Thursday, December 11, 2008

Paul Chaplo





"Rather than being commercial assignments, these images are my personal work. Interestingly enough, some commercial clients enjoy these images to see my style, composition skills and creativity or 'vision,' as they call it.

My passion is fine art landscape photography
I am currently photographing Big Bend from the air. Here are a few sample images. I call this series "A Vision from Above" and the photographs been selected for two major gallery showings in Texas during the past 12 months."


I cannot find an interview for this corporate photographer as his work is primarily commercial.



Gallery representing his Artistic works.

www.chaplo.com

Manipulation




"The media is manipulated in all manners, for example through professional public relations (PR), and covert and overt government propaganda which disseminates propaganda as news. What are often deemed as credible news sources can often knowingly or unknowingly be pushing political agendas and propaganda."

Media Manipulation, Anup Shah, April, 2006

How forces affect media and corporate broadcasts and how the media manipulates itself to push one agenda over another is paramount to my work. My goals in the series are to illustrate the way data can be paired with images and distorted to change the appearance of that data as a whole. I believe the world would be a different place, with a more informed public, if unbiased news of the facts were presented vs the material distributed today.
Adding up the posts, it looks like I am missing 1 Thursday and 1 Sunday post. I will create 2 more posts.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Thomas Bliss





"I have over 20 years of industry experience spanning the "Motion Picture" and "Television Industry" as a "Production Still Photographer", to working in the executive offices of a major international advertising firm.

Living in the Northwest, I am very fortunate to be within three minutes of some of the most beautiful inland waterways in the world. I’m a rather accomplished sailor and yachtsman, graduate of the United States Power Squadrons® , U.S.C.G. Americas Boating Course, and a member of the United States Coast Guard / AUX, Flotilla 33.

In addition to shooting land based assignments, our yacht photography crew is comprised of current and retired U.S.C.G members, certified "coxswains" some with over 30 years of on the water experience in navigation, mission planning, SAR, First Aid/ CPR and AED. We have several shooting platforms available from swift boats to luxury yachts, fixed wing and rotary wing (helicopter) pilots.


Rest assured that when you hire us for a land, sea or air based shoot it will be safe and well organized." -Biography

- 4 images and / or video/sound clips of artwork

It doesn't look like there are any interviews out there, as he is more business based than art based. I think this is why I am attracted to his professional work. It is focused on being a business, with clients. However I find many of the photographs to be strikingly artistic.

Clients or "galleries" include:


http://www.architecturephotographer.com


Thomas Bliss


Edit: Drr... forgot to add pictures.

11/13- Global Economics


"Jolted by rising unemployment and shrinking investment portfolios, Americans have been feeling the pain of the world's worst financial upheaval in more than a half century. As President George W. Bush and leaders of other major countries meet here for an economic summit, many are wondering if they'll be able to find common ground for relief."

Meltdown 101: Will the world economic summit help?

Jeannine Aversa, AP November 14

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gulxT_fMzSinmjdXxpkCC92zoDowD94ETP880


My interests revolve around the economics of this global economy. I think this current economic downturn has been a reflection of just how interconnected our economies are on a global scale in this day and age. One country cannot experience economic trauma without affecting the entire global economy in the same manner. I still feel markets will work themselves out if regulation is limited and the governments involved do not put too many constraints on them. Most interesting to my particular market in trading global currencies, is the fact the the US dollar is actually at the same level today vs major currencies like the EURO as it was in 2006.

Simen Johan

Still haven't decided what to post on this presentation. I could not decide how to react to the actual presentation, however the art itself is easy to react to. I think the artist was hampered in getting his idea's across via a language barrier. He knew why he was creating the art, but wasn't able to verbalize it in English as well. Which is disappointing, as I believe he could talk about his different series all day.

Overall the art was very dark, especially in the earlier kid years. He seems to harbor a pretty deep resentment towards children that comes across in his earlier work. The mostly composed children portray a very sinister feel, even in some very innocent positions.

