life and grand events. She lays out the ways that everyone has the same practice in American culture of keeping photographic evidence of graduations, birthdays, and weddings. Sontag says that “photographs furnish evidence”, evidence of every day acts, to breaking news. Photographs have been used to prove facts or dissolve myths, due to their “narrowly selective transparency”. Other art forms can fabricate reality and change the environment to make the image what they want it to be. Though Sontag brings up that we do have Photoshop to create idealized images, often found in magazines and fashion articles, she also says that those photos “are no less aggressive than work which makes a virtue of plainness”. Sontag seems to organize how every photo has its place in the world.

Sontag’s writing lays out the basic understanding of photography, and how it interconnects between art, life and culture. Reading Sontag’s article brings light to what has been commonly understood throughout American culture, and what’s not often challenged.

It’s interesting seeing how a relatively new technology has dominated cultures around the world, and has founded the way people look at the world. We all look at photographs on walls and in magazines and see truth, there seems to not be a whole lot to challenge. Every single day a person sees hundreds upon thousands of photographs, and we’ve been taught to habitually look at the images and not take a step back to really look at what we’re seeing.

As Americans, we have also created a habit of photographing everything we see and find interesting, creating a catalog of daily images. As a privileged culture we have photography at out fingertips, not only with digital cameras, but also with camera-phones, social media and photo albums. If anyone wants to see another part of the world, all they need to do is look it up in National Geographic, or Google it. If anyone wants to go back in time and look at something from the 1950s, it’s as simple as looking in a history book. Photographing life is the most unobstructed ways to document real-time, real-life, unlike the previous art forms. Though we have Photoshop and other photo-alteration programs, photography is the closest we have to 2-D reality, and the closest thing to tangible memories. Photos can be reproduced over and over and over, creating a sense of indestructability.

When one photographs a special event, the real world, or captures a fleeting moment, we establish and freeze time forever, never to happen again.

2-22-15

2-21-15

2-20-15

2-19-15

GIF

2-17-15

2-16-15

Time Project

So this is a completely different composition than originally planned... I tried out my proposed idea and couldn't go with it...

2-15-15

Rejected valentine downtown Ashland 

2-14-15

2-13-15

2-12-15

Photo scavenger hunt

1. Photograph of a journey

2. Photograph that's not a photograph

3. 5th and 11th words in an email

"You Week"

2-11-15

Another photo from Mexico: this one is from Frida Kahlo's home in Mexico City, these dolls were strung up by her bed.

2-10-15

Fuzzy

2-9-15

My two oil paintings

Project Proposal: Time

For my time project I want to specifically find the connection between time and movement. I will work with layering three photos for each finished image and use different techniques to display time, such as long exposure or depth of field. I will use models to create movement and story-telling so imagination will be a big part of this project.

What is Conceptual Art Intro and Chpt. 9

• "Conceptual art challenges the traditional status of the art object as a unique, collectable or saleable."
• presenting artwork as challenges rather than statements
• Conceptual art in four forms:
• readymade- an object from the outside world which is claimed or proposed as art, thus denying both the uniqueness of the object and the necessity for the artist's hand
• Intervention- when image, text or thing is placed in an unexpected context
• documentation- where the actual work can only be presented in notes, maps, charts, or photographs
• words- where the concept in presented in language
• conceptual art is reflexive
• "Artists work with meaning, not with shapes, colors. or materials"
• Photography fear, not a true form of art in 60s-70s
• Turning photography and film from using it ironically for to indexing the world unobstructed
• Cameras essential to documentation 
• "Different versions of reality"
• Christian Marclay, Amplification, found photographs made bigger and placed in a church, completely changes concept 
• Viewer can be made into surrogate person
• "What do you represent"

2-8-15 + Layering

2-7-15

Blanket Fort

2-6-15

2-5-15

2-4-15

2-3-15

I don't know if anyone else had this problem, but Blogger kept crashing on me? Anyways, he is my picture that I was trying to upload yesterday...

2-2-15 bedsheets

Too sick to come into class today, if anyone could give me a run down of the midterm or the upcoming project that would be awesome! 

Studio Lighting Workshop Vocab Sheet

High Key: Light and bright, many light and gray tones (more upbeat, youthful)
Low Key: Large, prominent areas of dark (somber, serious, needs more side and back lighting)
Soft Light: Diffused shadow edges, soft, barely visible shadows from large light sources
Hard Light: Shadows with sharply defined edges, high contrast
Family of Angles: The angles seen by a viewer that produce a direct reflection, determines where to place lights
Kicker Light: A light that adds extra illumination, "kicks up" brightness, about half brightness of main light
Main Light: Light that provides most of the illumination, single source
Soft Box: Diffuses light through material over a light
Reflector: Gold, silver or white cards that bounce light onto the subject to fill shadows
Fill Light: Extra lights that give about half illumination of main light, usually placed near camera
Hot Shoe Mount: The mount on top of a camera for a flash, or of the type
Strobe Light: Commonly used as studio lights, have 1200-4800 watt-seconds per power supply
Histogram: Graphs that represent the 256 values that constitute the gray tonal scale from the blackest black to the whitest white
Color Temperature: Measured in Kelvin, K, is the variation of color hotness or coolness
Light Absorber: A black object that reduces bounced light
Onamonapia: is this supposed to be onomatopoeia?? The camera shutter goes "click"??
Color Gels: Filter materials that can be used on lights to create different color tones
Umbrella: An umbrella that diffuses studio lights
"Snooted" Kicker: A small fill light with a snooter can make the might directional
Hot Light: Continuous lighting
Cold Lights: Electronic flash
Diffused Light: Softer light, where shadows are less hard due to large light sources and scattered light
Monolight: Single light source
Beauty Dish: Or softlight, a large metal reflector used for portraiture
Specular Light: Mirror image of the light source that produces them, can be avoided by not being in the family of angles. The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflectance
Barn Doors: Light modifiers that are fixed onto the front of the light source that can be moved and changed
Gobo: Anything that goes between the subject and the light source specifically to block part of the light
Incident Light Meter: Light that falls on the subject, either directly or indirectly
Fill Flash: A light that fills in shadows on a subject, not the main light

2-1-15