Photoshop work

Last week a fellow photographer asked if I would edit some headshots she had just recently taken of an opera singer.  I was happy to help out and have the opportunity to keep up on my retouching skills. There were 11 photos that needed to be edited.  I really enjoy looking at the before and after, it reminds me of two things: 1) that professional digital cameras are not designed to take “great” photos, but are meant to capture as much information so that photographer has something to work with and manipulate during editing.  This means that there is a lot more detail, but you don’t always want everything that the camera captures to show up – like fine lines on the face. (film is much more forgiving and softer).  2) What we see in magazines is so far from realistic. So I thought I would share the differences between what is captured and what the image ends up looking like:

Abstract Food

Recently I have been shooting nostalgic food for another project.  I have been exploring how we relate to food and identify with it.  While shooting that project I started messing around with abstraction.  I am a bit entertained by the idea of taking something very familiar, for example skittles, and rendering them unrecognizable.  I like how our minds want to make sense of images that are not initially recognizable, and it starts guessing at what is captured within the photo.  Some of the images are just splashes of color and gradation, others have more detail that show a bit of what is the subject.

It is actually pretty challenging to take very recognizable food and remove recognition of it, some work and others don’t. It is a bit of trial and error. Here are some of the abstract images I shot of some childhood sweets. enjoy.

Backyard Wedding

For my first weekend in New York, my girlfriend, Carly Otness, asked if I would shoot a wedding with her.  We started photography school together and enjoy working with each other; we both have different styles but find that they compliment each other well.  I was more than happy to have an opportunity to shoot with her again.

The wedding was for a childhood friend of Carly’s who was marrying a man from Portugal. It was held at the home that she grew up in; it was a gorgeous house tucked in the trees about 45 minutes north of Manhattan. The most unique thing about the wedding was that everyone was asked to wear white.  It was a beautiful backyard wedding, the ceremony was held in a garden, the cocktail hour by the pool, and the reception under a white tent on the patio.  They hired a live band – which I always prefer over a dj (as long as they are good) – had great food (Portuguese inspired), delicious cocktails, an old school photoboth, a cigar lounge, and bottles of wine as a party favor.

Carly was the lead photographer and captured some wonderful images, I was the second shooter – focusing mainly on the details and candid moments.  Here are some favorite shots of mine from the day.  enjoy.

 

Poetic inspiration

The title image I use for this blog comes from a series of images I did while in graduate school.  I think as photographers it can be easy to continue to shoot the same subject over and over again.  It is also easy to get stuck in a pattern of “seeing”.  I know I am attracted to specific things – mainly graphic compositions.

A lot of artist make their careers off of creating the same thing over and over again, in different variations. There is nothing wrong with that approach, however, for myself I tend to get bored when all of my images start looking like each other.  So to continue evolving my eye and shooting different images, I will give myself different assignments when I set out shooting. Sometimes they are simple, like spending a week photographing a single subject or only taking photos while looking down, other times they are more complicated.

This specific series of images came from an assignment where we were asked to interpret a poem. I love poetry, but have never used it as a source of inspiration.  I chose a poem by Pablo Neruda – a love sonnet:

Sonnet XVII

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

For me, as I read and re-read this poem, the more I appreciated his ability to describe something that is nearly impossible for most of us to articulate.  My favorite line of the poem is “I love you as certain dark things are loved,/secretly, between the shadow and the soul.” The last bit – between the shadow and the soul – is such a beautiful concept for me. I wanted to see if I could create images that capture that concept.  Where does the shadow me the soul? What does that look like? These are some of the images that I discovered, enjoy.

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Lace and Femininity

Last year I was introduced to the work of Cal Lane.  She is a female welder who turns masculine materials into metal lace, rendering the object useless. For me it was an interesting commentary between masculinity and femininity, and it made me look at lace in a new way.  Prior to viewing Cal Lane’s work, I associated lace with little old ladies and wedding dresses, I did not consider what it could say as a medium.

Another inspiration for the use of lace was a portrait by Imogen Cunningham.  The use of lace took a seemingly simple portrait and added literal layers and metaphoric layers to the image.

As an artist, I use my creative process as a means of articulating my thoughts and emotions. This usually ranges from simple ideas, like the beauty in moldy oranges, to more complex emotions, like cooping with loss.  When faced with something challenging with my life, I know if I can find a way to express it in my work, it will help me come to terms with everything.

Recently I had to face a personal loss that came in the form of a miscarriage.  While struggling with the mourning process, I began brainstorming a creative articulation of my emotions. For whatever reason, lace was the main material I wanted to utilize.  I love what I ended up creating, it is nothing amazing, and the concept still needs work, but for me, for the moment, it captured what I was going through.  It is a weaving of white lace over a canvass, with one strip of lace transitioning from white to red.  It is simple, quiet, sad, confusing, beautiful, delicate, feminine…

Beautiful Ugly

Beautiful Decay is one of my favorite bodies of work.  It is a simple concept, seeing beauty in what is normally found grotesque. My interest in photographing molding oranges started when I lived in a house that had an orange tree in the backyard.  I spent an afternoon picking up all the molding oranges that were collecting at the base of it and drawing flies into our backyard.  Initially completely discussed by having to touch the oranges, I began to admire all the colors and patterns that were covering the surface of the oranges as I placed them into a trash bag.

One day I would love to see them all hanging in a gallery together, large prints, that take the oranges beyond their actual size, into something that is merely an object. Where the viewer can admire and hopefully grow to appreciate the beauty of mold in all it’s wonderful texture, color, and pattern.  This body of work was also inspired by photographer David Maisel’s body of work Library of Dust.  If you do not know about this body of work, check it out, its both beautiful and disturbing.

I hope you love my oranges as much as I do.

A Lovely Life

Awhile ago I started this project just for fun.  I would spent time every week (well tried anyway) photographing details of the small town I was living in (Ojai, Ca). It was a nice way to get to know the town, and to take a break from my MFA program by just taking simple photos. The idea was to print them all 3″x3″ and have a gallery show in town, with a wall covered in all the photos, plus a couple of my favorites printed large and framed. Now that I’m no longer living there we’ll see where this project goes.

Ojai was the smallest town I have ever lived in; it was cute and quaint and contain within it a lot things that I had always wanted to live around.  As I go through all my photos that I took while living there, I will post my favorites.  Here are a couple: