New Stuff

Just a few new pictures, although only one of them will be shown for the final critique.

Anderson Gallery

I don't think I ever made a post about the anderson gallery. I submitted two prints ("The Worm Keeper" and "Ravens Breath") and they both got in. My name was of course on the list of works that got in and I went in to show paul before I submitted the prints that I had them. I didn't take a picture of myself in the anderson gallery because I didn't find it necessary since I had met with paul beforehand, and paul said that was okay.

And since it was juried, I got two prints in for the Senior Show which were "The Plucker" and "Painting Death". Both were very well recieved so i'm excited!

This is a quick one, so the end. :)

Last shoot

So I just finished my last shoot of my college career. It feels kinda strange. Not in the sense that i'll never take a picture again, but i'll never have to take a photograph for a class. Everything has always had to be for a class; now it's going to be for clients (hopefully).

The shoot went well though. I think it was one of the fastest shoots i've done to date haha. AND I only took about 100 pictures which is absolutely crazy for me considering I average at about 250-300. I got to use the scorpions which was interesting and my model actually let us put some scorpions on her which was awesome. The editing for this shoot should be pretty minimal which is a relief. The only thing I might go back in and do is photograph some smoke and put that in because I feel like it needs just a little something.

Overall I think i'm going to be very happy with the outcome of this shoot so yay!

Almost Done!

I'm in the process of editing one of my last shoots. This one is taking forever! I'm not 100% satisfied with it yet, but it will have to do. I should be doing my final shoot for the series tomorrow night. I think that will turn out pretty neat! There will be live scorpions,snakes and spiders Oh My!! haha.
I'm thrilled to almost be done. Pretty much everyday for the last month or two i've been wanting to shoot myself (not literally but you get the idea). I'm surprised I haven't developed some sort of disorder from stress.....yuck. Hopefully once this is all done I can get back to having good eating habits and time to take care of all the things I haven't been.
I must say that I am very proud of myself though. I think my work has improved sooo much in these last few months. I credit that to finally having my own studio lights and not having to depend on borrowing someone elses, saying screw it to my other classes and spending the time I need on my sets and shoots, and just generally being more inspired. Building these sets and environments has been very fulfilling to me and I'm definitely going to continue with it and develop more.

Okay, back to editing.

Panel Day

So I think my meetings went well today. I first met with Kimberly Frost who gave me some good feedback and I think she genuinely gave me some honest opinions about my work. She seemed interested enough to ask me if I had a card or website, which I don't and i'm kind of embarrassed about it. I'm going to get someone to make me a website soon cause I really need one. I've been waiting until I felt like my images were good enough to put on a website. I think I have some pieces that i'm actually happy with now so we'll see about the whole website thing.

My meeting with Aimee Koch went very well. She seemed to love my work and said a lot of nice things. After looking at her work I wasn't sure if she would like mine or not. The only thing I figured she'd pick up on is the whole feminist thing. While I do not consider my work feminist, I figured she would engage and relate to it that way. We actually talked about my work for the whole 15 minutes where as with Kimberly it took maybe 10.

All in all I feel pretty good about the meetings and now i'm excited about the show! I'm just hoping i'll have enough time to help out a lot but the next couple of days is filled with stuff I have to do! It's crazy!

New Image

I've had another crazy week! I shot wednesday but that one is going to take quite a while for me to edit and im not sure if i'm really happy with it. I shot today though and got some good stuff! The lovely miss Lana Jade was kind enough to come all the way down from DC for me to shoot her today. I wanted to do a tim burton/beetlejuice type set. I think I succeeded in that and im happy with the way it turned out. I was up until about 3:30 thursday night building this damn thing so im glad it turned out.
I took in three prints to richmond camera the other day to get printed and mounted on gator board. I decided i'd rather do that then try mounting them on aluminum. I just don't feel like I have the time or money to be experimenting right now. I'm going to take the image that I edited today and get it printed monday; hopefully it will be ready by tuesday so the panel and jurors can have four to choose from.
So without further ado, here is the newest image!

