Today we watched a video about Collier Schorr. She is a photographer that focuses on males in society specifically in wrestling and over in Germany. She is fascinated with the relationship between men and their commraudry with each other. In the video, she talked about going back to her high school and shooting the men’s wrestling team. Her fascination is with the defeat and exhaustion of the guys after a really hard days work. Sometimes in the video, she was taking pictures in the guys faces and it seemed that some of the guys liked it and some did not, which was evident in her pictures. But that was the effect she wanted was to have the curious look on their faces of why was a woman at their wrestling matches tanking pictures. 

The next part of her work was done over in Germany. She is of Jewish background, and talked about the sadness that she felt for the holocaust. In that though, she took pictures of German boys wearing US uniforms. It was interesting because you would think in most countries that the boys would be wearing the uniforms of the soldiers of their country. But because of the atrocities of the German armies, most of them wore the US uniforms. And then in one of the shoots, she had them put on German uniforms and the boys took on a whole different demeanor. It was as if in the United States sodiers uniforms there was a positive feeling and in the German uniforms there was a negative feeling from the past of that army. The difference was very interesting and was something Schorr was intrigued with.

Here are a few more pages out of my book. I have been working on the old pages chapter. As soon as the black and white and color start taking shape, i will have some of those pictures up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just completed my first panorama and it turned out really nicely. This was taken down at a beach in on a beautiful sunny day. It will be in my book as a double page spread.

So the update on the book is I am going with my idea from my last blog. I am doing a three chapter series of old photographs, black and whites, and color. Here is the first page I have completed for my book. It is in the old pages chapter.

Here is a picture I just worked on that I will use in my book in the color section. I enhance the colors of the sunset just enough so that they really take your breath away.

A few weeks ago, I visited the Ordover Gallery at the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. The Gallery was displaying work by Ralph Lee Hopkins and other photographers centered on the Baja of California. Hopkins is a photographer for Nation Geographic being a professional photographer for twenty years now. He specializes in his work on the Southwest region of the United States and Baja California, Mexico.

The exhibit was absolutely astounding with vibrant colors that popped from the pieces giving beauty to all four corners of the picture plane. Hopkins work was mostly of the coastal parts of the Baja. He had some great photos of dolphins and whales swimming in the ocean, and there were some beautiful shots of animals and plant life captured in an amazing state.  What amazed me was the preciseness of detail and color in the crispness of his pictures. They were wonderful shots with bright vibrant colors and use of composition bringing the two together perfectly. Other great works were displayed by other photographers. Some of the works that popped out at me were by Jack Dykinga and Flip Nicklin. Dykinga captrued amazing shots of succulents in blumm, and Nicklin’s pictures of sea life were incredible. The use of light playing reflection on the water was a really neat use of the sun light. There were also some other pieces of places that I did not know existed in the Baja of California. I had never know that there were wineries or jungles in the region. It was an amazing display of the diversity in topography of the area.

Overall, the exhibit was absolutely amazing. The great use of colors and diversity in display of the landscape in Baja California was eye opening. Some of the most beautiful pictures were displayed with amazing views and exceptional use of clarity and contrast in the images.

I am contemplating a couple ideas for my book. The theme I mostly want to base it on though is landscapes that are near or by the ocean. I will be using some of my own writing taking different ideas that I have from the pieces as well as life influencing reflections. I would like to mix some Bible verses as well in with the mix paraphrasing some of my favorite passages that might correspond along with my images. As far as color schemes go, at first I really wanted to work with enhancing color and bringing the beauty through clarity. But after I have been working with my images with the old paper textures, I am very drawn to that and the old worn look the photographs have. I may do a mixture of both or make a three part and do a third color, a third black and white, and a third in the old picture style. This is how far I am and am excited to get started because once I think I get working, the final idea will become clearer to me so stay tuned.

Old Photograph Textures

Color by the sea

 

Black and White

A couple weekends ago, I visited the Museum of Photographic Art down in Balboa Park. The museum had some really great displays of works by Ansel Adams and Jo Whaley.

