Conclusion of Sequence As a Story Blog

I really gained a lot from writing this blog and researching photographers that interest me. I am really drawn to nature, wildlife, landscape, pattern, water, and time-exposure photography. I think that I got a lot of inspiration for my own work by looking at the artists I have written about here. My goals are to try to experiment a lot with time-exposure photography on different types of water. It is so easy to get stuck in the automatic mode of a camera, and I forget sometimes to change it up and shooting on manual.
For my projects,
I enjoyed the documentary the most. I really am happy with the topic I chose and I had fun going out exploring, and shooting. I hope that my images are beautiful, striking, intriguing, concerning, and action provoking. I want to get across the message that the environment is a beautiful thing and we need to protect it. And right now, we need to do a better job of it.
I am happy we got to work in groups this semester. I think that group thinking is good for brainstorming and team work. I like working and collaborating with classmates and seeing what their ideas are, and making things happen.
For my blog,
I want to travel to all of these National Parks and photograph. But it makes me wonder if I would be able to get anything relatively close to what these photographers have captured. I mean, you can't get better than that! I think that photographers have to find their own style because in landscape photography, it can be easy to duplicate works.

My ultimate goal in the future: I am going to China after I graduate college. I am going to photograph giant pandas in the wild. It is really difficult to do though.Firstly because they are extremely endangered animals. An estimated 1,600 live in the wild. I could just photograph them at the reserves, which I probably will end up doing for a bit, but I want to go hiking in the mountains and really capture and observe them in their natural habitat. This has been a dream of my since I was a little kid. Before, I just wanted to go and see them in the wild, but now I want to photograph them. I think this is really unique. There are a large amount of photos out there os pandas int he nature reserves, but very very few of pandas in the wild. I have been talking to a zoologist who is trying to find wild pandas and put radio collars on them to study their behavior and natural living. She has been going for 5 years and has been unsuccessful in finding one in the wild. This is not promising for me, but I will not be discouraged. I want to purchase more professional camera equipment including a longer telephoto lens and a dslr sensor camera. I am staying with canon forever. I will also need a tripod, a mac, a lot of memory cards, and a really good camera bag. I know it will be expensive to do. I am paying my own way and I am proud of it. There is still a lot of research to be done for my trip, and maybe the first part is researching wildlife photographers so I can work on my own projects.
I am so excited to see where this interest of mine takes me. I don't want money to hold me back. It would be amazing to have the opportunity to travel around the world. I am making a list of locations and parks that interest me, and it is getting really long already.

Panoramic Mind: Masumi Hayashi

Her work is a combination of images into 1. A panorama where the viewer can see all of the images that were combined. I am interested in panoramic photography work, bu t in mine, I usually take the images I want and combine them in photoshop to make 1 cohesive print. I don't want the viewer to see the images that were stitched together at all, just the overall effect.

Here is what this artist was going for in her very different approach to panoramic photography:

Masumi Hayashi's panoramic photo collages explore the incongruity between appearance and reality in the American experience. She does this by creating photographs of contested sites: abandoned prisons, post-industrial landscapes, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund Sites, and the remains of American concentration camps. Yet, the resulting panoramic photo collages exhibit tremendous beauty, laced with both precise detail and abstraction. Without overt or critical commentary, they explore both the surface and the reality behind such places, whether they be panoramic landscapes or haunting interiors.

A key characteristic of Hayashi's work is the fact that her photo collages refrain from overt commentary. She creates work of tremendous beauty and simplicity, even though the landscapes she selects are primarily sites of conflict and contestation. Her work does not preach or condemn. Rather, it entices the viewer to learn and question through attraction to the physical, and often haunting, beauty of a site-whether it be the inherent beauty of the landscape or that which results from the transformations of her artmaking.

To create her panoramic photo collages, Hayashi's process is both systematic and open to change. She begins at the horizon line, shooting approximately two dozen photographs in a horizontal circular rotation until she ends up where she began. She then angles upwards, then downwards, continuing until she has fully captured the landscape around her. After she returns to the studio, she collaborates with a printer to produce the component photographs and begins the final phase of assembling the collages. Rather than submit to a rigid framework, Hayashi plays with the discrete images to determine what might make-first and foremost-a convincing work of art. The resulting photo collages range from a 100 degree to 540 degree rotation and include as many as 140 individual photographs or as few as five.

Hayashi's use of multiple images underscores the insufficiency of a single photograph to capture complex experiences and realities. Viewers must simultaneously process the individual component parts as they try to make sense of the vertiginous perspectives produced by the circular rotation. This is especially the case in Hayashi's photographs of interior spaces, where the camera distorts what the eye and brain naturally process.

Mark Adamus

Marc Adamus is a landscape photographer based in Corvallis, Oregon. The visual drama and artistry of his photographs are born of a keen eye for the many moods of Nature and a life-long passion for the wilderness. This passion shines throughout Marc’s work and has attracted a wide audience around the world.

His talent for rare captures of amazing light and fleeting atmosphere imbue his portfolio with a sense of the epic, majestic and the bold. His success derives from patient single-minded pursuit of all the unique moments that generate the magic and energy of the wilderness, often spending months immersing himself in the landscape he shoots despite the rigors of season and weather.

