Matt Thyssen - Weekly Artist Post

Mike Seehagel

1. Landscapes, landscapes, and more landscapes.  You start to see the same exact technical choices in each and every one of these once you look at them long enough. A particular time of day, wide shots with foreground, middle-ground, and background, and a low aperture for more depth of field.  With that basic formula down, you can start spewing out as many nice landscapes as you'd like.

2. I suppose the artist's thematic intent was to portray the Canadian Rockies as they are.  There doesn't seem to be any political or social statement to any of these. Maybe he just wants to make some pretty pictures, or maybe he feels some kind of spiritual connection to the mountains.

3. What makes this set special, to me, is the location.  I suppose another viewer may just see some pretty landscapes that are nice for looking at, but don't really see any deeper meaning.  I want to be inside these pictures, my spirit yearns for places like this.  I connect well with these types of photographs.

Cynthia Bowles- Weekly artist

Mike Brodie 

Mike Brodie is a photographer that seeks to capture the experience of juvenile runaways in his A Period of Juvenile Prosperity. He used a low ISO for high quality. He also angled the camera in each photo to control what the viewer focuses on. His images have small areas of color contrast. For example, in the second image, the red of the scarf around his boot is complemented by the faded yellow green of the grass. 

I think Brodie intended to highlight their journey of running away. Their clothes suggest that they are living in poverty but survive with each other. However this ultimately shows the lack of authority in their lives. It seems as if the world has given up on them. He gives a reality check to society. Showing them what actually happens when a child is forced to live life alone and struggle to survive. 

I like this series because of the way he shows their experiences. His presence is not enforced on them, they continue like normal and he probably spent a great amount of time with them. I really like the first image. Choosing to have the bridge divide the image makes the picture for me. It shows the options most people take advantage of by using a car on the right. Instead, the boy looks towards the train coming from under the bridge as if his reality has arrived. 

Cynthia Bowles- Weekly artist post

TONY STAMOLIS

1. Tony Stamolis is a modern day photographer that uses a low ISO, a fast shutter speed, and a simi closed aperture to create the exposure he wants for each image. He also uses the color contrast between the foreground and background to highlight his focal points. For example, in the last image the contrast between the brown rusted gas tanks and the sky line makes the red drawn frowny face pop out. I believe he took the time to find the perfect position and time of day to take each image. He might have used a tripod in the second image to catch the skateboarder on the edge of the pool like that. 

2. Stamolis used these photos, as well as a few others in his series to show what is not normally seen by society. For example, in the first image, you normally see death metal fans in that scenery. In his Fresno series, he takes other images of drugs, gangs, and people in poverty. He shows the ugly truth about that city that very little people appreciate. 

3. I think by capturing the unseen world he brings up a lot of sociological issues. Like in first image,  it looks odd that two people like that would be in that kind of environment. I say that because normally, when people are wearing facial make up that, they are in a dark area with strobe lights and  a band. Its become a social norm. Stamolis takes the social norm and changes it to take away the stereotypes that come with that society.   

Cynthia Bowles- Weekly artis post

ROBERT D’ALESSANDRO

1. Robert D'alessandro uses black and white with all his photos in the series names 'Glory'. He also uses the american flag consecutively through out this series. He might have used a low ISO for high quality images but also used a tripod to prevent camera shake. In the second photo, I believed he defiantly used a tripod, a fast shutter speed, and a simi closed aperture. He uses natural lighting and the contrast of the american flag to emphasize his overall idea for this series.   

2. I think D'alessandro's intentions were to make a bold statement about the "American Dream". By frequently using the american flag, it is used as a symbol of the "American Dream". In the second image, the person reaching for the flag, to me, is a way of saying a lot of people who are americans are chasing those dreams. The third image, shows what some have sacrificed to try and reach the dream  that is spoken of so frequently in our society. 

3. I believed D'alessandro did an amazing job trying to convey such a bold statement through these photos. Looking at the series as a whole, it is clear that the ideal America doesn't exist. People may be very prideful and take advantage of the opportunities open to them, but there are many who are not as fortunate. The guy in the last image might be a veteran of the war. He sacrificed his legs, and risked his life for his country but still looks hopeless as he sits on that flag.    

