Best of

Best of Week

Best of

Best of Week

Best of

Best of Week

Best of

Best of Week

Best of

Best of Week

Best of

Best of Week

Best of

Best of Week

The Calm Before the Storm

I was lucky enough to be able to view the exhibition The Calm Before the Storm at the Light Factory in downtown Charlotte, which featured photographers Camille Seaman, Kathleen Robbins, Eric Tomberlin, and Pip Nguyen-Duy.  Because I am a young photographer, exposing myself to as many different photographers as possible is very helpful in finding new inspirations, as well as seeing how other photographers work.  Though I may not always find a piece interesting, I feel it's very important to open myself up to different styles as opposed to limiting myself to one specific one.  One photographer's work that stood out to me was Eric Tomberlin's series titled Massification and the Sublime. Two pieces in the series that particularly caught my attention were Spillway (2009) and Overpass (2009).

Spillway is very simplistic in nature as it is an image of a chain being connected to two platforms near a body of water.  Overpass continues this simplicity by being an enlarged view of water, cement, and steel.  While they are by no means the most complicated subjects, I find their simplicity very captivating.

Though the images are very simple in nature, I believe them to be successful (as well as the series as a unified whole) in carrying out Tomberlin's curiosity of "how our creativity, technology, and our fear of the unknown are tied into our sense of hope, suffering and denial."  His images also help to show the impact people have had on nature, and to let our imaginations wonder how nature will be affected in the future based off the decisions people have made.  For example, one of his other photos that stood out to me was Dairy Farm.  This image consists of several rubber tires being laid out uniformly across a huge amount of land.  This illustrates that the tires clearly have a reason for being there, while making one wonder if the tires will eventually bring harm to the land.

I believe this series as a whole was successful in carrying out Tomberlin's goal.  Though some of the works are very simple (such as the before mentioned Spillway and Overpass), I find that simplicity can be just as powerful as a complicated subject that may overwhelm a view.  Having images that feature such simple subjects allows me to wonder and contemplate more about them, which draws me even further into the photo.

Project 5

For this project, to "Find Your Muse," I had a surprisingly amount of difficult finding inspiration. However, once I came across some photos of Romanian-native Mihai Mangiulea, I knew I finally find my inspiration.  His artist statement for his collection is:

It is difficult for me to say how much outside influence is in my work and why I am photographing this space or that one; it's maybe easier to say what is coming from inside. 

I am searching to encounter an interior image that seems to me being anticipated or approximated by reality, reality that acts like a medium. I feel that the way to this image is there, in front of me, like a dissimulated presence.

My work on a photograph ends only when I recognize the image that seemed, in the beginning, to be obscured by the real. It is strange to recognize something that hasn't been seen yet; in fact, there is a moment when my work ends because the image has become itself, equal to what I feel I must see. It is the certitude that that image can't be otherwise.

Two of his works that stood out to me are:

        

I find his abstract atmospheric aesthetic very appealing, and was immediately drawn to them.

Panorama

Here is my panorama before it is used with Pano2VR.

HDR

This is my final WIP image for HDR.

Project 2

For the second project, I was to illustrate an idiom.  I chose to do "He lost his head," but then I realized this could also apply to "Don't judge a book by its cover."  I chose to do this image because Mario and Luigi are always a unified team, and I wanted to put a different perspective to Mario's image.  However, I only did that for this shot; I love Mario and Luigi and wish no harm to them in reality.  I also wanted to keep the composition simple, with nothing in the background to distract the viewer from the figures.

Abstract Color

Hello everyone, welcome to my blog!  For this post, I'll be showing a work in progress image for an assignment for using non local color to affect an image's aesthetics.  I went into this project with an open mind and this is what's developed so far.

Here is the original photo that I took while on a trip in Las Vegas.  I loved the coloring and the detail of this picture so I decided to go with it for the assignment.

To recolor it, I wanted to give it a more spiritual quality to it, especially with the horse's wings and the eyes of both figures.  As of now, I'm just playing around with which colors work best to achieve the look and feel that I'm going for.  Brushes may or may not be used later on, but until then I am just changing up the colors by selecting and filling in certain parts of the picture.