Marc’s photographs have been published extensively worldwide in a large variety of media ranging from calendars, books, advertising and the publications of National Geographic, Outdoor Photographer, Popular Photography and many more. Marc has been acclaimed as one of the most talented landscape artists of his generation.

"Mood and emotion are the primary elements I seek to capture in all of my work, and for me, these are the images that evoke that emotional response the strongest."

My Favorite images:::
1) "Great Beyond" Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. WOW! This creates such a mood of mystery and beauty. The starry sky is stunning and the waterfall coming from the background into the front in a good trail for the eye. He says he combined 2 exposures for this which I would guess. He needs 1 for the night sky and another for the landscape at twilight. The exposure used for the sky took in more than 5 times as much light as is seen by the naked eye, using an extremely high ISO, a big aperture of f2.8 and keeping the shutter opening for 45 seconds.
2) "Ethereal" Central Oregon Coast. Dramatic twilight skies and a long exposure create the surreal, otherworldly mood. I like the ghostly water on the rocks again.
3) "Magic Mountain," Mount Rainier National Park. Taken as the moon was setting. I like this particularly because the clouds are clear and divide the mountain. It looks like the mountain is rising over the cloud horizon.
4) "The Storm Wall" Glacier National Park, Montana. Again, a longer exposure created the movement of the water and waves. The black and white gives the feeling of being cold and stormy in this image.

William Neill

Awesome photograph for landscapes, water, light and nature. I am a fan!

Portfolio: http://www.williamneill.com/portfolios/landscapes-of-the-spirit/index.html Top picks:
Landscapes of the Spirit:
1)Dawn, Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Canada. Foreground shows rocks under the water, middle ground is all blurred blue water, background is 2 mountains meeting with fog in between.
2) Twilight Surf, Big Sur Coast, California. Time exposure on moving water creates a foggy blur on top of the rocks that I like.
3) Bridal Weil Falls, Eldorado County, California. Using a medium shutter speed, probably 1/25th of a second he captures the water falling on the rocks. There is focus there, but also a blur at the same time showing motion. I find this interesting.
4) Rocks formations and surf at twilight- again, he uses a time exposure to create a ghost effect of the moving water on the rocks.

Impressions of Light:
1) Giant Seqoias, Maripose Grove, Yosemite National Park. I think he uses a camera shake to create this effect. The trees are obviously stationary, so he must have had a 1 second exposure and tilted the lens up or down slightly while the shutter was open. This creates a really interesting effect. It looks very painterly.
2) Carp, Bronx Zoo, wow, at first, I had no idea what this was until looking at the title, and now I see it. He took a time exposure of the fish while they are swimming under water. I love the effect.
3) Dawn, Mono Lake, California: This would be a boring image without the time exposure. There is no focal point, just ground and sky. But the longer exposure creates a Gaussian blur and painterly effect that I like.
I find this series very interesting. I love the effects of time exposure of light on different objects and scenes. He used close ups, middle ground, moving objects, and landscapes.

Meditations in Monochrome
These remind me of Ansel Adam in terms of contrast, light and shadow. He does some very stunning landscapes in black and white, and also patterns and repetition subjects.

"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."

Paul Nicklen Photography

He photographs Leopard seals, polar bears, narwhals, aurora borealis, walruses, birds, sea lions in the arctic for National Geographic.

He got started in 1994, while struggling to make money as a young photographer, Nicklen wrote a proposal to the Nunavut territorial government asking for funding to begin a book project documenting wildlife in the arctic and Antarctica. The government cut him a check for $8,000.

I like how he captures action scenes. For example the image of the leopard seal reaching for a bit on the penguin and almost snapping his jaws is so thrilling. His favorite places to work are places where he knows that he can protect through strong photography. He likes to work in remote places with extreme environments such as the high arctic. Such places get very little coverage and their species need protection as much as any other.

"My goal is to bridge the gap between scientific research and the public by producing stories for magazines such as National Geographic. Since 1994, I have been fortunate to see my work published in hundreds of magazines around the world. In the last few years, I have published seven stories in National Geographic Magazine: "Atlantic Salmon," July 2003, "Northern Exposure," January 2004, "Phoenix Islands," February 2004, “Where Currents Collide,” August 2006, “Deadly Beauty: Leopard Seals,” November 2006, “Life at the Edge,” June 2007, “Narwhals,” August 2007. Other stories are in the works and I will be on assignment for National Geographic for much of the next two years"

I like his use of reflections on water and snow. "Ice Chunks at floe edge" the curved lens makes the illusion of the surface of earth and the sun rising over the horizon.

He is an adventurer photographer. Online it says he has ridden on the the back of a bowhead whale. He has had a near-disastrous attack by a bull elephant seal.

To approach animals in their most natural, native settings, he has to understand they mysteries of their behavior. He takes careful preparations he can show the animal in its best light, demonstrating its beauty, strength, and intelligence. I think photographing the polar bears is helping to show people the effects of global warming and what we are doing to the animals in the arctic. I like the dramatic use of lighting in the early or late parts of the day. He also uses reflections to make the image more interesting.

