Tag: education

It (Was) World Photo Day!

August 20, 2016 / Rick / 0 Comments

As legend would have it, the date for World Photo Day came about because it was on 19 Aug 1839 that the French government purchased the patent to the Daguerrotype process and announced that it was being given away to everyone for free. It seems a good a reason as any to choose a date for celebration. If it had not been for the generosity of the French, photography as a process may have taken a very different path to development. This year marked the World Photo Day’s 7th year of celebration, which isn’t too shabby considering the growing pains it had to endure its few couple of years.

I had pretty much decided that I was going to take the day off from making images and, instead, reflect on my own personal views in this world. I’m going to be honest, between work, watching preseason NFL Football, and enjoying an incredible Italian dinner, I didn’t get much thinking done. In fact, I had even planned this blog entry to coincide with the ending of World Photo Day in the Midwest, but ended up falling asleep early. Bad, Rick.

I did, however, think about my own evolution in photography. Some of my earliest images are lost forever due to hard drive failures and getting lost in moves from one hard drive to another (1 lesson learned – file organization is important). I did come across this one, however:

Williams Tower – Houston, TX (2007)

I recall my own innocence (for lack of a better term) in taking this photo. I was still learning everything I could about photography, but it was very slow going at the time. Magazines such as Popular Photography seem to assume one has a baseline of knowledge. I didn’t even have that baseline when I took this picture. It wasn’t until a little over 2 months later that things would finally start to gel for me.

Beneath The Massacre at Summer Slaughter 2007 in Houston, TX

An early concert photo taken in 2007 (before the image of Williams Tower). This was among the first taken with my DSLR.

Cy-Fair College – Houston, TX (2007)

That was my first film image taken after I enrolled in a photography course at Cy-Fair College. I was amazed at how one class worth of lecture crystallized everything for me in terms of the camera settings. I had achieved a baseline of knowledge (and quickly learned how very little use a certain magazine had for me in terms of teaching). I knew I could only get better from there. I had to, since this negative was pretty messed up by my repeated attempts to load it on the film roll for processing. It also awakened the artist that was always inside me and had been suppressed since graduating from high school.

I’d like to say that I did get better. In these early days I still had my innocence (again, for lack of a better term) about photography. I learned technical aspects (such as metering for extreme lighting conditions), effective composition, and color balancing. I would go on to learn about conceptual things such as the language of photography (which eludes me a little, but with each day it gets a little slower in avoiding my grasp), the essence of photography as an index and how it relates to art, and the limits and possibilities of the medium. The conceptual stuff destroyed my innocence, but gave me new focus (pun not intended) in terms of how I was going to proceed.

This is an interesting time for photography. Like the proliferation of hand held cameras in the 1960’s and 70’s, cell phone cameras have brought an old challenge back to photography, albeit in a way that is much more intense. A couple of years ago an artist was inspired by an exhibition at the Museum Of Fine Arts Houston that explored photomanipulation prior to the advent of Photoshop. He created a little project of abstract photos taken with his iPhone. He said that he was “faking it” by attempting to create art with a cell phone camera. Not much was discussed about that project (he was submitting 2 for critique), but it does illustrate the challenge posed and the resistance to it. The explosion of social media has also brought new importance of the snapshot just by virtue of the proliferation of snapshots in the wild.

The 2 issues above pique my interest each in their own way. The proliferation of cell phone cameras (along with their growing capabilities) has led some agencies to actually eliminate photo staff and rely on the field reporter to get images for a print or web story. Can an untrained (relatively speaking) photographer capture an image that will have the same effectiveness as one captured by an experienced professional? That is the biggest question. The growth of social media, fueled by the growth of cell phones, challenges our personal relationship to photography. The snapshot is generally a personal image made to document our relationship to the world. When those images are out in the wild, is it still “just” a snapshot? How has our relationship to the world changed when a personal photo is published for all to see? How is medium challenged in general? Is “art” photography elevated or cheapened? These are just a few of the questions we find ourselves asking.

Thus ends my contribution to World Photo Day. I will leave you now with a recent image I created, just to show my own progress in photography. I will also leave a snapshot I created at the same event. Maybe it will help my faithful and not-so-faithful readers to ponder their own questions regarding the medium within the context of my discussion. If not, well, that’s perfectly fine with me. Not everyone thinks about it the way I do, but I do hope you at least enjoy the images.

