New photos coming soon

The last few months have been pretty hectic. Been shooting lots but not time to process. Hopefully this coming weekend new work will be coming.

The Thrill of the Hunt

I have always had an interest in photographing wildlife. Animals are beautiful creatures that can be captured in such pure, amazing ways. Living in a mid-size city had made it a distant dream. Occasional I photograph the sparrows that fly around my house, when I visited the National Zoo I loved photographing the animals even though it felt like cheating to me, but today two hawks were flying around my house and I ran inside and got my camera and spent 45 minutes capturing images as they flew from tree to tree. I loved it. It was exhilarating and wonderful. I realized that while I was sitting there scanning the trees, watching for when one would show its beak and give me that perfect shot that I somewhat understood hunters. In my own way I was enjoying the thrill of the hunt the same way a hunter does. Of course my way involved no innocent animals being slaughtered for sport and I hopefully got some cool pictures.

Spending time in DC

I am currently spending some time in DC walking around and photographing everything I can. I got to go to the library of congress and see an exhibit of Ambrotype photographs from the civil war. That was pretty exciting. Hoping to go back to the library of congress to view the photographs from the FSA. Hoping to also go to the zoo and photograph some of the animals.

Meeting with Laura Letinsky

I managed to get lucky and sign up for a meeting and critique of my work with Laura Letinsky when she visited YSU to give a presentation on her work. She focuses on still life photography which is not quite in my field of interest but being able to speak with a successful fine art photographer was a great opportunity. Mostly I discussed my direction in photography, which I am still trying to discover, and she suggested a lot of photographers to look at that might have work similar to what I enjoy.

Creative Portrait Assignment 4

The fourth assignment for my Creative Portrait class was self-portraits. I wanted to focus on exposing a different side of myself that I don't show people. I have always been the type of person who does not talk about how I am feeling even with my friends. I don't like to draw attention to myself and would rather just escape notice. I wanted to show more of how I feel that I wouldn't show any other way.

This image was created for two reasons. The first reason is I thought it would be interesting with the flour similar to some of the work that Rankin has done. The other is because I keep so much bottled up that sometimes I need to let it out. The bad thing with this image is that I am actually punching the door with flour in my hand. It took about 30 shots till I got one I really liked and my hand was red and hurt a lot by the time I finished.

This image also had two reasons for being created. One is just because of the revealing nature of the image. The other reason is that whenever I am stressed out I retreat to my refuge which is the shower. I can let hot water beat down on me and relax. It is also a remnant from living with my family in that it gave me time to just be alone. I could shower and think and just feel better. This image was the one I chose to blow up to 17x22 for the assignment because I felt it was the one that was the most revealing.

I think sometimes everyone wants to just scream or cry. This image is just the feeling of wanting to put your head in your hands and cry. 

Realizations

I have been thinking a lot about what I like in photography lately. I like a lot of photographers but generally I shy away from snapshot photographers. I do not care for pictures of people just doing things with no planning. A person can be photographed with a good composition and good lighting by thinking the shot through. When shooting I often like to just sit back and view the area until I decide where I think might work. The only time this doesn't apply is children and I think taking unplanned photos is the best way to capture the true essence of child. Interacting with them and playing with them is important. But it is still no excuse for a bad composition.

The type of photography I really like is more surreal photography. I like HDR, I like saturated images, I like odd images like Dave Lachapelle. I don't care as much about capturing a moment in time. I like a story or an image that makes you wonder. I do like other types of photography. I love landscapes, portraits, still life, but I see everyday life everyday. I want to see more. I want to wonder.

Back to work.

After a much needed break from pretty much everything I am back to working on my photography. Really looking forward to my classes this semester. I am taking a class covering the history of still photography. I am really excited to learn about all the different processes and the people who affected photography. I am taking a class called Intermediate Digital Photography. I hope to learn a lot more Photoshop techniques and have some more conversations with myself. I am in the a color photography class which is going to be fun. I can't wait to learn a lot more about color balancing. Right now I still just sort of tweak it until it looks good. The last class I am taking is The Creative Portrait which should be awesome. It is going to force me to work with people which is a real problem and I will be learning a lot about lighting which is an area I have very little expertise in.

All of these classes means I will probably have a lot of work going up. I will be resuming tomorrow with the daily posts. I might have some posts actually cover interesting stuff I learn instead of photos. Tomorrow will be a special double post at 8am.

Busy with School

Being slammed with school work right now. No new post today.

School interference

I have a rather large test today so I was unable to properly prepare a post for today due to studying. See you Wednesday morning.

Second guest speaker, Dana Sperry

The second guest speaker came into my digital photography class yesterday. His name is Dana Sperry His presentation was pretty good. He gave a lot of good advice about looking for art galleries and shows to get your work in. He was very helpful and also spoke one on one with everyone in the class. I now have two ideas I am thinking about doing for my final project. I plan to do both of them though so I will have to see how the beginnings of each one starts and work from there. Soon I will be doing a write up of my plans.

I am currently looking into applying for art galleries. I have to apply to two as part of my class but I want to apply for more. I am running into the problems of finding galleries because Youngstown does not have a large art scene, and work to submit. I feel I have some good work mixed with a lot of learning experiences but I am not sure I have a collection of images that mesh together well. My final project would be great and I plan to use it later on but I need to submit soon. Time to look through images quickly and see if I have the basis of a collection to enhance.

I have added a new poll to the top right.

Preparations for a final project.

First off is an apology for the last several days. I have been really sick and didn't even leave my bed for several days. Finally back up and moving and ready to resume. My last weeks photo assignment will be posted this Wednesday.

My digital photography class had a guest speaker today. Kerry Skarbakka came and talked about his work and spoke one on one with us about ideas for our final projects. His work is amazing and I highly recommend looking at it. My idea I am thinking about is going to address my fear of people. I have such a problem with stuff such as going to bars or other events with large amounts of people. I want to photograph my emotions. I want to show what I feel and maybe help myself at the same time. Kerry Skarbakka was very helpful with his opinions. I was glad to hear his opinions.

Digital Photography Class

I am starting my digital photography class at Youngstown State University today. I am hoping to learn a lot in this class. I need a lot more work on my techniques and especially in Photoshop. I will be posting about my assignments as I work on them. Hope this is a good semester.

Setting up a studio.

I decided to convert the spare bedroom at my house into a Partial Photo studio. I wanted to post images to share it with everyone.

This are just a few snapshots I did after finishing a practice shoot for an upcoming blog post. I have several more lights I can put to use besides just these 3. I think I have 11 lights total I can use. The largest problem is that the room gets very, very, very hot with even just these 3 lights running. I will have to see during the day how the light from the window affects my images. The window faces north so it should not be a problem and might even be able to be used a little.

Someday I hope to have a full studio with a portriat area and photos on the wall, for now I will love what I have.

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera.  ~Lewis Hine