Category: Thoughts (Page 3 of 3)

“Life is just pain and piss; it’s nothing that I will miss”

– Wood Of Ypres, “Wet Leather” (2009)

I get depressed when I hear lyrics like that.  As an artist, I love life.  It’s the feelings that you need to create art, and being alive is the only way art gets created.  There’s my deep thought for the day.

I’ve delved further into Sontag’s collection of essays that makes up her book, On Photography.  I’m having a hard time really gauging her stance on photography as an art.  She does hit it on the head that photography is a special medium (I’m on the third essay and she’s made it her mission to hammer that idea home in each essay thus far), but the feelings I get from her regarding photography range from neutrality to disdain.  Sontag, having grown up during the period where photography went from being a technical hobby for the rich to having reached a critical mass among consumers, certainly offers a unique perspective on its growth as an artistic medium.

I’m still working on the “Descendants of Abraham” piece, just not actively at this point.  I guess a little bit of ingrained adult ADD set in when Sontag’s book caught my eye again.  To be fair, I’ve had the book for over a year, I am just now getting around to reading it seriously.  Also, right now, I’m spending a lot of time, where I normally would be creating, to looking at some critical theory aspects of art.

We did a unit on Saussure this past Spring in my Art History Introduction to Critical Theory course.  Saussure, of course, is considered the father of modern semiotics, i.e. the study of signs.  His American counterpart, Charles Sanders Pierce, further expounded on Saussure’s work.  There exist three categories of signs: symbol, icon, and index.  The category into which a sign is placed is dependent upon the nature of the relationship between the sign and its meaning.  This is where things start to get a little fuzzy and I’m trying to piece them together (a full 2 months after the end of the semester, no less).  It’s the index category that I’m having to most trouble sorting out.

An index is a sign that has a direct causal link to that which is signified – think of a stoplight warning sign and the actual stoplight about which you are warned – that sign is an index.  An icon is a sign that stands for an object because it resembles it, while a symbol represents an object by virtue of laws, traditions, etc. (the letters on this screen are symbols).  Where I’m having trouble with indexes is when an icon or a symbol crosses the line and becomes an index. The professor did say that the index is the most troubling aspect of semiotics, so we should not worry too hard if we don’t grasp it right away.

One of the things we were told in the class by the professor is that of all the mediums, photography is an index as the image has a direct link to what it is representing.  Let’s say, however, that we have an photograph of a Ford Mustang for an advertisement.  Does that not make the photograph an icon as it is representing a particular kind of car?  Another questionable example would be the work of Dorothea Lange during the Great Depression.  Those portraits were meant to represent the working poor during the Great Depression, in which case my understanding would place them as icons.  Where is the direct causal relationship between the sign and the signified?

Sometimes I feel like the answer is right in front of me, but when I reach out, it scurries away as if playing cat-and-mouse with my intellect.

At any rate, I will leave you with one of my own to ponder the question of semiotics.  This is an image of the main gate at the Seneca Army Depot in Romulus, NY.  In the 1980’s this US Army installation was home to the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.  If memory serves, I believe it held just under 3,000 weapons in storage a mere 75 miles from where I grew up in Cincinnatus, NY.  The base was closed in the 1990’s under the military reductions begun under President George HW Bush and continued under President Bill Clinton.  This main gate, a few buildings around where the motor pool was located, and the enlisted housing area remain.  The enlisted housing area is occupied with residents while the area where the weapons were stored is now part of the NY State Department of Corrections.  What makes this an index rather than an icon?  There are no right or wrong answers and I look forward to having a nice discussion.

Click to Embiggen

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and wild ones of all ages.  Step right up.  I welcome you to come right in…  inside the electric circus.”

 – “The Big Welcome” – WASP (1986)

As far as album introductions go, I personally think that’s one of the coolest I’ve ever heard.  It’s not your typical heavy metal intro…  no guitars, no drums, just some circusorgans playing and a big top emcee inviting one into the tent.  Of course, then it kicks into high gear with the title track.  WASP was never really known for their strong songwriting, but they did have their moments in the late 80’s/early 90’s…  but Idigress.