Cynthia Bowles- Weekly Artist post

SAUL LEITER

1. Saul Leiter was a photographer born in the early 1920's that sadly passed away in 2013. In the photos above, he uses a low ISO, a slow shutter speed, and a open aperture.Although during the time he was alive, he may have used an older camera. He used a shallow depth of field in each of these photos and focused on a reflective/ transparent object to create his images. He manipulates the viewers eye by doing so. 

2.Leiter might have took a great amount of time to capture and fully create the picture he wanted. For example, in the third image, he probably stared at the floor of some waiting room or office and noticed the reflection of the outside. My guess is that it took hours to get someones head perfectly aligned with the white puffy pillow and  checkerboard pillow while getting into a taxi. The color contrast in that same image highlights the way the environment outside was during that time. By that I mean the bold colors of green and yellow is less alarming in reflection than it might have been if he took the picture a different way. 

3. I love the work that Leiter has done. I like the way he truly used his environment. I also recognize the amount of time he invested into each photo. I think by using the reflection off the floor and taking the images through a the rainy windows was very creative. Looking at them gave me a different perspective idea of the way society was back then. 

Joshua Caudell - Weekly Artist Post 16

Eri Morita.com

In This Beautiful Bubble, is a series by San Diego based photographer Eri Morita. In these series, Morita focuses on resident in sunny San Diego. However, the catch to the series is that Morita photographed subjects who have always been from the area and have not explored outside of it, such as action shots and some animals with people. Morita has stated, "I felt amazed and I embraced freedom to decide what to do and where to go on my own. "

In the above photographs, I feel that Morita made these photos by placing her subjects in the area in which they are. The first photo, Morita must have found her subject which appears to be a woman with a dog, and waited to capture the image from a camera set up on a tripod. The second her subject looks like that her subject is trying to photograph her with some type of a digital camera from the early days of digital cameras.  Finally, the Third is more of an action shot.  I also feel that Morita had a high quality ISO (i.e. ISO 100-400 Range), low shutter speed (probably between 1/20-1/60) and a large depth of field (i.e.f/22-f/32 Range) to capture the entire surrounding.

I really like Morit'a photographs. The purpose of the photos to explore the bubble in which we contain ourselves is what truly fascinates me. In the case of these photos, action shots were the focus of the pictures.  Morita has expressed that she has travelled and moved all over the world, while they are individuals who are trapped inside their own bubble and refuse to break out.

Kellen Clarke

Annie Collinge

1. The strange coincidence that a random antique flea market doll looked similar to her aunt inspired her work. Annie was from London and later traveled to New York where she came across the dolls. Seeing the resemblance between the dolls and others, she moved forward with that theme in her photographs. Each doll and each picture has a meaning to her and Annie has kept the dolls throughout her journey of work.

2. The photos above are a few photos from Annie taking a person and turning them into the doll. This has been her inspiration and theme since she came across the first doll in New York. Not limiting herself to find the dolls, she used people as the main focus to match. She spent countless time working with her subjects in New York and wanted to created a match so simply, that it was crazy. 

3. Reading the background to Annie Collinge's work, the fact she was afraid of dolls like her subjects is crazy. Sometimes artist take their fears and turn them into their best work. What Annie has deiced to make photographs of is such a genius idea. It reminds me of them people take the old time photos or recreation moments from childhood. Annie Collinge's models and dolls match so close it makes ones mind turn.

Lucas Suarez - Weekly Artist Post

Eri Morita.com

In This Beautiful Bubble, is a series by San Diego based photographer Eri Morita. In these series, Morita focuses on resident in sunny San Diego. However, the catch to the series is that Morita photographed subjects who have always been from the area and have not explored outside of it. Morita has stated,  "I felt alarmed but I embraced freedom to decide what to do and where to go on my own. "

In the above photographs, I feel that Morita made these photos by placing her subjects in the area in which they are. The first photo, Morita must have left out watermelon slices, waited for the butterflies, and waited to capture the image from a camera set up on a tripod. I also feel that Morita had a high ISO, low shutter speed (probably between 20-60) and a large depth of field to capture the entire surrounding.