Frans Lanting

Frans Lanting:
He photographs birds, places, mammals, people, the environment, fish, frogs, and nature. I like his use of repetition, pattern, color, light and shadow to compose images. I looked at his images of birds and tried to do similar techniques with my seagull shots. He likes to capture their eyes to draw you into the photograph. I also looked at the environmental pictures to get new ideas for my documentary project. His portfolio "larger than life" is very interesting to me. He has elephants, antelope, penguins, polar bears, rivers, lions, impalas, cougars, dolphins and birds. He usually has a repeated form with no real focal point, or he has 1 strong focal point with a very pretty background.
He was born in Rotterdam, Holland. His photographs are regularly published in National Geographic, for which he is a photographer-in-residence. He is also featured in Outdoor-photographer, Audubon, and Life.

"I don’t like to talk about that too much," he said, looking out of the window over the dunes into the fog bank that moves from the Pacific onto the California coast almost every afternoon, where it stays until the next morning, a mellow mediator between sky and ocean, and ocean and land. The question which Frans Lanting avoids is supposed to lead to the topic of his work as a wildlife photographer.

His success came fast. He arrived at the peak of his profession in only ten years and has been able to add a new dimension to it. His stories, which normally take shape during long months on vacation, bring life to remote geographic names like South Georgia, Madagascar, Botswana, and often create the public image of these landscapes and animals for a worldwide audience.

Environmental Photography for my Documentary

By 2050 a third of the people on Earth may lack a clean, secure source of water. Join National Geographic in exploring the local stories and global trends that define the world's water crisis. Learn about freshwater resources and how they are used to feed, power, and sustain all life. See how the forces of technology, climate, human nature, and policy create challenges and drive solutions for a sustainable planet.

This is one reason why I wanted to do my documentary on the waters and environment of the jersey shore. http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/photos/freshwater-threatened/fenriverpollution.html . This site helped to give me ideas about topics and shots I can look out for. They have examples of freshwater and ocean water. They capture moments of waves crashing and ocean tides, while they have the calmness of the freshwater. They also have underwater shots on the national geographic site of course, but I did not have access to an underwater camera unfortunately. However, I would not want to photograph in the ocean here, no image would come out because the water isn't clear at all. But at the same time, maybe that would help to get a point across... I liked experimenting with time exposure and photographing water. I went to the beach for the sunrise to see what I could get. I didn't have a tripod at this point, but I tried to balance my camera on rocks and rails. I liked the outcome of shooting the rocks in the ocean with a 3-4 second exposure. The ocean waves move over the rocks creating a ghostly effect. I just think next time I should bring the tripod to make the rocks more crisp and in focus.
I also was passing the waterfall gardens on campus and I took some time exposure shots. It was in the middle of the day so the light was not ideal, but I still think I came up with some good stuff. I like both of the different options when shooting water. First, I shoot on automatic and froze the water as it was falling. I like this effect. Then, I used a 1/5th second exposure, followed by a 1 and 2 second exposure. This obviously blurred the water and showed the motion. I like how both of the shots turned out. I want to continue to explore the use of time photography on water.

Jack Flaherty

Jack Flaherty is a local sports photographer. He shoots high school sports including field hockey, soccer, football, swimming, lacrosse, softball, basketball, ice hockey, and gymnastics. Jack does some college sports, and has recently started coming to field hockey games here at Monmouth and taking pictures. What he does is he comes to the games, shoots, and uploads them on his website: http://www.jackflahertyphotography.com/photogallery.html. They are for sale there: 8x10 are $15, 11x14 are $35, and 16x20 are $60. I have started talking with him after the games, and he told me he spends roughly $20,000 on photography equipment each year. His newest lens he is using cost him $5,000.

I think he uses canon, but I don't know the names of the each lens or camera, but he has so much equipment. This makes me wonder if all of this equipment is necessary to get good pictures. I always thought that its not the camera that makes good pictures, its the photographer. But, if you don't have a high tech. camera for sports photography, it becomes really difficult to get the good shots. I invested in a 100-300mm canon lens. I am getting good results with this lens when I shoot sports, and the results are getting better the more I shoot. Jack's camera must shoot 10-20 images per second. He holds down the shutter continuously making sure that he doesn't miss anything. At our game yesterday he shot 2500 pictures. I looked at them all, and sometimes he has 20 images that are almost identical.

I really wonder if he has a unique skill for photographing sports, or what if, with the best possible equipment, anyone can shoot sports if they just hold down the shutter. What makes a good sports photographer? Is it someone who captures every possible moment of the game, or the ones who capture the pivotal action shots and emotional moments of the game?

Michael "Nick" Nichols

Nick is a wildlife photographer for National Geographic. http://www.michaelnicknichols.com/
I am really drawn to his work. He uses remote cameras that are triggerd by animals breaking an invisible beam. Some animals are so afraid of humans that it’s nearly impossible to photograph them up close. The trick is to have the animal make the kind of image that you would do if you were there.

He used this method to capture images of leopards. "In that first foray, after months of trial and error, we only had one publishable image (of a leopard with half his face out of the frame). Since then, we’ve refined the process, with much better results, as you’ll see here.Leopards have a huge range, from Northern China and Siberia all the way down to South Africa. The only place they can be seen regularly is in the private game reserves of South Africa, where baiting and hidden radio transmitters have been used to habituate them for tourism. They are incredibly secretive — a few even survive on dogs, pigeons, and rodents in the streets of Bombay."
"Legend (and maybe fact) has it that one leopard killed over 500 humans before finally being killed by the famed tiger hunter Jim Corbett. They are not meant to be seen except with a fleeting glance that leaves you unsure of what was there."