As in all visual art, composition is key to making a successful photograph.  Without good composition, a photograph becomes merely a picture of something.  But what is composition and what makes a composition a good composition?  That’s a tough question since there are no hard and fast rules of art, only guidelines that should, at the very least, be considered when creating a piece.  Unfortunately, there are nearly as many opinions on the answer to that question as there are people on the planet.  My answer to the first part of the question is this:  In composing the photograph, one must always pick out the element of emphasis and let all the other elements in place support that emphasis.  Sounds simple, no?  That hard part is, however, achieving “good’ composition.

The ruling guideline with a lot of “professional” photographers right now is a concept called “Rule of Thirds.”  Basically in this “rule” you take your frame, draw three lines horizontally, and make them equidistant from each other.  You repeat the process once more, this time drawing vertical lines, to end up with 9 rectangles.  You then have 4 intersections inside the frame.  When composing your photograph you want to place your subject on one of those points (often this is called the “power position”).  When I started learning about photography, I read a lot of Popular Photography magazine.  When I would read their image crititiques, they would invariably crop an image to conform to the Rule of Thirds.  It really didn’t matter what was in the photo, they wanted it to conform to that rule.  At the time I took the Rule of Thirds as sacrosanct and attempted to compose all of my photos in that manner.  The fact that I wasn’t always successful was beside the point – this was something I was shooting for which each photo.

When I took my first photography class in 2007 my professor never really discussed Rule of Thirds unless she noticed a student who seemed to be struggling with composition.  Given everything I had read in Popular Photography at that point, I wondered a little bit why she didn’t talk about it much.  When I consulted the text book on composition, it also spent very little time discussing the rule.  I just kept on doing what I was doing.  Then one day during a class critique session my professor pointed out something she found interesting in another student’s photo and brought up the concept of CLOTIS.  Basically, this concept told that if you arranged the elements in the frame in such a way that it formed one of the letters in that word, you made what was called a “safe” and what could be considered a “good” composition.  The Rule of Thirds was not as sacred as I had been led to believe and here was a professional MFA Photography professor giving me license to break that rule if it didn’t work.

There is a reason why one should avoid placing the subject in dead center of the frame – it basically keeps your eye fixed on that one point in the photograph and you have to actually work to look around the photo.  In the early 1920’s Arthur Hammond wrote that the reason why this bothers people is because it causes actual physical exhaustion due to the muscles that articulate the eye being exerted.  I laugh this off because unless a person is having some serious metabolic issues, the tiny movements of the eye aren’t really going to force someone into having to take a nap because of tiredness, but I get the point.  A person is going to have to actively think about looking around the frame instead of being led around in a natural manner.  Some may say this is the sheeple in everyone coming out, but I’ll leave that to those who study human behavior to debate that point.

But what if the Rule of Thirds is not practical?  Admittedly that wasn’t a question I thought much about before my professor mentioned the concept of CLOTIS.  What if my subject was too large to be placed neatly into one of those power positions?  I then started to realize that a subject can be placed close to center if it fills (or comes close to filling) the frame or if it can be arranged in such a way that your eye is guided naturally from the subject around the photo (which would be something CLOTIS-like at work).   I have plenty of photos that many consider successful (at least at my level of accomplishment at the time they were created) that don’t necessarily adhere to the Rule of Thirds.

The Rule of Thirds deals mainly with the placement of elements around a frame, as does CLOTIS to an extent.  There are plenty of other concepts relating to the use of lines and shapes that come into play (which is something that CLOTIS also covers).  Some of the aforementioned successful photos (often unconsciously) incorporate those other concepts, while others do not.