The “professional” image

The snapshot

Quick Updates

November 27, 2014 / Rick / 0 Comments

Regarding the Rock and Roll call for entry, unfortunately I did not make it in. The juror, Paul Natkin, had a vision different from what I had submitted. I will be honest in saying that I was a little disappointed and that some of his selections left me scratching my head a little bit, but I did see where my images just didn’t fit in with his vision. I don’t doubt the man’s credentials – he’s taken one of the most iconic photos in the history of rock music (click here to see). I do want to extend a congratulations to all those who did get into what I am sure will be an extraordinary show. I’ll just have find another excuse to visit Minneapolis in the near future (better yet – Mankato – I love the topography of south central Minnesota).

Two other call for entries have garnered my attention. I am debating on whether to answer them or not at this point. The deadline on 1 of them is 1 December, so I have some things to think about.

This past summer and early autumn were particularly stressful for me. I decided to channel some of this into some more personal work for the semester. Here are 2 examples of this work:

I created a total of 14 of these. They received mixed reviews, mostly because there did not exist something to tie them all together. That, I confess, is a fair critique because all of these were reactions to different situations. A lot of my peers had their favorites. During the midterm critique, I was asked how I was going to make the audience want to look at them because they didn’t seem, to this person at least, to be something I was creating to visually please others. I didn’t remark at the time, but I did later answer that question in a private conversation with this individual – those who go up to see it will be the ones who want to take the journey with me. I didn’t mention the fact that I noticed this person did not go up to look at them closely. That’s a fact that made me think the question was a little unfair – if this person had gone up to view them closely, but felt forced to do so, it would have added a bit of intellectual weight behind the question. To be fair, however, it is entirely possible this person went up to look at them closely prior to my turn at critique, but absent any evidence of that happening, I will assume that this person did not. I was also told by another individual to avoid “art as therapy” as it is usually nothing more than a resting stop between projects. I remarked that these “resting stops” often are the genesis to some great things. This person then backtracked a little and told me that they weren’t trying to denigrate my work, but I’m taking that with a grain of salt.

The good news, at least in terms of the semester, is that I’m back to creating work that will satisfy the academics. I have the series discussed in my previous post (Condensed Information). This won’t be included in my final for the semester as the concept has morphed a bit and needs some more work to fully flesh out. I’ve also revived another concept that had to be put to rest due to equipment issues. This one is exciting to me and I will share it with everyone in about 2 weeks.

I’ve also been creating videos for my program’s video section. To be honest, if there is one thing that art school does well, it’s instill self-doubt in students. I have my opinions on why this is, but I’ll save those for a night when I’m feeling a little more akin to sounding off. Let’s just say that this section is the one where I feel the most in terms of self-doubt. But, here is one video that I think will become part of something good:

I’m finding that my work is trending toward focusing on the individual. I’m finding that everyone has a story to tell, and I find these fascinating. In fact, my to-be-revealed series deals directly with individual identity. With my previous portraiture series, I learned a lot about the people who participated, especially in the “Emotional Portraits” series. Through the video above (and subsequent series of videos I plan to make based off this), I may just learn something about myself. We will soon see.

I also have a couple of other concepts that I want to try out. These will start soon. For 1 I need to find a willing volunteer and the other I can start with a self portrait over the semester break. Actually, both will start over the semester break as that’s when I will have the time.

Last night I had a dream wherein I referenced, in a conversation with the other person in my dream, a past dream. I woke up this morning and my head was spinning from it. As I get ready to retire for the day, I wonder if something like this will happen again tonight. At one point I was keeping a dream journal. Things started getting a little vivid as I was keeping it and I stopped. I wonder if I shouldn’t start again with this dream.

Ok, these updates weren’t so quick, but things have picked up in the last month. I’m creating again, which is very good for me. I also still have a show to plan. At this point, I’m going to call it a night. Comments and questions, as always, are welcome.

It’s All About the Content

March 27, 2014 / Rick / 0 Comments

I know I should really post more than once a month. This semester is kicking my ass a little bit, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m learning a lot and finding out things about my vision that I never realized before. But we won’t go too much into that with this post. Let’s go ahead and keep this one on the simple side.