New image

I finally think i'm finished editing an image from my last shoot. I was really planning on doing two shoots in one day but unfortunately it didn't turn out that way. Hannah showed up two hours late, took about an hour and a half to do makeup, and then had to leave by 6. I got the important set done though so i'm happy about that. I took some pictures of her rats in the set too and I was wondering if I need to put them in there as just an extra thing. I know the image doesn't NEED the rats, but I thought it would be a cute/creepy addition. My only other slight worry is how this image is going to be read with the others. I lined them up and stared for a while, but it didn't do me any good. I think they will definitely be read as being by the same artist and of the same style so I guess i'm not terribly worried. I was originally going to do two characters, but after showing hannah the book and talking out some ideas with her, we decided that it would be awesome to do a shadow of "The plucker" instead of actually seeing the character. I was really struggling with the costuming and color of the plucker so this seemed to be the most awesome solution! I'm happy with the way that turned out. I was surprised as to how difficult of a time I had with getting the right shadow. I figured it'd be really simple but I guess not.

The next set that i'm putting together is a kind of gold themed set. There are going to be a lot of tans and golds color wise, and subject wise it's set around a shaman/fortune teller type character. I'm going to have jars with random weird things and liquids in them (one of which will contain live scorpions which i'm super excited about!) and then this shaman like character that's going to be spilling out bones, shells, and stones to read your future! It looks awesome in my head, I promise! Right now building the sets is becoming less of an issue and now my problem is getting models! I have a weird schedule so it's getting difficult to find models that have my same weird schedule. It also doesn't help that i'm picky because I have a lot of girls that want to model for me but they just don't have the looks I want. I'm hoping to shoot on this set by monday (if all goes well with the model thing). So i'll post whatever comes of that!

Busy weekend!

So I didn't end up shooting thursday night. We (my model and I) decided we should just shoot on monday that way she's fresh and it's not super late at night. Because of this I will have more time this weekend to build and complete the sets. I went to this place called Habitat Restore out in richmond and I found a bunch of cheap stuff for sets...I'm pretty excited. Hopefully by monday i'll have two, almost three sets complete and ready to shoot. I'll be shooting on two of the sets monday. What I really need now are some different models. I was supposed to be shooting all weekend but my models skipped out on me. Luckily Hannah always saves the day for me :)
I got both of the pieces that I submitted to Anderson gallery in which I'm excited about. I wasn't expecting to get anything in actually. I saw the word conservative and was immediately like "yep, i'm not getting in" haha. Hopefully these two prints will sell and give me some extra $$. The two prints I had in last year sold which surprised the hell out of me and i'd love to meet whoever bought them because those are strange pieces to have hanging on a wall in someone's home.
And on another note, i'm going to call around a few places tomorrow to find out about postcards. I was going to order through vista, but I took a look at the postcards Kathryn got back from them and I wasn't impressed at all. If i'm going to spend $40 on something it better look damn good.
That is all for now. I should be posting up some images soon!

Alan Berliner

I'll just start off by saying that I absolutely loved his lecture. I enjoyed the fact that he didn't ramble on about his work in the beginning and just let his work do the talking.
The film was funny, emotional, and I think really rewarding to both Alan and his father. I really enjoyed the dynamics of their relationship and interaction. His father seemed like he would be an awesome grandfather. I love old men and ladies that still have a lot of spunk in them.
I think what I enjoyed the most about the film was how I was so easily able to relate to it. Even though my grandfather wasn't as spunky as he was, I still saw a lot of my own grandfather in him; even down to the red sweater (my grandfather ALWAYS wore a red sweater). The film made me think about a lot of things. Mainly it made me even more regretful that I didn't get to have a conversation like that with my grandfather before he passed this last January. Alan was very lucky to have this kind of relationship with his father and I never for a second thought throughout the movie that they had any sort of hostilities toward each other. I really envy people who can have relationships with their relatives like that.
I laughed a lot during the movie but more than anything it made me sad. I don't have any close relationships in my family and I really don't know any of my family history. Both my mother and my father were adopted strangely enough so I don't have much of an idea of where they came from. I know my mothers family is from italy, and I have no clue about my fathers family. I only just recently found out that the reason my father was adopted was because both of his parents were killed in a car accident. He's never been one to share those kinds of things. The only thing I know about my mothers family was that her mother was an alcoholic and she has a sister somewhere. I've always wondered about my real family. I envy everyone else because they can look at their grandparents, aunts and uncles and see who they resemble; see where they came from. I have no idea who I look like in my family and have always wondered because I don't look like my mom or dad.
I think once I graduate I am going to do a bit of research and see if I can find out more about my family. I had no idea there was a vault that has everyone's family history in it and knowing that there are actually places like that gives me more motivation to find out what I want to know.
I wish I was able to stay longer after the movie to hear him speak because I really enjoyed listening to what he had to say. I'm definitely going to check out some of his other work now.