Ok, so why am I writing about this?  The answer is simple – I was not happy with something I was told today by a “professional” photographer.  The photos he looked at today weren’t exactly the pick of the litter (long story behind why I didn’t have my best photos with me, but rest assured the fault lies with the event organizers regarding this), but they were judged by more than a few degreed professionals and lay-people as successful.  The biggest problem he found with the photos I had was composition.  The thing that really got me was he kept going back to Rule of Thirds and how most of those images didn’t achieve their potential because of Rule of Thirds.  On one photo he claimed the subject was too dead center (it was not) and that spoiled the whole photo.  I pointed out to him that the subject came close to filling the frame and that the point of focus I was going for was actually quite close to the upper left power position, to which he replied that I should never be filling the frame.  I was a little perturbed by this.  I mean, if he didn’t get why chose the focal point I chose, then that’s fine.  But here he was dismissing it due to adherence to a “rule” that is more often than not broken.  This left me a little puzzled as in the three professors who have taught me photography thus far (each one a professional artist and photographer and each wiht a lot of experience in various areas of the field) have never stuck so close to the “rules” of composition when critiquing a piece by anyone in class.  There was one photo I submitted (among my best) that was textbook Rule of Thirds in compostion and this particular photo was his second favorite.  Here is the kicker – his favorite photo (and a favorite among the group critique) actually did not adhere to the Rule of Thirds.  I thought about calling him on this, but I quickly realized I wasn’t there to argue with him.

Now here’s the conclusion (I know what you’re thinking “it freaking took you long enough!”) – The “rules” of composition are merely guidelines that  more often than  not work to create effective photographs.  There are times when they can be ignored and times when they can be broken, and it’s up to the artist to know when those actions are appropriate.  Adherence to hard and fast rules only lead to dogmatic thinking in a given medium, and in the end the art suffers because of it.  The Rule of Thirds is an effective starting point for beginners because it helps them keep the subject out of dead center.  For those more advanced it becomes a good guide and while I rarely see it flouted, I also rarely see strict adherence to it.  This person who looked at my photos today demanded strict adherence to it.

I was told by this person to look at a lot of other people’s photographs (I do – just ask my wife about all the photography books in the house) but to remember that just because it’s hanging on a wall or printed in a book doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good.  I laughed a little inside as the thought entered in my mind that just because one calls theirself a photographer doesn’t mean he or she knows much about photography.  He was listed on the signup sheet as a photographer, sculptor, and woodworker – that right there should have sent up a red flag (a 3-D artist who dabbles in 2-D, but he was the only person with open slots).  In all fairness, there were a few non-compositional things he said about my work that he thought could use some improvement, with which I had absolutely no problem.  Ninety percent of his feedback, however, was devoted to composition and Rule of Thirds.  As an aside, I shared what I was told with my Digital Art professor (who also happens to be my 3rd photography professor and MFA with over 25 years of experience in the field) and she seemed a little puzzled by this person’s feedback as well.

I am personally bewildered by the strict adherence to the Rule of Thirds by so many “professionals” today.  In reading some older work on photography, especially after it broke out of its image as a mechanicial activity and gained recognition as an artistic medium, the subject of Rule of Thirds  is briefly touched upon.  However, it is only regarded as a starting point used when forming ideas for a composition.  The current, almost fanatical following, to me at least, is restricting the artisitic side of photography.  Granted, magazines like Popular Photography don’t necessarily cater to more advanced photographers.  That and the fact that the magazine is 80% product reviews pretty much caused me to stop reading it halfway into my Photography I course.  I would think, however, since those who read this magazine in particular have more than a passing interest in photography, they would encourage a little bit of artistic experimentation.  The upside, however, is that they’re at least trying to introduce some intellectual element into composition – a friend of mine was told once (by a complete layperson) that the subject MUST ALWAYS be in the center and fill the frame of a photograph.  Talk about your bad advice.

