WEEK 2

WHAT I DID
In the past week, I spent 5 hours doing my weekend assignment experimenting with colored light and shape. I spent 3 hours looking up, finding, and browsing books at the library, and a couple hours thinking and processing what direction I want to take. The books I got were works of the photographers Eric Meola and Howard Schatz. I feel like both the library and internet searches have negative and positive aspects. I was frustrated with the quality of work that is in the section I was looking in. I feel like books are great for history- knowing how photography has evolved. However, the quality of both amateur and professional photography has increased significantly since most of the books in the library have been published that the photos seem irrelevant to me. Most photographers are uploading their work to websites, not publishing books. Remarkably, I was excited to come across the Schatz book because long ago I had torn a photo out of one of my American Photo magazines but had no idea what the artist's name was. The same photo was in this book and now I have a larger resource for that type of photography. I think it's harder for me to find good material in the library, but when I do, I have a larger set of images and a name to associate them with. I get frustrated on the internet when I find the perfect photo, but it was posted by some kid on myspace who got it from his friend and I have no way of finding who the original creator is. Here are my favorite Meola images:



Best of Schatz:




WHAT I FOUND/DISCOVERED:
I thought a lot about my struggle to pick between going out and finding the pictures versus staying in the studio and making the pictures. My reasoning for maybe staying in the studio is to have control of the lighting and focus on color and shape. I discovered that I am drawn to these two books of very different subject matter for the same reason: they both have an intense focus on shape and color, but the first one consists of recording another place/culture that already exists in the world, and in the second one the subject is completely fabricated. I love the look of both but I find the idea of sharing with an audience a world that already exists but if it weren't for me bringing it to them and showing them, maybe they wouldn't know about it or be able to see it. That seems more important and meaningful to me than making pretty pictures. I realized there's no reason why telling a story or sharing my explorations can't also be beautiful, and maybe it's more beautiful because it's real. My conversation with Sean helped me to see that I can still focus on color and shape or play with colored filters in order to alter the mood of the image.

WHAT'S NEXT:
I think what's next is to get comfortable shooting again. It's been a while since I've shot anything and an even longer time since I went out into the world with a camera in hand. Most of the shooting I did last year was indoors with artificial lighting, or documenting of other artwork. Though I'm sure color and shape will play a part in what I do, I could still make it the main focus or have it be a secondary consideration to another subject. I think the next step is to go out and do a little shooting while splitting my focus. I should designate part of my shooting time for capturing color/colored light/interesting shapes and the other part of the time for shooting people/animals etc. At this point in time I don't want to come back with hundreds of photos to go through, but I will consider it a step in the right direction to get out and shoot.