Holiday greetings

Merry Christmas, Blogger.

New Year, new challenges.

Interesting People, Gorgeous Photographs

http://backyardbill.blogspot.com/

The highlights

from a dull place and a beautiful face.

Back in the studio

Still learning the nuances of my new RB67 and since my first rolls were chrome and I don't meter enough to be viewed as 'professional,' the only image that is truly good is one of my Grandfather's grave and for fear of emotion being misconstrued as cliche, I'm going to keep that one to myself.

However: Here is my first image as part of my Studio Light series.


The products themselves are going to be pretty unrelated (macbooks to cigarettes) except that they were all once a part of the old vintage print ads from the forties and fifties. The products may have changed over time, or maybe just the way we think about them has, but the idea is to print them all like this, with the old ad included, and new slogans or tag lines playing off the old ones.


I'll have a new one of these every week, and plan to shoot two rolls of film a week for myself as well. Those will slowly make it on here as finding time to scan is hard enough.

I just spent an hour on this website

http://www.nocultureicons.com/


There are a couple RIT kids on there that seem to consistently turn out good work - I found it because Liz Kaufman has it linked on her flickr somewhere.


My film is ready today. And I'm back in the studio (after a year) tonight at 6.

Developing film today.

Beyond excited. Hopefully some self-posts later on.

Edit 12/2/09: I suck. But I've enrolled in a Studio Light Class this quarter and will be scanning film and uploading files soon enough.

So tactile

Elinor Carucci. Oh. Wow.

Jim Lind

Updates galore.

I think that Jim is actually only a year older than myself, unless he took time off before enrolling at SCAD. Either way, I am thrilled to know that he exists and that he is making art.

Favorites:







As well as the rest of his City of Exile series and the entirety of Bad Habits which must be viewed as a whole for full effect.

William Eggleston and Lee Freidlander

The two photographers that have what I still continually lust after: sheer grasp of color mastery and visual puns and storytelling. My latest finds included both of these gentlemen.

Eggleston's book "5x7" depicts more portraits than places and also includes black and white amidst the color vibrancy. For both of these reasons, it was like looking at an entirely different photographer. I found myself wholly unfulfilled by his black and white portraits - I was actually desiring the color that had once existed in the real-life scene. I relied on Eggleston for that.



With the converse:







While still retaining a huge amount of photographic merit, they are not his strongest images, nor his memorable ones for me. My inspiration comes from those above and beyond, which, when I speak of Eggleston, will mean his color photographs.


On the other hand...
Lee Freidlander is merely a stepping stone in my next findings.



From Freidlander's "At Work" as well as from his series with MIT about the affects of computer use on workers came an interesting series of images to me, particularly because of a professor I work closely with here at RIT.

James Rajotte is a Fine Art Photojournalist who has been teaching at RIT in waves since 2007. I'm currently the TA for his Photo Arts 1 class and teach the first years a thing or two. He was my professor when I was in their position two years ago and everything I love about photography I owe to him.

Back to my Freidlander image -

This is the parallel that caught my attention because Rajotte's series: Blasted has been in the forefront of my mind for a while.



I've got another find already lined up for tomorrow. I can't be lax like I have been recently.

Hannah Starkey

I found Hannah Starkey in one of my library-raidings and liked her so much I took her book home with me, initially because I thought I would update and scan photos from it for here, but knowing I don't have a scanner, I understood that I fell in awe of her point of view and execution. Her over-stylized lighting and scenarios seem straight out of the advertising department here at RIT, but I think it is her process that intrigues me most. It is a collaboration between her past experiences and those of her sitters coupled with the emotions and feelings from both parties. In Photographs from 1997 to 2007 the main subject was women and she explains about the parallel experiences she can share with them versus how men might interpret the scenarios themselves.



Hannah Starkey's Best Shot

Stephen Shore's Portraits

Although his book Uncommon Places is more well-known for it's namesake, in between the starkly occupied and vividly colored suburban landscapes are a series of portraits that correspond with the surrounding views. I'm spending a lot of time in the oversized section on the fourth floor where all the best photography books are and today, that was my find.

The original goal...

... of this was to discover something every day.

Back at school, I will be making more efforts towards this to stay connected with imagery and with art, but this is the summer of discovering myself and my life. It is going undocumented because my heart contains the whole thing.

