Katie's Blog

artist visits

2008-04-28T07:59:00.007-04:00

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

2008-04-23T17:53:00.003-04:00

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

2008-04-23T12:43:00.000-04:00

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

2008-04-21T10:09:00.008-04:00

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.

2008-04-14T09:34:00.004-04:00

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

2008-04-07T11:17:00.002-04:00

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....

2008-04-03T13:21:00.013-04:00

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

2008-03-31T08:53:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-19T21:09:00.010-04:00

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

Update before critique

2008-03-03T10:21:00.008-05:00

This weekend was devoted to trying different ways to get these plates to work. The problem I have been having is that the medium does not want to stick to the plate, even when its dry, it peels up and doesnt look the way I wanted. Therefore I am trying the resin idea again but going to find a type that are clear rather than the green tint.

Here are a few of my images for Weds..

Also, my parents live in FT lauderdale and there is an art festival called "Las Olas Art Festival" where booths and tables are set up to sell art (mostly photographs). I collected a bunch of business cards and typed up all the links if you want to take a look. I realize a lot of these artists do the 'pretty' work but I thought maybe it would be fun to look at the stuff that is selling like crazy.

www.georgerhodes.com

www.dreamsofthegoddess.com

www.robertjonesphotography.com

www.randallpersing.com

www.ilkindeniz.com

www.dickzimmerman.com

www.newenglandruralimages.com

Disappointed yet excited!

2008-02-25T09:10:00.003-05:00

Well this weekend was a bummer. I had complications with my medicine and Friday and Saturday so I barely could get out of bed. Anyways, without being able to go out and shoot, I spent a lot of time doing research on formats and how I can present my next assignment. I have a shoot tonight and tomorrow night. This means that I can post pictures in my next blog.

I am going to shoot someone eating in the messiest way. I liked the idea of using one model rather than going out and shooting because I can manipulate the way the shot is formed. I can also have it exaggerated. Im really excited about this shoot.

I thought about how to present this. In my ideal, perfect world, I would have a circular photo of my model eating. I want to put that photo (probably printed on transparancy or fabric) in the middle of a plate. I then want to fill the plate with clear resin to lock in the image. I know this will take a lot of work and I am really hoping to have it done by monday's critique.

Besides my project, I got an email from a guy named Brian. I dont know if any of you got the email because I looked at the list of people who he sent it to and didnt recognize any of the names. He hold workshops about lighting and everything which is really cool. I want to join it but Im saving for a house so I cant. Only 150 bucks if you wanna join.

heres the link.

Trying new things

2008-02-10T10:23:00.000-05:00

Well I did it. I finally went out and shot people at bus stations. Got dirty looks from an Indian couple who owned a run down motel I parked in but I got some shots. I wanted to do the tight cropping in and alter the color of it because I wanted the quality to be not perfect. Here are a couple of the ones Ive fiddled with. Theres still a bunch more I am working on but I wanted to post a few so you can see them

Update

2008-02-04T10:04:00.000-05:00

Well I know that my path to my ideas has changed since our first critique. We had talked about going in the route of taking photos of the actual physical touch of people. I took a few photos at a health fair I went to this weekend. I am planning on taking more this week. I am not sure if I want to display them similar to the format wendy suggested with the many little images on one page (like the artist she chose for me) or if I want to make them bigger. Anyways, the cropping and format of the presentation of my images is what I am working on. any suggestions?

Crazy rain.

2008-01-20T10:45:00.000-05:00

Well yesterday was pretty fun, not to mention packed! The weather was pretty cloudy and gross outside and got even worse once we got home. There were tornados that went right through brooksville. I got some pictures to start my semester out though. It is a little different than my proposed plan in the first post I made. I want to still do that idea of eating but on another project. This one was very fun to do. I took pictures of people who were watching the battle and documented the different poses and actions people do. In other ones I took, it dealt with the interactions people have with each other. all were shot from behind so there is no faces in the picture. I need to upload and resize so I can throw some up on here. Which I am planning to do later today or tomorrow. Hope you all had a good weekend and stayed dry!

Event attending this weekend

2008-01-16T10:22:00.000-05:00

Hey! So I am planning on going to a Civil War reenactment this weekend in Brooksville. I need to get a link to the information for it and ill through it up here on my next post. Since I wont be able to shoot until saturday, I wanted to look through some photographers and find some that really interested me.

If any of you were in my digital class and remember the photos I did of an old run down trailer, this guy reminds me of the subjects that inspired me. I guess I am a sucker for liking aged and abandoned things. Just the thought of how they looked and were used when they were new really gets me thinking....not to mention the black and white photos make it even more inspiring to me. (I have always been fascinated by black and whites).

Steve Szabo

And I was also looking on yahoo to find images that really portray the work that I want to start to develop. Here is a link with a bunch of photos that is the closest I could get. Please check it out.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/75158779@N00/

The images are not able to be copied and pasted and it takes too long to cut them.

Start to a new project

2008-01-14T09:56:00.000-05:00

Okay so I have been thinking about how to create successful images of people eating and shoving their faces. Eating is one thing that people do that can be pretty disgusting at times, especially when they dont realize that others may be watching them or seeing how they eat. This first picture is just one off google that I found which is going to be the layout of my work for the first project. I wanted to make the people almost identity-less by cropping out what really wasnt important (the eyes, hair, head, etc). This also helps to focus on what they are doing that is being watched. I am planning on going to events where people eat a lot of crap (usually with their hands) such as the fair, parks, etc. Anyways, here are some images that sort of deal with the interest that sparked the beginning.

This picture is the layout I plan on using:

This is how some people look when they eat (ha):

I really like this image:

Anyways, I think you get the point. Let me know if you have any suggestions. This is a whole different route than I am used to when it comes to photography.

Test

2008-01-14T09:54:00.000-05:00

Hey. Just throwing this up there to see how things work.