Ordover Gallery

Visiting The Ordover Gallery was definitely a different experience. After visiting MOPA... and then visiting the Ordover Gallery it was a change in pace. the pictures were totally different. Nothing what i expected. The quality, and the clarity made me feel like i was there in each image at that location. I really loved Ralph Lee Hopkins pictures of the penguins.... I remember that same night I had a dream that I was there and the penguins were in it... kinda trippy. My personal favorite were his artic animals in motion.. leaping... jumping. It added a whole different perspective from the way you normally seem them. I personally love animals especially these type so being there made me kinda feel like I was at a trip to seaworld. He really inspires me to take a different look to my pictures. Although I personally like the black/white photos like the ones I saw in MOPA... he proves to me pictures can be just as strong and powerful in color. The vibrance and the color of the snow/ice is just amazing!

San Diegoooooo MOPA

A while back, I visited the Musuem of Photographic arts in San Diego with a few friends. I must say it was a touching experience... If you're in a hurry you can get through and see all the pictures within five minutes, but if you take the time and examine each artist's work you could spend anywhere from an hour to a few hours in there. It's amazing how you get to see a collection of people's work alltogether side by side and see how different each is. For me i found each work really interesting and each having their own message. I remember a while back attending the same musuem but the theme of the photos were about hispanic migrant workers and the life they led. So when I went in there I was expecting the same type of experience. This time it was a little different. I didn't know anything about the photographers going in except they had different stories. There wasn't a collaborate theme. I saw some amazing photo's but there were two in particular I liked the most. I wanted to choose two completely different photo's. I could have stuck with the same theme and chosen people and how the artists decided to portray them in my opinion... but for this project I decided to choose two that were alike in the color of the photo but other than that I didn't seem to find any similarities.

The first photograph I chose to examine was Still Life with Melon by Douglas Mellor, and it was printed in 1994. I personally love this picture. It reminds me of something you would see in an old art history book except it wouldn't be a photograph it would be more of a painting. I love how Douglas Mellor does that with his choice of lighting and the way the objects are placed on the table. When I was reading the information about the picture i noticed it said it was a "silver print." Because I was unfamiliar with what that was I decided to look it up. "A generic term referring to all prints made on paper coated with silver salts. Most contemporary black and white photographs are silver prints." It makes me realize photographs are really versatile. They can be put anywhere that has a surface. I also liked how he takes such simple elements such as fruits and makes them so beautiful. I wanted to do my photobook on foods and all the elements of it, but I found it a challenge to know what to do with it. I love his play with light and it reminds me of Caravaggios still painting of something really similar. It's crazy to think how the one on the right is a painting versus the one on the left that is a print. Both their uses of light is an inspiration to me and I hope to be able to play with the lighting in my future pictures to get the same types of affects they had.

The next photograph I wanted to look at was Leon Levinstein's Coney Island. Again another black and white picture. It makes me feel like an ant looking up at the human world and the world around me. The man looks so peaceful and almost deadlike. It's hard to judge an artists work without knowing a bit about him. I really liked how in class we got to see or hear stories about where the artists come from. But this mans work one of my favorites. It shows the beauty of life and how it can seem so at ease but that there is more behind the scenes going on by the man walking behind the man lying down. It makes me curious as to what's going on in the surrounding areas.For me black and white pictures are my favorite. They are simplistic yet are very artistic. They're not overdone by color and yet get the artists view across.

fun at night

I just wanted to post a few pictures that I took a few weeks ago in Fallbrook. I took these outside of a friends house in the middle of the night. I was messing around with the appeture and camera shutter speed and for me i feel i got some amazing shots and wanted to share them with everyone else. :)

Diane Willow - Guest Speaker

I think It was really awesome the fact that we had a guest speaker in this class. Oftentimes in other classes you never get to meet other people from different places who specialize in the field you're learning about. Her work was different than any of the work we've seen so far in the class but it cool hearing what she had to say. I really like her use of "flow" and the inspirations she said she has had. It was interesting seeing the differences between her pieces, my personal favorite was the exhibit with the microplankton that glow. I've seen them before but never in a exhibit someone has. When I think of them (the plankton) I think of them in their natural habitat so it was fun seeing her take them from them environment and incorparating them in a way that many people can see them. The technical stuff she did with the silicone that lights up so that you can see them was also interesting. You can tell she has a lot of unique ideas that are inspiring to others. For me it inspired me to not look an object just as an object but the components of what makes it up and how they all rely on each other to work. I'm really glad she came in and spoke with us because it allowed us all to see a different perspective of the arts.

Richard Misrach

What to say about Richard Misrach... I really love the lighting he uses to capture his images. Lighting can make or break an image and I feel the setting in which he is able to capture them makes you drawn into them. They are all in such naturalistic settings which also makes them more beautiful. I found the picture Pyramid lake below to be one of my favorites. The way the clouds reflect onto the the water just adds so much more beauty to the shot itself. I'm a big fan of nature images especially ones that he does in the desert. In a way they are inspiring to go take night shots out in some different environment and play around with them. It's crazy to see what kind of shots you can get just by fooling around with a camera.

