Response to a Photograph

There was a picture today in the Light from the Middle East exhibit that featured a party that had happened with four people in it. The picture was left all the same except for the people’s faces and skin  - which were totally whited out. This was done for protection of the individuals because parties of this kind were not allowed – women had skin showing, there was drinking all around and it looked like a typical American party however, it was prohibited. I thought this picture was really captivating. It looked as if the people were photo shopped, as if they were not supposed to be there (which technically they weren’t) and were put in by a computer. I also found it interesting how making all aspects of the skin completely white made the people look as if they were comic book characters in a every day setting. I found these quirks beautiful and shocking. I’m sure the way the people looked and the light that was on their faces looked nice (after all this picture is in the Victoria and Albert Museum) but it’s sad that the faces and skin had to be taken out for protection. I think the realness of hiding identities or else these subjects might have been killed makes the picture which might have been arbitrary in any other capacity, very deep. It also illustrated how much the human face brings into a picture. Without the emotion on someone’s face or where they were looking with their eyes, there was much to question. Faces give away a lot of information so without it, I felt like something was missing. Perhaps that was the photographer’s point, that our faces make up who we are and create us as an individual and without it, we are just part of the background and surroundings. Even if that isn’t the point of the photograph, I thought it was really interesting to see and definitely left me wondering. 

Here is my set for today: The Human Street All of these pictures show the hustle and bustle of modern day life and the crowdedness that society has - and that crowded feeling can come from people, places or things. 

A Letter to Fox Talbot

Dr Mr. Fox Talbot,

First off, can I saw how wonderful of a home you have? It is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen and I absolutely loved it. If you can spare a room I would love to be roommates!

Next, I wanted to say thank you for your work with photography. Photography is one of my favorite things to see, experience and do. Being able to capture one specific moment for all of time – to immortalize one second, one feeling is a beautiful thing. Photography has taken me to places I would never get to go to and let me see things that I wouldn’t be able to see.

Photography has become a huge part of my life and it would be much different if it hadn’t been invented when it did or how it did so once again, thank you. Thank you for helping create this entity that has shaped how I see the world and freezes moments in time. It really is a wonderful invention.

Xoxo

Here is my set for the day: A Sense of Light and Time In all of these pictures I tried to play with the light source and (because of the whether) was able to get some great pictures!

The Journey, so far...

The past 4 (really 5 for me because I arrived a day early) have been so crazy, fun, exhausting, and great all at the same time. When I arrived in Paris, I had no idea what it would be like. I didn’t know if people spoke English at all and I would never have an idea of what was happening or even what the city would look like. I didn’t know what type of photographer I was and certainly had no idea of different techniques that we have learned. As the days evolved, I gained confidence in my ability to navigate the city and in my photography skills. Before this class started, I was a point and shoot picture taker. I would just take a picture and hope for the best. But now, I am starting to figure out how to deal with aperture and shutter speed to get the best lighting and am starting to get the hang of different exposure techniques. I am also using iPhoto editing for real now, not just pushing the enhance wand and letting it choose the changes for me…which I am very impressed at! This trip has been great not only for learning about photography but art in general. I have loved all of our trips to the museums even if we haven’t seen a lot of photography because it has made me think about what type of photographer/artist I want to be. What do I want my pictures to get across? What do I want the subject to be? Do I have a style? And every question makes me work harder at getting that one perfect photograph. I really loved Paris. It was absolutely beautiful with gorgeous architecture that photographed lovely but I am ready to take on London! If I have figured out and learned this much in just four days, I can’t wait to see what I am going to be able to do by Sunday!

Here is my set for the day: USA in the UK These pictures are all what I see (as the USA) in (or in route to) the UK. It shows my journey to the UK and what I saw while there

Constructing Identity Through Photographs

Photographs are tidbits that a person can use to show their life. They can show their interests, what they do, what they like and virtually anything else about them. All the photographs that I am personally connected to are either about how I see the world or how the world sees me in a certain instant. If I am taking the picture, other people are able to see the world through my eyes and get my point of view which helps them understand me. If there is a photograph that I am in, it shows my relation to the world and how I interact with it. It shows in a certain instant, what I was like and how another viewed me. Allowing others to see these types of photographs lets them come up with their idea of what I am like which in turn helps me create my identity. Our identities are made up of reflections of how others view us and photographs creates that perception. Photographs also allow us to see what we look like to others in the world and so we can figure out how we present ourselves, what we are like and put together some of the pieces that make us one human being. The pictures in my set for today are of me, but mainly how I view the world, what I think is important or interesting and little things that are symbolic or representative of me and my life.

Here is my set for the day: A Sense of Self These pictures show me traditionally (my place, my face, what I am eating) but also show what I see so the world can see how I view it.