I believe he further developed this later in his nature series, though maybe with a little less natural dislike coming through. The pinnacle of the nature series are the statue's. Where beauty and a dark theme combine into several pieces that are beautiful until the viewer looks a little closer to find the slightly darker underside with spiders hiding in the center.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Ted VanCleave





"The Hollywood Sign is an international iconic symbol that is recognized by hundreds of millions of people all over the world. It not only represents Hollywood, but it also represents the movie and entertainment industries and the dreams of everyone who has enjoyed a movie and who dreams of being in the world of entertainment"


Interview with the artist

Galerie Lakaye



tedvancleave.com

Economic Downturn

"The economic downturn, which started in the handful of states where the housing market was in the worst shape, is spreading to almost every corner of the country and to a wide variety of industries, according to a Federal Reserve report released yesterday.

The trouble is showing up in such disparate ways as weaker demand for staffing services in New England, lower trucking volume in Ohio and surrounding states, and a resistance to spending money on capital projects by financial institutions on the West Coast.

That assessment is based on the "beige book," a compilation of anecdotes from businesses around the country gathered by the Fed's 12 regional banks. The previous report, in the middle of January, found signs of weakness in certain states and industries but described a U.S. economy that was generally holding up."


Economic Downturn Expands Countrywide
By Neil Irwin
Thursday, March 6, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/05/AR2008030501053.html

The economic downturn and the media's reporting on it are key to my current work. This is one of the few media articles I could find that did not try to lay blame on any political party or person. It seems to be reporting the facts in numbers and quoting actual economists. I think the media should be focused on these numbers, as they affect us all. However a majority of media outlets seem to focus on assigning blame and making it seem worse than it is. It is a free market, as long as the fed's keep out. A free market must have fluctuations up and down, but downturns are only lengthened by government intervention. Another recent article was released citing the New Deal and how it prolonged the Great Depression for 7 years longer than it should have lasted.


Slideshow available here

Bret Culp





Artist Statement:

"Roots creep over rock searching for refuge and nourishment, neglected bricks and mortar crumble under the elements and return to the earth, a mountain is slowly devoured by the sea forming a precipice ? these are photographs of matter governed by time chosen to illustrate the relentless determination of nature, the beauty in impermanence, and the eternal cycle of creation out of destruction.

The medium and techniques that I work with are chosen to strengthen the sensory aspects of the photograph in order for the viewer to feel more directly connected to the world within it. I believe that the authenticity of the final image should not be based on how loyal it is to reality but how well it conveys its message.

I have a natural inclination toward black and white photography as its inherent qualities of abstraction grant it the power to intensify the emotional impact of a place while leaving space for mystery. It?s in the shadows that you find the true nature of the subject. Grain is one of the creative tools that I like to employ to further my expression, like a painter?s brushstrokes. I particularly like the additional level of atmosphere that grain can bring to a photograph when artfully used.

I primarily use medium format, as there is a nice balance between being able to push abundant grain out of the film and retaining a high level of detail. Prints are made using pigment on cold pressed archival cotton rag producing an extraordinarily rich tonal quality, excellent sharpness and archival permanence."



Bio

Leonardo Gallery

www.bretculp.com

Socialism


"In this post-Communist era when even "liberal" has become a dirty word, the effort to create a more humane society will not be revived without explicit demands long associated with socialism. Social movements for environmental protection, women's rights and racial equality sooner or later run up against the institutional constraints imposed by capitalism. Then they discover that they can't achieve their goals without becoming anticapitalist. What will individuals and groups demanding equality, democracy, respect for the environment and freedom from the market call themselves as they try to coalesce around increasingly global demands and on behalf of increasingly global alternatives? We need not be timid about naming this "socialism." What else is it? What a new progressive movement needs can be simply stated: more socialism. "


The Left Needs More Socialism
April 1, 2006 Ronald Aronson
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060417/aronson

I think this article from 2006 is appropriate in todays world. We have now had the majority of the US vote for socialism. We have had a major political party run on the platform of taking money from the rich and making everyone equal and win. We have voted against personal responsibility and drive to make ones life better, and instead would choose to take the money from the people who have had that drive in the past and been successful at it. It doesn't matter that no one in the middle class will benefit from hurting the people that sign their paychecks. It only matters that the rich feel as miserable as everyone else. The amazing thing to me, is that they ran on this platform. It wasn't some attempt to pull the wool over our eyes and lie about what the left actually believes in. They ran on it, and we voted for it. I just hope we get what we asked for.