He took the famous image of Jane Goodall with the gorilla reaching out to touch her hair. I like this because she is not afraid of the animal and uses disarming body language with him.
I like the intimacy in his photographs. They make you feel like the people or animals do in the image.

Christophe Huet

Christophe Huet is a french photoshopretoucher. I find his work very interesting and fascinating. He does advertising and I think that is even better because he can make money from his work. He created advertisings for Nike, Motorola, AIDES and Playstation. He started out working as a printer, and he trained himself on retouching. He has been retouching now for 10 years. I read that his main purpose is to make people forget the retouching itself even if it seems obvious because of the singularity of the image. Now he keeps on working as retoucher and manager at ASILE since 2005.
Sometimes, he refuses projects for personal reasons like ads for cigarettes, for junk industrial food, or others that degrade any kind of people. He thinks we have to be responsible for our act, that’s the attitude he tries to have for himself even if it’s not always easy to do. He does not want to say ‘yes’ to everything in the name of money. The artistic part of his job can’t make him forget his responsability. Likewise, he always tries to keep time to offert his job for association that struggle against cancer, smoking, aids, all bad treatment, ecology...
On his website, we can view his work and he also has a section where he shows the different steps involved in making the complex images. I find it amazing how he starts with one image and ends up only using a portion of it. He uses so many images in one piece and he makes it look so real even though most of them are impossibilities. I think his website is great. I like how he is not just a photographer and a retoucher, he comes up with the advertising ideas that are so original and eye catching.
I hope to develop photoshop skills that are half as successful as his are.
link: http://www.christophehuet.com/

Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark has traveled to make pictures that reflect a high degree of humanism. Today, she is recognized as one of our most respected and influential photographers. Her images of our world's diverse cultures have become landmarks in the field of documentary photography. Her portrayals of Mother Teresa, Indian circuses, and brothels in Bombay were the product of many years of work in India. A photo essay on runaway children in Seattle became the basis of the academy award nominated film Streetwise, directed and photographed by her husband, Martin Bell. She is best known for being a documentary photographer, photojournalist, portrait taker, and advertising work.
"She demands clarity of issue, excellence of technique, and the ability of any image to stand alone. To elaborate, while editing she abstracts herself from the circumstances of taking the photograph. Mark is not a prisoner of nostalgic memory such as, "this is the woman who fed me when I was hungry in Mexico," "this was a good/bad day for me," or "the man in the hat had survived many tragedies," and so forth. The image itself, therefore, must prove its own reason for existing that will be meaningful, in some way, for the viewer."
Mark says, "I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul, and I think you have to be clear about that."

Start of Sequence as a Story Blog

Art Wolfe- a great landscape and travel photographer that I was reading about in the library. The book was photographs of landscapes and native cultures. I checked out his site and he is also shooting the world's fastest-disappearing wildlife. His vision and passionate wildlife advocacy affirm his dedication to his work. By employing artistic and journalistic styles, he documents his subjects and educates the viewer. His photographs show his love for the environment. His images take my breath away. Aerial shoots are amazing. He shoots people> festival, hair, human nature, portraits, world children. His places are what I am most drawn to> aerial, architecture, spotlight, surreal land. The spotlight is very interesting because it is a landscape where one part of the image is highlighted from a spotlight. It could be a whole mountain in a landscape, or a circle on a huge mountain, or inside a cave, a spotlight shinning down, or a spotlight of the sun through the clouds, etc. Wildlife includes camouflage. You don't see the animal at first, you have to really look at the image to see how the wild animal blends in with its environment. Lions in the savanna, wolves in the woods, cheetahs in grass, owls in the tree bark, white wolves in the snow, seal in the snow, etc. Wildlife also has single moment captures. This is where he gets the shot of action or movement. These are really amazing. The eagle scooping up food from the water, lions attacking a bison, a cheetah killing an antelope, a bear catching a fish, a seal about to kill its dinner, penguins jumping, hippos yawning, polar bears fighting, bats flying, horses running in water, bears swimming, birds flying, etc. They are moments that he captured. Prob. a very high shutter speed for the ones where the action is frozen in time. The environment with animals shows the animal and most of the image is showing its surrounding environment. In most of these images, he is getting pretty close to the animals, even if he used a 500mm lens. Last in this section is portrait of animals. This is basically him shooting just the animal close up. For all we know, these animals could be in captivity because we can't see their environment. Last category is impressions. This is showing color, pattern, repetition, shape, contrast, texture, framing the subject. He has prints available. Panoramas at 40" is $600! 50" is $1,000, and 70" is $1,500. Don't get me wrong, they are amazing, and I would love to have them, but it is so expensive for a print that isn't matted or framed. He has published 26 books! He is my new Favorite photographer!!

http://www.artwolfe.com/index.html

Imapix

Imapix is a Nature photography company. Wildlife including deer, birds, cows, wolves, sled dogs, owls, eagles, foxes, horses, cats, dogs, ducks, and insects. There is a combination of action, emotion, and interaction in the wildlife shots. Then there are landscapes, close ups of flowers, and also some action of dog sled racing, and bicycle racing. Overall, I think his work is very strong because of the subject, lighting, color, and the general impact it has on the viewer. 

