Yesterday I went to see the Richard Avedon photography exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It was easily the best photography I have ever seen. I was overcome with emotion by his portraits. As an Academy of Art student I receive free admission and discounts for special events. I try to visit as often as I can and have seen so many fantastic exhibits with Olafur Eliasson, Joseph Cornell, and Richard Avedon being my favorites. It is really a treat.
Poor art student’s solution to traveling: photography!
Love the tilt shift photos the best -even when they manipulated with saturation and depth of field in post production.
From Wikipedia: Tilt-shift photography refers to the use of camera movements on small- and medium-format cameras; it usually requires the use of special lenses. However, Tilt-shift miniature faking is a process in which a photograph of a life-size location or object is manipulated so that it looks like a photograph of a miniature scale model. By distorting the focus of the photo, the artist simulates the shallow depth of field normally encountered with macro lenses making the scene seem much smaller than it actually is. Many miniature faked photographs are taken from a high angle to further simulate the effect of looking down on a miniature. Objects oriented horizontally make better subjects for tilt-shift miniature faking than vertically oriented objects.
Working on a fun photography assignment this week. I will be making three photographs each of three different subjects, using three different analog manipulation techniques for each subject without the use of Photoshop.
In high school I won a photo contest for submitting a negative sandwich type print. I first printed an image of my boyfriend’s profile over an image of waves breaking onto the shore. The idea behind negative sandwich is genius and so fun to play around with. Reminds me of the endless possibilities in photography.
When I was going through a box of photos the other day I found pictures from my family trip to Germany from when I was a kid. I was in the third or fourth grade when we went and we stayed for about a month. We drove across the country and spent about a week near the big Oktoberfest (that is where I got the big goofy glasses). We were accompanied by my aunt, her husband—whose family lived in Munich and his relatives. I went on a few rides at Oktoberfest and was amazed at how large in scale everything there seemed. Huge tents packed with people, beer steins larger than I had ever seen, giant roller coasters—one of them even had rings of fire. We danced on the tables and I drank steins of orange Fanta. All of the little towns that we passed also celebrated Oktoberfest and had small carnivals. It was a neat experience staying my uncle’s mom’s house and visiting his with relatives. It was the first time I had ever slept under a down comforter. I will always remember how they served coffee and tea with lots of desserts in the afternoon. And the chocolate was the best I have ever tasted.
During our travels we went to many castles and churches. My favorite of course was the Neuschwanstein castle because it is the castle that Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty castle is styled after. We walked up the big hill to the entrance and the view at the top was amazing. I loved all of the cobblestone roads and thatch covered roofs. Every place we went to felt old and worn but rich with history. While on the road we stayed in guest houses, sometimes on farms, that served wonderful breakfasts with real butter and jam. I remember eating tomato soup that was made with cream and the hot chocolate topped with real whipped cream that wasn’t sweet. It was colder there than I was used to and there were wonderful forests to walk through. I saw an abandoned cabin and told my mom that that’s where the witch from Hansel and Gretel lived. I felt like I really was in where all the fairy tales came from.
Towards the end of the trip we also went to London for a few days and saw the sights. It was nice to hear English being spoken again but I still strained to understand the accents. By then I was ready to eat some different foods. I was not accustomed to eating as much meat as we did in Germany. In London we shopped at Harrod’s and even then at a young age thought it was incredibly exciting. It is such a neat department store!
I really like the picture Revenge of the Goldfish by Sandy Skoglund. In fact it the first piece of art that I ever bought. My sister took me to Melrose (Street in L.A.) sometime in the eighties when I was young and I bought a postcard of Sandy Skoglund’s Revenge of the Goldfish. I loved it so much and thought that someday I wanted to become an artist and paint all of my furniture the same color. Pretty funny now that I think about it. _ This semester I am taking an online photography class and this photo was featured in our module on style. I was so happy to see Skoglund’s picture because it took me back to a time and place that I had forgotten about but I still love it and I still want to be an artist so I suppose not much has changed.
