artist visits

With his experience living in suburbs, Todd Hido grasps the idea of "home" and depicts it in an interesting way. The ambience of lighting from the moon and street lights hits the house which creates a feeling curiosity of who lives there. When Todd spoke in front of the art department, he gave a lot of insight on what his process was. Even though most of his work was in the darkroom, it was apparent what his passion was for, finding a perfect shot, even if it takes hours of driving around. I found his images interesting because of the quality of his method. He took a lot of time framing and exposing his shots. He spent even more time in the darkroom, testing out different colors and sizes until his final print was made in the way he wanted. The houses depict a variety of homes including apartments and trailers. The lights on in the window show that someone is there and lives there. But who? Even though the photographs have a lot of concept, the viewer determines what it is and what this house represents.

After he showed the slides of his house photos, he posted images that were successful but not as much as the ones previous to them. They were of women, usually in a bed or a bedroom. Even though they were interesting when it came to portraying the female body, the composition and seeming purpose to these shots were a little less apparent to me. Even though a photographer works in more than one subject, I believe his work is stronger in the darkroom. With the negative of a female, the color adjustments are more than limited.

new pics

Hey Guys. Sorry I wasnt a able to make class today, stupid car. Here are some of my images I took.. I picked the best ones I felt were successful more than the others.

Hope to see you all soon

New Photos

Here are the images I chose out of the photographs I have taken recently. They are the ones that stuck out to me more than the others. I am sorry I wasnt able to make class. I hate my car. Lets just leave it at that. Hopefully I can get a little feedback on these images and I am excited for Monday to come to see how everything else the class is doing.

See you then!

More photos! In high gear

Ok so here are some of my images I shot last Monday. These are 4 of 6 of the ones me and Wendy chose. The other 2 for some reason wont convert to jpeg on this computer so I can load them but I have a converter at home. I shot on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning also. An average of about 15-35 shots a day. Those images will be up soon. I have been working on editing these to print them out.

Hurray for the stressful last week of classes/finals!*



*note the sarcasm

How is it already the middle of April? Holy geez.

So who's ready for the summer to be here? I am excited because I found two classes that I can take that go towards my major so I may be able to squeeze my graduation in by december. I'm hoping. But we all know what USF stands for. :) Anyways, a couple of you that were in my special topics digital with vicky remember I did a shoot of an old abandoned trailer for one of our projects. Well I decided on Friday to return to this trailer and take some more photographs. I still wanted to stay in the mode I have been and shoot photographs that are more up-close. I am working on editing and playing with color to decide how I want the final project to look. Hope everyone had a great weekend.

My task from Wendy is to shoot everyday this week. I really want to improve and since I dont have much confidence in myself I am really going to try to make this happen.

Todd Hido

Well, I think I enjoyed Todd Hido more than a lot of other art students. We talked about his work and how helpful we found his critique to be. Today, Wendy, Maria, Spencer and I discussed how his work seems to be that of the 80s or how it is more an intuitive way to work rather than making a conceptual plan before just going out and driving around. I thought he gave me some good input about what I can do and who to look at. Granted he was nice to everyone and didnt give much harsh criticism but I think that helped out a little bit (at least for me).

My plan within the next couple days is to take some more photographs. I wanted to look up any events or places that have a lot of history to them. I really enjoy work that has older or abandoned things in it because of the history they hold. I told Todd that I love texture in photographs (which is where a lot of the examples you saw in my last blog came from).

Just wanted to throw this up here. Take it easy guys.

Continuing....

Hey! I did some more shooting this week and weekend. Here are some of my images. Going on to the kinds of things I like to shoot (rather than forcing myself into the conceptual world that I struggle in), I decided to focus on texture and more non-objective but not totally abstract images. They all fall into the idea that older, used objects can be even more interesting than new, clean things. Check them out.

Artist Images

Hey! I looked up a bunch of different artists and found some that had really great work. I will copy and paste some of their images in here. Enjoy!

Fredrik Marsh- He did a couple different series of abandoned interiors. Some photos are more interesting than others but that thought of coming into a place where someone used to live and taking pictures of it after it has been left and ruined is fascinating.

Fredrik Marsh



Carla Anderson- this photographer has some similar aspects in her work as me. I love the way that nature is overtaking something that was man-made (very cliche but a good topic)







Ron Gordon-




Jan Saudek:


Here are some of my favorite images I saw by Todd Hido. I am pretty excited about the critique with him.

update after break

Hey guys. Hopefully you all had fun in Denver. Sorry I wasnt able to join you. Wendy and I talked about possibly taking a different route with my photo projects. I really wasnt enjoying what I was doing and I told her that I wanted to make images that were just visually interesting, therefore I took a bunch of pictures and am going to take more this weekend. I know there isnt a lot of concept between each of the photos, but thats not the target I was going for.

check them out and give feedback if youd like