End of Semester

I have truly enjoyed this semester with you all, despite Ike getting involved. I hope to see each of you around campus next semester. Keep me up to date with what is going on with you, and feel free to consult me about your future work - I would love to see where you go after this. Have a great holiday/break! Grades should be accessible soon. I am posting them now.

Happy Holidays

I hope you all have a nice Christmas and a Happy New Year. It's been a nice semester knowing everyone and I learned about how to use an enlarger, and the camera settings. This is my first semester at the University of Houston. The thing that made me upset during the semester was Hurricane Ike.

Good Luck

It was great meeting everybody! I haven't really been to college for 11 years!! I was surprised and pleased to meet so many down to earth and nice people - it wasn't what I was expecting! Anyway, hope everyone has a great holiday and I hope to see you in future classes - if not good luck with everything you choose to do in life. Wendy

Keith Carter at HCP Saturday!

Artist Talk and Book Signing with Keith Carter
Saturday December 6, 2008, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

http://hcponline.org/calendar.asp?show=640&calid=602

http://www.keithcarterphotographs.com/images.html

remaining lab hours!

Here is the schedule for the chemical lab for the last week of school:
Wed. Dec 3rd: 5pm-11pm
Thurs. Dec 4th: 5pm-11pm
Friday Dec 5th: CLOSED
Sat. Dec 6th: 10am-5pm (Dena Wallace)
Sun. Dec 7th: 10am-5pm (Candace)
Mon. Dec 8th: 5pm-11pm (Rowan Bigham)
Tues. Dec 9th: 5pm-11pm (Kelly Quarells)

Also, if you cannot be in the classroom at 10am on Monday, please email me asap so we can coordinate a time to meet up/for you to pick up work.

sladuncan@gmail.com

Sooo...

Anyone want to buy a whole pack of photo paper from me? I thought I would need it but meh. Er along with a couple of sheets from my old box. My starting price is $70 but I'll be willing to make a deal ;)

need my self portrait work??

Hi Shannon! I had left class today to get paper and just realized that you might have handed our self portraits back. Maybe not, I have no idea, but I want to use some of the photos for the final. So I was wondering if I could get the project back in order to mount the photos by Wednesday. Is there any chance of that? (please)

Good news...

The lab will be open ALL day and night - til 11 pm. :)

Final Lab Hours

Lab will be open tomorrow from 10 am til 5 pm.
I will be at school from 6:30 pm til 8:30 pm to allow you a little more work time.
We will use Monday as a workday, and you will have regular lab hours Monday and Tuesday evening.

Hope you all had a nice break and holiday. :)

Statement for self-portraits

Most of the photographs I took were taken utilizing motion, especially the 5 I chose for critique. I decided to capture motion in my pictures in order to give them abstraction. I decided to give them abstraction because I wanted them to be hard to read. I wanted them to be hard to read because I feel I am very hard to read myself. I usually find that most people can rarely tell when I'm happy or when I'm depressed. Most of the time I feel I just have no real readable expressions, in fact I find it EXTREMELY DIFFICULT to smile properly without forcing one. I usually have to laugh in order to naturally smile. Same goes for when I'm sad, I'm very well with masking my pain so most people can't tell when I'm honestly just chipper and in a very good mood or when I'm torn up inside and just "in a bad way". That being said in most of the pictures I don't have my face featured, and even in pictures where it is it's blocked one way or another.

The main series I focused on are 3 photographs of myself. 1 of me lying down amidst my collection of CDs and the other 2 of my arms holding up my favorite, most treasured, guitar. The photo of me with my CDs features my face however since I couldn't really use motion to create abstraction since I was lying down I simply used my hair to block my face from view. In a way I feel this one held some sub-conscious elements just taking it in briefly. The reason behind that is I also find it very hard to make direct eye contact with people let alone keeping it for more than a second or two. So perhaps that could also be another reason why I wanted to obscure my face. That being said, I'm lying around my CD collection because music is very much apart of my life, I'd say besides caffeine the only other thing flowing in my blood, is music. Also to be noted in the photograph I have the album "The Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd featured above my head. I did that to illustrate a sort of light bulb type of image, like I'm enlightened. I say that because that is the one album that really made me become deeply interested in music in general. I find it to simply be a brilliant and beautiful piece as a whole. Plus it helps to both bring out my deepest thoughts and dreams but also bring me back down to Earth with its dreariness when I sit down to listen to the whole album all the way through. Anyways I'm rambling.

The other 2 photographs in the series I feel illustrate the strength and inspiration music brings me and the strength and inspiration I seem to find from within myself. During the process of this project I became extremely burnt out due to work loads and my personal life. However I think this piece is extremely powerful because of these circumstances. When taking these photos I was shaking my guitar extremely violently up and down in front of the camera, something that should have tired me out considerably since the guitar is actually quite heavy being essentially a big slab of mahogany wood. So in essence, no matter how dark and horrible my day may be or how worn out I feel, as long as I have the music flowing through me and I'm still able to lift up and play my guitar, I can see the day through. Also to be noted in all 3 photographs I also wanted to illustrate distance by not clearly showing "myself" in general. I usually feel at times I can be extremely distant, even with my best friends. It comes and goes but I always notice a distance when I interact with people in general at times.

The last 2 photographs are a bit more playful and not as deep per say as the main series. The first one was a bit of a fun one I devised. I rented this video game "Guitar Hero: World Tour", basically a music-based video game. In the game it has a create a character feature. So I used that to create sort of an ideal "Rockstar" version of me. I created abstraction in the photograph by taking the picture while I made the character rotate capturing some motion there and also from the fact I was photographing the TV screen so scan lines can be seen in the photograph creating another form of abstraction. Also I feel the idea in general of making an ideal version of myself is in a way an abstraction of its own. The last photograph was one of several different photographs of a series. This series was mainly me doing all sorts of crazy movements with my guitar. Like some photos in the series featured me doing "windmills" while I strummed my guitar, others pictures of me in the process of "smashing" my guitar against the floor (didn't go through with it of course lol), and the one I went with for the critique is one of me "shredding" along the neck of my guitar. I chose that one because this one held so much motion and abstraction in the photograph that I was pretty much unrecognizeable and the only thing in the photo that helped me remember what I was doing in it at the time was the way the neck of the guitar was positioned when the photograph was taken. So in short, although I may be a emotionally distant person I do have a very playful side still in me. And in a way that does make sense because this semester especially I've been a social butterfly, shaking off all my nerves and inhibitions. So in a way these photographs capture traits of who I've been and who I hope to be.

LAB HOURS SUNDAY

lab will be open from 10 am until 5 pm Sunday!

Sunday

Do we have a time for Sunday yet??

Mounting...

With mounting your prints:

You want to remove the white border around your prints if you will ONLY be mounting them. Otherwise you will have an unattractive white border around your print. This can be even more of an eyesore if the white print border is on top of off-white mounting board. You can cut down your print to desired size first, tack a corner of the mounting paper to a corner of the print, then cut down the excess mounting paper.

If you will be mounting AND MATTING your prints, the white border is not an issue. once you have matted the print, the photograph will show through the window, but the print border will be covered by the mat.

Question about mounting

My prints all have borders, where you are able to see the sprockets.

When we mount our photos, I was curious if I was supposed to trim off the white border of the photo print itself, or just leave it on when I mount it on the board.

Some have told me yes, and some no. I'm too scared too mount any photos until I know for sure. Hahha.

Thanks.

Portfolio

Camera Co-op sells a box for the 11 X 14 mounted prints. What did you want the prints turned into you in? You said something about store bought or handmade, but I'm not sure exactly what they are supposed to be in. Appartenly there is no folder type storage available just a box. Let me know. Thanks! Wendy

Angled Me

With my series of self-portraits I originally wanted to emulate Alexander Rodchenko’s style of using extreme angles. On a couple of the photos I believe I successfully achieved this, specifically on the one where I am looking at the rearview mirror of my car, the one that is angled from the ground at a seated me and the one where I am laying spread eagle on the grass. For the other two, though they aren’t necessarily using extreme angles, I do believe they are my favorite of the five. This is mainly because I was able to get very good exposures on both.
So because I focused more on experimenting on the style of extreme angles I wasn’t as focused on the emotional meaning behind every photo. But I purposefully didn’t smile in each photo because I hoped it would show the state of mind that I was in while working on the photos. To make a long story short this has been a long, confusing and stressful semester for me, with the workload of my classes, the aftermath of Mr. Hurricane Ike and recently the death of my grandfather and all that goes along with that. So I guess you could say my state of semi emotional numbness came out in the photos I took of myself.
Ultimately I was very happy with results of the prints I chose to develop. All but two of them, the rearview mirror and the one where I am seated, had good exposures. For those two I did 12 seconds of extra burning to parts of the prints in an attempt to bring out more detail. I think overall my favorite print is the one where I am wearing my throwback Astros hat, seated against a brick wall with my hands outstretched towards the camera. I specifically like this picture because I was attempting to achieve a decent depth of field shot to get a different perspective on extreme angles with the hands out of focus and me in focus.