Do I have a lot to learn?  Of course I do.  While I remain confident I’m on the right track, I know I have a long way to go before I can achieve something close to the levels of the masters such as Keith Carter, Paul Strand, and Henry Cartier-Bresson (among others).  That’s why I will keep studying, shooting, and seeking feedback from those I admire to whom I have some access and have built a relationship.  I would like to give a shout to those three professors who have taught me so much so far – Steffani Frideres, Troy Huetchter, and Laury Emery.  Without them I don’t think I would have ever rediscovered my artistic side.  What I found interesting and very promising was this – one of the Photography professors from another college in the area told me to look her up when I got the chance.  She may, of course, want to tell me to forget it and that I have no talent, but something in her demeanor in talking to me told me she saw some potential in me.  The journey is starting to get interesting.

Well, it’s late and I have other things to do before I go to bed.  To all of you who made it this far – thank you for enduring my rant.  To all of you I bid you goodnight.

It’s only the 2nd day of class so I didn’t really learn anything I didn’t already know. But that’s ok, it gave me time to experiment a little in class and inspired me to experiment a little at home.

I somehow always knew Cy Twombly’s art would influence me in some way.  I’m not talking about his paint or chalk scribbles, but his very large and nearly solid color canvas paintings.  The Menil Collection here in Houston has an outbuilding dedicated just to Cy Twombly.

This was me experimenting with color blending, just as one would with a real paintbrush.  I didn’t really have a plan going into this – the picture just sort of created itself.  Perhaps it’s the final hues of a day that’s about to end.  Perhaps it’s a blurred closeup of Jupiter seen from space.  Maybe it’s a red-hued scale showing that there are very few absolutes in this world – most is just a shade of one of the 2 extremes.  Or, it may have just been a guy with some time to experiment a little with his computer drawing program thing-a-ma-jig.  That’s the great thing about art – there is never 1 correct answer.

Perhaps I can find a way to make something similar to the work of Mark Rothko.

While this isn’t a photograph, this is part of my evolution.  Does anyone have any comments?

PS – This looks pretty awesome printed on Anasazi Canvas…  I might need to have this one mounted.

I wrote this essay in 2008 as part of a one-off photo book I made as a gift for my grandmother. It was an expression of my definition of art. Here is the essay in its entirety:

Art is what we make it. I’ve always believed that. I once had a conversation with someone who had been accepted to art school and was excited about it. For some reason I felt the need to say that art is what we make it. This person told me that he, fortunately, “has grown above that”. Some people just don’t get it.

Everyone has a different aesthetic. Even two people who have similar ideas will look at a famous work of art such as The Mona Lisa or the Statue of David and come away with very different feelings about both pieces.  Take this a little further – when these two people produce a work of art on their own, they both will produce very different pieces.  One may not like the other’s work, but to each person the piece they produced is art.

That’s because art is an expression.  That, however, begs the question of what kind of expression is art?  The beautiful thing about art is that it can be an expression of anything at all.  It can be how one feels about a certain subject; it can be an expression of how an experience affected them; it can be an expression of a happy or sad memory.  The possibilities are endless.  There is a story that a German military officer had met Pablo Picasso after the Spanish Civil War.  The officer, upon realizing with whom he was speaking, said “You’re the one who created Guernica“.  Picasso’s response to this was “No, you’re the one who created Guernica, not me”.  This famous painting was Picasso’s reaction to the horrors of war he witnessed during the German bombing campaign in Spain.

When one has something to express, there comes the question of medium.  The possibilities here are also endless.  This is also where people get easily frustrated.  I know in my own case I’ve given up more than one painting project due to the fact that I’m not very skilled with a brush.  Give me a quill pen and some ink, however, and I’m good to go.  Working in any medium takes a little practice to become effective.  I spent many hours developing the fine control required to use a quill pen so I could achieve the clean lines necessary to add power to my work.  Dancers spend many hours practicing their steps, actors study their lines and characters, and writers learn the best use of words.  Skill with a chosen medium is necessary because without it the end result will definitely suffer.