Poor birdie

So i've finished one from my last shoot. I'm going to look through them a few more times, but this one stood out to me and i'm pretty positive it'll be the one that I keep. I love the mood and organic feel of this set. I also feel that it compliments my first piece quite well in it's mood, aesthetic, and a sort of hunter and prey relationship that the two have.

I've begun building the next set. In this next one I will be introducing two characters and it will be loosely based upon the illustrated novel by Brom called "The Plucker". I've been trying to formulate a few ideas and now it's time to get things rolling. I wasted too much time trying to plan everything out carefully. Now it's time to just start building and let it take on it's own course.
With the image that i'm posting tonight, I tried a different approach. I presented an environment to the model and tried to let her interact with it as opposed to me having a certain composition and that's all I do. It was really hard for me to not control her every position; I need to break that habit. I think that might partially be a really bad habit I picked up from working at Glamour shots....posing people. I guess it's okay in some situations, but I think for the benefit of my images I need to let the mood of the environment direct the model instead of me.
Don't worry paul, i'm going to get this done!

Todd Hido

I was thoroughly impressed with Todd's lecture. I typically am not very interested in images that do not contain people. Maybe it is because I can then relate more easily to the image if there is a person. But with Todd's images of the houses and also the interiors of foreclosed homes, I found both a strong presence of people and a lack thereof and I found the combination of the two in his work interesting. In both cases it leaves you wondering what the person is either doing in the home, or why they left the home. The mystery of who that person is keeps the viewer engaged and lets them provide their own story instead of being shown exactly what the story is.

In the house series, I really enjoyed the environments Todd created out of preexisting environments. The colors he gets set the perfect mysterious mood and of course his composition leads the viewers eye to all the right places. I particularly enjoy the ones where there is snow on the ground because it gives the image a feeling of isolation. Also I enjoy the interiors of the foreclosed homes because again the isolation that one would have if they were alone in the room is an interesting perspective. Even being inside, one can still build there own narrative and they even have clues at times that are given by what the people left behind. A lot of the locations seemed to be somewhere I'd love to shoot at .

The only work of Hido's that I didn't particularly enjoy were actually his portraits. They just didn't have the same voice as his other works did. I wasn't nearly as impressed with his portraits as I was the homes and foreclosed homes. Normally I would say that this is pretty backwards, but his stronger work is definitely with his environments without the people. I even liked his actual landscapes more than his portraits, especially the ones taken at night in the alley ways and streets. Those seem to be more in his element.

Overall I was glad I attended this lecture. Todd seems like a super nice person and is definitely a great photographer!

Latest

So I feel pretty good about the critique even though I only got MAYBE 10 minutes. I'm proud of what i've done and am satisfied with this current piece. Now i'm trying to decide on which set to build next. I guess it really depends on whether or not I can find some astro turf. I have been trying to get it for a while and everyone seems to be out of it. This week i'm going to check the places again because I was told that they'd be getting some in soon.
The other set i'm planning on building will be neat. The theme of it will be inspired by one of my favorite books, The Plucker. It's an illustrated novel by the artist Brom. It seems like it would be a child's book but it definitely is not! I'm sketching up a few ideas and I need to think on some things before I decide which way i'm going to go with it.