Self Portrait Statement

Self Portraits express a variety of things to many different people, but if done right, you can send a message that everyone will get correct. Being fascinated and familiar with portraiture photography, I wanted to challenge myself and take it to the next level. I decided to do partially nude self portraits, and expose my love and how comfortable I am in my tattoo and body art.

Tattoo's and body art has definitely shaped who I am and what I've been through since my child hood. Tattoo's are a regular part of my mother's side of the family, and growing up with that side of the family, instead of with my father, I believe I am a better and more understanding person to all cultures. There is nothing better than expressing yourself through photographs, than body art, so naturally I combined the two and decided to focus on them for this assignment.

Growing up in poverty and confusion, I never knew my father and basically grew up thinking I was only Mexican. I wanted to use my standing back portrait to be placed in the middle to show this; which has my sugar skull day of the dead tattoo. My tattoo's represent the person I've become throughout life and who I want to be remembered as when I die and this is all that is left. I want to be remembered as a caring person who wasn't anything but open to everything and everyone.

This assignment was a little disappointing to me in the fact that I think I over excited myself. I was expecting self portraiture to be easy because I've done it using a DSLR and not a 35 mm camera. The results aren't exactly what I was expecting but it most certainly taught me many things and definitely opened me up to so many ideas and possibilities. Although these final prints aren't, in my mind, absolutely perfect I still really enjoy them and I am proud at myself for taking this approach. To me, they are beautiful and I enjoyed having this opportunity.

Self Portrait's Statement

"The Inner ME..."

Self portraits are either very simple or very complicated. Most traditional self portrait concentrates on the face, where a simple smile is displayed. However for my self portrait assignment in this class I choose to interpret myself through myself without displaying my face in any of my prints. I’m going to capture the inner me through my body language and old poetry I have written a while back. Each photograph will represent a single poem. The poem itself will play the memoir of each different photo or the other way around. It depends how the viewer chooses to view my work.

They way I plan to achieve this goal is through using transparencies that I have purchased and created in Photoshop on my own. These transparencies will contain the individual poems and a consisting display of calligraphically border.

I would like to speak a little of my choice of poetry fro this particular assignment. I choose these specific poems because they reflect on the me I keep hidden from the world around me. Anyone can tell I been through a tragedy, but what people don’t see is that my burns are nothing to me. I have came to accept what my God had brought upon me. However, a girl’s loss of her mother at young age is the real tragedy, at least in my heart that’s what I feel. Although I choose poems that display me as a lonely, depressed, and filled with sorrow person I still ended my intentional series with poem about faith. This poem is written in a way to encourage others or reminds others of the importance of faith, yet it still reflects on the person who wrote it, me, as someone who came through their hardships by holding tightly to this intangible belief called FAITH.

I believe I succeeded in achieving my goal for this project. Although I hate to do self portrait projects, I can honestly say I have enjoyed working on this project.

Self-Portrait Proposal

First of all, the photographs that I saw at the Museum of Fine Arts gave me many ideas of how to create a Self-Portrait of myself. The photographs that I will be taking for the Self-Portrait assignment are random photographs about me. As of now, I do not have a specific topic for my photographs. I was thinking of shooting rolls that are related to John Coplas which he made a self-portrait about his body parts, and also from Vaclav Chochola which he took his picture and inserted a transparency of him. For my first roll of film, I will take pictures of myself at the University of Houston in different poses. I was also thinking about taking three pictures of myself in a portrait as a mafia person with a bluish background and with the mafia logos on the four corners. And for the rest of the roll, I will be shooting it at the University of Houston. For the second roll, I will be taking pictures at my house also doing different poses. I will take the first ten pictures at the front of the house standing near the plants, all three vehicles, and standing next to my house. The next five pictures will be pictures inside my house. And for the last ones, I will be taking them in the backyard on top of the garage. I always wanted to take pictures of myself on top of the roof in different poses. Some of them will be about my daily activities that I do sometimes. For my third roll, I will be taking pictures of my body parts like Coplans, and the rest of them will be about many places so I can insert transparencies of myself in the picture itself.

Proposal for self portrait

Proposal for self portrait
Pochawan Calvert


This project is harder than I thought it would be. Finding our inner self, who we really are as a person is really difficult. Especially when you pretend to be someone you’re not. I’m always trying to please others, never myself. Our society is so critical; people will always judge you no matter who you are. I try to be the best person that I can possibly be, but I always feel it is never good enough. I have done a lot of things in the past that I am not proud of and I try to live my life positively, but life in general is just too hectic for me. Sometimes I just want to pack up my stuff and leave, but where do I go from here? I do have to admit, I have more good days than bad days. I am much happier now than I was ten years ago. Sometimes I feel like I am the luckiest person in the world. I must sound really crazy right now, but that’s who I really am. These are some of the feelings that I would like the viewer to see when they are looking at my self portrait. I would like to keep the images as simple as possible. I do not want a lot of distractions in the photograph. Most of the photograph will be shot in my home where I feel most comfortable being myself.

Matting

Can we use the black matting or does it have to be white?

PLEASE READ!

IMPORTANT

The school is scheduled to be closed from Nov 26th until Nov 30th for Thanksgiving Break, meaning the lab will be closed. I am willing, however, to meet you at school at some point during this break. If you all can come up with times that you would want to come in, we can arrange some unofficial lab hours where I will be the monitor. The sooner you submit requests, the sooner we can decide on a time.

If you come in during regular hours and the monitor is not present, PLEASE CALL ME. When the monitors do not show up, you are inconvenienced and I would like to report them to the monitor coordinator.

Lastly, please look at the final assignment on the blog.

For the sake of time, you will be required to MOUNT ALL 10 PRINTS.
If you do MOUNT AND MATT all 10 prints, you will get extra credit on your lowest grade this semester.
I hope this helps!

the lab...

I regret to inform you all that the lab has been said to be closed until Monday. We will now do a mounting and matting demo Monday, and have critique on Wednesday. I apologize for the inconvenience, but will allow the extra time to compensate.

lab tonight....

I will be in the lab between the hours of 7pm nad 9 pm this evening. If you need me to answer questions about prints, etc..., feel free. If not, see you Monday for critique!

Lab closing

I just saw a post that the lab was closed this weekend and now it is gone - what the heck?? Is it closed - can they do that?? I repeat - what the heck??? I have to reshoot pictures, process negatives and print out at least two more prints - how can the lab be closed?? I'm hoping it was just a cruel joke and you are taking it back!!

With regard to the final portfolio - can the new prints be anything we want and can there be more than 5 new prints?

Upcomming Openings

Diverse Works
Thrive

Notions of time play through the work of 16 notable artists from Houston in Thrive, an exhibition organized in conjunction with a conference at University of Houston: "Gender, Creativity and the New Longevity." The exhibit and accomanying programs are a co-presentation of DiverseWorks and Women's Studies program at University of Houston. Artists include Elia Arce, Laura Bennett, Ellen Berman, Suzanne Bloom, Joanne Brigham, Kathy Hall, Roberta Harris, Rachel Hecker, Mary Jenewein, Lauren Kelley, Charles Mary Kubricht, Lynn Randolph, Debra Rueb, Toby Topek, Kelli Vance and Dee Wolff.

http://www.diverseworks.org/?pgid=3&subid=6&cid=169

_______________________________________________________________________

Lawndale Art Center
November 21, 2008 – January 10, 2009
Opening Reception Friday, November 21, 2008, 6:30-8:30 PM
Artist talks at 6:00 PM

Pleasing Punch | AJ Liberto and Jesse Robinson
Personal Panopticon | Cory Wagner
Once Removed | Ann Marie Nafziger
Flowback | Mequitta Ahuja
To Whom It May Concern | Emily Sloan
NIMBY | Kevin Curry

http://www.lawndaleartcenter.org/events/upComing_front.html

Show in Blaffer leaving soon! Don't miss it...