The other beautiful thing about art is that there aren’t really any hard and fast rules.  This is the what I feel is the essence of art.  Where science depends on the order that be achieved through mathematics, art breaks through this order and opens up realms beyond what can be described by math.  We can see a black hole reduced to mathematical expression, but I have yet to see the same done with a Renoir painting.

But of course, when one applies art to the concept of design we begin to see rules.  Designers have an art background, but their focus is on using their creativity to produce something acceptable for someone else.  While there aren’t strict rules to design (not any of which I am aware), there are strong guidelines that designers use that have shown to be effective in pleasing their customers..  While design work is art in the sense that creativity is present, it isn’t a pure form or art where the expression of self is the core motivator in creation.  When I think back to the prospective art student, I believe that he hasn’t grasped why people create art and that he believes that design and skill with a chosen medium are the core of what art is.

When I was in high school I seemed to have an aptitude for mathematics and science but a love for art.  I graduated from high school with five credits both in math and science and four in art.  Twice a day I worked within the rules and structure of math and science and once a day I was able to break out of those confines and let my soul out through whatever medium were we employing in art class.  Let me be clear – I loved science as well as art.  The question I never asked myself at the time was how to resolve the love of both.  The answer would be presented a long time after I graduated from high school.

I took my first photography course in the Autumn of 2007.  We worked with black and white film for this course.  A big part of the course was learning how to develop film by hand and print the photos using a dark room and chemistry. This is the simple part when one begins to consider the physics involved merely in the use of light when taking a photograph. I had never experienced a class like this in the past.  Just like in high school art class I was creating something, but to create I needed to follow the rules for the chemistry involved.  And when I manipulated the science, I came out with different creations each time.

One may say that is what happens in science – if you manipulate the components you get a different end result.  The next logical question is “where is the art in photography?”.  It is true that manipulation in science gets different end results (like adding hydrogen to vegetable oil to get shortening).  However, when it comes to photography, it begins with the photographer’s imagination.  To make a great photograph you need the imagination to see what you want to see come through on the paper.  Without that imagination, then it’s merely design work to please a customer.  Granted, it could be said that it took imagination to create shortening, but when one knows the chemical properties of saturated fats vs. unsaturated fats and knows that the addition of hydrogen will remove the kink at the end of a unsaturated fatty acid chain, thereby allowing saturation to occur, well, I have a hard time seeing imagination in that.

Expression involves showing the world something that’s important to you.  With photography I now have a way to show people what gives me wonder, where I find beauty, and what affects me.  The best part is, I use both art and science with it comes to creating my expression.  That is why I love photography as a medium.

Anyway, that is my little scribe on how photography is an art.  I felt it necessary to share this with everyone as recently a commentor expressed some disdain for the elitist attitudes that some “artists” hold for photography as a art form.  I personally have to say I agree with the commentor.  The example of the prospective art student shows why.  I do, however, like to read what they have to say.  That’s part of the Sun Tzu mentality I have…  I do like to know what the other person is thinking.

Thoughts?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

I was inspired by some long exposure photos I saw in the 2010 Folios edition of “Silvershotz”. On Wednesday the overcast cloud bases were in cloud roll mode, so I thought maybe I could pull off something similar to what I saw. I got to the George Bush Nature Preserve here in Houston and went to the pond on Noble Trail. I set up the tripod, used the built-in level function on my camera, and searched my bag… I found that I left behind my 4-stop neutral density filter. I knew right away I wasn’t going to get the shots I originally wanted. Undaunted, I took a few shots anyway just to play some more with my camera.

For those who don’t know, a neutral density filter is a filter that cuts down on the amount of light that passes into the camera lens. It’s called neutral density because it does not affect the contrast or light dispersion into the lens, it just cuts down on the amount going in. It fits over the end of the lens. This allows for long exposures during bright light and will allow very narrow apertures for macro shots where a deeper depth of field is desirable.