David Hume Kennerly





"
David Hume Kennerly
Photo Credit: Karen Ballard

David Hume Kennerly has been photographing history for four decades. Contributing Editor for Newsweek Magazine, Kennerly continues to travel the globe to produce insightful images of important historic events.

His career began in Roseburg, Oregon, where he published his first picture in the high school paper when he was just 15 years old. His first official photographer jobs--as a staff photographer for the Oregon Journal and then the Portland Oregonian--led him in to a position with United Press International (UPI).

Kennerly won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1972 for his remarkable photographs of the Vietnam war. After the war, Kennerly returned to the United States for Time Magazine, and in mid-1973 and threw himself into the domestic battles then raging in Washington. After Richard Nixon resigned, Kennerly was on the South Lawn of the White House as the soon-to-be ex-President departed. His historic photo of Nixon’s wave goodbye, taken when Kennerly was just 27 years old, is one of the dozens of his images that have helped define American photojournalism.

Nixon’s successor, President Gerald Ford, asked Kennerly to serve as his White House Photographer, a role that resulted in some of the most personal political pictures of his career. During Ford’s tenure, Kennerly photographed world leaders including Emperor Hirohito in Japan, Leonid Brezhnev in the USSR, Franco in Spain, Ceausescu in Romania, Marcos in the Philippines, Tito in Yugoslavia, Suharto in Indonesia, Deng Xiao Ping in the People’s Republic of China, and Queen Elizabeth during the bicentennial celebration at the White House.

When the Ford Presidency ended, Time swiftly called the 29-year-old Kennerly back to action, sending him to photograph Fidel Castro in Cuba, President Anwar Sadat in Egypt, and the horrors of Jonestown in Guyana, among many other assignments. He went on to major projects for Newsweek, LIFE, ABC Good Morning America Sunday, and George Magazine. Kennerly has photographed more than 35 covers for Time and Newsweek, covered assignments in more than 130 countries, and counts more than one million images in his photographic archive.

Kennerly serves as National Program Chair for Washington Mutual’s forward-thinking “Home of the Free™ Student Photojournalism Project”. Home of the Free gives 7th- and 8th -grade students the opportunity to learn how photography is used in news reporting about government, while creating photos of public servants in their own communities.

In the year 2000, Kennerly traveled more than 250,000 miles to 38 states and seven countries for his fourth book, Photo du Jour: A Picture-A-Day Journey through the First Year of the New Millennium, published in October 2002 by the University of Texas Press. A companion exhibition of fine art prints from Photo du Jour appeared at the Smithsonian Institution’s Arts and Industries Building from October 1, 2002-December 29, 2002, and at the Houston Center for Photography April 30 – June 12, 2004."



Review of David Kennerly


No current galleries, however past galleries include:
USC
Modernbook Gallery

www.kennerly.com

Monday, October 27, 2008

Liberal Media


"Those who still doubt the press needs fresh, preferably conservative, blood, should consider these numbers: In 1999, 12 percent of journalists said fairness and balance were a big problem for the media. Now, in the Pew survey, only 5 percent say so--this, after further proof of liberal dominance and noisy debates about liberal bias. And in 1999, 11 percent said ethics and standards were a major concern. But after high-visibility scandals involving fabricated stories and controversies about plagiarism, only 5 percent agree today. The case for ideological realignment of the media is closed."

Liberal Media Evidence, 5/28/2004
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/143lkblo.asp?pg=1

I've been debating how I am going to get any helpful critique advice atleast on the concept of my work in this class. When I first began exploring this topic, all I saw was a divide between what I continued to see in the Media and what I passed every day when driving around. The media continues to try to convince us that the world is crumbling and we will all be living on the streets tomorrow, however there is a new BB&T branch that just opened on Staples Mill, investors are stepping in and buying up troubled property in huge numbers with new construction going up in Short Pump, and the price of gas is back to $2 a gallon with SUV's still on the lots of the expensive real estate along Broad street.

