Daniel Weiss

I liked this gleaning because it was interesting to see contemporary photos by someone our age and I agree with Weiss that film photography and working in the darkroom is much more gratifying than digital photography.

In many of the street photographs that appear to be of strangers, you can see some sort of interaction between the subject and the photographer. For example, the overweight man on the bench with his hand up seems to be saying “stop, don’t photograph me.” The man with the red guitar also doesn’t appear thrilled that he’s being photographed. In some of the other street photos, the subject seems to be looking suspiciously at the camera. Does Weiss ask permission to photograph the people he doesn’t know?

A few of the photos seems like still from a comedic film or TV show. In Weiss’ black and white photo of two men, it looks like the man in the hat and sunglasses is acting or telling a joke and the man on the right is either very sad, confused, or in disbelief. I have no idea what is going on in the image but the overexaggerated facial expressions and makes it seem like its two actors.

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Cassoni

I enjoyed the Cassoni project. Doing a project that forces me to set up a shot and pay attention to the details helps to make me focus on trying to tell stories or portray some sort of feeling through my images rather than just taking photos that I think are aesthetically pleasing. Also, it is amazing how Photoshop can merge multiple photos into one seamless image.
Although in class people weren’t fond of how the three panels worked together, I think that the three panels together is stronger than just the top panel with the girl in the red dress. It seemed like people particularly thought that the middle panel with the close up of the two old-fashioned looking men shouldn’t have been included. I agree that the middle panel doesn’t really add any new information. However, I think that the close-up helps to focus the work on the two old-fashioned men and thus makes the story clearer. To me, the close up of the men and their different positions in each image illustrates that they are in fact ghosts that wander throughout the cemetery, praying for others who are buried in the cemetery. The two men are oblivious both to other ghosts and live people who walk through the cemetery. I see the mostly hidden figure carrying the shovel is the bottom print as a real person oblivious to the ghosts. The ghosts are also oblivious to her. The figure with the shovel can either be interpreted as someone working in the cemetery or a criminal.
I liked working in a group because it provides people with whom to discuss and critique ideas, and it was fun. However, group work for art classes also can be frustrating in that you can’t just do everything your way. It is a lot easier to compromise with group members for a paper, presentation, or problem set than for an art project.

David Hockny

Using a camera obscura to help with drawing reminded me of how people sometimes separate a piece of paper into a bunch of small rectangles and then draw what goes in each little box one at a time. Many painters started to make more realistic paintings. Did they all know about camera obscuras and concave mirrors and how they could be used? Does Hockney believe that many painters used optical devices or just a few of them did? Wouldn’t someone have discovered what the artists were doing and exposed them for “cheating”? What are the other explanations for the “sudden burst of realism in European painting” other than camera obscuras or concave mirrors?
I’m really amazed by Hockney’s composite photographs. I like that they are unique but still easily accessible for viewers.

Marilyn Minter

I didn’t particularly like Minter’s photographs themselves but putting art on billboards is a great idea. I like idea of putting art on billboards because it is unexpected and billboards are normally covered in ugly ads. However, because Minter’s photographs look somewhat like advertisements, seeing them on billboards wouldn’t be as unusual as seeing a photograph that looked more like fine art and less like an advertisement on a billboard. If I had seen these billboards while walking or driving through New York, I would not have realized that they were art, and would have been thoroughly confused. Because the art is in a public location that is free for anyone to look at and not protected from the weather, I feel like I have lower expectations of the art and would be more impressed with the same piece of art on a billboard than in a museum or gallery.

Cassoni

5th graders

Camera Phone Photography as Art

I don't agree that in a few years everyone will be doing cellphone photography exhibits. A few cellphone photo exhibits are interesting because they are unique, but the quality of the photos is inferior to the quality of photos that can be taken with a good digital camera that I don't think photographers will want to spend time making such images when they are no longer as new and unique as they are today. Also, the fact that cellphone cameras are convenient is not an adequate reason for why they should be used in place of better, but bulkier, cameras.

What is interesting about Patrice Elmi's photographs is that they appear as if they were taken from a good camera, not a cellphone camera. The colors are all very vibrant, the light is good, and the images are sharp. I was surprised to read that Elmi did not photoshop or digitally manipulate the images. However, to me what is most impressive about these photos is not the images themselves but that they were taken with a cellphone camera.

The prints are only 6 inches square. At a time when large photographs are becoming more and more popular, why would many photographers want to limit themselves to small prints?

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Practice Panoramas

Field Trip

Photo classes are excellent because they're pretty much the only college classes I've had that go on field trips. I really enjoyed the trip to Portland. I liked Tanja Hollander’s landscapes a lot although I wasn’t a big fan of her window shots. Her landscapes, particularly the water shots reminded me of the series of photos that are half ocean and half sky (I forget the photographer’s name). It was fun to photograph the basement of the mill and see the Photographic Collective’s darkrooms. I would like to take the color darkroom class at the Bakery Photographic Collective either next month or next semester.

The photo exhibit at the Portland Museum of Art was great because it was a large collection of diverse photos all in one place.

I didn’t like “The Wonder Gaze” as much as the Glickman collection or Tanja Hollander’s work. I liked the name of the exhibit, “The Wonder Gaze”, and the idea of photoshopping out the victims of the hangings in order to focus on the spectators. However, I didn’t find the six color photographs all that aesthetically pleasing, except for the one with the old haunted looking tree. The color photographs just didn't hold my attention for very long, and I felt like they were unnecessarily large. Also, I was very surprised by how expensive the photos were.

Looking at the photographs in Portland and Kolster’s “Safety Envelopes” series has made me more interested in looking at other people’s work… I now procrastinate by looking at photographs online.

Animation

The animation project was fun but I felt that it didn’t really focus on photography. It was difficult for me to concentrate on an individual photograph when I had to be continuously taking photographs. I wanted to move the camera around to make the animation more interesting and focus on the framing of each shot, but that was difficult to do. After looking at all 600 or so photos together in the animation, I realized that all my zooming in and out and moving around led to a very crazy and chaotic movie. However, the result was okay because the hectic movement worked well with the band practice animation. After realizing the need to keep the camera still or move it very very slowly, I tried to keep the camera fairly still for the “Kitchen Counter Chaos” animation in order for the animation to focus more on the characters’ actions than on the camera’s movements. However, I wasn’t all that successful in keeping the camera still because I got too caught up in moving the camera to follow and zoom in on the action. Although imovie was a little frustrating to use, I much preferred it to having to deal with the printers and matting. Althouth I prefer normal photography to animation, I’m glad that we had this assignment and I’d like to make more animations. There is a lot for me to learn about creating animations.

Field Trip!

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