Damaged Romanticism
Blaffer Gallery
Through November 15.

The pathetic aesthetic returns? Former Blaffer director Terrie Sultan, critic David Pagel and critical theorist Colin Gardner use the work of fifteen contemporary artists to illustrate "an aftermath aesthetic" and the "recognition that virgin births are fantasies, that blank slates are not found but actually involve lots of often violent erasing, and that starting fresh is more like starting over." With a global spread of artists Including Richard Billingham, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Edward Burtynsky, Sophie Calle, Petah Coyne, Angelo Filomeno, Jesper Just, Florian Maier-Aichen, Mary McCleary, Wangechi Mutu, Anneè Olofsson, Julia Oschatz, David Schnell and Ryan Taber/Cheyenne Weaver, it promises to be an eclectic mishmash of styles and media, filtered through a thick critical sieve.

Myself

For my self portraits I would mostly like to borrow Rodchenko’s idea of using odd and sometimes extreme angles. His piece that originally grabbed me was the piece called Chauffeur where the picture is taken from the perspective of the rear view mirror. So I ultimately would like to try to play around with this idea and a few cool ways.

Medium Format Camera

I am planning to continue on as a Photography major. Does anyone know if I will need a medium format camera for later classes. I have the opportunity to buy a used one for a really good price and was wondering if I should jump on it. Let me know!! Thanks! Wendy

Self Portrait Proposal

First - sorry I was late this morning!

I am not a big fan of pictures of me for obvious reasons!! Anyway, I got a few ideas at the museum. I am going to attempt to do a transparent image like the one where the guy was in the street. I am also going to try to do one with a black background with just faces - Maplethorpe??. My other idea is to try using a reflection in a mirror. I am waiting on a couple of props to come in the mail this week and will be shooting this weekend. The pictures I tried to day may be too washed out. I still like the idea, but may have to reshoot.

Self-portrait proposal

I think what I want to do will be a bit challenging. I love the idea of overlapping negatives, but I kind of felt deterred when I saw what a difficult time my classmates were having with their photographer project. I was wondering instead of negatives, could I somehow utilize photogram techniques in this? I want to go in to the more graphic direction again... If my images had to have a theme (do they have to have a theme? I wasn't sure about that), I am thinking of making them about body image & appearances. I'm also interested in fashion photography poses and incorporating those into my images. (I'm a huge fashion fanatic and fashion photography is my favorite kind) Oh! And also lots of props and crazy compositions. One particular image I want to do is me standing with my ribs sticking out in all their glory, hands on hips, with an overlay of graphic skeletal ribs. Is it possible to print the ribs on transparencies and overlay them onto my image in the printing process? Like say, my image takes 18 secs, so at 12-15 secs I put the rib transparency on top of the image and for the rest of the time flash the light.

James P. Blair

Zack Leal
Shannon Duncan
Fundamentals of Photography

The photographer I decided to emulate is James P. Blair. Blair is well known for his work featured in National Geographic however these weren't the pieces I was drawn to. The body of work of his that interested me was actually his private work. This work is mainly comprised of photographs of graffiti, distressed walls, and other things people might find to be eyesores. However I find his photographs to be extremely fascinating as he always manages to also capture a perfect view point that makes it seem as if you were looking at the object itself exactly from the same point of view he took the picture from. So combined with the dingy but raw expressive quality of the pieces he captures I must say I was extremely enthusiastic and interested in trying my hand at taking photos in the vein of his style.

I tried my best to have both of those elements (grafiti type pieces and personal point of view) in the photographs I shot. Nonetheless this experience helped me to broaden my horizons for subject matter as even the mundane for some may be exotic and refreshing to others. Another thing is I feel I'm developing even more of an intimate connection now with the photos I take as all 4 of the final photos I decided to use encompassed a variety of experiences whether it was in finding the subject, actually taking the photograph, or in the process of making the prints. I now also feel that perhaps Blair must also feel this intimate feeling with his works as he tries to capture his photos in a way to best express and show how he found his subject matter in order to share that same experience with those viewing those photos.

Jerry Uelsmann

Kirk Ehlig
Shannon Duncan / Fundamentals of Photography

Jerry Uelsmann

The photographer that I attempted to emulate is Jerry Uelsmann. I was drawn to Uelsmann because of his great surrealistic eye for art. But what specifically drew me too Uelsmann was his ability to take seemingly normal photographs and turn them into one mind-bending surreal print. From what I read on a couple of different websites is that Uelsmann would use several different enlargers with different negatives in each. He would then go to each developer exposing his paper to with the next negative while burning and dodging when needed. Uelsmann is seen as an innovator in photography because he ventured away from the normal documentary style of photography and priniting to his more surreal style.
What I attempted to emulate from his style of printing is how he would use several different negatives. I was drawn more to his techniques than the conceptual ideas behind his prints themselves. Being a graphics major, learning how to do some of his techniques (i.e. dodging and burning to blend different negatives) has helped me gain a greater appreciation for what I can do somewhat easily in Photoshop and Illustrator.
Uelsmann must have spent hours or weeks per print when he first started his style of printing because I spent three to four hours per each print and went through probably 25 pieces of paper. When Ueslmann would use up to 12 enlargers so he could easily move from one enlarger to the next, I used one enlarger with two different negatives. Though it wasn’t quite the easiest thing to do it was manageable. Ultimately I would like to try to attempt to more prints like Uelsmann in the future.

The info I found on Uelsmann is from:
http://www.eyeconart.net/history/photography.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Uelsmann

Jerry N. Uelsmann

At the beginning of this project I chose Martin Brent, but I soon found it difficult to imitate the types of pictures he captured in his photo. So, I decided to change my famous photographer. I begin searching in Google for famous photographers and I stumbled on a personality test to see which of the famous photographers I am most compatible with. That’s how I ended up with Jerry N. Uelsmann as my famous photographer.
The reason I stuck with this artist was because I was captivated by his photos. They had a graphic look in them which I found to be quite interesting. The fact he was able to accomplish the graphic effect just by printing photos is amazing. It’s pretty easy to achieve it with a computer, but by my personal experience I realized it is very difficult and a time consuming job to achieve perfection.
Being a graphic major I found his work fascinating in the aspect that is very similar to what we do in graphic arts. I didn’t know that you are able to create work by using more than one negative. Just like doing it in Photoshop we use different layers to create a close perfection to a master piece. In Photoshop is easy to overlay different picture in different lighting, to burn and dodge, or even erase. On the contrary, developing photos in the same sense, not so easy. It was a challenge to get the pictures to look half descent to be viewed. It was easy to come up with a technique to get the work done but to apply it in reality was most difficult.
Although I found this artist fascinating, imitating the way he developed his work was very exhausting and not really fun. I concluded from this project that choosing a graphics major instead of photography was the best thing I did for myself.

Geoff Winningham

Proposal
My famous photographer is Geoff Winningham. I chose Geoff as a photographer because the gallery attracted my attention. He was also known as a filmmaker, and a journalist. His work of photography is different to other photographers. His photography dealt with all characteristics of Texas and most of them were taken in the 1970’s. This includes rodeo, high school football games, wrestling, livestock show and and majority of sports. I always wanted to shoot rolls about sports, and events. The majority of his photography was all black and white and using the 35 mm camera. Some of his printing styles were high in contrast and some of them low in contrast. Geoff Winningham’s work has a lot of meaning into it. I liked his way how he used his ideas, and his creativity to capture all of his images. By looking at all of his galleries on the Internet, I learned about Geoff Winningham.
My photography work will be about events in the Houston area. This work relates to Geoff Winningham’s photography work, but using my creativity and ideas to create this type of work.

20 Famous Photographers

I hate UH wireless...
so here ya go!

Jerry Uelsmann
He is known for his manipulation of black and white photographs in the darkroom, otherwise known as photomontage. His pictures involve multiple exposures merged into one to produce the surreal. What’s also neat is that his film of choice is Kodak T-MAX 400.

Arthur Tress
The Dream Collector, Shadow Series, and Theater of the Mind, all of these works, show the extent of their creator’s imagination. Tress doesn’t seem to get too complicated with his prints. He simply takes carefully planned shots.

Josef Sudek
A Czech photographer known for his haunting night-scapes in Prague. It seems that losing his arm while in the Austro-Hungarian Army greatly affected his life and influenced his style of photography. However, having one arm didn’t keep him from taking such beautiful pictures (like those of the St. Vitus cathedral) with large format, bulky cameras.