However during my critique, all I could here on the content was more of the media's side. I didn't think of it as a political topic until they started bringing up what they think as the reason's for the current economic slowdown. The class refered to "the last 8 years" and "yadda yadda failed politics". Without getting into it too much, the current slowdown is obviously caused by banks being forced to hand out high risk loans to unqualified candidates. The government began forcing the banks to do this during the Carter administration with the "Community Reinvestment Act", which was dramatically stepped up during the Clinton administration. The loans that are failing today are failing because the Arm payments are beginning to increase. Meaning they were written 5-10 years ago. Either during the Clinton years or in the first few years of the Bush Administration. Bottom line this is not some new problem that came about from some failed policy in the last 8 years. Either way it is interesting how political I see my prints after the critique.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Michael Kenna






Biography

British, b. 1953

Michael Kenna was born in Widnes, England in 1953. As one of 5 children born to a working class Irish-Catholic family, he initially aspired to enter the priesthood but his passion for the arts led him to The Banbury School of Art where he studied painting and then photography. Later he attended The London College of Printing and began working as a photographer and artist. He moved to San Francisco in 1977 where he was astounded by the number of galleries the city housed which allowed artists to showcase and sell their work. San Francisco has remained his home ever since.

Michael Kenna's work has often been described as enigmatic, graceful and hauntingly beautiful much like the Japanese landscape. Kenna first visited Japan in 1987 for a one-person exhibition and was utterly seduced by the country's terrain. Over the years he has traveled throughout almost the entire country constantly taking photographs. From these many treks the book Japan, featuring 95 of these photographs, was conceived.

The simplicity and clarity of Kenna's Japan alludes to rather than describes his subject allowing the viewer to have a completely unique and tailored interpretation. He has described this body of work as, "more like a haiku rather than a prose"; his work being like photographs written in short poem form. Kenna's photographs are often made at dawn or in the dark hours of night with exposures up to 10 hours. Kenna has said "you can't always see what's otherwise noticeable during the day… with long exposures you can photograph what the human eye is incapable to seeing".

Michael Kenna's prints have been shown in numerous exhibitions throughout the world with permanent collections in the Bibliotheque, Paris; The Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague; The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Kenna has also done a great deal of commercial work for such clients as Volvo, Rolls Royce, Audi, Sprint, Dom Perignon and The Spanish Tourist Board. Japan is one of 18 books of Kenna's photography to have been published to date.

Interview

Gallery



Website

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Bailout Bill



"In times past, national debt typically was run up by borrowing money from private lenders and spent on goods and services. The tendency was to absorb loanable funds and bid up interest rates on the one hand, while spending led to inflationary price increases for goods and services. But the present giveaway is different. Instead of money being borrowed or spent, interest-yielding bonds are simply being printed and turned over to the banks and other financial institutions. The hope is that they will lend out more credit (which will become more debt on the part of their customers), lowering interest rates while the money is used to bid up asset prices ­ real estate, stocks and bonds. Little commodity price inflation is expected from this behavior."

Parsing Mr. Paulson’s Bailout Speech: The Unprecedented Giveaway of Financial Wealth
www.globalresearch.ca October 18, 2008

This printing of money in an attempt to fix a problem that was created by a socialistic government forcing the banks to make high risk loans has been very interesting to watch. Now that the government is actually buying voting shares worth of stock in the largest banks and we are moving toward a centralized government controlled socialist banking model, it will create even less diversity and competition in the market which should have an equally interesting affect on the market that I trade. The media's perception in thinking this will fix the problem and trying to persuade the public that these measures will stop the downturn has been overwhelming. I hope to capture some of that.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Tony Sweet





After 20 years as a professional jazz artist, Tony changed careers and directed his creative juices towards nature photography. The improvisational, spontaneous, and abstract nature of jazz are also integral elements of nature photography.

Tony's work is published on calendars, post cards, posters, annual reports, greeting cards, catalogs, and electronic mediums. His fine art prints are exhibited in private and corporate collections throughout the United States, and he is represented by The Getty Picture Agency.

Tony conducts his Visual Artistry photography workshops throughout the continental United States. Tony's articles and images are featured in Shutterbug and Rangefinder magazines, and is a contributor to Nikonnet.com. He is a staff writer for Nikon World magazine.