I took a few shots and decided on my Day 6 shot and left the others to sit on my hard drive. About 24 hours had passed and I decided to take a break from my paperwork and fired up Lightroom to look at some older photos. For some reason I decided to look at yesterday’s photos first. This is the original shot here:

The initial reason for rejecting this was that it just wasn’t what I was looking for when set out to take these photos. But I learned a little while back that nothing stays the same, even 24 hours later things change. I saw something more in this photo… something dark and sinister.

The darkness of the trees in the horizon stirred the emotion in me, so I started playing with it a little bit to bring into focus the vision within my subconscious mind. There was a harshness in the winter trees that played against the soft and subtle tones of the clouds. It was almost as if I were in a dream that was descending into something more sinister. After converting the image to black and white, it really became apparent that this was the vision in my mind.

The image was still too dark to be effective. I lightened the photo but the trees now looked funny. I was able to darken the horizon and found the darkness of the trees was playing very well off the clouds, which now had a rough but wide dynamic range. The white at the top center begins to darken as you move through the image, ending in the nearly black trees. The water took away from this effect, so it was cropped out. Once I softened the clarity of the entire image, my mind’s vision was fully realized:

This now was the final image. It shows a dark and sinister path ahead, which is what my mind saw when I opened the photo again less than 24 hours after initially rejecting it. The image is entitled “Chimera Descent”.

This little exercise highlights the fact that everything in life is fluid and changes can occur rapidly. I still go through some of my old photos looking for new visions that exist within my mind. Nothing stays the same, and sometimes the things we reject contain a beauty that only comes after initial contact.

Any comments on this are welcome.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been over a year since my last post here. I started this blog as a way to help track my growth in photography. Shame on me for abandoning it.

I’ve been a little busy with the camera, though probably nowhere near as busy as 2008. I did manage to take a little trip to Minnesota for the sole purpose of photographing some of the state. I’ve also shot a few concerts here and there, but nothing like 2008. With the absence of Ozzfest this year I was sure there were going to be a lot of smaller tours going through. I’m not sure if it’s the economy or what, but the concert season was unbelievably light this past summer. Other than the trip to Minnesota, my productivity with the camera this year has not been as prolific as 2008.

While I’m striving to take technically correct pictures (i.e. good exposure and, in the case of digital, white balance) I found my vision seemed to suffer a little bit. I’m not sure what’s going on, but my photos over the past 8 or 9 months just don’t seem to be all that interesting when I look at them. For a lot of rejected photos I will look at the digital negatives again 6 or 7 (sometimes even more) months later. In some cases I find that there is something there I didn’t see before… but this year that has been the case very few times. To that end, in the past 2 months I’ve been looking at a lot of what are considered fine art photos and trying to draw inspiration from them. Perhaps my mind is becoming more discriminating in my own work. If that’s the case, I need to sit down and figure out what’s causing me to be more discriminating.

Whatever the case, I’m thinking of merging this blog and Primordial Light into one website. I don’t know yet what the name will be as there is another website called Primordial Light, which is a hobbyist astronomy site. It will be a little while before I get to that point. Whatever the case, that’s still a little ways off as I work through the real-world responsibilities of a job and raising 2 puppies. Also, I will be discussing more of some other work I see out there and talking about how it works for me. This should help me get closer to the answer of what exactly is the nature of my own vision.

There aren’t any pictures today as I still have a lot of work to do. I just needed to update my faithful and not-so-faithful readers of my status.

I’ve always been of the school of thought that art is that which we use for expression of the self. The imagination is not constrained by the rules that hamstring the sciences and one can use almost any medium imaginable to express that imagination. And that expression can be on any level from the obvious to the completely abstract. In essence, art is what we make it.

Effectively expressing one’s self obviates the need to master a given medium. Da Vinci could not have painted the Mona Lisa without first knowing how to effectively combine the canvas, paint, and brush to achieve the effect he wanted. Mastering the medium is all about achieving the desired effect.