Alfred Stieglitz
He helped, in great part, to make photography an equally acceptable art form such as painting and sculpture. He is best known for his works with Georgia O’Keeffe, of whom he took over 300 pictures.

Edward Steichen
Already an established as a fine painter by the beginning of the 1900s, Steichen master pictoralism before moving on to straight photography and eventually fashion photography. The Pond-Moonlight, one of his early pictoralist photographs using a then-experimental approach to color, sold in 2006 for $2.9 million, the highest price ever paid for a photograph at auction.

W. Eugene Smith
Smith’s fame comes from his photo-essays. Throughout his life he seems to have been in the front lines of every major political issue, always looking for complete control of his subject matter.

Sandy Skoglund
Known for her surrealist images. Skoglund originally started learning photography as a way to document her art. That quickly changed to her works involving elaborate sets with actors or objects, of contrasting or monochromatic colors.

Sebastiao Salgado
Salgado’s photography can be categorized as documentary. He is most noted for his photography of workers in less developed nations, such as the picture in our Black and White Photography book (Firefighters at Work).
Arnold Newman
Known for his “environmental portraits,” pictures of subjects in a controlled environment, in their most familiar surroundings. His idea was that the photograph had to be interesting even if the subject was unknown or had long been forgotten. For Newman, the subject wasn’t the only thing that made the photograph interesting, but the surroundings as well.

Barbara Morgan
Is most noted for her dance-photography. Of particular interest is Morgan’s photograph, Valerie Bettis: Desperate Heart. It captures the element of motion while at the same time an artistic effect by placing two exposures in one photograph.

Duane Michals
He describes himself not as a photographer but rather, an expressionist, someone who expresses himself according to his needs. Michals steps out of the norm by using text in some of his pictures and photo sequences.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard
An optician, married, a father of three, president of the Parent-Teacher Association, and a coach of a boy's baseball team, Meatyard wasn’t the most typical of photographers. Neither are his photographs. With such eerie and disturbing pictures, it’s hard to believe Meatyard when he says, “an educated background of Zen influences all of my photographs.”

Sally Mann
Known for her photographic books: “Immediate Family,” “At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women;” and “Mother Land: Recent Landscapes of Georgia and Virginia.” For her collection, “Deep South,” Mann used damaged cameras and lenses to produce eerie, ghostly pictures.

David Levinthal
When Levinthal takes photographs, he thinks small. He uses miniatures in his photographs, complete with a surrounding environment and skillfully placed lighting. The miniatures at times can easily be mistaken for real people.

Dorothea Lange
Like S. Salgado and W. E. Smith, Lange was a documentary photographer and photojournalist. Her works dealt mostly with the Great Depression. They brought to public attention the lives of the poor, the migrant workers, the displaced families.

Barbara Kruger
Kruger is an American photographer known for her conceptual art, usually black and white photographs with overlaid captions of white on red. Her messages are about how we are to each other, about our society.

Michael Kenna
This English photographer is known for his unusual landscapes. His film of choice is black and white. His choice in angles, time of day, and exposure times make his photographs unique.

Jim Goldberg
An American photographer known for mixing photographs and text to create a type of storytelling. Goldberg explores various aspects of our subcultures and social classes. The text in his photographs often involves the writing of his subjects.

New Proposal

Veronica Valadez

Cindy Sherman was never involved in the arts until she entered college. Her freshman year she studied painting but felt limited and frustrated with her work. Sherman turned to photography instead and used herself as a model for her photos. She admits she tried to pay someone else to be her muse but discovered she couldn't completely rely on them. In Sherman's first series of photographs she presents herself as different women that represent the stereotypical roles they play in society. Her photos are often mistaken as self portraits. However if one looks closely her expression is blank and often resembles a mannequin. Sherman also detaches herself from the photos by leaving them without a title.

Like Sherman I wish to question the roles of women in society, the media, and the art world. I also want to explore how these roles have changed in our society including values and morals. I plan to use myself as a model for my photographs and to include some props as well. To be honest I can relate more to Sherman on a personal level more than I could with Hans Bellmer. I wouldn't call myself a feminist but her photographs make me question my place as a woman and artist. In a way I believe her work challenges everyone. You look at the stereotypes she's created on film and it makes a girl want to break them.

Janet Croog

I am so sorry this is posted after 5. I have been changing homes so I was unable to get everything together in time, but I had written this yesterday actually (even though you wouldn't know that I suppose...).

Edward Weston

The photographer I am emulating is Edward Weston because his photos are very figurative. I have always been interested in the human body, especially when dealing with natural curvature which is why his style pertains to my own. He even said, "I am stimulated to work with the nude body, because of the infinite combinations of lines which are present with every move."
Another way Weston photographs natural curvature is through vegetable forms, as you can see in his “Natural Studies” portfolio. I can really appreciate his taste for this subject matter. He inspired me to find some of my own vegetables and see their form in relation to the human body, especially with peppers. One of his most famous photos is his “Pepper, 1930” photo.
His lighting in his photos varies from well balanced to a bit contrasted in order to pronounce the shadows and highlights in the curves of his subjects. I really like the photos that have a dark background which makes his subjects a more dynamic focus. His subjects can be very simple in the fact that it is just the human body or just a vegetable, but the form of the subject itself is not all that simple because of all the lines and curves it has.
For my first roll of film I tried to emulate Weston’s photos using a human form and a few vegetables, including a pepper. I used a male body as opposed to Weston’s female bodies, but any body I can get a hold of will have the same affect in its infinite lines and curves. The pepper I used has curves similar to the human form, especially of the back of a person. The idea can be abstract also, so any eye can find anything out of the curves of the vegetables I used (which is the beauty of art in general).
I plan to take more photos, hopefully of different people, but in the same manner Weston uses. I also plan to find more vegetables. I will not do revealing nude photos, but I will continue to shoot creative body curvatures. Because of Weston, I have now become intrigued by the pepper vegetable specifically, but I know many vegetables have a unique curvature that I can relate to the human form. I plan to search endlessly for these vegetables now.

artSLAM!

This is completely unrelated to this class...

I am working with HoustonHipHop.com to plan an event called artSLAM! at the Meridian. The best description of artSLAM! I can give is it a combination of live music and "live art". In previous events, this consisted of a DJ spinning while local artists painted, drew, tagged, did spray-stencil art, sculpt, etc. Sometimes b-boys will come out and do their thing just to add another layer of entertainment.

We are currently looking for artists to be part of the show that are willing to produce their work live. We are discussing having a silent auction for the work, so there may be some money involved, but that is not finalized. This event is more for artists to get some exposure and for everyone to have a good time.

It looks like Sunday, November 23rd has been confirmed and it'll probably run 8-12pm.

If you are interested in being involved, please email me at houstonartslam@gmail.com or contact me at myspace.com/houstonartslam
If you know someone that might be interested, please send them this info. We are are in need of artists and looking to solidify the roster ASAP.

Thanks!
-Chelsea

ansel adams summary

Around 17 years old, Ansel Adams photographs focuses on producing soft-focused landscapes called “pictorialism.” Later on he focuses on using the technique of “previsualization,” where he would carefully calculate the effect of a photograph before taking it. His very first work using this technique is presented through the photograph, The Face of Half Dome (1927). In 1928 he used a telephoto lens to create stunning close up image of a mountain that was in fact very far away. Then around 1930s, in joining the group f/64, he experimented with large format cameras to produce maximum depth of field and extremely sharp-focus images. This was when he started to photograph realism. The next decades, 1940s, he concentrated on photographing close up still-life to panoramic views and distant landscapes.
His range of photographic styles includes romanticism, poetic-vision, technical precision, and environmental advocacy.
“Expose for shadows; develop for the highlights” as said by Ansel Adams, when he photograph his works he would look for the composition of the shadows on the subject if not the fore and back ground. After Adams pursues “straight photography” he continues using this photographic method until his death. Straight photography is the clarity of the lens being emphasized, and the final print gave no appearance of being manipulated in the camera or the darkroom. He uses “burning” and “dodging” in the darkroom to manipulate his prints to the way he would rather prefer. In addition, he developed a scientific method to photography called the Zone system, for the purpose of manipulating the tonalities of the final print. In his works he has very high contrast of depth to the images, the shadows were intensify to give off a better depth of field photograph.
Most of his works are like a work of art, they are not like documentaries of a place, thing, or persons. The photographs seems like they can be read in words instead of as a picture. In addition, in these works all the subjects and practically everything is in focus and nothing is blur. The creativity and the beauty presented in his photographs are attractive. I would like to emulate his stylistic fashion and conceptual fashion as well.
The shots I’m trying to do is trying to make it as sharp as I could, putting everything in focus. With that I also want to present a pleasing artistic view of the subject I focus on. The photos are probably will consists of landscapes and nature, since he concentrates a lot on these categories.