I really like Morit'a photographs. The purpose of the photos to explore the bubble in which we contain ourselves is what truly fascinates me. Morita has expressed that she has travelled and moved all over the world, while they are individuals who are trapped inside their own bubble and refuse to break out. 

Lucas Suarez - Weekly Artist Post

Freya Najade

If You Are Lucky You Get Old, is a series by London based photographer Freya Najade. Najade travelled from the U.K. to the United States, to photograph retired senior citizens in their homes. Najade's approach to taking these photographs are brilliant. Not only is the focus on the subject itself, but also on the hanging wall pictures, furniture they sit on, and natural light.

I would assume that Najade primarily uses natural light through windows to lighten her subjects. I also would assume that Najade had her ISO set at 100-200 due to the sharp quality of her subjects. Lastly, the depth of field in Najade photographs are set so that the subject front and center is the main focus, but also the objects that are scattered in the background.

I really like Najade's photographs. I especially enjoyed the first photo of the women in the red dress with the horse portrait hanging above her. It is an unusual background, yet the woman sitting on a couch in a nice red dress is what makes the picture more unusual and enjoyable.

Kailyn DIckason Weekly Post

Mariya Kozhanova







Mariyas series shown above is about Russian teens who are into dressing up in cosplay. Cosplay is abut becoming a specific character, and I think that Mariya wanted to show that even though these teens are using a form of escapism to leave their lives, that they are still themselves even in cosplay.
She is also trying to explore whether or not cosplay is deeper than just every day escapism.
                      I think she took a lot of these pictures at hand holding level. I appreciate the way she uses light and color to make her subjects appear glowing. I really like all of her work because she seems to ask questions through her camera, I think her topic is interesting too.
                        All in all I may keep watching for this artists work. I dont love it but its not too bad either. I will keep looking for her new arrivals as time goes on.

Brianna Ivey-Weekly Post

Shoccara Marcus

 1. After being away from her family for ten years, Shoccara Marcus moved back home after finding about her father's cancer diagnosis.  In Marcus series "Choreographing My Past", she goes back into the past of being a child again. Shoccara Marcus goes into different places in the house and poses in different ways and in some of the photos her family was present.  She uses both natural light and artificial light to help her make her pictures. Even though she is the main focus in her photographs, she did not do any portrait shoots nor did she face the camera. Shoccara Marcus put her camera on a  tripod to make her pictures.

2. Being away from her family for so long, she feels invisible and also the tension that goes with being away from family for such a long time. She attempts to freeze time while during her dance moves. Even though everyone is doing their normal routine as if nothing changed. Shoccara Marcus felt pressured into going back to the mindset into her younger self. She believed that dance was a way to escape from the separation that she felt from her family. While trying to find a place within her family.  She felt emotional struggles and wanted to abandon her project.  However, these experience helped her resolved the difficulties she had with her family.

3. I don't know what happened with Shoccara Marcus and her family to make them be separated for ten years.  Maybe she wanted to dance professionally and her family disapproved as many families do when they find out their children want to become artist. Maybe it was something very emotional and/or physical, I don't know but I am happy to see them reconcile their relationship.  I would have thought that since Shoccara went back home because of her ailing father that she would make a series about that. However,  she took a different approach and made her home coming more about her and how distance disrupt relationships and how scary,  lonely and hard it is to mend those relationships.

Monica Fowlkes - Weekly Artist Post

Michael Massaia

For Transmogrify, New Jersey-based photographer Michael Massaia melts more than a dozen ice cream pops, tracing the unsettling yet beguiling ways in which each sugary confection becomes disfigured and reconstituted as it dissolves into nothingness. The photographer’s childhood, he explains, was marked in part by an acute misperception of his surroundings. Ordinary objects at times appeared to him as something entirely foreign, a phenomenon that he describes both as seductive and frightening. Decades later, Massaia, now thirty-six, employs the innocent figure of the ice cream bar to express the ways in which our youths, though often looked upon with nostalgia and sentimentality, are sometimes tinged with moments of darkness, confusion, and alienation.