Part of art instruction, aside from learning the myriad of media available, is challenging the student to find new ways to express the self. It’s one thing to simply put forth the objective, but it’s a different thing entirely to put forth the self in a way that challenges the artist and stirs something in the viewer. Once the artist is able to tap the imagination in terms of expression, the sky is pretty much the limit.

Consider this picture:

This sculpture is part of the Menil Collection in Houston, TX. I set to shoot this to make it look as if the branches were springing forth from the obelisk. I thought with the contrast from the backlight I would achieve that effect. A quick glance shows that I achieved that effect in the actual object, but closer inspection shows the distinction between the branches and the broken obelisk body. I submitted the printed photo for critique.

The teacher praised me for coming close to achieving what I wanted, but then told me that aside from achieving my stated effect, I really did little more than document art produced by somebody else. I was a little deflated because I was proud of the picture, but I knew he was right in his assessment. In essence I had mastered the medium as far as what I wanted to do, but I had not challenged myself into representing the subject in a different manner.

Fast forward about 4 months and I find myself trying to find something to do with my camera. I was doing up some barbecue of the slow smoked kind and decided to take some shots in my backyard. I thought my back fence would be a good subject for expressing decay since, even though it is still standing, is nearing the end of its useful life. Here is the shot I thought best represented the decay I was seeing:

After stewing over this one (and publishing it on Primordial Light) I started to think that there was something missing. I still can’t quite put my finger on it, but there is something missing. I see decay, but then what? The sunlight coming through really didn’t add anything to the picture.

I had spent much of my time over the past 3 months concentrating on concert photography and had not really done anything else. I thought back to what my Photography professor had said about the obelisk picture and realized while I was creating art, I was not challenging myself or the viewer.

I decided to offer up the challenge to myself and here are the new and improved obelisk and fence photos:

The same images taken in new directions with very different results. One person I spoke with gave me 2 different reactions after looking at the photos.

Now I challenge you to let me know what you think after seeing these pictures. In the words of my buddy Mark – “Don’t be afraid to comment on the photos”.

It’s coming to that time of year when the semester is winding down. I have to start seriously thinking about my portfolio for my final exam. I have an idea in mind, but at this point I’m going through my scans and looking at photos on a virtual light table to see how things look together. Hopefully I’ll have a concrete idea next week and can start printing and matting in earnest. Wish me luck on that.

Aside from that, I shot another roll of 220 and a roll of 35mm. I think I’m becoming more discriminating as with these 2 rolls, I didn’t find many that were up to my own standards. This definitely isn’t a bad thing. I also am finding myself considering more factors when looking at photographs. That’s a good thing, too, but I need to be careful about becoming a snob, especially when I myself am at a low level within the art.

At any rate, here some off the new rolls I thought to share with you. Let me know what you think as the comments help me grow.

This is my college in my first fairly successful night shot. I’m going to have to ask my professor about the flare from the light on the left hand side. I’m sure it’s not lens flare, but it does take away from the overall picture.

Another silhouette of this plant. I have another one showing on my Flickr account. This plant actually makes for some good lens testing. This shot as well as the night shot were both taken on my Canon Rebel Ti 35mm SLR.

I also have another photo of this on my Flickr page. This one, however, was taken with my Pentax 645 medium format camera. The ball here is a perfectly balance sphere weighing around 6 tons. Carved into the sphere is a map of the world. The globe rests on a 1/4″ film of water that is constantly pumped in to hold it up. Because of this, a person can spin this globe in any direction with just a little push. This has always been one of my favorite works of art in the city of Houston.

This statue has become a symbol of the city. I myself have quite a few photographs (mostly digital) of this statue. This is one of my favorite film photos, though. Creating silhouettes is good for learning how light works and how to meter for the shot you want. This was taken with my Pentax 645 medium format camera.

There were a few more photos from these 2 rolls that I can use, but they won’t be shown here. Once I get my final portfolio settled, I’ll let you know. At any rate, let me know what you think of these photos.