I leave you with a promise that I am living and thriving, and still photographing on occasion when I'm not too busy actually participating in the world around me.

This will evolve as I do, but I will continue to discover for the rest of my life.

I guess this is the electronic promise of that to myself.

I have three loves...

photography, writing and family. The latter got a bit smaller this past week with the burial of my Poppa. I've had so much to say, so much to share and bleed for him since his passing on Saturday, but I believe that in my peace, I've said it all and now it is just a matter of living as he did: with precision and humor.

He never ceased to be amazing. Even in his final weeks, surrounded by doctors that would make House take a Valium, his humor fought to destroy his situational pessimism. He wrote everything down. Two five-year diaries chronicling 1945-55 were found and perused, his "Resume," similarly documenting, is a fourteen-page long outline of every step in life he's ever taken. I want to memorize it.

I was his favorite grandchild, daughter to his favorite son and to the woman his wife refused to accept into the family. He loved us with his smile.

I am working on negotiating my regrets to take their leave. I have no reason to hold onto sadness or disillusionment. But I will hold onto his memory and his talent for life. Not only will I hold but I will squeeze with everything I have until it has no other choice but to absorb. I will carry him with me forever.


Earl D. Collins July 15, 1929 - June 20, 2009

Summer

I'm going to try to do this. And soon. The summer is worse than I expected and some things have come up, but I am not neglecting the thought required to produce something here.

Please be patient.

God knows, I need to as well.

I lost it.

The will to power myself.

I'm so close to being finished but I do not want to leave this place. It keeps me social, even if unhappy. And I've been known to withdraw into myself when not presented with the proper environment.

Visual Journals were due today, but Jen was sick and so class was canceled. I found this blog though:
[Daily Dose of Imagery]

and most importantly, a group of images from February 2008 that directly relate to my project.









More soon. I hope.

Stephan Vanfleteren

Quite the mouthful, Stephan Vanfleteren is a traveling photographer who takes some of the most stunning, uniquely straightforward portraits I've seen in a while. While Jackie was working on improving her lighting replication, she introduced me first to her assignment photograph and then, in my own time, I found other reasons to have a gander.


From Facing Stories
Belgium: The Poverty of Loneliness

Probably the most unrelated to my own final project, Stephan's portraits aren't the only thing I fell in love with. Hobos In The USA was the second series to catch my attention because as a photo essay, it was gritty and truthful but straightforward and beautiful at the same time. A seemingly disrespected people seen and portrayed respectfully.




I don't know much about these photographers until I post about them and look them up and realize how far behind I fell in the knowledge pool. These people are famous. Where have I been?

Adam Jeppesen and others

Graham Walzer asked me too look up a fellow named Adam Jeppesen because he had a similar aesthetic to what I wanted to be shooting and not necessarily what I had in my work in progress product.



There so much control over these images without much seemingly controlled light. Somehow even with my poor articulation, Graham was able to pick up on what I desired to shoot and is this wellspring of knowledge in which you can blurt out a style or a subject matter and he will say something like "Have you taken a look at...?" And of course you haven't, because if you had, you wouldn't be so off track.

In exchange for his nugget of knowledge I remembered a photographer I had seen at AIPAD but not heard much about prior to this: Michael Wolf. Wolf's series called Transparent City is a beautifully executed idea that has, in fact, been done before - but not quiet as blatantly well. When you start to navigate his website to discover something original you find the Sitting in China: Bastard Chairs series and immediately find yourself falling in love with his ability to see things that have become so quickly part of the environment while not belonging there at all if they still had an essence of their former selves. These are portraits of personality.

I haven't decided if I want to upload any images from my final-in-progress to here yet. I'm not sure what the sense would be while I'm still completely silent.

Tod Seelie

I ran into Tod Seelie in class the other day while looking for inspiration and while he doesn't have much to do with my Night Spaces project, I cannot get his name out of my head.


Tod Seelie

If you look at anything, look at his Landscape series. These images are breath-taking and find a way to put you in any shooting scenario he may have been in. For all the commercial work he's done, these are peaceful and attainable spaces. This is what I want out of photography.

Finding myself

The plan is to be better.

As public as this might be, tweeting isn't going to help me discover what I've lost and it also wont hold me over until I'm not living here anymore.

I will discover something new.