Not books

Shot people today! Its nice to get back to working with models! Then I put them into books, which is more of a pain in the ass than I initially thought it would be.

booksbooksbooksbooksbooks

More books, staying up way too late working on these.

6 days until my senior review.

Turning a new page

I shot some more thesis stuff yesterday and decided to get back to my super book destroying roots, both by hollowing out a portion of a book, about 250 2 inch sqares, and folding some paper cranes. In addition I also tried constructing objects out of the pages and juxtaposing them with text. I'm not sure how I feel about these but it was certainly different from the rest of the books I've been shooting lately. I could explain these images more but I am curious as to what everyone else takes away from them.

Night light

I've been spending a lot of time doing studio work lately so it seemed like a good as time as any to get outside an shoot, also I had to for an assignment so that worked quite well. Shot a friend of mine who was gracious enough to appear in some of my earlier hipster photos but didn't make the final cut. I'm trying to get out of the super refined studio aesthetic right now, and trying to get closer to something that looks less controlled. Not really sure what I came out with, possible implied narrative as a bonus though.

Gum Print

Reworked an image I shot for my Studio II final. I like the original, but I love this Gum Bichromate and cyanotype print. I also drew in the string with pen. It has a much softer feel than the original and the texture is great. Sadly you can't feel the paper through the internet.

More books, in non-silver

I thought about printing my thesis in non-silver processes like cyanotype, gum bichromate, and palladium. Its carrying over from the original idea of obsolete things and going from analog to digital and back to analog. Although these images are all from digital captures so its just going to "obsolete" analog processes. I like the images but I'm not sure if they are as strong as the original images. They have a certain aesthetic but I'm not sure if its the one I want to have for the book series. However they do give me a lot of control manipulating the images that isn't photoshop and that is always refreshing.

CMYK Separation, printed in Gum Bichromate

Cyanotype

Cyanotype and Magenta Gum Bichromate

Cyanotype and Viridian Green Gum Bichromate

Palladium and Cyanotype

Color + Books

I had a really good response to what I shot for wednesday so I decided to see what I could do without a deadline bearing over me (although senior reviews are 25 days away). I thought I would throw in some color with gels, since the one that had gels on it in the previous shoot elicited the most responses. I've tried to improve on hiding the text by using shallower depth of field and vignetting but its still needs work.

I'm going to attempt some drawing in the books next shoot, need to find some reference, I haven't drawn in ages. If all else fails I'm going back to paper cranes, but I think I've forgotten how to make them again.

Senior Review Practice

Yesterday day we had a practice senior review of sorts. All three senior workshop teachers critiqued our work in front of our respective classes. The critiques were a little fast paced but they had to cover around 30 people in less than 4 hours. It was an intense experience but went over a lot better and less stressfully then I thought, but it was probably a cake walk compared to the actual senior reviews at the end of the month. Overall I got some good feedback and things went a hell of a lot better than I thought they might go. I had been shooting new stuff late night Tuesday, with the most finicky of camera I have ever shot with, the Phase One P25 digital back on a Hassleblad 503CW body, but when it did work it was marvelous. I was shooting in one of our tiny studios and was practically shooting from in the hallway at times because of the lens I was using. I didn't get home until well after three in the morning and somehow made it back to school an hour before my classes critique started and managed to edit and get three 16"x20" prints made and a thesis statement that I was actually sort of happy with done before the 1 o'clock critique. 

I've returned to my work on books and have started destroying the books more in an effort to more fully transform them. I'm still having difficulty dealing with the text as I am more interested in it as a visual element most of the time, and tend to glaze over the actual text. I used shallow depth of field to attempt to make most of the background text illegible but there is still some problem text in a few images. I have another meeting coming up next week so it looks like there are a lot more late nights shooting with the Phase back. I wanted to shoot film, but this is turning out to be much more practical at the moment (when it works) and much easier than scanning negatives. I really like the first two of these images but I'm hoping to make a lot of progress visually over the course of the month. Everything may eventually end up as a non-silver print but I like these images as they are right now.

"Untitled"

"Privacy"

"Corridors"

Props

For my fashion class we had to do an assignment with props, and in all honesty I didn't feel up to the task of making something. So I decided to do it via photoshop. I was really nervous about presenting the work since everyone else actually made things but I got a lot of feedback and response to the work which was nice since sometimes pieces can be met with deafening silence. Which is worse than someone saying they hate it, because at least they have an opinion on it.

I wanted to do an idea that I had thought of a while ago of mother earth being corrupted by pollution. I didn't go far enough with the mother earth idea, I'd like to redo it with a nude and with more greenery to contrast with the metal and perhaps a more gritty addition to contrast with the greenery. It ended up being an interesting piece regardless and was a nice experiment for me.

This is the first attempt with just the smoke stacks added.

A cropped version of what I showed in class.

Endless march of Hipsterness

Now that I have finished the assignment I can go through and scan the other 100 frames I shot and pick out some other good ones that didn't quite fit the assignment as well. I decided to shoot some ISO 800 film just to get some pictures with addition grain. I'm quite enamored with film at the moment, which is encouraging because I need to send my digital out to be fixed.

Hipster(s)!

I ended up not going with the tighter crop on this image and printing the full frame since the bottom was underexposed. It brought out some of the grain of the film (despite being Ektar 100) which fit the aesthetic of the hipster culture quite well. It was a lot of fun to shoot all of these. I need to find some more hipsters to pose for me.

Rough Cut

For my fashion class we had to shoot "Philly Style" so I immediately thought about shooting hipsters. Which was a great deal of fun, but since I didn't have any real live hipsters to shoot I improvised. So I found some hipstery objects, like plaid, PBR, fixed gear bikes, and vintage vinyl. These are really rough scans since I didn't have enough time to go through and make good scans of everything, but I needed something to judge them by.

New Apartment

Out the back door

Buddy Holly

Alternatives of my new wayfarers.