Portrait Series - My Girlfriend

Fashion Series - Circa Shoes

Food Series- Extraordinary Desserts

Flora Series

Online Photographer: Rachel Reber

Rachel Reber is an old friend back from high school. We both were into the digital arts and I've always like seeing what she can do especially with a camera. This girl is amazing when it comes to capturing and conveying emotions through her photos. Her photos pretty much focus on people. She would take shots of peoples body parts, it is never the whole body. She focuses more on body arts to convey her messages. She uses different effects on her photos like different colors, black and white, one color and more. Rachel Reber's photos are something to look at and watch out for.

http://sickwithmagic.tumblr.com/

Online Photographer: Ryan Cabal

Ryan Cabal is a close friend and he pretty much inspired me to go out there and take pictures. A lot of his photos are close up of objects like japanese things, peoples faces and then some. I like his work because it is similar to mine and how I take close up of shoes and give inanimate objects more life to them because people don't view it until they see it in a different perspective and aspect.  

http://raian365.tumblr.com/

Chris Mayne

When Chris Mayne came into our class and demonstrated the usage of the camera and the pictures he has taken. After seeing his photos, he truly has skills and patience. He is able to capture photos of birds without the blurriness and capturing the shot in a great angle. It is amazing how long he waits for the right moment to take the photo and the different locations he has shot in. Chris Mayne has a lot of luck and skills on his side because he is able to capture great photos and gets a lot of opportunities to go out and just take pictures. I remember he told us that he has a family member that can fly him out to where ever he wanted to go to take his pictures. 

Of course someone with his skill has to have a great cannon camera to back him up. He also had other equipment that helped him acquire those shot. I remember he showed us this device that attaches the camera onto you and you are able to take a more stable and focused shot. It is amazing to see how a photographer or any kind of artist do their craft, their experience, the equipment they use and more...

An-My Le

An-My Le is a famous Vietnamese photographer. Her photos focuses on landscape, particularly the military. It was interesting that she was able to gain access with the military to take pictures of them during their training, exercises, and preparations. Her photos reflect the impact, consequences, and the destruction of war. With her black and white photos, she was able to take and capture the tension between the landscape background and the battleground scene.

Field Trip #4 Balboa Park MOPA: Beloved Daughters Exhibition

I went to Balboa Park over the weekend and I caught the Beloved Daughters Exhibition. This exhibition must be the most emotional and heartbreaking out of all the galleries, art shows, exhibition and art events I've been to. It was hard to view the photos of the wives and the little girls, especially after reading the description and the stories behind them. These women were basically being punished for many different reasons like for giving birth to girls and not giving birth to boys.
They say pictures are worth a thousand words, but the pictures in this exhibition goes way beyond that. Photographs in the exhibition are really an eye opener of what is going on in other parts of the world. The photos portrayed a lot of sad and torn emotions. The women and girls in the photos are not smiling and it went even well with the picture being grayed because it emphasized more of the sad emotions.

Carrie Mae Weems

Carrie Mae Weems is a strong artist and photographer. Her work conveys powerful meanings that viewers may or may not be offended by them. She uses what has been done in the past and corporate them with the history of African Americans and recreate them in this series of past events that lead up to the present. Each photo has a historical background to it like photos of inspirational African American heroes like Martin Luther King Jr. all the way up to the present with the presidency of Obama.

Kicks With Style

More Kicks With Style

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman's work of art is very interesting. In the video, it is amusing to see how an artist comes up with their ideas and how they would approach it to make it work. Cindy uses a lot of different props in her art photos like make up, masks, clown noses and costumes. It is amazing how she uses different props and different techniques to capture different meanings and portraying people in a different and unique way. Cindy goes through this process of editing her photos to see what works in order to bring out a character to life in her photos. I like the idea of not titling work. Cindy mentions that if she doesn't title, the viewer's will be able to interpret it their eyes see it. Compared to having the work of art being subjected and focused to that title.

Infrared Quiz

Composite

Quiz 1

Field Trip #3 Balboa Park MOPA: Ansel Adams

I was able to catch Ansel Adams work at Balboa Park over the weekend. Ansel is a very interesting landscape photographer. Most photographers will portray their landscape photos in full out color to show the depths and detail of the landscape. But Ansel purposely put his work in black and white. For some reason these type of photographs actually works because it gives it more of a contrast and a certain depth of feel to it. After viewing some of the photos, I felt like I was in a different time because some of the photographs looked like they were shot from the past which was very interesting to me.

Shoe photographs

Field Trip #2 Ordover Gallery: Kim Zuill

Another artist that caught my attention was Kim Zuill. Since one of the series were supposed o focus on this semester is flora, I was able to learn a lot on how other artist are able to capture flora pictures. Zuill's photos of flowers was very playful. She was able to manipulate her subject in a interesting way. She gets up close and zooms in on different areas of the flower and manipulate it in an artistic way which is very interesting. I like how she uses a black background on the flower, it gives a blank space as if the flower is just floating up there. Also the use of the black space was a smart technique because it does not take away the attention from the flower.

Field Trip #1 Ordover Gallery: Abe Ordover

I went to the Ordover Gallery over the weekend. The gallery was filled with pictures, mostly from the photographer named Abe Ordover. Most of the pictures he took looked like they were hand painted which was really interesting. Ordover is very skilled in creating that illusion of making the audience think they are looking at a painting, but in reality are actually looking at a taken photograph. Most of his photographs are of people, nature, landscape and animals. His animal pictures really caught my eye. The timing and the way he captured the animals in their habitats is really interesting. It is amazing on how most of his pictures of animals are kind of looking directly at the camera. I don't know how up close he got in taking those pictures, but it still amazing that photographers are able to take pictures of animals on the spot like that, let alone producing a quality picture that is really clear and up on your face that you can almost touch it.

Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon is a very interesting photographer. Avedon has a talent for shooting his portraits of people on a plane white background. Even though there is no background or setting in his work, Avedon was able to capture the character and the personality of his subject onto a plane background. It is very interesting how he is able to capture the character and personality of his subjects by having them look directly into the camera. In his work, you can sense the emotion of his subjects and have a sense of what they are feeling. 

Overlay and Blending Mode

Black & White / Split Tone

Rick Smolan

Rick Smolan is a very inspiring man who talked about his stories and journeys he's been on since he became a photographer. Rick went on these different trips visiting different countries all around the world doing what he is passionate about which is taking pictures. He talks about how his career as a photographer completely took off by taking on these projects and getting his name out there in the world. As an inspiring artist, he opened my eyes by talking about the work he's done, the difficulties he had to overcome, and how he manages to pull through with a bit of luck at the end.