I can’t remember if I mentioned this or not (and frankly, I’m too lazy to go back and look), but our in-depth topic of study this semester is portraiture. This is a little out of my comfort zone as I’m not one to shoot people. I guess this comes a little from a view I had of portraiture that was rather limited in scope. I have had models sit for me before and they expected direction from me. The problem for me in those situations was I would go into them with very little in terms of an idea other than “I just want to photograph a person in various poses.” Needless to say, it was a little difficult to get much in the way of content from them. That’s not to say that those sessions were wastes of effort – I did get some good shots out of my subjects. They just seemed to take a lot more effort than I anticipated.

A couple of years has passed since those early sessions. I found out that having an idea was very important when going into a shooting session. Currently I have 3 active photo projects. Of those, 2 are portraiture projects that have concrete ideas attached to them. One deals with projection and perception while the other deals with emotion. Of course, the emotion project could be a perception/projection type project as well, but since this is a rather specific area, I am a little hesitant to lump it under that heading. After all, isn’t portraiture all about perception and projection? But I digress… here are 2 images of those projects in progress (click image to embiggen:

I’m sure my readers can tell which is which in terms of projects. We just had a midterm critique and I received some really positive feedback on the images in the projection/perception project. The only real negative was one of the professors really didn’t care for the print quality, which I thought was very fair given there were some issues with the color balance throughout the series. All in all, however, the feedback was very positive and the critiquing bodies expressed an interest in more samples as well as how I edit them down for the final series. We ran out of time so we weren’t able to discuss the emotion project images I submitted. I’m not unhappy about it though, as the project is specifically for my class with Keliy Anderson-Staley, and not my overall semester project (which the other is).

Speaking of Keliy Anderson-Staley, she is a professor that the University of Houston and a bit of a rising star in the fine art portraiture game. She shoots a lot of tintype portraits. A tintype is made when a metal substrate (tin, in this case) is coated with an emulsion and then used as the “film” in the camera. The “film” is then developed, fixed, and washed pretty much the same as film. The emulsion is slow (in this case it was a 15 second exposure) so Keliy used a bar to help keep my head upright through the entire exposure. The use of tin as a substrate and the wet collodion emulsion is one of the earliest processes of photography. She took this of me in February:

I highly recommend checking her website (link at end of article). She has some really good stuff up there.

Well, at this point I should be heading out as it is late and I need to be awake in a little over 4 hours. I will update again soon as a lot has happened for me, and I have many more ideas I would like to discuss. Feel free to comment at will, and don’t forget to check out Keliy’s work.

Keliy Anderson-Staley (anderson-staley.com)

End of June

June 26, 2012 / Rick / 0 Comments

I’m not sure where the time has gone. One minute I’m relaxing and the next thing I know is that Summer is half over. It’s not that I’ve been lazy as my energy has been geared more toward my activities with The Overtime Page and on my day job… it’s just at the end of the day my creative energy seems sapped. I’m going to have to do something about that, starting with a project I’ve been reworking using some new technique I learned about a month ago. I’ll have that up in a few days as it is currently a work in progress.

As a quick update, I didn’t do as well this semester in the grading department as I would have liked. I received a B- in Color Theory, an A- in Primitive Photography, and an A in Art History Critical Theory, which finished me out with term GPA of 3.447 and a cumulative GPA of 3.668 (through 2 semesters). While that can hardly be considered a bad GPA, I would like it to be better. Obviously the Color Theory grade was the biggest factor in straddling the A-/B+ realm. That class was something else (long story) and I’m glad to be done with it. I’ve promised myself that I won’t be taking any more “3rd Floor” courses (the 3rd floor is mostly reserved for the Graphic Arts program at UH), but of course we never know what opportunities may present themselves, so onward I push. Next semester I’m going to be taking Traditional Photography (formerly known as Intermediate Photography), which is a film based course, The Aesthetics of Faith (which sounds really cool as it will be taking some Critical Theory and applying it to original creations), and Video Art (a requirement of the Photography/Digital Media program at UH). I’m going to be a busy little bee come the end of August.

At this point I really don’t have much more to say. I’m coming out of my creative slump so expect a lot more soon. Have a good night, everyone, and keep tuned for updates on events as they happen. As for now, I’ll leave you with a signature creation from this past semester. This is a Van Dyke print of my Facebook profile photo. I hope you enjoy. Good night.

Click to Embiggen