Sally Mann

Personally I find Sally Mann's work to be my favorite. I like the fact that she has stuck to using old fashion style cameras and has made it work to her advantage. I think pictures nowadays are becoming too digitalized and her work is straight. Of course she has to take quite a few to capture the image she wants, but the art of her pictures are beautiful. I found what she said all of her images have to be "peculiar, if not why bother shooting?" Anyone can take a picture it's just magic when you find something and make it work. Black and white pictures are so natural and it's crazy to see how she was able to get the lighting and settings just right to work with her. I think her work is a lot different than any of the work we have seen before. You can tell she is a very down to earth type of person and it comes out in her pictures. She doesn't need the crazy city lights or life to take amazing pictures. She is able to find her works of art right in there in nature with people and objects. Who knew that a picture of a dog bone could loook as amazing as she shot it. Her dedication to her work shows in her images, and you can tell she lives for capturing that one perfect picture because she will do it over and over again if she has to. The quality of her work is something I think that will help her always be remembered.

Collier Schorr

Collier Schorr had a really strong message. You can see she has a strong passion for shooting adolescent men and how she depicts them in different settings. She tries to take real events but then reenact them in different ways. I found her work kinda weird, and kinda seemed obsessive in the video since all we saw was her work of young men. When i looked up her work online you can see she has a passion for photgraphing both adolescent men and women. The way she speaks about what she is shooting and the whole concept of men and masculity you can tell she is shooting something she loves, something some of us have a difficult time trying do (find our one passion, and then actually pursing it) Her work is inspiring because I find it such a talent to be able to get your message across in your pictures which i think she does quite well when she explains it.

I personally thought her work was inspiring but I personally didn't think it was anything special or extraordinary. But I don't think that was her purpose.

here are two of my latest pictures. one was taken aboard a cruise ship i went on, and the other was from a bridal shower i attended. In the first picture I really liked the colors, and the other i just really like how the candle becomes the main focus. I just wanted to share some of my pictures that I really truly like.

Roni Horn

Roni Horn... I really like how she can take something as simple as running river water and use it as a metaphor for the rest of her photographs. I like how she uses that one element that inspired her for other aspects of her photography. Looking at her work it was almost crazy to think that they were actually photographs and not pictures (her water images). She takes a more metaphorical route to her work and in my opinion is a lot different than the artists we've seen in the past. In a sense her work reminds me of the painter Degas because he liked to paint people in motion. Clearly they are from two different times and have different concentrations but when I first saw her work I immediately began thinking of him. I also liked how she could make a picture seem so different just by taking them a few seconds apart. It goes to show all artists are different and that no two works are ever completely alike.

A portait of hers i liked because it didn't have to be something over the top. It was simple yet beautiful.

accordian

These are the pictures I took for my accordian. I really got some amazing shots from a mountain in Arizona, and I felt what better way to show my love for what I was able to see firsthand. For peole who have never gone slowly creeping up a mountain just taking everything in, I truly reccomend it because It was probably one of the best experiences ever. It was a place with not much civilization but you could see the towns below while you just sat on the rocky mountains and peered down below. The higher and deeper you climbed the more you moved away from ponds and hills to actual snow. Enjoy :)

Stefan Sagmeister

From what I saw of Sagmeisters images, I immediately fell in love. He has a way of capturing pictures by also placing words around them. He makes it more obvious to viewers what message he is trying to send and I think just by looking at the following image you can tell his images are powerful. He helps makes his images stronger by adding words and I think it's something we can all learn from. An image can say soo much but sometimes word help get what the artist wants us to see. He is an inspiration, and I really loved looking at his work. I also googled him to get more information about him, and I found this link that told more about who he is and where he started from. http://www.designmuseum.org/design/stefan-sagmeister ... He makes it known that you don't have to be all fancy with pictures and sometimes the best images are right in front of you. I like the wording and his placement of everything in his pictures.

Carson

I think Carson brings about some good concepts with his art. Many people often overlook that although a picture may be bad, and you only want to use bits and parts of it; it takes trial and error before you can be completely positive it's not usable. He also makes a good point that you can find art in anything especially when you start off with next to nothing. It's just a matter of playing around with what you do have to find perfection. You may think a stamp is just a stamp but when you start playing around with it you can really discover a lot from it. He makes me realize you don't exactly have to look at something dead on to get shot but sometimes just by not looking and focusing on something else you can get something better than what you were originally tending to get.

Mt. Lemon

So this past weekend I went to Mt. Lemon... which is about 45 minutes north of Tucson. I knew it snowed it Arizona but who knew in that area. Needless to say I was unprepared, but I feel I was able to capture some really good images on the trip up the mountain where you didn't see any snow until you got onto the other side of it.

amusement

Love roller coasters!

I went to a fair and thought that different things you typically see at one would be the perfect items to shoot. They have such bold colors that just stand out. I think they contrast quite nicely with the sky behind it. I remember  as a kid always going to carnivals and riding the ferris wheel. It was something always looked forward to. So when I look at it it brings back good memories. :)

The Man behind the Camera (James Nachtwey)

personally felt really inspired by the photographs James Nachtwey took. It makes you realize how although things may be going bad in your life people in other countries are going through a lot worse. No matter how bad your situation there are people who are living in worse yet are finding ways to get through it. He showed a picture of a man who was skeletal and looked like he was on the brink of death yet somehow he was pushing to get through it... to live. Another picture i remember was one of a boy in front of a town and he focused on the boys head and blurred out the rest. His pictures send strong images to people and make you think of the worse possible things happening. When you live in a society where higher education is the norm and most people in our country are at least clothed and fed you fail to see the picture of everyone around and I feel we become consumed. I liked the way he represented the people although it may have been a little disturbing. It's a harsh reality that we have to face but we have to stop caring about ourselves and think about the whole world around us. His pictures of war make me think about my story, and what i want to get out there to the world and show them. We all have passions it's just a matter of being able to show them to the world. James Nachtwey took his passion and expressed them through these photographs which shows that anyone is capable of doing anything it's just a matter of how you go about doing it.