Here, the ice cream bars, the simplest of childhood pleasures, become both frightful and compelling, like nebulae extending for an inestimable measures of space. The pops that worked best, he notes, are the old-timers found in carts, and he often found himself— like an excited boy—chasing after trucks as they whizzed past playing their familiar, haunting tune. The melting process was done over the course of about an hour, over a sheet of plexi glass in the artist’s home studio. While working on the project, he re-activitated his boyhood taste for the bars, and he admits, it’s been hard to say goodbye to the sweets. “I’m almost weaned off,” says the artist.

I really like the tie dye effect that the melted ice cream gives off as well as the different colors together.  I also like the how distorted some of the ice cream get when it is left out to melt.  All of the pieces give off a nostalgic feel back from childhood and memories of running after the ice cream truck on a hot summers day.

Sabrina Brooks- Weekly Artist Post

Martin Hill

I think that there is something beautiful about a person who can find the odd and unusual in the world.  That is why I am personally drawn to the otherworldly landscapes of Martin Hill. Now he obviously creates sculptures to fit the environments that he places them in and that is what is unique about him. He makes each image so carefully that each sculpture, no matter what element it is make form, belongs in the setting he places it in.  Most of the sculptures that he creates are geometric and more specifically, spherical.  He creates the occasional organic, humanoid shape as well. Most of his landscapes have the subject placed in the mid-ground which seems like the most appropriate place to peak the viewers interest.

Hill’s style seems to be to take the basic four elements, fire, water, earth and air and mixing them with one another by placing a natural sculpture in an environment that has a contrasting element.  Hill’s aim seems to be to manipulate an existing environment to be more surreal and fantastical.   There seems to be an importance placed on the creation of these sculptures from completely natural resources. Perhaps, Hill is thinking that same way that I am thinking when tackling photographic depictions of nature.

In my research for the final project of this course, I wanted to find people who take seemingly ordinary landscapes and manipulate the perspective of the subject into being something utterly new and perhaps even zoomorphic.   Hill not only achieves this goal but he also instills the mindset that nature should not be destroyed in order to depict nature in a photograph. For instance, making a sculpture out of ice and placing it in a lake does not alter cause any harm to the environment whatsoever, whereas a plastic sculpture has the potential to do so. All in all, Hill creates these fantastical scenes without harming the environment around him…besides the occasional controlled fire of course.

Breotnie Nichols - Weekly Artist Post

Anna Liminowicks

     Photographer Anna Liminowicz captures tender moments between a lesbian couple and their children. Her pictures in this series, Between the Blocks, have a deep depth of field. This would have been achieved by closing down on the aperture. To make up for the loss of light, she would have to slow down her shutter speed in order to let more light in. This would allow for the photos to be exposed without any under or over exposing. Most of the pictures in this series are in doors, which would decrease her access to light. Therefore, she would have to increase her ISO, maybe to ISO 800 or higher.

       In this series, Anna Liminowickz is making the statement that same-sex parents are no different than heterosexual parents. She captures loving moments in the couples's every day lives. These intimate moments highlight the bonds the couple has with their children. She has immersed herself in their home and as a result has been able to create these heart warming photographs.

      I appreciate this series because it humanizes same-sex couples. I think what often occurs with same-sex couples, especially lesbian couples, is that they become fetishized. Rarely are they ever shown as ordinary people. It is nice to see a same-sex couple portrayed in a positive manner.

Holli Turner - Weekly Artist Post

Mariya Kozhanova

The photographs were taken at handhold speed 1/60 nothing is moving so handhold or slower makes the most sense.  There is a shallow depth of field, which suggests F4 or a larger aperture to let in more light.  I enjoy how the artist did not shoot full on portraits of just the face.  She has a unique perspective.

The concept for these photographs are that they are portraits of young Russians that do cosplay.  Mariya Kozhanova was concentrating on identity or the lack thereof of a formed identity where they began to be inspired by different cultures.  She wanted to dig deeper into this subject by documenting these cosplayers to see if its detachment from the world or inspiration from a different culture.

Cosplay has always been interesting to me.  I have never dressed in Cosplay this is just coming from a viewer standpoint.  Some people truly immerse themselves in the character and spend countless hours perfecting a costume to become the character.  In my opinion it is a beautiful combination of art and fashion.  Other than just the subject of Cosplay the combination of light and color in the photographs is great.  There are wonderful shadows and great placement of the subjects.  Excellent photographs overall.