He has authored three books on the art of photography: Fine Art Nature Photography ('02), Fine Art Flower Photography ('05), and Fine Art Nature Photography: Water, Ice, Fog ('07). A fourth book in the Fine Art Photography series is due to be released in January of 2009.

Tony maintains an active speaking schedule, addressing professional photography organizations, universities, seminars, and teaching workshops, is an instructor on betterphoto.com, and a member of the Baltimore chapter of ASMP.



- Interview with Tony Sweet Outbackphoto.com

He is not represented by a gallery, he sells mostly online and through stock sites.

- Tony Sweet

Thursday, October 9, 2008


Media Fear Tactics

"It would be interesting if the standards of Truth in Advertising were applied to television news as they sometimes are to television commercials. In that unlikely situation, TV news writers would be required to use phrases and words that convey accurate information – as opposed to the phrases and words they use today."


Media Fear Tactics
Gavin De Becker 2007 Gavindebecker.com

I think alot of todays hype that would lead us to believe everyone is living on the streets with a worthless 401k comes from the media. My work compares what we actually see in every day life to what the media tells us is going on around us as well as the actual numbers that back both up.




Sunday, October 5, 2008

William Neill





"William Neill, a resident of the Yosemite National Park area since 1977, is a landscape photographer concerned with conveying the deep, spiritual beauty he sees and feels in Nature. Neill's award-winning photography has been widely published in books, magazines, calendars, posters, and his limited-edition prints have been collected and exhibited in museums and galleries nationally, including the Museum of Fine Art Boston, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Vernon Collection, and The Polaroid Collection. Neill received a BA degree in Environmental Conservation at the University of Colorado. In 1995, Neill received the Sierra Club's Ansel Adams Award for conservation photography. Neill is a member of Canon USA’s elite Explorers Of Light and Print Masters."


PHOTOGRAPHER'S STATEMENT
The reason I photograph is to experience the beauty of Nature, of wild places. I explore the essential elements of rock and tree, of cloud and rushing water to discover the magic and mystery of the landscape. My search for beauty is romantic and idealistic. It is the spirit of the land I seek-be it in a small piece of urban wildness or in vast wilderness. Rachel Carson, in her book The Sense of Wonder, writes, "Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts."

Photography is a quiet, intensely meditative activity for me. Minor White, the Zen-influenced photographer, stated, "Be still with yourself, until the object of your attention affirms your presence." When the light and the subject inspire me, I am compelled to compose an image. The images that I enjoy making the most are those that rely on emotional response and perception rather than the spectacle of the scene. I enjoy isolating the details of a scene, often to the point of abstraction. By creating photographs where the content or orientation is not obvious, an intimate and enigmatic feeling can come through. I would rather make an image that asks a question than answers one, one that intrigues and arouses curiosity in the viewer.

Photographing wild landscapes, depicting an image of pristine beauty, absent of the intrusions of man, is a dangerous proposition bordering on creating a false mythology. Yet wild places do still exist. What little is left will be lost if we don't develop a new and enlightened stewardship of our earth where Nature and Man are not considered separately. Barry Lopez writes, "Wild landscapes are necessary to our being. We require them as we require air and water. But we need, at the same time, to create a landscape in which wilderness makes deep and eminent sense as part of the whole, a landscape in which wilderness is not an orphan." Perhaps the only way the world will change is for people to go through some kind of a profound aesthetic experience that makes us aware that we are personally accountable for our actions and how we affect the environment.

I can only hope that my photographs convey an enduring sense of wonder, a deep appreciation of the magic, beauty, and mystery of the natural world.



2006 doubleexposure.com interview


Galleries


www.williamneill.com

Saturday, October 4, 2008

High Dynamic Range


It's not 1 word, but I have really been enjoying it.

"
One of the problems of films and even more of digital sensors is their capacity to reproduce scenes with high contrast. This is characterized by blowned high-lights and/or completely dark shadows, whereas in the field, the eye discern much more tonalities. Sensors have indeed a limited dynamic range (a capacity to record variations of luminosity), inherent in technology employed. It is thus necessary in such scenes to choose between an exposure preserving high-lights, or an exposure preserving shadows. There are however solutions, but which impose certain constraints in term of shooting. We will try here to understand HDR photography and its usability."