Photography and Death

Thinking about death can be weird. Trying to comprehend something that no one can explain what it is like and what it is like after is a bit daunting. However, the way I see it, photography keeps a person alive after they physically die. A picture of someone is a way of letting people remember the past and what that person meant, which as long as the memory is alive, the person can be alive too. Mexicans believe that a person's soul does not depart until after the last person who remembers them dies. If there is a photograph of a person that gets passed down through generations, technically that person could be alive in spirit forever. Photography also lets moments that die after they pass continue to live in our memories. Seeing something that once was and bringing it to life in your mind - whether it is a person or event - brings it back to life and lets it live longer than it did physically.

The pictures from my set at the cemetery are focused on flowers and plants. I chose this because I think it was interesting to see that after someone is physically gone, their memory remains so much that others bring objects - such as flowers - to keep the memory fresh. I also like it because of the juxtaposition between the humans who were dead under the ground and the flowers that were mostly alive above ground but whose roots were in the ground on top. I think flowers can bring a sense of hope and light to the typically dark idea of death and by photographing these graves and their flowers, I am helping keep the people in them alive in spirit just a little while longer.

Set for Cemetery pictures: Cemetery of Piere-Lachaise
Set for Eiffel Tower Pictures: Eiffel Tower

A Sense of the Other

Leah: I met Leah on the day we met at DU. We got to the building early and talked and our friendship began. We met at the hotel a day early to stay together and I have learned so much about her. Leah is a very old soul. She is a poet and can find good art anywhere in anyplace. She writes poems as we are on the go whenever she feels inspired and comes up with verse that has very deep meaning. She is also incredibly directional smart and can figure out any map or location we need to get to. Leah and I also have a lot in common that we have bonded over - particularly shopping and food. We both love to shop and have the same taste in foods. I like walking around Paris with her because we find so many fun stores to go into and always encourage each other to buy things we like - even when we shouldn't. I think if it were not for this class, Leah and I may not have met and so I am very glad we have become friends on this trip. The picture that I took as Leah's portrait shows her artistic and comedian sides.

Vanessa: Vanessa and I knew each other a little before this trip. We both work in the same psychology lab back at DU so we have seen each other for Undergraduate Research Assistant meetings and while we work but we never hung out before this trip. Vanessa is one of the sweetest people I've ever met. She always has a kind thing to say and is nice to everybody. She also is very artistic - she takes pictures and shots that I wouldn't have thought of and they turn out really neat. Vanessa is one of the best people to photograph as well. You can't take a bad picture of that girl...she is always camera ready. The portrait that I took of her I believe captures her beauty and kindness.

Link to the Sense of Self and Portraits set: Sense of Self & Portraits
Link to Paris du Nuit set: Paris de Nuit

A Sense of Place

Today, I woke up with no sense of place - I couldn't remember where I was, or what was happening - but over the course of today I think I have found my place as a photography student and a sense of this place called France.

As we were walking around the Palace of Versailles today, I was blown away by how grand it was and the fact that it once was someone's home. We walked through corridors, rooms and gardens but throughout I kept trying to think what it must have been like to live there and to have that be your home. I think one of the most important places a person can get a sense of is their home and the fact that this one was so huge and beautiful blew me away. Trying to understand what Marie Antoinette felt like living there mad the place a little more real to me but at the same time, it felt distant, as though all the crazy history that I had learned about it didn't really exist. Also walking around the gardens, I felt like I was seeing my all time favorite movie and book, Pride and Prejudice, come to life. That was an amazing feeling. I felt like I was back in the 1800s being Lizzy Bennett, strolling through Mr. Darcy's gardens. I've often thought of what it would be like to experience that type of life and being there gave me the sense, if only for a second, that I was Lizzy Bennett and experiencing the novel first hand.

However, as I was walking around this morning on our hotel street and then later in Versailles, I realized that I feel like I am in France. It is finally hitting me that we have arrived and I am experiencing this place that I have dreamed about for years. I've decided that I really like this place. I like the feeling of the city, the foreignness of the language and the different sights and smells that Paris has. I always have felt like I wasn't born in the right time period but now I am pretty sure I was just born in the wrong continent. I love the feeling that Europe has, so refined and regal, and it's a place that I could get quite used to.

So what is my sense of place right now? It's here. In Paris, France. On a trip that I can already feel is going to change my life.

Here is the link to the flickr set I created for the day. It has some of where I feel here, some of my best photos from the day, and some fun ones: A Sense of Place

Journeys, Physical and Psychological

Oh traveling...what difficulties you bring into my life.

I left home on Thanksgiving morning and arrived in Paris Friday morning, it's now Friday night and I have no sense of what day it is, what time it is, or where I am...I think I need some sleep!

