Final Artist Critique: Luc Demers South Window 2010

Luc Demers is a contemporary photographer who does many different genres of of work. One in particular series that is striking is his series called Darkened Rooms. In this series he photographs various windows and doors in a setting that chokes out light. There is usually only one source of light throughout this particular series, which gives these passageways a certain glow. There is an eerie and almost other worldly quality that is accompanied by the light source in most of these photographs. This picture above is apart of the Darkened Rooms series and it is titled South Window 2010. This is a very striking photograph to me, mainly because the room is completely bathed in deep shadow, while there is only a small, illuminating source of light.

This photograph is a stark representation and embodiment of Demer's Darkened Rooms series. The genus involved with using completely shadowed rooms accentuates the natural light source in a mystical way. This passageway almost visualizes an entry way into another realm or world. The use of just a small amount of light allows Luc Demers to portray this entry way in a very mystical and glowing  manner that suggests many functions and outcomes. Demers illustrates the endless possibilities involved with shadow and light. With this series he defines a whole new way of taking interior pictures. In the future I hope to see more of this man's photography work and see how he has evolved his use of light and shadow.

Final project : passageways of transformation, progress critique

I am going toward bathing my images of doors and passageways in stark and rich black shadows. I am attempting to have viewers see doors in a different and more dramatic light, in order to convey them as sacred passageways or transitional spaces. 

Project 4 Altering the Print: Scratching the Surface of Nature

I scratched off various pieces of my landscape prints to illustrate space in a different way. I wanted to project a style of art that took me back to an infantile state. I also wanted to enhance each print in a very physical way. 

Idea For Final Project: Doorways of reality

This is a tentative idea for my final project. This was partly inspired by Aldous Huxely, Jim Morrison, and my own personal intuition. These are the doorways of reality. 

Matthew Brandt: Viel Lake CA 5

Matthew Brandt is a contemporary photographer that does most of his work out of Southern California. His photographic work consists mostly of various alterations of photographs. In this particular series Brandt altered prints of different lakes and reservoirs around the state of California. Most of this series was altered through dipping his C prints in the lakes themselves. C prints are Chromogenic color prints that have a certain amount of silver halide emulsion and dyes that bring out the color of images on photographic paper. These prints were soaked in the lakes that were being photographed, which tinted or distorted the colors of these various images within his Lake and Reservoir series. This is a very creative and genius process that not only captures the visual essence of the lake in the image, but the alteration also embodies the physical properties of the lake in the image by being soaked in the lake's water.

This particular image above brings out the warm color scheme involved in the C print. Through the process of being soaked in Viel Lake water an alteration is brought fourth through the image. This process brings the image under a different light almost as if this image is being seen for the first time. This is an ingenious way of taking landscape photography and I hope to continue to see more work like this from Matthew Brandt.

This Is Epic

Here is an amazing video 

Color Bars project Spring 2012

Here is another personal take on stop motion. This was a Sunny D commercial spoof that I filmed for intro to video art production in Spring 2012.

More stop motion from Bruce Bickford

Bruce Bickford is a legendary stop motion artist and here are some excerpts from Frank Zappa's film Baby Snakes 

Animation Group Project from Spring 2012

This is a Media Arts group project that some peers and I did during the 2012 Spring semester for intro to video art production.

Robert Adams Los Angeles Spring: Redlands California 1982

This is a photograph from Robert Adams. It is titled Redlands California 1982 and is a part of his series called Los Angeles Spring. Robert Adams is a photographer that has done most of his work in the Southwest Region of the United States. His work consists of pictures that illustrate human influence over time on natural landscapes. Much of his work also conveys the relationship between man and nature, and also visualizing scenes within the natural world. Many of his photographs tell a story of a particular group of people or a natural environment, which makes some of his photographs apart of the category of rephotography. The scenes Adams chooses to photograph give the viewer a feeling of past present and future, which makes many of his images so successful and timeless. His LA spring collection produces these narrative feelings feelings in a cinematic way.

This photograph of Redlands California, conveys the feeling of human creation and deterioration over time. The hanging tree indicates that the natural surroundings of this suburban neighborhood are deteriorating as the human environment encroaches and builds upon the natural habitat. This photograph conveys a story of development and deterioration, which makes this series very unique. Many of Adams photographs embody the duality of human nature and progress on the natural landscape of the natural wold. Even though he conveys a message of deterioration through human influence, there is also a haunting beauty within them. Most successful art embodies duality and Robert Adams work has done just that and continues to do so.

Photoshop filter and action fun

Structural and Geological Time Lapse

This rephotgraphy project opened my eyes to how time changes manmade and natural objects. These photographs all illustrate a sense of change and the separate images from the rephotographs embody the spirit of each site that I photographed. This was a very interesting project because I learned a great deal of history about Tome Hill and the Rio Grande bridge in Los Lunas. The background history that went along with each of the rephotographs inspired my personal take of each site.  