Nicolas Genette, on August 21, 2007 NicolasGenette.com

Exploring HDR has been an interesting leap because it has breached the gap of what I felt was missing in Digital photography from film. It is very similar to the Zone System for film. An HDR image can be composed of multiple images or 1 image. When composing and HDR from a single RAW image, the similarities are more apparent. It defines the .RAW format as the closest thing we can get to a digital negative. If you shoot to correctly expose the shadows, the RAW image will contain the information to also pull out the highlights. The RAW can be used to produce multiple images at -2 -1 EV +1 +2 for example, and it can do this much better if it was shot as the +2, because the camera knows what the image looked like at 1/60 if the sensor was exposed for 1/30.



Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Alessandro Bavari





BIOGRAPHY

Alessandro Bavari was born in Latina, a coastal town south of Rome, Italy, on april 1963.

Grown up in an italo-french family, he was early attracted by artistic matters and decided to attend art college, where he began making photomontages at the age of 15.

Then, he studied scenography, photography, history of art and various other topics at the Academy of Fine Arts, in Rome, where he developped strong grounding in the techniques of oil, watercolours and engraving, while experimenting at the same time methods mixing tar, glue, industrial paint and exploring photographic printing techniques.

During these years, he took the habit of making numerous photographs everywhere he goes : human and animal matters, objects and architecture, pictures and landscapes, fossils and materials, which join his mental museum, also strongly influenced by indo-european cultural myths and allegories as well as 14th and 15th century artists.

Since 1993, he adds digital manipulation to his art, developping a personal artistic language using industrial and organic products from nature before incorporating photographic process, then computer digitalization, which leads to "a kind of contamination among the arts dissolving the boundaries which distinguish them".

Alessandro Bavari lives and works in Italy.


Youtube interview


Gallery


artist website


Monday, September 29, 2008

Incomplete

Paul Thulin has read your blog up to this point/entry.


Your blog is currently incomplete.


Sunday Artist Highlight

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Data Visualization


"Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive. There is a variety of conventional ways to visualize data - tables, histograms, pie charts and bar graphs are being used every day, in every project and on every possible occasion. However, to convey a message to your readers effectively, sometimes you need more than just a simple pie chart of your results. In fact, there are much better, profound, creative and absolutely fascinating ways to visualize data. Many of them might become ubiquitous in the next few years."

SmashingMagazine.com Data Visualization: Modern Approaches 8/2/2007


I have been searching for a way of visualizing graphical data in my work. Visualizing historical graphical data in a more aesthetically pleasing manor is an area of art that is kist now being breached. Beyond Graphs and charts. Visually pleasing presentations of any given data can hold the viewers attention longer. It can be easily interpreted or loosely based, but should uphold the data

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Trey Ratcliff












"Welcome to my personal site. I have made this site to explore a bit of creative photography and writing, and I know full well that people that Google me will end up here. Others end up from my official photography portfolio at www.treyratcliff.com.

On this site, I lay about 80% of my life out there for everyone to see - friends and business associates, current and future. Most of my days and nights are spent working with the fine team at John Galt Games, but I do find time to have a bit of a creative outlet here on my blog, taking pictures and doing a bit of writing. I find it keeps me balanced.

Briefly… a photography-centric bio

I’m best well known for, well, I suppose, this site, StuckInCustoms.com, where I gets around 300,000 unique visits per month including one from my mom. In addition to this, Flickr, and other online communities, my work has been seen in the Smithsonian castle in DC, is represented by Getty, has been featured on the BBC, and has had numerous showings around the world.

I am known generally for my interpretation of HDR photography, for which I have a tutorial there on the right. I grew up blind in one eye and this might have changed the way I views the world. I don’t know. It’s hard to be objective about the way one’s brain was wired. My background is in computer science and math, so I bring an algorithm-like process to capturing the scene in such a way that it evokes memories in a palpable manner. "


Interview:
http://www.fotohacker.com/2008/01/30/interview-with-hdr-photographer-trey-ratcliff/

Getty Images is his gallery.


Artists Website: http://stuckincustoms.com/