I am interested in wildlife photography; but more wild and exotic animals. My life dream since I was little is to go to the mountains of China and photography wild giant pandas in their environment. I would hope that my pictures would inspire people to help save these endangered animals. I would also like to go and photography animals in a safari in Africa, penguins in Antarctica, the Galapagos, and the rainforest. I hope to travel to all of these places and photography wildlife and landscapes there.

 

Christian Frolich

I love this work. I found it on Flickr. He shoots landscapes, portraits, and commercial work. He has black and white landscapes, and also bright amazing colored landscapes. He has many shots near the beach. He also adds his own texture to many images. There are some with special paper on multiply, tree bark texture, and crumpled paper in the background. I like the ones with texture because I look at these images longer because they are not normal. I think the color in his images is strong, bright, contrasty and eye catching. It looks like he has traveled to many different oceans to get his seascapes and lighthouses. I am inspired by his photographs because landscapes and seascapes is a realm of photography I am really interested in. 

http://www.frolichphoto.com/ 

conclusion

Overall, I loved dig. photo this semester. I wasnt sure if I was going to take it because of field hockey practice everyday. I really didnt like missing field hockey 2x a week; but when you have a passion for two things in your life, you need to balance them out. I loved working with sports photography and developing my skills. I liked printing with Epson and scanning negatives. I used acrylic gel for the first time so that was a learning experience. I have never heard what a dyp tic was until this class and I think it posses a very interesting concept. I love the impossible image project and doing research for it on worth1000.com. I have thought really hard about my major and decided I want to get a b.a. in photography as well as a b.f.a in graphic design. I am excited to continue developing my skills.

John Heyn

John Heyn graduated from Kean University with a B.A. in Photographic and Graphic Arts Education in 1978 and has been heavily involved in photography for the last 27 years.
John founded Heyn Photography in 1988, specializing in wedding and portrait photography and building off his previous experiences as a freelance wedding photographer for major studios throughout New Jersey.
Since then, he has won numerous awards for his wedding photography in both New Jersey state and national print competitions, including the Professional Photographers Association of New Jersey's (PPANJ) most prestigious award, 2006 Photographer of the Year. In 2002 he took the Fuji Masterpiece Award and a blue ribbon in the New Jersey state competition for his moving image entitled Night Moves. John has been a member of the Professional Photographers Association of New Jersey (PPANJ) since 1989, the Professional Photographers of America (PPA) since 1988 and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.

He passes on his passion for photography by teaching photo levels 1-4 at Monmouth Regional High School. He was my photo teach in high school.

Edward Noumair

"When you love something that much, it doesn't matter how hard it is, you just do it." Edward Noumair, Professional Photographer from Asbury Park. He started his own photography studio in 1939 and has been in the business for 60 years. He became insterested in photography during high school when he joined a photography club and the teacher in charge of the department encouraged and supported his interest in photography. He continued with this photography class for a couple of years and during that time he photographed many school projects as well as individuals students in the school.
During the summers he worked for Mitchell Liebsman, a man who ran a concession on the boardwalk, called The Action Photo Company. He used a DeVry Motion Picture camera, which converted to a single action photographic process. By the time he graduated from high school, he felt encouraged enough to start his own business. He found a little store on Summerfield Avenue and rented it for $25.00 a month.
In 1942, when the war broke out, he closed up my shop, covered and stored all my equipment and joined the US Marines for the next four years. There, he photographered all kinds of things. He was frequently sent up to perform mapping duties.
After the war, Edward returned to Summerfield Ave to continue his business. He soon had a very good customer base and was known for his work. In those days, he was pretty much the only photographer serving Deal, Interlaken, Neptune, Bradley and all the towns along the coast down to and including Belmar. Because his business was flurishing, he purchased a studio on Bangs Ave in Asbury. That is where he worked until he retired.
Edward shot portraits, weddings, group portraits and modeling. He served as the Professional Photographer's Association of New Jersey president in 1980. He has earned many awards for his photographs from this association.
He retired in 1999. In the past year, he has invested in his own digital nikon SLR and computer. He is also going to set up a darkroom in his garage to make prints from his old negatives of historic Asbury Park. Edward just turned 88 years old.

He is my grandfather, and the reason I became interested in photograhy.

HDR photographs

I am interested in making HDR images. I have not done it yet, but I have seen many pictures that have amazing colors because of HDR. I did a little research and found some directions that I am going to test out:

First, use a tripod so all the pictures are the same.
Bracket 3 different shots with settings EV +/- 1 or 2.
Use a cable release.
Use aperture priority. (F8 for starters)
Meter the scene by half pressing the shutter release button, then remember what shutter speed number gets displayed.
Switch to manual, and set your shutter speed to the number. Leave your aperture at F8.
Shoot your 3 images.
Then in photoshop, open up 3 images-one for midtones, highlights, and shadows.
File-Automate-merge to HDR-add 3 files.
New file has possibly 32-bit color. Lower to 16-bit for printing.
Edit normally as wanted in photoshop-curves, color. etc.