In Response to Byron Wolfe and Mark Klett Rephotography

The photographic work of Byron Wolfe and Mark Klett take re photography to a different level in terms of precision and quality. Each of their images are matched together perfectly and one could not tell the difference between the two from first glance. The only thing that gives the older photographs a differentiation between the recent ones is the absence of certain structures or the presence of new ones in the modern frames.  The old, vintage photographs are blended into the recent ones very beautifully and seamlessly. This type of precision makes the photographs meld the settings of the new and the old together, which creates unique images. This type of matching with re photography can be very difficult considering the changes within buildings and settings.

Although the re photography practiced by Byron Wolfe and Mark Klett are natural landscapes, there are elements of old human structures within them, which makes the photos very challenging to match. But the changing, absence or presence of new structures can work effectively together like they do in most of Wolfe's and Klett's work.  Much of their work involving the Grand Canyon and Hopi land work very seamlessly together, while also illustrating to different time periods of each setting. Each of these images pulls the beauty of each time setting out and instills it within the viewer  in a very clean and crisp way. These two artists are redefining the world of re photgraphy and hopefully will continue to do so. Their work has also inspired me to think of our current re photography project in a whole new way. Utilizing two images to make a single image was something that I would never have thought of.

Man Ray "Rayogram" series

Man Ray was an artist, who lived from 1890 to 1976. he spent most of his life in Paris and was an influential force in the Dada and Surrealist movement in France. He always considered himself a painter and did a great deal of photography work in his later days as an artist. His photography work is immensely diverse ranging from portraiture style work to his famous "rayograms," which were produced through a camera less process involving the exposure of light on objects, which are pressed against photographic paper. Photograms are a unique facet of photography because the process requires no camera and it mimics, to a certain extent, modern day scanning techniques. Man Ray was a master at his craft and the image above is a perfect example of the boundless possibilities that Man Ray projected through his photographic work.    

This particular photogram, displayed above, projects a still life in a super natural and existentialist way. I believe the light was exposed through a piece of cloth and the objects placed in front of the light are rendered in a very mystical and surrealist way. The objects convey a still life painting and the form of these objects is conveyed in a very soft manner through the cloth. The lines of the objects are captured in a very unique way almost mirroring oil paint or pastel work. This is within a series of photograms that Man Ray composed throughout his career as an artist. These photograms of his illustrate the unique ways that one can project objects through photography.  

Crafted Nature

This is a series of diptychs that mirror one another in shape, line, form, and color. With this series I Wanted to convey the parallels between nature, crafts along with line and form. Nature is art and art is nature.

In Response to The Thing Itself

It is very interesting to think of how an image cannot be defined without the subject. It is an aspect of photography that many, including myself, forget while practicing artful photography. The subject is an unconscious principle that, a beginning or even experienced, photographer may not ever think of, mainly because most artist look for photographic aspects that people like rather than focusing on what the subject they are photographing really is. Art is something that can only come fourth in its true form, when it flows from the heart rather than from external influences. I think one of Bill Jay's most pertinent point in this article is that, photographers, who are taking pictures with their understanding of the subject, have successful images because the subject has been examined thoroughly from ones internal perspective. But on the flip side photographers, who shoot when thinking in terms of public taste, become caught up in what looks pleasing, rather than focusing on the subject before them. Subject is key in photography because, many viewers do not consider the person who took the picture or the process behind a certain photograph.

Photography is a medium that is unique because subject matter often rules over the artist. A photographer catches the essence of a subject in many ways and I believe Bill Jay in this article stresses that the photograph should capture the reality of the subject and the artist's understanding of that subject. Without the focus on the subject, a photographer will try to hard to capture something that is inorganic. That is why so many young photographers become fed up with the academic side of photography because many students simply want images that are pleasing to faculty members and peers. There is nothing wrong with wanting pleasing images, but since subject is inseparable from a photograph, and since a certain subject is framed for significance, a better understanding of how one understands that subject is key to having creative and wonderful images. With deeper understanding of why one would shoot a rock, a viewer will capture the essence of that rock through their own understanding. Photography like art is something that cannot be forced. The best art is the kind of art that doesn't try hard to be tasteful.  

Story of a Journey

This is a story of a journey through the unknown. It is almost a mirror of the chaos that we, as humans traverse, on a daily basis in this natural existence on Earth. I purposely framed these photographs this way to manipulate the scale of the objects I was capturing. Anyone can gain a different story when viewing these, but my hope with this set is to make a body of work that every viewer can relate their own life journey to.