Traveling and journeys are difficult for me to wrap my head around. At one moment, I am in the USA and the next I am in Paris in a completely different day. Whenever I am on the plane, I loose track of time. It's almost like being in frozen time. The day does not exist. Time does not exist. But you know you are there for a long period of time and at the end of that time you know you are going to be somewhere new. While I know that I traveled over the ocean, I still have a hard time comprehending that this trip is finally here! We stayed up to acclimate ourselves to the time change but I don't think it will hit me that we have actually arrived, that I am in Paris, that this class has started until tomorrow when everyone is here together. It may not even hit me until we finish the trip! But I know in the end, when I am flying back home to Colorado, I'm going to struggle with the frozen time in the plane and go through the process of comprehending what just happened all over again.

Here are some of the pictures of my transition from Colorado to Paris: A Sense of Transition Photography Set they combine the pictures of being a typical traveler with adjusting myself to Paris and transitioning to world traveler.

Before Departure...

History of Photography

Nicephore Niepce: Nicephore Niepce was a french inventor who took and produced the world's first permanent photograph in 1825. Having not been a good drawer, Niepce used lithography, a camera obsurca and bitumen to capture the image. The process took over 8 hours to complete! This was the first time that a photograph was taken and didn't fade away.Without Niepce's contribution to photography, it would have taken longer to figure out how to keep a permanent image, which would mean photography would not be as high-tech as it is today. This is his first picture, called "View From The Window at Le Gras":

 

Louis Daguerre: Daguerre was a french artist and physicist who worked with Niepce to develop the technology for photography. After Niepce died, Daguerre created a process called the Daguerreotype - where he exposed a thin silver-plated copper sheet to iodine crystal vapors which created a coat of light-sensitve silver iodine which was then exposed to the camera. He refined the process by adding vapor given off mercury to speed up the process. The plate produced the exact image but laterally reversed. To be seen, the image had to be lit at a specific angle. Because of the chemical compounds, the surface was subject to tarnish so the image would need to be sealed under glass or mounted in a case. Also, because of how the process worked, there could never be any duplicates of images. This was important to the history of photography not only because it made the process faster than it was with Niepce, but because of how the pictures were taken, people could get portraits and could capture memories much easier than they could have with  a painting or drawing. This is a picture called "Boulevard Du Temple" which is the first photograph of a person who is only in it because they did not move for the 10 minutes of exposure. This is also why there isn't any traffic in the picture: 

Henry Fox-Talbot: Fox-Tablot was a British inventor who created the calotype process and worked on photo-mechanical reproduction. The calotype process uses paper coated with silver iodine to take a picture over a minute or two and then use a chemical process to develop the image. This process also created negatives so that duplicates of the image could be made. This invention made the photography process even faster and allowed for one picture to be taken and several copies to be made. Without the invention of the negatives, there might still be one picture for ever photograph taken! This picture was taken at Lacock Abbey in 1835 by Talbot. The negative that this print came from is the oldest in existence!

Hippolyte Bayard: Bayard was a French photographer who invented direct positive printing and also put on the first public photography exhibition in June 1839. Direct positive printing is a process where silver chloride paper is exposed to light which then turns the paper black. The paper is then soaked in potassium iodine then is exposed in a camera. After exposure, it is washed in a hyposulfite of soda bath and dried. The exposure for this process was about 12 minutes and the paper had poor light sensitivity, however the result was unique and could not be replicated. This method was used for still subject matter (such as buildings) but it was sometimes used for portraits. Bayard also came up with the idea of combining two negatives so that the sky and other landscapes were properly exposed in a picture. One of his most famous pictures is called "Self Portrait as a Drowned Man" in which he created the first staged picture in reaction to unjustness he felt that he had been treated with. 

Julia Margaret Cameron: Cameron was a British Photographer who is most famous for the portraits that she took. She only started photography when we was 48, after she received a camera as a present. Cameron developed soft-focused "fancy portraits" and the majority of her pictures were either closely framed portraits or illustrative allegories. Cameron photographed many celebrities of her time including Charles Darwin, Alfred Lord Tennyson and George Frederic Watts to name a few. The portraits that she took were very close cropped around the face and soft-focused. Her photographic illustrations were typically about historical scenes or literary works and she designed them to look like oil paintings. This picture is called "Annie, my first success" and was taken in 1864. It is the first picture that Cameron felt satisfied with and you can see her style of closely cropped and soft-focused easily: 

Lady Clementina Howarden: Howarden was also a portrait photographer however, she focused more on the background and environment than the faces of the people. Howarden started off taking stereoscopic landscape photographs but then moved on to images of her daughters which influenced her style of photographs. She used natural light for her photographs - which at the time was considered as being daring - and would put mirrors to reflect the light naturally. This is one of the pictures she took of her daughters - she would dress them up and strategically place them in their environment and surroundings.