Sports photography tips

I have complied tips for being a better sports photographer from various online sites:

1- Know your subject- slow sport/fast/large field/small/where's the action going to happen?

2-Know your camera-You can't spend time with trial and error when shooting sports, because the action will have passed. 

3-Take good pictures-shutter priority/faster shutter speed will freeze the subject.

4-Don't just shoot the action, sometimes dramatic photos are found after the play or on the sidelines. 

5-Practice- the more you practice (just like in sports) the better you will be.

Goal- to combine a great moment, with great content and great emotion in a single shot.

Mike Orazzi

Found this guy on Flickr. He is a sports photographer who has also shot field hockey. Not normal high school field hockey, but he has images up from the NCAA D1 final four. Softball, track and field, tennis, baseball, lacrosse, golf, rodeo, volleyball, basketball, gymnastics, soccer, cheerleading, football, and wrestling. Wow, that is a lot of sports to be shooting. After looking through a lot of his work, I decided that I like the pictures with a lot of action that show the players' faces, and I like the ones with emotion and action together. Some of his pictures are great but could be improved if he shot from a different vantage point. One picture is of a soccer goalie who is diving to make a save. When Mike pressed the shutter, he got the goalie as he was 3 feet off the ground and horizontal. However, we see his feet and legs. The picture would be more impacting if it showed his face as his was making a last ditch effort dive. The ball got passed him. Anyway, I think that being a good sports photographer depends largely on being in the right place at the right time. And being ready to snap the shot of course.  

Robert Creamer

Artist who uses a flat bed scanner to create images of flowers and fauna. I watched the video of him working from his site, and his process includes setting up his flowers in a box with a black background to scan. He can preview the scan as many times as he wants until he is satisfied enough to make the scan. During his editing process, he tries not to manipulate his work too much. He said he doesn't want to focus of his work to be the editing, but the subject itself. When I first saw his work of flowers, I assumed they were photographs. I was surprised to learn that they were made using a scanner. I am realizing how much scanners are important and can be important tools in making photographic art. 

Mark Slankard

Body of work: curb appeal-mid-western suburban landscapes. "Curb Appeal" is intended to explore the problems and possibilities of suburban developments as a site of contention to expanding privatization and social withdrawal. His "Minor Invasions" work is fake dollhouses and scenes that are made to evoke sublimated fears and desires and explore tensions between childhood innocence and sadism. I think it is very interesting how he has sos much meaning behind his work. He doesn't shoot to shoot; he has a mission and he prepares what he needs to get his point across.

McKay Imaging

McKay Imaging is a photo company based in Red Bank, NJ.  Elizabeth and Robert McKay work together to shoot weddings, commercial, portraits, and performers. I am a fan of their work, and I am trying to get an internship with them this summer. They charge $3800 starting for wedding photography, and $395 starting for portraits. They also have a gallery in Red Bank that I have been to last summer. 

Jerry Uelsmann

He is an amazing photographer. I can't believe that he puts together his compositions all in the darkroom. They are so well meshed together; I am very interested to find out how he does it. "Jerry creates his work with film and darkroom techniques, but he in no way harbors any ill-thoughts on digital work. To him it is like painters who prefer to use different brushes." 

Maggie Taylor

Maggie Taylor is a digital artist who uses a flatbed scanner and vintage unclaimed photographs to make unique art. Her work is interesting and unusual. It isn't quite photography, but it has many photo elements. There are sometimes 3D objects in a 2D space. She paints many of her background. They look more like paintings to me personally, but I know that they are digital compositions. They are mostly 'impossibly' images. Even if that environment could exist, the subject matter is fantasy. She has done a body of work called Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which is a play off of disney's movie. Maggie is married to Herry Uelsmann who is also a famous photographer. He is a master combination printer who uses multiple negatives and enlargers to make his darkroom work. He makes impossible images using the darkroom. 

Online Photo Storage

Everyone is like back up your work! Save to your jump drive and to Thawspace, burn CDs, etc. I am looking into online photo storage because Thawspace is not forever, CDs can't hold too much information, and I can't seem to figure out how to burn to DVDs which have more memory. Memory cards are very small and can be easy to lose. Burning CDs takes up physical space and also has the possiblilty of getting lost. Online storage sites: Flickr, photobucket, shutterfly, snapfish. hooray.com, fotki.com. Every online photo storing/sharing site is different. Some cost money each month, or just one flat rate, and some are free altogether.  Some offer a little storage, and others have unlimited. Some can save full resolution and others save 72 dpi. My favorite is Flickr because there are so many photos to browse, and most of them are very high grade work. I get ideas from there and learn from others. 