I'm posting this because my printer doesn't work.

Your Famous Photographer Summary.

Hi all.
For Monday, please have a summary about your photographer, with a corresponding roll of film (processed with contact sheet) that you have taken in their style.

In your summary, I am looking for a detailed description of the photographer's work (including subject matter, affect of camera setting on the work, printing style [high or low contrast, dark or light prints], and meaning or concept of the work). Please explain what you are drawn to about the work, and how you wish to emulate this photographer's work - it might be in a stylistic fashion, a conceptual fashion, or a combination of things. Be specific, be creative, be innovative! I would like to see a written explanation of the shots you plan to take, and how these will relate to your photographer.

Any questions, please e-mail me.

Famous Photographers, pt. 2

Bill Owens
Owen did a particular series called Suburbia, which focused on endless paradox, monotony, and false impressions that are suburban life. He demonstrates how cropping can drastically change the content of an image.

Jim Goldberg
Jim Goldberg is a photographer that has been able to most successfully integrate photos and text. In his series Rich and Poor, he illustrates the similarities differences between people from varying levels of wealth, and in doing so, captures intensely personal portraits that reveal the depth of his subjects’ lives.

Lartigue
Lartigue got his first camera when he was very young and started photographing his family, mostly the younger members and usually at play. His work lends to the idea that some are born with natural talent and that trying to reproduce his shots only become that, reproductions.

Bourke-White
Bourke-White joins the ranks of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange during the 1930s and documented the strife of those suffering from the Dust Bowl. She also pioneered many fields for women, as the first female photographer for Life, the first female war correspondent, and the first woman allowed to work in combat zones during WWII. Many of her photos articulate the work of man on massive scale, from the work she did with Otis Steel Company and during the construction of the Fort Peck Dam.

Edward Burtynsky
Another photographer that work in very large scale, Burtynsky has recurrent theme of industrial spaces and how humans impact and change natural landscapes. He claims to not have any political motivations but it is near impossible to assume a objective and neutral position with that type of subject matter.

Bellocq
Another in a line of documentary photographers, Bellocq is best known for his work in Storyville, New Orleans's infamous legal red light district, and brings to the front a less notorious, but equally vibrant dialogue of people’s lives.

Joel Meyerowitz – He was known for his street photography and for his uses of shadows and lights. I particularly like his piece Blind Man where it is a picture of blind sitting in a booth and people walking on the streets out the window next to him. The irony of the photo is that there is a great amount of light shining through the window when the blind man can’t actually see.

Harry Callahan – Known for using photography to delve deep into his own personal life. His use of multiple exposures, such as Detroit, really intrigues me. Taking several negatives of one car and printing them shows great motion.

Bill Brandt – His contrast photos give the viewer a spectrum of emotions. In his Window in Osborn Street the three children shown in what seems to be a cellar give off a since of poverty through the location of the kids and with how the actual cellar seems to be.

Brassai – His pieces seem to deal a lot with nightlife Paris, including buildings, roads and some people. In his piece Backstage at the Folies-Bergere his use of an aerial shot above the women in front of the mirror interesting because when glancing at the mirror I at first thought the women were in front of painting.

Hans Bellmer – Known for his surrealistic pieces using dolls. His piece called The Doll is interesting due to his use lighting. The shadows falling on the body of the doll make some interesting forms.

Robert Adams – His photographs seem to only deal with landscapes and buildings and rarely showing any humans. I like his photo called Untitled, Denver, the light coming through the window onto the bed almost gives the piece an eerie feeling of loneliness.

John Baldessari – Used his art often as commentary on contemporary art. It seems as if in some of his photos he blocks out some of the people’s faces to take emphasis away from the fact that it is actually a person.

Alexander Rodchenko - I love his use extreme angles and his work seems to incorporate a little bit of humor. He seems to use both of this in his piece called Chauffeur where the picture is taken from the perspective of the rearview mirror giving the image in the rearview the feeling of almost being in an alternate reality.

Edward Steichen – His pieces intrigue me because he seems to use a slight blur when he exposes his prints giving his works a slight fantastical feel. His famous piece HHHThe Pond-Moonlight intrigues me due to the fact that the reflection of the trees on the pond are almost as clear as the trees themselves making it seem as if you are staring into two different realms.

Arthur Tress – Is an artist known for his staged surreal photos. His piece Flying Dream really caught my eye. In the piece three figures lie on what seems to be the net of batting cage. With the kids on the net they almost seem to be flying.

Jerry Uelsmann – His surreal photography seems to almost pop out at you. He uses several negatives per print like in his piece Symbolic Mutation where he uses the negatives to have a hand coming out of woman’s head.

Minor White - He used common themes and made them interesting through his use of light His work also seems to be involved with direction a lot as well. In the piece Road and Poplar Trees, in the Vicinity of Naples and Dansvill, New York it almost seems as if he dodged the trees to give them a slight glow.

Carrie Mae Weems – An artist known for her pieces that usually deal with the African American experience. She seems to use dark lighting to give her pieces a feel of somberness.

Man Ray – He was a photographer known for his fashion and portrait work and his photogram’s. His work tends to delve into surrealism quite often. In his piece Le Violon d'Ingres he photographed a nude female seated from behind, painted the wholes of a violin on her back on the print and then re-photographed the print. It’s almost like a sort of old fashioned photoshop.

Roy DeCarava – His photos have great lines and use of lights. In his photo Graduation he uses the large shadows of the buildings surround a woman in a dress to frame her. The lines of the shadows and the sidewalk draw the viewer eyes to her.

Wendy Ewald – I like her use of both photo and text and drawings. Her piece X from An African American Alphabet is interesting because of her use of the two mediums for repetition with hands of the boy forming an “X” and the drawing being of two “X’s.”

Jim Goldberg – Also uses mixed media in his prints as well in another interesting way. He uses his added text sometimes as captions commenting on the photo, such as the cover for his book Rich and Poor.

Dorothea Lange – Her photojournalistic style during the early 1900’s is very intriguing. A lot of her pieces are great at capturing the event of the moment they are photographed. Her piece Ditched, Stalled, and Stranded San Joaquin Valley, California is great at capturing a stereotypical man of the Great Depression. The photo shows a great deal of detail in the texture of the man’s leathered skin and worn out vehicle.

Andre Kertesz – his work show great composition and also great detail. In his piece Wandering Violinist, Abony, Hungary the proximity of the man and boy compared to the baby is an interesting relationship. The photo plays with lines and depth of field with the muddied road wander out of the frame.

Ernst Haas – He is another photographer that has made his name as a photojournalist who plays with light and abstract forms. His piece The Cross he uses the light from the windows on four skyscrapers that is reflecting through some fog to give a somewhat heavenly haze. It also seems like he may have dodged the light in the fog a little.

Wow...

I'm thinking about imitating Hans Bellmer but I really have no idea how I'm going to get started. Most of his photographs include complicated installations of dolls...so um does anyone have random mannequins lying around? Heh :/

Here's a link to some of his work

This is the Man Ray photo I was talking about today in class....

Man Ray "Dust Breeding"

20 Famous Photographers

1. Sam Abel
I choose this photographer because of the nature scenery. The interesting part of the picture is that he choose to take a picture of dead flowers and leaves on the contrary f what we usually see. We usually associate flowers with beauty but he has associated them with dead beauty. Which means beauty doesn’t last, which I found a very interesting approach that I might like to take sometimes.

2. Jan Faul
This photo has a certain mystic about it. It makes think ofa movie scenery and creatves a composition that I always tried to paint but failed to accomplish on paper. That is why this photo has caught my attention.

3. Stephen R. Brown
This composition has created a golden sunset which makes me think of Egyptian’s legends. I love to dig back in the history of Egypt and this picture makes create many different legends of my own that s why I love it.

4. Peter Grote
This photo makes me reminisce about one of my favorite movies, “The Day After Tomorrow”. T creates a sense of doom and futuristic depend on the mood of the person.

5. Alex Brattell
I love how detailed and futuristic the photo is. It looks as if it can go forever yet there is still a limit. The details of the shades and the perfection of ow much light is allowed in.