Anyways, here are some of the latest images as well as some images from Brom!

a short one

Still working on editing pictures, but I found this video of David LaChapelle that I thought was a short snippet of inspiration.

Feb.27

I'm pretty excited about how my last shoot turned out. It still needs a lot of work, but at least i'm headed in the direction that I want to be. I've been doing my best to make my work top priority and not let my other classes take over. That always seems to happen and it's extremely frustrating. My plans for now are to spend several more hours editing the pictures i've taken so far and possibly reshooting a few things. I'm going to try and avoid it, but I might end up asking my latest model to make another trip down here to reshoot some things. I really don't want to have to do that because i'll feel bad making her drive all the way to me again, but hopefully she'll do it if I ask. Here's a few images of what i've done with her. Some pertain to Senior Portfolio, some don't.

Latest happenings...

To start off with, the bake-sale was a success! We raised about $200 in spite of about 6 people telling us we were going to be shut down. I guess now we just have to wait and see how much money we're actually going to need.
I'm just about finished building my first set. I put together a composite I guess of what it will more or less look like minus a few things. I can't wait to shoot this set! I think it's going to turn out really neat!
Also, I did some scouting out for possible outside locations. I think I want to mix having both studio and outdoors locations. We'll see how that works out. I am going to put up some pictures of the possible sites as well.
Sorry i'm a bit short of words....I have the flu and can't really think clearly...

Anthony Goicolea

I must say that out of all the artist lectures i've been to he has been one of the more interesting artists. I was very impressed with his skills in duplicating characters and putting himself in these roles, whether it be a male or female role. To me, it doesn't seem like he has all of these pressing issues that he's trying to throw out there, it seems more like experimentation and having fun in a lot of cases! It didn't seem like he was as serious as other artists that have been here and I enjoyed listening to his methods and reasonings. He didn't show any of the pieces at the lecture, but I really enjoy his fairy tales series. He transforms so well in each image and they are fun, but have a seemingly dark tone to them. "M" is for the mad hatter, is my favorite because he looks really creepy and the giant tea cup and sugar cubes give it a nice surreal effect.
His work relates to what I am going to be doing because of the duplication of characters. The main theme of what i'm doing is revolving around inner demons and I want to reference that by duplicating my subjects into sometimes different characters(ie:demons,zombies) as well as their regular character in one image. I want my subjects to be interacting with their other characters in the images and actually face their inner demons. We'll see if my photoshop skills can come up to par with Anthony's haha.
Tomorrow i'm going to go out and buy more materials for the set i'm making as well as scouting out some different locations. I want to do a majority of my work in the studio, but i've thought of maybe taking some shots into different locations if I can find any that inspire me.

Feb. 6

It typically isn't something I listen to, but tonight I decided to take a look at Nine Inch Nails video for "The Perfect Drug". The video has always fascinated me and I love the aesthetic of it. It has that creepiness that I've been gravitating towards lately. The theme that i'm seemingly leaning towards right now has to do with inner demons, and I think this video expresses that in a very interesting way. Just watching it has the power to put me in a completely somber mood. I don't necessarily want my work to do the same, but I think the inspiration I get when i'm in a somber mood ends up coming through my work in a much more thoughtful way. I'm not striving to have a whole lot of meaning behind my work, aesthetics is what i'm mostly going for. We'll see where it takes me though.
I also revisited Mark Ryden's website for the first time in a while. For some reason I felt like I needed to take in his work again. Not necessarily to start drawing directly from it again, but to try and regain the inspiration he gave me.
I miss building sets, but lately i've been realizing how much it is to take on building a set. There are so many details to think about, it's stressful. Not to mention expensive. I always try to buy things that I can return but I either mess them up too much to return, or just procrastinate and never return them because i'm a packrat. I took a long walk through a antique store out by staples mill and found so much amazing stuff! Very expensive amazing stuff though......that I could never afford. It would be so amazing if they just locked me in there for a night and let me take photographs of everything. I think that might be my biggest problem this semester. I want to make more elaborate settings but it just takes so much! I'm afraid I won't be able to come up with eight different pieces in this time period. I feel like i'm pretty gung-ho on doing the set thing though....I need to do it.
Well I don't have a good ending....I'm going to sleep.

