Inspiration:

"You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you. I broke something today and I realized I should break something once a week to remind me how fragile life is. In the future everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes but I always say one's company, two's a crowd, and three's a party. There should be a course in the first grade on love. I have a social disease. I have to go out every night. It takes a lot of work to figure out how to look so good. I am a deeply superficial person. Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job. "Well what do you love most?” That’s how I started painting money. The artificial fascinates me, the bright and shiny. I guess I've been influenced by everybody. But that’s good. That’s pop. I never wanted to be a painter: I wanted to be a tap-dancer. Black is my favorite color and white im my favorite color. Art is what you can get away with. They say that time changes things but you actually have to change them yourself. When I die I don’t want to leave any leftovers. I'd like to disappear. People wouldn’t say he died today they'd say he disappeared but I do like the idea of people turning into dust or sand and it would be very glamourous to be reincarnated as a big ring on Elizabeth Taylor's finger. I don’t really believe in love. I sort of believe in liking. If everybody’s not a beauty, then nobody is. I like boring things. I did fifty elvises one day. If you want to know all about Andy Warhol just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me and there I am.Theres nothing behind it. I really do live for the future, because when I'm eating a box of candy I can't wait to taste the last piece. The world fascinates me. Ever since I was a kid I've wanted to live as fast as I could so I always try to find ways to do things faster. But why should I be original? Why cant I be non-original? People look the most kissable when they're not wearing makeup. Marilyns lips weren’t kissable but they were photographable. Once you "got" Pop you could never see a sign the same way again and once you thought Pop you could never see America the same way again. I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them I don’t try to make them extraordinary. I just try to paint them ordinary-ordinary. I never met an animal I didn’t like. I think that everybody is my friend. I never read, I just look at pictures. Pop art is for everyone."

Andy Warhol

I took this picture in Australia. It is one of my favorite pictures I have ever taken. I love the stance of the three penguins, their little wings sticking out and their heads poking around looking for food. I really like the lighting as well. I think there is a lot going on as far as shadow and the light and dark features of the penguins. compositionally, most people hate the centered look of the focal point, but I like that they are in the center of this picture. the way the three heads go in different directions leads your eye all around, and breaks of the center focus. It is divided up in the thirds horizontally with the sand, water, and rock, and vertically with the three penguins.

my crazy head

I'm a very visual person. Images and types and stills of real life situations get stuck in my head and i refer to them to describe life and my thoughts. But I'm also very into music. Sometimes a song lyric, a few notes, or a verse will get stuck in my head for days and days and it will become my soundtrack to those days. I wish that life did come with a soundtrack. that for different moods and experiences songs would play that perfectly portrayed the emotions you were feeling at the time. Just like watching the hills. as shallow as it is you cant deny the music they play describes the situations and the moods of the people in the scenes. Let it be known I do not with my life was the hills, but its simply a good reference. Currently my head is playing Paramore and the lines "Darling, you are the only exception" are running through my mind as they have been the last 3 days. What do I do about this? it happens constantly, every few days or so my head with start a new playlist and keep it set on a song for a while. its something i relate to. a deep down to my core understanding of what those words mean. maybe it doesn't hit everyone else like it hits me, but certain parts of songs or a few words in a verse will give a one of those moments..where the words describe you and you're the only one who feels them. clearly I am not. i wish i could put words together to make people feel connected. words are just words until you feel them.

Critique

After the critique on Thursday, I came away with a better understanding of a good self portrait, and what to change about mine. There was some interesting shadows on my face in my first self portrait, which show the shape of the camera. Without doing too much, it might be cool to emphasize the shadow in photoshop. Also, the self portrait with my legs walking away is a cool photo, in my opinion, but from what Priscilla said it doesn't seem to show much about who I am or give very much emotion. We talked a lot about portraying emotion through our self portraits, and I think that is something I need to work on. I was nervous about that before because I didn't want them to seem "Myspace-like". But I think now I have a better understanding of how to go about that. Along with emotion, symbolism is also something I should consider. For instance, water has a lot of symbolism and there is a lot that one can do with water to make a portrait interesting. The way one interacts with the surroundings also adds for an interesting narrative. This weekend I took more pictures and tried to play with the idea of interacting with the space I was in.

I also never even thought of putting something where I would be standing in the picture to get the focus and composition in the right place, and then jump in at the last second. I tried that this weekend and it made things much easier! :)

After watching that documentary about Annie Leibovitz, it changed my thinking of what photographs can do. I always thought about photography as a way to capture a moment in time, but the way that Annie took pictures made the moments special without needing any explanation or outside information. For instance the pictures she took during the 60's when she began working for rolling stone of the hippies, showed how much passion and emotion these individuals had, all through one photograph. The pictures speak for themselves. The same as in the Lennon and Yoko Ono picture. It has so much love and intimacy in their embrace. It is also so special that this was taken only hours before John Lennon died.

It is just so amazing how much Annie can capture in her pictures. The emotion and energy is incredible. She just has such a talent and an eye for getting the essence of her subjects.

#1

This picture was taken by Matt Handelman, a UD student who I went on a study abroad trip with to Australia.  This picture is of Philip Island, not far from Melbourne.  We were here in the evening, around sunset. What I love about this picture is the dark effect that he used.  I have similar pictures, but they don't exaggerate the lights and darks as much as Matt's.  I really want to learn how to edit the color and lighting to change the effects of a landscape (or portrait, picture of friends, etc).  I love this picture :)