Rankin

Digital Photographer who lives in london. http://www.rankin.co.uk/bio.aspx. He does advertising, beauty, portraits, lingerie, covers, and fashion. His photographs are very digitally enhanced and manipulated. He shoots for advertising. Everything from Baileys, Cannon, Nike, Dove, Coke, Shampoos, water, sunglasses, clothing stores, BMW, and diamonds. He makes covers for many different magazines including Vogue, Esquire, GQ, Dazed, and playboy. I think his images are sharp and 'hip' like fresh. A lot of modeling and fashion, beauty shots for makeup probably. I like looking at how photography can be used for more than just art. Advertising. It is a way to make money, and I like that there are successful digital photographers in the advertising field. This is a field that interested me 3 years ago when I was first going to college. I took an advertising class and was going to major in that a well. I am happy with my major now, but I think it would be good to learn more about photography and advertising and how they go together in many instances. 

Aaron & Rosie Nace fotography

I found these two artists on flickr.com. I think they are amazing. The way they can digitally composite their own impossible images perfectly is something I strive to do. He puts himself in a lot of his work. I will talk about some of his self-portraits. 

-His face is a puzzle with many pieces, and his hand is holding the piece from center.

-The background is a patterned wall paper, his face is on top, and half of his face is flat and part of the wall. 

-His face with no eyes, nose, or mouth.

-Composite with many old fashion clocks and his torso.

-A remake of Frida kahlo with him in the center and a similar background.

-He has many movie posters with him in them. All very interesting.

Actually, he is in all of his work on his web site. In his blog, he said it gets old taking pictures of yourself.

Rosie is his partner on the website.

All of her photos are self-portraits too... I still like the images. They are for the majority like our assignment 2 with impossible images. They are really cool and realistic for being impossible. I def. am a fan.

http://www.nacedesign.com/index2.html 

Portfolio

I just printed out 14 images of field hockey sports photography! I have 2 more left, but they don't fit on the same page so I am waiting until I have something else to fit on the page so I don't waste any paper. Most of them are 7.5x11@300 dpi. Others are 10x10, and 4x7. I realized something pretty interesting. I started shooting for my portfolio the last weekend in March. When I came home to edit from that shoot, I saw a lot of pictures that I wanted to use; maybe 10. Then I shot the next 3 weekends, and the images from the first shoot didn't seem so great anymore. I think it's a good thing. Each weekend that I went to shoot, I think I got better because of my final portfolio pictures that I decided to choose, only 1 is from my first shoot. The number of pictures I choose to use gets larger as each shoot progressed. Therefore, I think I definitely improved each time I went out to shoot. (Also, I got a new 100-300mm lens for my birthday which helped). I took one shot of my field hockey net on So Sweet a Cat field a year ago that I want to find and use for my portfolio. Overall, I am really happy with the theme I choose because it is something I am really interested in, and I think I improved significantly. I am also happy that I stuck with just the sports of field hockey because it is much easier for each picture to relate to the other. If I shot other sport, it would be harder to make a cohesive body of work. Over the summer, I want to try shooting other sports (Surfing, swimming, biking) I also want to experiment with panning on a tripod. :)

Alfred Stieglitz

"Alfred Stieglitz is often called the father of modern photography because of his driving force in the fight to have photography recognized as an art form. Camera Work was one of the greatest accomplishments of Stieglitz in his mission to bring the level of photographic art in the United States up to the level of work being produced in England and Europe." He photographed clouds to demonstrate how to "hold a moment, how to record something so completely, that all who see will relieve an equivilant of what has been expressed." He was born in Hoboken, NJ in 1864. He is best known for the images, "Winter, Fifth Avenue" and "The Terminal," but after doing my project on clouds for assignment 3, I find his cloud studies very interesting. I like to high contrast between black and white in some of his images; and then he also has some that are full of midtones and very low contrast. The sun is in some pictures: siloetted, or sunlight coming in from the side. In others, there is no sun visable, but still light. I think that everyone has looked up at the sky at somepoint and has found some type of meaning in the clouds. Dark, storm clouds, rainy clouds, sunny, huge, small, cottony, wispy, bright, dull, different shapes and sizes. Some people can spend a lazy afternoon looking at the clouds and finding shapes and animals in them. I think that Stieglitz was a legacy in promoting photography in America. Currently, his cloud work is not for sale, but is priced between $55,000 and $65,000! wow, that's amazingly high for a photograph.

Photography Portfolio

I am interested in shooting sports photography. I love sports and I love photo, so I tried combining the two, and I really enjoyed it. So, I am doing a portfolio on sports photography. I wanted to push the action idea and possibly shoot 'still life' in sports. I was imagining close ups, b/w, macro, pattern, etc for this idea. Examples would be a pile of field hockey sticks with all different colors and logos. Another example is sports equipment close up in b/w. 

My next idea is just shooting emotion in sports. People celebrating after a home run, fans cheering, coaches yelling, dad teaching his son to catch, lifting massive amounts of weights, crying after a lose, exhaustion, and frustration. 

My last idea is a photo essay where I will photograph a single sport or possibly a single sporting events and show all aspects of the sport: emotion, action, still life. Strong opening image, throughout the game, and a strong closing image. 

I decided to pic the last idea. I like the other ones, but for my portfolio, I want to shoot just field hockey and try my best to get prime action shots, emotion, and still life. I have shot at 3 different tournaments so far, and I have one more to go this weekend. I have edited over 200 pictures and have 10 solid ones. I am finding that it is best to just shoot and eventually I will get a good one. Until I get better at this type of photography, I am just shooting as much as possible. I think my images from the first weekend up until last weekend did improve a little. I am excited to see these printed out. I will have possibly 3 different sizes. 10x10, 7.5x11, and 4x7. Some images have better quality and resolution than others; I need to balance them out.