Feb.3

I have a shoot coming up on the 24th that I am currently preparing for. I'm throwing around a couple of ideas on what the set is going to look like. The theme is going to be centered around the color red and self loathing. What i am envisioning right now is a dark red set, with flowing red curtains that surround a mirror as well as a simple table(with reddish tones) and a red chair(Depending on what I can find) and of course the model will be wearing a red dress. I was planning on working with highly saturated images this semester but I wasn't really thinking of using red until the model that i'm using for this shot suggested wearing her red wedding dress. I've been toying with the thought of either using a whole lot of red in the image, or using a white set with just the dress being the only colored thing, but i'm pretty sure i'm going to use a lot of reds. The only thing i'm worried about is how this image will work with future images in this series since red is such an attention grabber. We'll see how it goes...

As far as photographers that i've been looking at, i've stumbled upon a few. Most notably a photographer named Andrea Giacobbe. I couldn't find much information on her, but I really like her work. Most of her shots are very fashiony and surreal. She has some of the strangest photographs i've ever seen but a lot of them caught my attention. I like her use of color and the locations she chooses for her photographs. I think her images are similar to what I want to achieve because they are aesthetically pleasing but have a strange twist to them that is a bit unsettling. These are the two photographs of hers that I think most pertain to the ideas that I have for my upcoming shoot.

Bookies

So the other day I spent a few hours in the library looking through photography books. I didn't have a plan of action really, I just picked out books that caught my attention either through the names or the cover of the book. I found a couple of artists that interested me but not as many as I had hoped. What I was hoping to find were other photographers similar to David LaChapelle, but I didn't have much success in that area.
I did however find a David LaChapelle book and it had some of my favorite pieces in there like : "Free Consultation Surgery Story" "Makeover Surgery Story" "Milk Maidens" and "April in Paris". His colors are always bright and exciting but it's paired with very strange subjects which makes them intriguing. I love the work that he does in the studio with sets. They always have a ton of weird stuff in them but it adds to the chaos and surrealness of the image.

The only other artist that caught my attention that was similar was Wang Qingsong. He is a Chinese artist that focuses on photography as well as oil painting. His work is mostly inspired by the rapid saturation of China by western influences. China is all about change and they want change very quickly. He says this is what gives him almost all of his inspiration. In his photographs he normally doesn't focus in on just one person, he uses a whole group. He places these groups in big sets, a lot of which seem very reminiscent of old paintings. What caught my attention about his work was that in a lot of his pieces he has that strangeness but with appealing colors and a lot of content behind each piece.

And I apologize for the layout. I can't figure out how to get it like I want it.

So now

I made a post right after the last semester ended which pretty much sums up what you wanted us to talk about in this post. To reiterate what I said in the last post, I was only semi satisfied with the way last semester went. I enjoyed that we didn't always have class because it gave me time to catch up with all of my other classes but at the same time it caused me to not work as much. Last semester was particularly straining because of the sociology, psychology, geography and professional practices class. I got so caught up in the psych. and soc. that I wasn't able to put as much into my work as I wanted to. This semester I am going to work on building more sets. I enjoy doing that and I think it will make my photographs better received. I have always particularly been intrigued by Dave LaChappelles work and the way his colors and sets pop. This semester since I have my own strobes now I am going to try and concentrate on set design so long as I have the funds and the sets that I want to make for the most part are going to be very vibrant and odd like LaChappelles.
The first set that I have planned is going to be like a fake garden scene with a doll like girl watering "flowers" which are going to be zombie heads coming out of the ground. I'm not really going to be concentrating of having some sort of awesome meaning behind the photographs. I end up worrying about that too much and I honestly don't care about it. The only thing I really care about is having aesthetically pleasing images that capture my attention. I was pleased with what I did last semester so the fact that everyone else didn't really like it is unfortunate I suppose. As long as I please myself is all that matters to me, because isn't that what art is about?