Last week I finally did a photo shoot with my lovely friend Chelsea. We went to Huntington Central Park. The generator I borrowed for the soft box lights I was gonna use didn't work, so that was a bummer, but that just means I'll have to do another shoot!
This pic is of our setup in a perfect little nook in the park, we got our dressing room and everything. There was a lot of stuff to carry that's for sure.
One of the themes I had in mind was Pandora's box, where it turns from innocent curiosity into something darker and full of despair. So those are the first pictures. Chelsea and me also just had fun shooting pics together. The other ones are sort of whimsical cutesy ones, we tried an "asian/japanese" sort of shoot, but it didn't really work out, haha. Then at the end of the day-tired after shooting and changing all day-we did a circusy one. It was fun, nothing too in depth on anything, so enjoy :)
Pandora's Box and Randomness
My 365 Day Challenge
I have another blog I am now in the 13th day of posting, and the challenge for me is to take a new picture everyday and post it on this blog. It's called 365 Days of Christine. And I'm pretty excited about it, because it pushes me to create something everyday. So here's the link, come follow me on my adventure. :)
Intoxication365.
Thanks Banksy
News from the Los Angeles Times that renown street artist, Banksy, is sponsoring free Mondays at MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), The Geffen Contemporary, for the Art in the Streets show he is a part of. He quotes, "I don't think you should have to pay to look at graffiti. You should only pay if you want to get rid of it." True words that make me like him even more. Thanks Banksy. The show is running until the 8th of August, read more here.
Piece below is by: Banksy, I Hate Mondays.
Quote: The Brother's Bloom
"I don't know about 'truths.' A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells, the less you know." -Penelope (from The Brother's Bloom).
Fantastic movie by the way, the quote is from the eccentric female lead played by Rachel Weisz, and she quotes this after showing Bloom her camera made from a watermelon. Perhaps I should try making one of those, hehe.
Photographer: Allison Stewart
This semester in my color photo class, one of the teacher assistants, Allison Stewart, is a graduate student who presented her work to our class, so I thought I would share it with you too. To check out more of her work, go to Allison-Stewart.com.
What a Nice Surprise
My sister told me several months ago that my photo was hanging in one of the offices at my old high school, Orange Lutheran. I had to go check it out. And just like she said, my photo was hanging in the administration office I believe. Wow, even after I already graduated, it was a pretty cool feeling knowing I had a photo still hanging up at my old school.
One of my sister's friends also said another one of my pics was in the graphic design/photo classroom. That is another visit I'll have to do.
Color Theory Project 1: Saturation
I realized I have not put up any of my work from my Color Theory class this last semester. It certainly was one of my favorite classes and was very interesting to me how colors work together and how our brain perceives them.
We did a lot of exercises this semester to help prepare us for these projects. This first project was fairly easy, what was mainly difficult was deciding what to do. We needed to basically create a poster, but one using all fully saturated colors. My teacher for this class, Jeff Atherton, is pretty awesome. He helped me out a lot picking colors and whatnot. I chose to do my posters on sea monsters just because they're cool and like destroying stuff. And I really wanted to go with yellows and turquoisey blues, but with sea monsters that wasn't going to work. I needed angry, menacing colors. That's where the red comes in and it was fun.
All our projects this semester needed to be painted. I had painted with acrylics before, and they are temperamental and difficult to deal with, but I started to get the hang of it and enjoyed actually painting with acrylic, I did surprise myself a lot this semester. One goal I had was to do my best and stick with doing what I wanted, and it worked for me.
This project, I kept it graphic. So I painted giant swatches of a single color, then drew my own stencil, traced it over the colors, cut them out, and glued them together. Simple.
During the critique, when it came to my picture, I saw that the boat I had in the middle looked like a shark fin because of my last minute decision where I had decided to paint it gray. Everything else I like and my teacher did as well, and we mutually agreed that the middle (where the boat was) needed to be fixed. So instead of going through and repainting everything, I just scanned it and edited it on the computer in Photoshop. Voila! The final product is much better. :)
Color Photo Project 3: Simulacra
Simulacra: the constructed image.
1. slight, unreal, superficial likeness or semblance
2. effigy, image, or representation
3. re-creation, fabrication, counterfeit, fake
This was the third assignment of my semester. I'll briefly mention right now that I am behind on blogging yet again, but I've been enjoying my summer thus far. I've done well this semester with getting my projects turned in on time, which was one of my goals. I feel that sometimes when given a photo project, I need more time than what is given. So it is coming up with the best of what I got at the time.
This project I plan to work on a make stronger during the summer. My teacher likes the ideas I am developing with this project and finds them interesting, it is just a matter of working with it more. I feel I'm close though.
This project works with appropriated images, which is basically me taking pictures of pictures and turning it into my own work. By re-creating these images of open-mouthed sexy women in advertisements, the original picture becomes distorted and pixelated creating this strangeness and fakeness to the image. I also printed the pictures very large to enhance this distortion.
I went through lots of editing such as doing different sets of pictures that all still correlated with each other, but money and time subtracted that from the equation. I ended up printing six pictures in a grid format, something that is already laid out for you like a magazine spread, where I originally got my pictures from. Even though I shot hundreds of pics, I narrowed it down to six to keep it simpler, and less overwhelming.
Struggling
I've been so conflicted lately about my work, my desires, my art. I feel like I'm in a constant struggle trying to find...something...hoping for an explanation about...something...but what? Part of the struggle is because I don't know. Is that a beautiful thing? Is that art? I think I'm chasing something, something I'm not quite sure what it is yet. But whatever it is, I hope it's a dream...
Color Photo Class: Portraiture
I'll be honest my project doesn't really have a concept too much behind it. I decided to shoot pictures of people that are somehow involved in my life and it was for the most part candid, trying to catch them in a moment, a snapshot. It was more of an experiment, and I used flash on all the pictures I turned in. I discovered while shooting (at the last minute) that I really like flash and decided to shoot the rest of my pictures using that.
My teacher said that technical wise my flash use was good, but she thought my previous work in previous classes was more imaginative. And I agree with her, I know she's right. I did however, have a few different ideas for this project, some didn't turn out the way I liked when I shot, and the one that I think would have possibly worked, I didn't have time to shoot (yes, because I procrastinated). So I can always resubmit, but it is not like I didn't like my photos. I absolutely do, but conceptually there's not much there. Some questions I need to ask are: How can I use the snapshot form in a different way? Possibly exposing our social tendencies. How should my flash be used? And that I could add more context into my pictures instead of cropping them so closely around the person. So quite a few options to push my work further.
Artist: Tara McPherson
I was at Urban Outfitters last week to get a birthday present for my sister, and found a Hello Kitty doll by Tara McPherson, oooo I was excited, it was so cute! That store has too much to look at I love it.
So I decided to do a blog entry on Tara McPherson, one of my favorite illustrators, who is a very talented and creative artist. I really mean that. She has her own unique style and color palette, even though much of her subject matter is cute, there's always that bite or darker side to it. Mischievous at times. She does a lot of poster work for bands and has many big name clients like KidRobot and DC Comics.
Check her out here.
Color Photo Class Assignment 1
Starting out the semester, we had our first project, and it was more like an experiment with color. Since many of the classes prior to taking this one was all in black and white, this was going to be fun. Besides, I had just gotten my new DSLR which I was excited to try out. One part of the experiment was to take pictures of variations of one color, then to contrast, another set of all neutral colors. Here are some of the things I took.
Cirque Berzerk Revisited
Last month on the 13th, I did go to Cirque Berzerk with my significant other and it was much more than I had asked for, very fun and entertaining. The contortionists were very talented, but I have to say my favorite act was when the four male acrobats started juggling themselves around on two trampolines, very fun and humorous. The posters make it out to be scary and dark, but it was not, plus there was a band and live music during the whole performance which was also very good. There were vendors on the bottom floor with unique and interesting merchandise.
And to top the evening off, me and my significant other (who introduced me to Pink's) went to the Original Pink's where there are delicious chili dogs, and they've been around since 1939. When we went around midnight, there was still a huge line! Anyways, if you haven't checked it out yet, I'm recommending it. Cheers.