6. Martin Brent
This photo is my favorite, because of its simplicity yet a very abstract meaning behind the composition. I love the composition and emotions it brings. I believe I would enjoy imitating this artist because this photo just speaks out to me.

7. Rob Carter
This photo is very simple and it doesn;’t have any specific form but that’s what intrest me. Some time the abstract part of any composition what draws people in, because their curiosity pulls them in.

8. Mine Fry
I find this picture quite disturbing. It causes a lot of confusion and conflict with oneself when viewed. However, it reminds me of a song by Rihanna “Disturbia”.

9. Hamish Fulton
This photo demonstrates the beauty of the landscape. Although I think it would much stronger composition if it were done in black and white yet is till find it fascinating.

10. Christopher Griffith
The sense of the never ending and the path to nowhere and anywhere what captured my imagination. It can mean anything.

11. Darren Harvey-Regan
This photo reminds of a religious story I’ve heard over and over. And the way they choose to paint the picture was very similar to this one.

12. Bill Peronneau
Landscape is always done in photography but this photo has a strong depth of cumulating emotions.

13. Anne and Patrick Poirier
The graphic appeal to this photo what caught my attention. You can’t tell if it’s photographed or painted that’s why its very strong composition.

14. Andy Taylor Smith
Clouds are interesting compositions because you can never know how they will react to the camera. You certainly don’t know what to expect when photographing clouds; The sense of the unexpected that fascinates me.

15. James Turrell
Moon pictures fascinate and I always wanted to take on approach on their composition; because it gives me a sense of innocence, fairytale, and dream.

16. Vanessa Warren
I choose because it focuses on the beauty of nature which what makes photography fun for me. And the way there isn’t any certain feel or texture to the background that it solely focuses on the beauty of the flowers makes very eye catching.

17. George Wright
This photo invests in individuality and although it’s a single tree it portrays a certain strength about it. However, the gloomy composition creates a hopeful ending.

18. Dave Hacker
This picture is my second favorite. The way the tree and nature is used to frame the man made buildings is something I always wanted to try. It creates different types of emotions do to the play on objects placements and srroudings.

19. Dennis Oppenheim
The mix of light, darkness, and water creates a sense of serene yet when the light breaks through the infinite water it breaks the composition into small shattered pieces. Which I believe to be the genius of choosing your subject that way the photo can be interpreted I many different ways.

20. Montana Forbes
The way she uses graphic art style mixed with real life photography art is amusing. This mixed media makes one think of the many different ways to translate and analyze this photo.

Zahra Alshair

20 Famous Photographers (Janet Croog)

1. E. J. Bellocq
Bellocq’s photos consist of women, or their portraits. I cannot decide if I like them necessarily, but I find them very interesting. Some give me an eery feeling because some of the women are in the nude but their faces are masked as if they do not want to be recognized. This idea is such a contrast because a woman will expose her body, which is usually covered to where you can only see her face and hands, and hide her face. The photos are very old, early 1900s, so they are black and white, but I prefer black and white photos when the subjects are people.

2. Karl Blossfeldt
These photos are of plant parts magnified. At first I did not find these prints interesting because I did not see any compositional value to them, but once I kept looking through his photos, I realized that the concept had value. We usually do not look at plants like this, especially so close because our eyes just cannot see it. So for me, these pictures resemble the beauty of the hidden life that we miss because of its size.

3. Margaret Bourke-White
Her photos are amazing when it comes to how she catches depression and war. You can see the effects of society on individuals through their expressions. She is very good at placement and size contrast between her subjects and the environment. Her photos really emit powerful emotions which makes her work very successful.

4. Harry Callahan
What stands out to me the most of Callahan’s work are the portraits of Eleanor. They are very beautiful, and I have a bias towards portraits. When I see a series of photos of the same person, though, I feel a connection to that person, or I feel like I can see that person through the photographers eyes which connects me to what the photographer may be feeling about his photos.

5. Imogen Cunningham
As opposed to Karl Blossfeldt’s work, Cunningham uses a more compositional technique when portraying the beauty of plants and all the details we miss with our eyes as we dart through life. So he has the concept as well as the composition down which is very nice and makes very successful photos. He seems to have a decent eye for shadows within curves of objects, like cloth, and plant tissues.

6. Emmet Gowin
Like Callahan, there are multiple pictures of a woman, Edith. Because there are multiple pictures of this woman, without knowing anything about the photographer except the pictures he’s taken, you automatically know there is some form of relationship between him and Edith. You know that Gowin sees a beauty in Edith which is why there are multiple pictures, and therefore you can relate, or see the beauty the photographer sees. I love that.

7. David Hill and Robert Adamson
I do not take interest in these photos for their concepts as much as I do for their history. These photos were taken over 100 years ago right into the mid 1800s. I like to see the evidence of history through photos more than text because text comes from the mind, which is always uneven and colored, while photos are real, actual images straight from the eye. But there still is an art in these photos, especially the portraits and the emotions they convey. These are fun to look at and relate to now compared to then.

8. Lewis Hine
Not only do his pictures portray the history of industrialism, but they have nice compositional technique which adds appeal to the photos. There is a balance between making evidence of history and making art out of that evidence, and Hine does both. So while there is an art to his photos, his concepts are very dynamic in showing the dangers of the way these people are working and the strength they need to fulfill their duties.

9. Cameron Davidson
I like these aerial views in his photos because, similar to the magnifying technique, these shots are not something you can see unless you use another piece of equipment, other than your eyes and camera to see. You cannot see these images otherwise, or unless you are high up on a cliff or mountain. This is another way to see the beauty in life, or nature, that I cannot see on a regular basis.

10. David Armstrong
His photos are very blurry but very soft. They give an abstract idea about them, but you can still make out his subjects just enough. The photos are similar to paintings which are nice; I love to paint. Also, if these were black and white photos, they would not look as nice because the color is used to determine the subject or the mood of the photos. Black and white coloring would only lessen the beauty and appeal of the photos.

11. Alioune Ba
Her photos are nice about depicting another culture. She uses creative man-made textures against the natural body to create a vivid connection between the both. I like how she uses the body, like hands and feet, as an art form.

12. Alex Brattell
His work has a spacial value to it. His photos emit a sort of peace through that space. His use of black and white media adds to that emotion, because if his photos were in color, they would add more energy to the photos, which would not be as calming.

13. Martin Brent
His photos are about unintentional art and I admire that to an extent. I actualy prefer to make art intentional, but I also know there is a beauty when we connect to the world randomly, or unintentionaly, and when we see something through our periferal vision.

14. Doc Edgerton
With the invention of the electric flash, Edgerton added a new way to photograh which I find very interesting. This is an art on a different angle than what I am used to because, once again, we cannot capture these moments with our eyes and retain some solid picture. He captures the beauty of what fast motion really looks like when it’s stopped in the middle of moving.

15. Josef Koudelka
I like how Koudelka captures people. They are caught at times that are not proper almost. Their faces are all scruntched or they are doing something unsanitary or their body is missing a limb. And all the photos are around Europe in the 70’s. And he uses their angles very well to create artistic compositions when capturing people.

16. Clarence Laughlin
Laughlin (funny name) has very interesting photos. They are not like the usual historic photos. They are almost like today’s modern photography, kind of tripy and dreamy. They have more of a creative imagination appeal to them rather than capturing as much of the depression of the time.

17. Helen Levitt
Her photos are realy nice in the sense that she captured quite a few smiles from a very depressing time in the U.S., especially from the children. She has pictures of the chalk drawings, or kids playing in the streets. It lightens up the mood of that time period, but it doesn’t ignore it because you can still see what the kids are wearing or the depressed faces of the people in the backround, or the dirty backround in general, with everything torn up or trashed.

18. Edward Weston
His phots are interesting because he uses the human body in some photos and they are displayed to show off curviture, like landscapes, but he also has pictures of landscapes ad they remind me of the human body. He also has photos of vegetables that have this similar human form. So I feel like he brings the human form to nature or vice versa. I’m not sure if that was his intention, but that is what I get from his photos.

19. Jerry Uelsmann
His work seems more contemporary, similar to how photographers today use photoshop, even though his photos were taken decades ago. I’m not sure what thechnique he is using because I don’t know what kind of technology was available at that time but it seems to be some sort of layering technique to change what is really seen from the camera, which makes it more interesting and artistic, compared to all the historical photos of that time displaying depression and reality. This is like an escape from reality.