Proj 3

For the next project I am doing #3 which is post print manipulation. In the past I have done a Polaroid manipulation where I heated up the picture with a hair blow dryer and  then took a golf tee to make swirls and textures on the print. So when I first heard about assignment 3, this is what I thought of...but we are printing on the epson printer on matte paper so I didn't know what to do. 2 weekends ago, on a drive home from temple, the sky was looking really amazing. So I took out my camera and took some pictures. When I was in class trying to think of something to do for assignment 3, I looked at my pictures of clouds that I had taken and decided what I was going to do. I printed out 4 large images of the sky and interesting clouds. 2 of the images where from that weekend, and the other 2 were from about a year ago. No I have the images printed and my post print manipulation is going to be painting with an acrylic medium glossy gel. On Thursday after I buy the gel, I am going to use a thick paint brush and I will make several layers of gel to create a texture that looks like the clouds. Hope it works out how I want it to.

Project one is done. I stuck with the dead/ alive theme. Overall, I am happy with my project. The second project is the impossible image. I was def. overwhelmed with the possibilities of this assignment. It's unlimited. And I wanted to challenge myself. What I have right now is 2 images of levitation. One is a boat floating above the water, the other is a car floating above the street. I duplicated the shape of the subject and filled it with black and transformed it into the shape of an appropriate shadow. I used a gaussian blur and lowered the opacity slightly.  I used the blur tool to add extra blurred edges. For the boat over the water, I used the liquify tool to just mess up the edges of the shadow a little so it looks like it belongs on top of the water. 

My next image is a man and dog silloette out; they are walking into the sunset on top of a lake. They also have a shadow, and I used the same techniques for this one. My last image I just completed is 2 sting rays who are flying in the air and a couple birds who are swimming underwater. The sting rays also have shadows. I really like making fake shadows. I think these image are pretty strong; not great, but realistic for an impossible image. I am going to keep exploring my skills in this subject. For example, I made Tiger Woods have a furry tiger face. haha. I would like to do more than 4 images, but I would rather have 4 solid pieces than more mediocre images. As for assignment 3/4... I don't know what I am doing yet. Be back soon, because I am really behind on these blogs. No worries yet though. 

Project 1 progress

For the first project I stuck with the Dead/Alive "theme" My first dip tic is a pretend dead person on a stretcher going into the back of an ambulance. This is to symbolize death. There is a person on the stretcher covered in a white blanket. On the other side, is a cut out from a magazine of a baby who needs a breathing tube. This symbolizes life because she is a baby; however, there is a catch because although she is a newborn, she still has health issues. 

My next one is a scan of a newspaper obituaries section. There is a person who is 21 who dies in a car accident listed. The picture on the right is for life because it is of a teenage boy getting his first car. Fine print would be car can bring new life, but also destroy life. 

Next is an infrared shot of a cemetery with lines of tombstones.  The right shows lines of trees that were recently planted and going to bloom as soon as it gets warmer. 

Lastly, is asbury park's convention hall because it is abandon but that is what exists right now.. The right shows old asbury park which no longer exists when it was so crowded and a really cool place to be. They are 4 dip tics each showing something different but all carrying the same theme. 

Project 2 Idea

Assignment 2 Proposal: Impossible Image
I am so excited about this project because there are so many different possibilities for an impossible image. I made a list of ideas and narrowed it down to one theme that I could use for the four images. (There has to be a theme right?) So my overall theme is something like “going against the laws of nature.” This includes the laws of gravity, the ability to freeze time, and super human abilities. For defying the laws of gravity, I could photography a construction site and take a steel beam that is horizontal (or vertical) and have a person walking upside down on the beam (or sideways). The person could be wearing a construction hat and be working on the job as if it was completely normal to defy gravity. For another image, I could set up a scene where someone would be robbing a bank and a cop caught them and fires a gun. The robber has the ability to catch the bullet in mid air. This is defiantly an impossible image. I think it would make the image more interesting to have more than one impossibility in each image, but I don’t want to crowd it or make it look fake. I have been going through a ton of different ideas for this project and I have to narrow down which ideas I should go with but if I am not on the right track with these two ideas then please tell me now so I can change my concept.

Ideas for my first project

Assignment 1 Proposal: Digital capture vs. analog input.
I understand this project to be two images that when are put side by side, take on a new meaning. On one side, there is an analog image and on the other side, a digital picture. We need a series of 4 pairs. My theme for this project is life and death. My ideas are to have each pair very different but share a similar but not exact theme. First, a cemetery on one side and a pregnant woman on the other side. The cemetery would be what happens after death, and the pregnant lady would be what happens before life. Also, maybe a baby and an old person. Another idea for a different pair is winter (dead) and spring (reborn). Another image could be abandon buildings which are dead and the renewal of building bringing new life. Another image could be something along the lines of sunrise and sunset, or lightness and darkness. My last idea is winning (full of life) losing (feeling dead). Also, being healthy vs. being sick or injured. I think this is along the lines of the project but my ideas are defiantly not set in stone and are up for being changed.