Nadar: Gasparad-Félix Tournachon (or Nadar) was a French photographer who focused on portraits but was a pioneer in many other aspects of photography. He was the first person to ever take an aerial photograph and use artificial lighting (specifically for when he photographed the catacombs in Paris). One of the most famous photographs he took was of Victor Hugo on his death bed in 1885. He also did the first photo-interview and took erotic photographs. This is the famous Victor Hugo photograph:

Gustave Le Gray: Le Gray was a French photographer who not only pioneered photography but also taught some of the other famous photographers (such as Nadar). He was selected to be one of the first five photographers to document French monuments and buildings and also help found the "first photographic organization in the world". He was the official portraitist of Napoleon III and took famous pictures of seascapes. Le Gray improved paper negatives and used combination printing to create his seascapes. This is one of his seascapes called "The Great Wave":

Diane Arbus: Arbus was an American photographer who is most famous for her black-and-white squared pictures of deviant or marginalized people. She saw photography as a medium that could be cold but that ultimately reveals the truth. She liked to develop strong relationships with her subjects and photograph them for years. Arbus helped form The New York School of Photographers. This picture is called "A Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents in The Bronx, NY" and was taken 1970 and showcases her theme of unique individuals:

Susan Sontag: Sontag was an American writer, filmmaker and political activist. She wrote a book which was a collection of essays called "On Photography" in 1977. In the book, she examines modern-day photography and capitalism, as well as photography and American ideals. Sontag also argues that photographs make all events equal and the meanings are all level as well. She says that if someone is trying to record, they cannot be present in that moment so the moment caputred is separate from the person. This is a portrait of Sontag

Olympe Aguado: Aguado was a Franco-Spanish photographer in the 1850s and 1860s. He studied under Le Gray and was a pioneer for several photography techniques. He developed the carte-de-visite which added portraits to visiting cards. He also photographed Napoleon III and his wife and took staged portraits that poked fun at the empire and nobility. Aguado developed a process for enlargement of photographs but there are no pictures from that original development still around. This is a picture called "La Lectura" which is one of his staged portraits.

Referecnes:

Victoria and Albert Museum. (2012). Lady Clemantina Hawarden. Retrieved from:    

     http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/l/lady-clementina-hawarden/

Wikipedia. (13 Nov 2012). Diane Arbus. Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Arbus

Wikipedia. (31 Aug 2012). Gustave Le Gray. Retrieved from: 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Le_Gray

Wikipedia. (13 Nov 2012). Henry Fox Talbot. Retrieved from: 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fox_Talbot

Wikipedia. (21 July 2012). Hippolyte Bayard. Retrieved from: 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippolyte_Bayard

Wikipedia. (2 Nov 2012). Julia Margaret Cameron. Retrieved from: 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Margaret_Cameron

Wikipedia. (20 July 2012). Olympe Aguado. Retrieved from: 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympe_Aguado

Wikipedia. (7 Oct 2012). On Photography. Retrieved from: 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Photography

Wikipedia. (18 Nov 2012). Nadar (photographer). Retrieved from: 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadar_(photographer)

Wikipedia. (18 Nov 2012). Louis Daguerre. Retrieved from: 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Daguerre 

Wikipedia. (20 Nov 2012). Nicéphore Niépce. Retrieved from: 

     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicéphore_Niépce

Wikipedia. (17 Nov 2012). Susan Sontag. Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag

PreClass Assignment

Hello everyone!! Welcome to my blog about my amazing trip to London and Paris for winter interterm!  I am very excited to start this adventure! 

Here is the link to my first set of pictures: Pre-Class Picture Set

The photos I put on flicker are some of my favorites that I have ever taken not only because they have interesting angles and lighting, but also because they were taken in some of my favorite places. The picture of my name in the sand was taken at my Grandma's house in Maine. I had not been able to visit her for a few years because of an illness that I had so when I took this picture, it represented me being at the place I love most. The fun picture of sand and sky was taken on a family vacation over the summer. I had no intention of taking a picture that came out as unique as this one did - it was completely accidental - however I think it might be one of the most interesting pictures I have ever taken! The picture on this blog is of Central Park. New York City is my favorite place in the entire world and Central Park has a magical quality about it. I took this picture to represent the storybook feeling that Central Park has and I incorporated the compass as a representation of directionality in the story. My final pictures I took on a class trip to Spain when I was a senior in high school. The picture with the three girls and the old man cracks me up. It was very much a right place at the right time picture - which I believe the majority of photography is. My three friends were chatting and an old man came, sat next to them and then acted very annoyed with their conversation. I think this picture capture a rare moment and without it, I would have forgotten about. I chose the final picture in my set because of it's colors and lighting. The bright colors of the spanish buildings always pop out and I think with this picture I was able to capture that feeling. 

I am looking forward to meeting everyone tomorrow at our meeting!