20. Nadar
Because I take interest in portraits, I like many of Nadar’s portraits . A few of his works are nice compositionaly, but really the idea of these people existing in the 1800’s is what captures my interest the most. There is more of a historical value to these photos rather than an artisitic one.

Famous Photographers Essay

maggie hooyman.


Ansel Adams is officially my favorite photographer. His stunning photos of vast landscape literally turns me on. I love the angles he shoots at, the wonderful depth of field he provides, and his amazing depiction of nature. The fact that all of his work is black & white causes his photographs to behold a mystical effect. Usually in pictures of landscape your eyes are so attracted to the colors that I think you miss a lot of the details in nature. I am in love with every single one of his photographs. There is no way I could pick just one picture that I like most of his. When the set of pictures that the website provided for him ended my heart sank, I would have kept looking at more of his images for hours.

Jerry Uelsmann is my second favorite photographer, though he embodies a very different style than Adams. Most of his pictures seem as if they’ve been manipulated in some way to provide extremely trippy images. One of my favorite pictures he has is of an un-rooted tree taking off into the air (Untitled, 1969). This picture is literally impossible, it must be fake, I have no idea how he did it. I am determined to learn his ways.

Clarence John Laughlin’s photos also induce viewers with a trippy feeling, as did Uelsmann. But, his photos do not seem to be manipulated in any way, he just shoots them in a manner that embodies such an effect. My favorite image that beholds this effect would have to be the one titled House of Hysteria. I don’t know how to explain it other than that all the different shadows in the image are what makes this picture strong. Another photo I love is his Beseiging Wilderness where the reflection of a tree is shown over a big house… I don’t understand how he executed this. One photo that I am positive Laughlin must have actually manipulated is his one titled Woman Reflected in a Mirror. The corner of this picture has obviously been added in some how.. I think if I were to start trying to make my photos trippy, such as Laughlin’s & Uselmann’s, I would want to combine their two methods. I would make most of my pictures naturally done, like Laughlin’s. The ones I would physically manipulate wouldn’t be as obvious as Uselmann’s .

Arnold Newman is said to be, “one of the greatest portrait makers in the history of photography”. His pictures seem simple to me yet, complete. One picture, for example, is his Imperial Palace photo. It is so basic, yet beautiful at the same time. I think what I really like about this picture is it’s framing. Almost the entire image is white (because the door is white) but he has this perfectly thin line of black surrounding it. The thickness of the line is the same width as the line separating the two doors, so he makes it seem as though the black frame is actually apart of the subject.

Walker Evans is a photographer from the 30s that took pictures of random landscapes & people. I like her photography because I felt as though she gave strong insight of the culture at that time. Her images reveal commercial posters from the era, the cars that they drove, different views of the current homes, and the rich people’s styles versus the poorer people’s faces.

Brassai’s photos are pictures of Paris after night fall. His images hold sort of an eerie, yet romantic feeling. One of my favorite photographs he’s produced is his one titled Tugboats and barges beside Pont-Neuf. The reflection on the water causes the semicircular openings of the bridge to look as if they’re on big circle. I also really like his picture Backstage at the Foiles- Bergere and the one titled Prostitute at angle of Rue de la Reynie & Rue Quincampoix.

Robert Adams’ photos also embody a sort of basic yet complete look. One of my favorite pictures that beholds this simplicity is the one of a bed with a glowing window in the background (Untitled, Denver 1970-74). Though I think his photographs of nature are stronger. I really like how some of his pictures of trees are shown side to side making them seem as if they’re just one giant image.

Roy DeCarava documented “the African-American experience & its cultural icons”. His pictures posses a glum yet, prosperous feeling. The image that intrigues me the most is the one titled Graduation. It’s odd how the girl is dressed so extravagant, alone, in a trashy alleyway. Another image I find interesting is Pepsi. Has he passed out from work exhaustion or is has he just lazily fallen asleep? I also think DeCarava’s photograph titled Window and Stove is very beautiful.

Imogen Cunningham is an American modernist with pictures dating all the way back to 1910. She mainly takes close-up pictures of plants. One of my favorite photos of hers would have to be Stapelia. It first caught my eye because the flower in it is so unique; the patterns on it’s petals almost look leopard print.. The features that make this photo stronger are the different shadows casted from the stem that is propped up & the different shades of the wall versus the ground.

Karl Blossfeldt also takes pictures of plants close-up but his seem as if he’s trying to really show you something about the plants where as, I feel like Cunningham was just taking pretty pictures. The photos zoom in on the plant much more & usually just focus on one part of the plant. I love the photo Aesculus parviflorabecause it magnified the branch tips of Horse chestnut to reveal what looks like little faces on the plant.

Emmet Gowin’s pictures are photos of her “every day life” in the 60’s & 70’s. Some of them seem bewitched with creepiness while others give me an oddly happy feeling. One picture I love that acquires the creepy sensation is titled Edith. What makes this picture so great is the subject was placed behind a screen door so that there is a layer of wire netting over her face. Gowin’s picture that makes me the happiest is Nancy. This is a picture of a little girl sleeping on the ground with baby dolls surrounding her. Even though this picture makes me all warm inside, the dolls still create a creepy look. One funny thing I noticed is a number of her photographs have that round edging that Wendy had problems with & from time to time show up in my own film. I wonder how she went about this…

Irving Penn is stated as “much, much more than just a fashion photographer”. I think the reason they’ve referred to Penn this way is because even though most his images are just placed in front of a backdrop, he is still trying to convey some sort of a message upon his viewers. Take the picture Mrs. Amory Carhart for instance. It’s a picture of a girl in a big, gorgeous, wedding dress but then there’s this giant, ugly, cord placed in front of her feet. Why he included the cord in the image is beyond me. My favorite picture of Penn’s is Summer Sleep. It reminds me of Emmet Gowin’s picture titled Edith because this too has a screen door appearing over the image. Penn went even further than Gowin by including flies on the screen & a tear in the wire.

Alfred Stieglitz is my favorite photographer from the early 1900’s; his pictures seem to entrance me. First they look as if they’re a some-what basic photograph, but as your eyes begin to wander you notice more & more details that he included. One of the best examples of this would have to be the picture titled Flatiron Building. My eye was initially attracted to the building that is so oddly thin. It’s such an interesting view of the tower that you never even notice anything else. But, when I went back to look at the image I first saw the building then, I noticed the snow that was caught in the middle of the closest tree’s arms, after that my eyes couldn’t stop admiring every little feature that was originally missed. I could go on forever about just this one photograph but I realize this paragraph is getting very long. I have to say though, I think the photo titled Snapshot, Paris is amazing; beautiful use of depth of field.

Josef Koudelka’s photos each seem to tell a separate story. This seems to be due to the fact that every one of them contains people in it that are not posing & are in common surroundings. I like all of his pictures, each of them are interesting in their own way. Koudelka also creates a nice framing effect within the image using different subjects to surround other objects.

Gary Winogrand’s photos seem unreal, but in a natural way… if that makes any since at all. I love the angles he shoots at and the odd images he captures. The picture of Winogrand’s that I like the most would have to be the one titled Los Angeles, California. It’s crooked, the light beam off of a balcony seems to glare in your eye, the shadow effect surrounding the ladies makes it look as if they’re falling towards you, & then there’s some dude asleep in a wheel chair with a little boy across from him starring. It’s great.

Joel Meyerowitz’s photos also seem to besiege you with an unreal existence. Each one seems to have something placed in it that doesn’t look right. His photograph titled Porch, Provincetown is probably my favorite image. How in the world did he get the lightening bolt just to the right of the porch’s pillar? How could he have known that it would strike in that area? I also love the lighting effect on the roof of the porch, the way the bottom half of the door is just stopped in the center, & the gloomy view of the boat in the water.

Max Waldman takes stunning photos of theatrical plays & dances. I love his photographs because I love theatre. In each theatrical photograph it seems that he is depicting a certain scene from the selected play. My favorite image of his is the Fiddler on the Roofone due to the fact that before I realized he took theatrical photos I saw this image and instantly knew it must be from Fiddler on the Roof.

Andre Kertesz’s photos gives a since of complexity. I love his picture titled The White Horse, New York. The way the branches cover the ladies head but you can still see her face in the shadow, just the shadow itself of her and her dog, and that weird carousel horse included in the left corner all make this picture stand out. I also love the photograph Rue des Ursins. The picture provides a glimpse of the inside of a bar and reveals the road descending from it. Showing the contrast between the man filled bar, and the lonely lady crossing the street.

