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Yummy Food by Julie Le | BOOK INFO

Women Hold Up Half the Sky

Women at Work in China

This exhibit was being shown at the Cal State University San Marcos. It is about the many jobs Chinese women take on to make ends meet. The whole exhibition opened my eyes to the many trials that these women experience. Coming from a country that values the male gender over females; males outnumbering females by a great ratio, it is hard for women to look for decent jobs. This exhibit reminded me of a National Geographic Documentary about baby girls in china. The documentary, in my opinion is closely related to the issues that the photographer brought up in his exhibition. It made me sad to see women constrained by traditional beliefs and are unable to follow their dreams. The "Women Hold Up Half the Sky" gallery has inspired me to take more politically inclined photos and make a difference by raising awareness to the public about social issues.

MOPA

Micheal Light- Human Interaction

His piece was an aerial photograph of man made landscapes. I liked his work because it was blown up in such a large scale you feel like the world below belongs to ants. I enjoyed looking at his work because everything was in focus. It felt like i could reach out and grab the landscape. His works mainly consist of consumption and natural resources.

Uta Barth "State of Idling as an act of Defiance"

Her work is about her immediate surroundings which is primarily about finding ways to make the viewer more aware of their own activity of looking. I enjoyed her works of art because she takes pictures of everyday things and make them beautiful. It reminds me of people who blog with pictures because the take pictures of everyday things and sometimes make them beautiful. It makes me want to try photo blogging sometime.

Susan Rankaitis-

Her work consists of her interests in relationships between art and science and the connection between mind, emotion, and awareness. It was kind of hard to understand where she was coming from in this piece however it was easy to appreciate its beauty. I liked how the curved lines extend out of the piece and the variations of the colors in the background add more texture.

Ken Gonzales-

He appropriates images of lynchings by digitally removing the victim's body from each photographs, which forces the audience to focus on the participants of the lynchings. This piece made me sad but however, like how Gonzales wanted I ended up focusing on the audiences and it made me wonder what they were thinking and how they were feeling at that time. It also made me think about how I would feel like if I was there during that time when the picture was taken.

Mona Kuhn-

Her work was about shots of her native country in brazil from her return to it after 20 years of being out of the country. Her pictures were very pretty but I found myself being bored and having little interest in her work. Sorry!

Todd Hido-

 He takes pictures of background of northern United States. The photograph I liked the most is one that was shot during twilight through a rainy window. It made me happy looking at his pictures because they were peaceful and serene. His shots were done in a monochromatic manner with emphasis on the weather.

Ordover Gallery

The Ordover Gallery artist list consist of:

Charles Cramer: Lyrical Landscapes

Tom O Scott:

Olof Carmel:

Peter Fay:

Abe Ordover:

Out of all the galleries I looked at for this class, the Ordover Gallery was my favorite. I really enjoy taking picture of and looking at landscape and nature photography so looking at these works of art were enjoyable. My favorite artist out of all of them would be Olof Carmel. His works of art made me feel really amazed that such places actually exist on earth. Partially because I never seen anything like it around where I live. But his works of art are unique and vibrant in color. For the most part most if not all of the whole picture in focus and I thought that this concept is ideal for landscape photography.

My least favorite artist would be Abe Ordover. I thought that since the gallery was named after him he would at least have some pictures that looked good (in my opinion). In my point of view his photographs run a little repetitive and most of the reflective colors are not appealing and boring. Some of his works of art seems just like what someone who was tripping on acid would see or a computer monitor that got punched in the face. Overall I did enjoyed everyone's work except Abe Ordover.

Double page spread

For my double page spread I didn't want it it to be connected really so what I did instead was frame them right next to each other. You can see when the creamer gets put into the tea on the left and then the one of the right is seconds after the creamer gets mixed into the tea.

online artist/photographer 3

Jerry Swanson

Jerry Swanson is an photographer that focuses on photographing architecture and landscapes. I found out about him when I was browsing for architectural photography on google. What stood out to me about his work is how professional he is. On his website he goes straight to the details about what can he do for your business. He talks about his strengths in photography and really sells his work through his professionalism and attention to detail that is geared towards each customer's unique needs. Not only is he organized with the business aspects of art and photography but he also takes great pictures. The angles and point of views that he uses really emphasizes the beautiful architectural aspects of the building.

What I learned from looking at his website and portfolio is that great pictures are taken at any time of the day. I also got that being professional with how you present yourself and your work also is very important. Being able to handle the business aspects of art is very important for an artist's career and I feel that without the knowledge of that then many artists are susceptible to become what is commonly referred to as a "starving artist". Being able to balance your own creative license and the customer's needs and requirements are also important. From Swanson's webpage layout it made me learn how to organize and sell my work in a professional manner. The only thing I could say about this artist is that I just wished he had more pictures to look at.