Ansel Adams first visited Yosemite National Park in 1916 at age fourteen. His father gave him his first camera on the trip. He shot most of his photographs in the west and a majority were done in Yosemite National park. His legacy is still infuencial on the photography world today. 

My favorite I would have to say was the Ansel Adams display. I had seen a couple pieces done by him, but it was such a privilege to see a whole collection of some of the most beautiful pictures that put Yosemite National Park on the map. He uses such great contrast in light and shadows in his work that complement each other. Then there is a great composition of the middle tones that are perfectly set up with the placement of the camera to create  amazing photographs. The pictures of the water falls, such as Bridal Falls, Yosemite Falls, and Rainbow Falls, really captured my eye with the cascading white water and then the black shadows balancing out the picture. There were also pictures from Mammoth National Park such as Devils Post Pile, which I visited about six years ago. It was pretty neat to see these photographs when I had visited the places. It was surreal for me thinking that he had come to these magnificent places decades before, and he probably was one of the only people to have witnessed these magnificent national parks at the time.The pieces were absolutely stunning leaving me awe-struck that the photographs were taken in the early 20th century. I was also surprised that he had photographed the Japanese relocation camps during World War II. He captured the everyday lives of people who had been taken from their homes to live at Manzanar in Nevada. I had visited Manzanar a couple years ago, and I am sure I saw some pictures done by Ansel Adams. I just did not pay enough attention at the time that I had seen his work. Overall, his work was wonderful with amazing use of extreme lights and darks in his work. He has an amazing eye for setting up a photograph that will capture the eye of the world bringing these amazing national parks to be preserved for generations to enjoy them for years to come.

Jo Whaley is an artist that fuses painting, photography, and science to bring out unusual and beautiful photographs. She uses butterflies and moths to as the focus of her pictures, but they may substitute something in the background picture. For instance, there was a picture that a butterfly was the head for a person in a ball gown. Another example is the photograph I have posted here. She uses the lines in the butterfly matching up with the branches in the tree making it look like the butterfly is part of the tree. She is a very different photographer, but I like her pictures becasue they are unique. I also love butterflies and love how she uses the color of the butterflies with paintings placed in the background.

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, the Museum of Photographic Art in Balboa park was a great experience. I loved the Ansel Adams visit with the spectacular pictres that he took of Yosemite and the West. Jo Whaley’s work was also interesting at her use of fusing something real with a painting making the two one.

I went online and found some old paper pictures and worked a little with blending them with some of my pictures. Then I blended sepia pictures with the old paper. These came out pretty good looking.

This pictures was taken in Ketchican, Alaska. Then with added sepia tone and blended old paper.

 

This picture was taken in Barharbor, Maine.

 

 

This picture was taken at Oceanside Harbor Beach.

James Nachtwey is a photograph journalist taking picture that focus on war, suffering people, and social conflicts.He was greatly changed by the war in Vietnam and the civil rights movement. This was when he decided to take on the subjects that he photographs today. Traveling all over the world, he has visually recorded the religious conflicts in Ireland,  gorilla war fare in South America, starvation and man slaughter in Africa, poor living conditions in Russia and former Soviet countries, and injustices to people in prison in the United States. He records mostly the innocent bystanders who are often caught in the turmoil of the country. For instance, he told a story about watching neighbors in Bosnia  Herzegovina  shoot at each other from their bedroom windows. He showed pictures of the genocides happening in Rwanda, Sudan, and Somalia that the government is inflicting by starvation, which he states is one of the worst weapons of mass destruction.  The pictures that he showed just rip your heart out to think that all of this is happening in our lifetimes. I often think of the times of killing being in mid-evil to the time of the US revolution to the Civil war to the two world wars and communist rule. But there is still man slaughter going on as we speak and it is happening even to this day. What Nachtwey’s wish is that he wants to tell the story for those who cannot speak up to tell it by digitally photographing their world and showing it to a world that is almost blind to it. There are thousands that go to bed hungry every day, hundreds killed just for ethnicity, and disease ravaging. These are the stories he is interested in telling.