Stephen Shore’s color rich photographs seem, once again, simple but still attract my attention. My favorite photograph of his is probably the one titled El Paso Street, El Paso, Texas. I like this photo because when it comes to my own photography I love to take pictures of nature surrounded by the destruction of modernization. In this photograph a tree stands tall upon a cement sidewalk looking out onto a city street. This image embodies my most loved photographic message.

Vincent Serbin’s images have all been transformed in some way. Some have different scraps of what appears to be tape across them, others have been purposely scratched, a few even appear as though he some how combined one picture over another picture while in the developing process. I love the look he creates with cutting the same photo in different ways & placing the pieces in order as they would appear in the original picture. I think my favorite picture of his is the one titled Parallel Worlds but that’s just because I like full moons & zebras.

Famous Photographers

Eugene Atget

            The bulk of Atget’s work focused on the changing landscape of mid-20^th century Paris. He showed the evolution of Paris by contrasting cars and horse-drawn carriages and challenged conventional techniques by intentionally including reflections in the glass of the shop-fronts he photographed and by capturing the “dirty” side of life at the time.

 

Dorothea Lange

With their honesty and unapologetic subjects, Dorothea Lange’s portraits have become icons for the Depression era. She was able to bring the plight of the farmers and migrant workers that had been left destitute by the Dust Bowl to audiences that otherwise would have probably never seen them.

 

Walker Evans

            As in Lange’s work, Walker Evans documented the effects of the Great Depression, however, his were somewhat different, particularly because he showed the inside of people’s homes. Through these glimpses into the humble, yet private residences, the full impact of the extreme poverty can be related.

 

Alfred Steiglitz

            Steiglitz is well known for making photos take on attributes of other types of art, like painting or sculpture. Picturesque views of New York streets seem juxtaposed with his nudes, where his isolated parts of the body in a study of line, contour, and shape.

 

Holland Day

            Day is best known for his many nude male youths, which stirred up much controversy and still make many viewers uncomfortable. Despite their social connotations, Day’s photos are an interesting take on human form and the use of costumes to present scenes that would originally never been able to be photographed.

 

Ann Brigman

            Ann used the nude female for extensively and usually placed her subjects in very dramatic scenes that incorporated nature. After staging these elaborate settings, she would add to the effects by using various techniques to alter her prints in the dark room.

 

Man Ray

            Man Ray is known for coining the term “Rayographs” which refers to his work with photograms. He used a variety of media to create a incredible volume of work that did not require the use of a camera.           

 

 

 

 

Hans Bellmer

            Most viewers are disturbed by Bellmer’s images because how they distort the human form into appearing mutilated and because of the way he arranged the (typically) female bodies into poses that suggest helplessness.

 

Erwin Blumenfeld

            Blumfeld spent his career in fashion photography and brought a wealth of European fashion to the American market. However, his use of a veil or other translucent barrier in front of his subject (usually nude females) has been the subject of celebration and controversy, in that some appear to be suffocating while others add a layer of mystery and seduction to the scene.

 

Harry Callahan

            Harry Callahan used texture in an exceptional way that produced strong emotions, if not at least intrigue, in all his photos. His wife and the city his lived in, Detroit, were recurrent in his work. He had an eye for taking something and shooting it in various ways to evoke entirely different moods.

 

Weegee (Arthur Fellig)

            Weegee was able to present his city in a way that seems so unobtrusive and from a perspective that makes the viewer feel like they are glimpsing into his world. His uncanny ability to show every angle without disturbing the people or their various states of existence goes beyond typical documentary photography into a realm of presenting life as it was from the inside, not through a lens.

 

Brassai

            Many photographers use Brassai’s night shots as templates for their own work, striving to recreate the glow of the fog and the quiet, calm, stillness of the streets. His human subjects seem to have been chosen based on the strangeness of their stories or the level of compelling content they could provide.

 

Cartier-Bresson

            Using asymmetrical composition, Cartier-Bresson was able to create incredible motion throughout his work while also leaving the viewer on the edge of their seat, anticipating resolution that never comes. This movement, anxiety and need to know is reminiscent of Baroque sculpture and painting in that, at every turn, the artist is attempting to capture an infinitesimal moment in time.

 

Helen Levitt

            Sometimes referred to as a “photographer’s photographer,” Levitt’s work centered on New York’s Spanish Harlem are some of the most humane, tender and intimate produced from the area. They display the innocence and purity of childhood, the appreciation of leisure time after a hard day of work and the pleasantness of allowing oneself to be, if only temporarily, completely carefree.

Famous Photographers Essay AGAIN

Famous Photographers Essay

20 Famous Photographers

Famous Photographers

Tuyet Huynh

Ansel Adams:

(Feb. 20 1902 — Apr. 22, 1984) a musician to photographer, Adams developed the "zone system" of controlling and relating exposure and development, enabling photographers to creatively visualize an image and produce a photograph that matched and expressed that visualization. His major concentration of photography was in the wilderness and the environment, most if not all of his works has everything in focus to the small detail.

Julia Margaret Cameron:

A British,1815 – 1879, Cameron took up photography late in 1863. Initially Cameron experimented with allegorical and religious subjects, but by 1866 she had begun the expressive portraiture for which she is best known. Most of her subjects’ expression in the portraits are more of sorrowful and seriousness rather than hope, and joy.

Imogene Cunningham

1883-1976 American Tonalist Photographer, In 1901, she commenced the longest photographic career in the history of the medium. Cunningham soon turned her attention to both the nude and native plant forms in her back garden. The results were staggering; an amazing body of work comprised of bold, contemporary forms. I favored most of her works for it’s soft light and shadow creating a misty like effects that grabs the viewer’s attention.

Lee Friedlander

He focuses on Documentary, Landscape, Photojournalism, Portraiture photographs. His landscape photographs show amazing detail and provides a very interesting composition.

Jacques- Henri Lartigue

He is not only a photographer but also a painter; it seems because of his painter background his principle in doing photography is to compose pictures out of the flux of life. His photography is partially abstracted.

Joel Meyerowitz

Meryerowitz’s works are very intriguing view of a situation, place or thing. His works were meant to let the view see themselves in the particular time of the photographs.

Tina Modotti

She concentrates on still lifes, documentaries, and portraits. Her works is a perfection of focus and contrast, presenting the object or person in the photo really well.

Irving Penn

He worked on photographing fashion, portraiture and still life most of the time. In addition, he is also consistently expanding his range of subject matter and method. He is said to be a master of reducitona and refinement, as he works with simplicity and a controllable setting to create timeless images of an ephemeral world.

Jacob Riis

Riis’ photos are conveyer of a message about the people’s needs that is neglected by many. The way he does this really grabs the view attention, it makes the audiences thinks and wonder and because of this the image he creates is imprinted in the mind of the viewer for a long time.

Ralph Steiner

Steiner’s focus on the design of his photos a lot more than anything else, he almost always try to pursued different techniques to present his works. He always insisted that successful photography required deeply personal interpretation. He is good at making something that is really simple seems much more intriguing.

Alfred Stieglitz

His works present an attracting composition. Some of them seems to be really busy and then some come to a very simplistic presentation.

Weegee

The photographs are very detail, some are gruesome because of it was of crime scenes. His photograph actually is very natural, as documentation of people in their natural habitat.

Edward Weston

He works with nudes, portraits, nature and landscapes. His photos have a very compelling composition and exquisite tonalities to them. His technique is called Straight Photography.

Minor White

He works as a textural photographer. White’s photo are displaced to viewer to lets the eye of the audience shape their own view about the photograph. His study with Edward Weston.

Garry Winogrand

The photographs are of every day life of people in the city, it seems to be of a documentary. He has good contrast which generates, helped the composition of the photos.

Jonathan Frantini

His works are relatively associates with a certain theme for each photo if not a set of them. The photo have great composition of color and depth.

David Lynn

His works are of nature and landscapes. The photos are close up of the subjects allowing the viewer to see the expression of the subjects. His work is quite detail and eye catching.

Frans Lanting

The photos are great images that compile a great sense of life and elegant into the composition of the piece. The piece themselves is very developed, almost like a painting.

Benedict Redgrove

He photography more of aesthetic, non living object. However the pictures’ composition is executed, captured very well, no matter if is the color or the objects’ placement it is all well position on the end print.

Jonathan de Villiers

He photograph fashion, architectural structure and rare landscape. All of them are perfectly executed to make a good compositional representation, as he give his works an ‘edgy’ look.