Sunday, December 15, 2013

Group Pictures


Group Pictures


Group pictures are funny to me.  They show a bunch of people in a place together and convey that those people enjoyed being together at that time in that place, but they rarely show what those people were doing.  This one, made into a gif for fun, was after we sat on a grassy hillside and watched the sun come up.  It was fun and we ate breakfast afterwards but this group picture is what remains.  Although of course, I took other images that day.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Fire

Fire


Have you ever gone camping? I don't mean with a camper because in general I consider that cheating.  But only sort of.  Whatever.  Whenever I go camping one of the things I look forward to is having a fire.  Fires are fun to watch and add to as they consume most anything you throw into them.  They're just eye catching, and I don't really know why.  Being kept warm is an added bonus. 

I took this image in my living room just before Thanksgiving.  The fact that it is a Lucky Charms box is of no significance, it was just sitting around our house.  But they way the flames shoot out the top is very interesting to me.  

Have there been any interesting times around a fire that you really enjoyed?

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Angels in the Tree



Angels in the Tree



This is the house I grew up in.  As I've said in other posts, I like to climb trees.  The maple tree with the glowing spots in it is the tree I learned to climb in.  At some point my parents bought those two glowing angels and I got the idea to put the way up in the tree.  I am an Eagle scout and the thing I enjoyed learning the most is how to tie knots.  Once we started doing this every year I would climb the tree with a pulley and a rope and tie it up near the top.  I would drop the long rope and climb down to tie the angel to the rope and my sister or mother would pull the rope down to get the angel into the tree.  As you can probably see, the 100ft.  extension cord we used barely made it up there, but it was always worth it.  They could be seen clear down the street.

Looking at this image now the angels remind me of the gospels of Jesus Christ where there are angels sitting on the tomb of Jesus after he has been resurrected.  Luke describes them as wearing clothes that "gleamed like lightning"  (Luke 24:4).  Maybe the same angels just happened to visit my house?

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Struck by Disaster . . . Twice

Struck by Disaster . . . Twice

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Posted on slate.com's photography blog, Behold is a story about Michael Redpath.  He was a firefighter at ground zero in 2001 after the World Trade Centers collapsed but he was also filling the role of photographer.  Now many people took pictures of the disaster but what makes Redpath's images interesting is what happened to them in his basement eleven years later.  Last year disaster struck again, this time in the form of Sandy the hurricane.  Redpath's images were affected by the water that stormed his basement creating these very interesting images.  He was waiting for it to not feel too soon to show his images but after this new development he's bringing them out to be seen.

I find it interesting how two different disasters can strike a certain area and create such an interesting set of images.  Most people might have discarded these images after being "ruined" by water but displaying them is a much more interesting way of approach. 

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

A Bicycle Ride at Night

A Bicycle Ride at Night:


https://soundcloud.com/pvotaw/bicycle-crash

I made this narrative story for another class I'm in.  It's actually a video class but this is just an audio assignment.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Rooftops

Climbing on Rooftops?

This is in response to Night Climbing by Ian Jeffrey at http://www.aperture.org/blog/night-climbing/.


Ian was writing about Thomas Mailaender, a contemporary photographer who collected these images for a traveling show recently.  The images, however, are taken in Cambridge in 1937 of guys climbing on roofs.  This article grabbed my attention because I myself like to climb.  I generally like climbing trees but I generally like to see things from above.  Something about seeing the world from a higher vantage point is fascinating to me. 

Ian points out that the activity of students climbing on the buildings isn't unusual.  He mentions a book called The Roof Climber's Guide that was written in 1899.  You don't write a book about something you never do.  The interesting point Ian makes is that these particular students were interested in publicity, in photographing themselves.  In 1937 this would have been more unique than today where everyone owns at least two cameras, one on their phone and one on their laptop.  Clearly these students back in 1937 were just forerunners to today's society where we're fascinated with photographing ourselves and putting our images up for the world to see on facebook and whatever other websites we're connected to on the internet.  

What's in a Dream?

What's In A Dream?



This is an image that I composited for class.  The assignment had a mere two requirements.  First of all we had to create a "dreamscape" that told a narrative and second, it had to be made using ONLY scanned in images.  

Some people don't really have dreams all that much but I am not one of those people.  I get dreams quite often.  Most of my dreams involve some sort of adventure.  As a case in point, I had a dream just this morning that had me in a sword fight with some chubby kid on a bright street somewhere and somehow I got his sword and won the battle.  But I digress.  I decided that since the assignment required us to use scanned images it would make more sense to see what I could find and then put the images together that I found.  Our art department here at Bradley University, like many other art departments I'm sure, has many old copies of National Geographic that are free for the cutting up or scanning.  On a couple different days I collected issues from before the 90's and searched through issues until I found an image that made me feel adventurous and reminded me of my dreams at the same time.  It wasn't too selective, just visually interesting to me.  Once I had around twenty images I had to narrow it down to a few that would work together and then put them together.  I ended up with the images below:




I liked the two little people on all of that ice because it looked like a place that would be interesting to walk around in, to climb upon. The volcano was mainly because I like blue but the fire got my attention and seemed intense, like what might occur in my dream.  The man on the end is from Yemen in real life (thirty years ago he was still alive anyway) but I chose him because he looked dangerous and interesting.

After playing around a bit I ended up with this image:


Showing it in class the teacher and fellow students thought I should perhaps add a few more little people and make my snow cave a little more like a snow cave.  The volcano also seemed to be just texture rather than a volcano.  Thankfully someone else in the class had this image:


                                                                  so I could add more little guys without much trouble.


It was an interesting assignment although I generally don't like being stuck using the scanner only.  It was a good way to stretch a little in being creative.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Cactus at Night


This is a flowering cactus on one of my friends' porch.  It is funny to me because the flower only comes out at night.  I do a lot with painting with light and wanted to photograph this desert flower.