Online artist/photographers 2

Brain Kosoff

Brian Kosoff is a still life/landscape photographer. He used to work as a city still life photographer but now works as a landscape photographer that captures the pure essence of simplicity and beauty in photography. His photographs are all in black and white and usually zoomed out and everything in focus. I really enjoyed looking at his work because everything was so eerily simplistic and beautiful. It makes you wonder how can such things in nature exist. His work inspires me to go out and take more pictures of everything because from what I learned from Kosoff's work is that there is beauty in everything. His work inspires me to take more black and white photos because from his work I learned that beautiful photography does not need to come in color.

Online artist/photographers

Jeremy Turner

Jeremy Turner is a landscape photographer who focuses on nature photography in the wilderness. His work captures the beauty of nature and the many colors that nature has around the world. I really enjoyed his work because he is able to photograph the vibrant colors of the landscape as well as take beautiful monochromatic photographs as well. His photographs are evidence of his hard work and effort used to go into the wilderness to photograph these amazing pictures. What I also like about his work is that he takes panoramic shots and black and white photographs. His black and white photographs have very high contrast between the lights and darks which give the photos great depth. His work is not restricted to landscape photography but he also branches out and has work dealing with architectural photography as well.

Jim Brandenburg part 2

In the second half of the video, Brandenburg talked about wolves and his experiences with taking photos of them. The photos he took were really pretty and had great composition. It was admirable of him to do this project for himself and very amazing that his work influenced people to be more aware of the environment. His work brought on the preservation of many wildlife habitats which could of disappeared if it wasn't for his efforts. His photos also inspired me to learn more about photography and nature photography.

Final Book Ideas

The theme that I wanted to go with for my final book project is photos of cute desserts. The main idea would be about desserts that look cute or pretty and yummy at the same time! I like the idea of food photography and how food can be aesthetically pleasing as well as taste good too. the photos i used for my snapfish are pictures i took of desserts. 

these are some pictures that I found on the internet that has the same concept of dessert and tea pictures I had in mind. I would also like to stick to pastel and spring colors to make it fit the cute theme.

Snapfish Photos

Fruit Tulip Mousse Cup

Miniature Tiramisu

Creme Brulee

I haven't gotten my snapfish photos in the mail yet but these are the ones I decided to use. I thought the pictures turned out well after I edited them through photoshop it's just not as pastel in color as I would hope. The colors seem a bit primary and masculine in my opinion.

Jim Brandenburg

Jim Brandenburg is a nature photographer that worked with National Geographic. After many years of working with them, the pressures of being a document photographer left him feeling unfulfilled and empty. He moved to Lake Superior to find himself and have a personal and creative renewal. He decided to do a 90 day photoshoot with just 1 photo per day to spark back his interest in photographing nature. I thought that, that was respectable and I liked his work. I also admire his commitment to his 90 day photoshoot and dedication to photographing nature. Overall his work is very beautiful and I admire his commitment.

Photoshop: Levels and Cropping

Before and After!

Collier Schorr

Collier Schorr is a photographer that is best known for taking pictures of adolescent boys. Her work has a sense of sexuality in them. I thought that her work was interesting because here she is taking photographs of boys and having them pose in a manner that one would think would only exclusively be towards women. From the video, it seemed as though she tried to prove a sense of femininity in things that are masculine. An example would be her photographs of the wrestlers. I found her work interesting but somewhat invasive. When she was in the gym photographing the wrestlers she reminded me of the paparazzi getting in their faces and thriving on their anguish. That part bothered me. but overall her work is very nice.

Sally Mann

I really liked her work. Her attitude towards art was really different. Sometimes I don't like it when people ask what's the artwork suppose to mean because it shouldn't have to have a meaning behind it. It's fine if it does, but it shouldn't have to. However her just saying that "art is just for fun" kind of contradicts her actions during the video when she was working meticulously. I thought it was very interesting how she opt for a old fashioned camera and film printing method to make her photography. Her work was very beautiful despite the fact that some of them were of naked children. But I did enjoy looking at her landscape photos because they had that glow that you would associate with heaven or a dreamlike quality. Which is the kind of artwork that I like to look at.

Roni Horn

Personally I did not get too inspired by her work as a whole. I did not understand the concept of the book with the numerous pictures of the same woman. I thought her photography was beautiful but where she was coming from with her work was difficult to understand. However, I did enjoy looking at her various photographs of water even though I feel like that's something anybody who has a camera can do. The one thing that reached out to me was the setup of her exhibition. It was not placed on a wall, but rather on wedged between glass frames and placed in different angles where viewers can have different perspectives of her work. I thought that was very unique. The setup gave me the impression that she wanted the viewers to flow through her work similar to how water would instead of just having them lined up against a wall. Another thing that I liked about her was that she felt that text was visual. And all in all, I enjoyed her work because its simplicity and how she sort of gravitates to the shade of white in her work.

Texture and Font

Rick Smolan

Rick Smolan is a very well known talented photographer that works for the Times magazine as well as National Geographic. He travels around the world and take photographs that move people. His works made it to front pages of many well known magazines and such works include photographic books of countries such as Austrailia as well as documentary story of G.I. children in different countries. Now he works as a book publishers publishing photographic books containing works from other famous photographers.