End of School!

The end of the school year is so close! Only a few more days then finals week! I can do this.. I think..

Class Time

I am sitting in class doing absolutely nothing. I should make myself productive, but I really don't want to. I will just wait for Tim to come over and talk to me about my book design before I do anything!

Can't wait for school to be over!

Final BDS project

I am doing Dan Winters for the final project. We are creating a book. I chose him because I really love his celebrity portraits. The ones of Will Ferrell, Sandra Bullock, and Michael Jordan are some of my favorites of his. He has a whole bunch of images on his website www.danwintersphoto.com. He also does other subjects like scientific photography.

ROCK CHALK!

So this whole box project isn't really coming along very well.. for the fact that I have no motivation to work on it... CHAMPIONSHIP GAME TONIGHT!!!! ROCK CHALK!!!

Spring Break!

So glad that it is finally spring break!!! Time to relax and not have to do anything school related.

Website Reflections

      Martin Puryear’s work is very abstract and different from anything I have seen or viewed before. All of the materials used in his work seem to be organic; materials not manmade. I think that is neat.  Puryear’s work also gives off an earthy feel, also by the materials he uses. Some of his pieces remind me of my grandpa’s house in Vermont. My grandpa lives in a pretty secluded area. There is a lot of opened space in his backyard that leads to a wooded area. You can also see the mountains from his backyard. Some of the pieces Puryear remind me of the walks we used to go on; when we would pick up sticks or rocks. I think it would be cool to experience his pieces in person. Being able to walk around and touch his work to feel the texture and to see all sides of the piece would be an ideal situation. His artistic ability is incredible, and his pieces are beautiful. 

     Kendall Buster’s work is the total opposite of Puryear’s. Some of Buster’s work reminds me of jellyfish in the ocean with the roundness of the objects he has created with a blue background. The group of images called “New Growth” reminds me of a cityscape. It brings back memories of New York City because I lived there when I was a child. The material Buster uses is very different and unique and I really like it. If he had used a different material I don’t think he would have had the same effect or look. His work seems very industrial. It also seems that he uses shapes that we use/see every day; there are not a lot of organic/freeform shapes in his work. Buster’s work would be very fun and a different experience to be able to view his works in person and to walk around them and to feel the textures of the mesh that he uses. 

chair project

Is this chair project ever going to end?! Drawing it over and over again does not seem necessary.

I dislike this cardboard chair project... a lot

Cardboard Chair

All weekend I was trying to figure out how I was going to build this chair.. I even had a dream about how to do all the folds and everything.

After building the chair I am pumped to say that it works.

Roland Barthes Camera Lucida

Roland Barthes Camera Lucida

After reading Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida I found it difficult to read, and hard to understand. Throughout the reading, there were a few things that stood out to me. The first quote was “Color is a coating applied later on to the original truth of the black and white photograph.” I thought this was interesting because I almost feel the same way. I prefer black and white images over color images. I believe in black and white images, whatever is being captured has more beauty in black and white, than it would in color. Barthes finished that idea with this: “For me, color is an artifice, a cosmetic (like the kind used to paint corpses).” The rest of the article goes on to talk about photographs in different ways; by date, how photographs are violet, how they don’t keep a memory, etc. I thought how Barthes said that photographs aren’t memories was interesting because you would think if you looked at an image you would remember something from that time, but according to Barthes you do not. “…it actually blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter-memory.”

Susan Sontag's "On Photography"

Susan Sontag’s “On Photography”

“To collect photographs is to collect the world.” This quote by Susan Sontag really caught my eye; I found it to be the most interesting part of the whole excerpt. I like how Sontag described photographs and how it was a still photo and that movies and televisions light up your room, but then go out, unlike photographs that are always there. All together I thought that this excerpt from Sontag’s book was very interesting and filled with information. She makes me think about photography in more ways than one; making me see photography in ways that I have not thought about, which I thought was very interesting. 

John Szarkowski’s The Photographer’s Eye

I found John Szarkowski’s The Photographer’s Eye kind of difficult to read. The first few paragraphs were probably the most difficult to understand, having to read it more than once. When I was reading it, it felt like it really did not flow very well, and I found myself having to read some sentences more than once so I could understand what Szarkowski was saying. I did find the piece interesting, how he separated the piece and talking about photography into five sections: The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time, and Vantage Point. In these sections Szarkowski was descriptive and gave substantial information, not leaving me asking myself “now what does he mean by this.” 

Back to school

"Back to school. Back to school, to prove to Dad that I'm not a fool. I got my lunch packed up, my boots tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight" - Billy Madison

Well yesterday was the first day back to class after winter break. I am excited to do this photography project as the first project this semester. I hope this semester won't be so hard on me!