Student Work: Louis Davidson

Another winter class that wrapped up last month was Master Photographer Series with Roxann Arwen Mills: Developing Personal Vision. The students produced some wonderful work, so I wanted to include a bit of it here.

Featured below is the work of student Louis Davidson, who has also provided some commentary which appears below the images. You can view more of his work at www.davidsondigital.net.

"This piece is a triptych (three photographic images intended to be shown together). They were prepared in response to our first assignment, which was to take photographs in a crowd without using the camera’s viewfinder. When capturing the images I slowed down the shutter so as to create a bit of blurring and sense of motion. Without actually seeing a full person, the viewer senses the activity and sense of purpose as people stride along busy urban sidewalks."

"This is one image from an assignment to create a digital diary of photographs. My diary showed images of scenes plucked from my everyday routine. This particular image shows a door and light switch at an office that I frequent almost daily. The photo’s layout may be likened to that of a Mondrian painting. There are approximately a dozen photos in the series, illustrating scenes from my daily life as well as the compositional and aesthetic interest of the commonplace things that surround us."

"This was part of a series of 10 photos. The assignment was to take photographs at the South Coast Botanic Garden. Rather than taking the expected photos of plants and landscape I thought it would be interesting to make a series of photos which create a story, “Love Blooms at the Botanic Garden”. The image above shows the beginning of the encounter between boy and girl. The one below shows the end of the story. The entire love story can be seen on my web site."

Linomation! (Linoleum Animation)

This animation, created with 296 (!) individual hand-carved linoleum prints, is beautiful, and reminds me of the work that students have done in our monoprinting classes (led by monoprint master Jaime Ursic). The artist says:

"This project is all about words in the English language and artists' interpretations of words that are not used so much anymore, and there are some pretty strange ones. I chose the word "dehisce", which means 'release of material by splitting open of an organ or tissue; the natural bursting open at maturity of a fruit or other reproductive body to release seeds or spores or the bursting open of a surgically closed wound.'"

Via BoingBoing.

Wear Your Type on Your Sleeve

I am a nerd, and I like T-shirts. Hence, I love nerdy T-shirts. So I squealed with joy when I came across "The 10 Shirts Every Type Nerd Must Own." We've got many a type nerd teaching here, and a few in the office as well (Scott is always talking about Kerning and Leading, I think they might be old friends from his designer days).

My favorite is Helbotica. Check them all out at thedesigncubical. And Karen has some more type shirt fun over on The White Boards.

Rumble in the Digital Jungle

Lifehacker, a great resource for high and low tech ways to make your life easier, recently held a contest for Best Image Editing Tool. The contenders were Picasa, GIMP, Adobe Photoshop, Paint.net, and Adobe Lightroom. While Photoshop ultimately destroyed the competition, I enjoyed reading their roundup of the various programs and their strengths and weaknesses. For example, Picasa is great if your Mom is looking to do some organizing and light editing of family photos, GIMP is a free, open-source Photoshop competitor, and Paint.net was started as a computer science project by seniors at Washington State University.

Which photo editing tool is right for you? This post and the reader comments might help you figure it out.

Lifehacker - Five Best Image Editing Tools

Painting with Tape

For those of us who came of age in a certain era (that era being 1980 - 1995) cassette tapes were an important part of our existence. I clearly remember the tapes that made the rounds in my home and on road trips, included Journey, Paul Simon, Phil Ochs, Boston, and MC Hammer. You know, the classics. And then there were the mix tapes, which we spent long afternoons crafting into the perfect soundtrack for whatever teenage angst was happening that month. I think one time I made a Tori Amos/Melissa Ethridge mix. So there you go.

Alas, in this modern era our beloved cassettes have gone the way of the dodo. But they live on in our memories, and in the art of Flickr user iri5, who pulls out the tape and crafts it into portraits of the musician. I love that they express some of the musical life and exuberance that is trapped in the little plastic box. Also, shiny black tape is the perfect medium with which to express Robert Smith's hair.







(via BoingBoing)

Darkroom, We Hardly Knew You

Something we struggle with a bit in this program is the growing gulf between digital and film photography. While many of our instructors enjoy shooting in both mediums, our students are generally interested in learning how to photograph with a digital SLR, and develop the Photoshop and digital workflow skills they'll need to take their hobby to the next level. I love digital photography, but it's sad to see film and especially darkrooms fall by the wayside.

Darkroom nostalgia is summed up well in Kevin Savetz's essay "Elegy for the Darkroom," on Salon.com. Savetz reminisces about his time in the darkroom in high school, saying "I don't imagine that applying the Burn-In Filter can effect the level of joy that I felt using my hands to shape the light that streamed onto photo paper. For that reason alone, paper-and-chemical photography will never really die. Not because some curmudgeon refuses to give up his Bessler enlarger and his Underwood typewriter, but because there is art in the process of creating art. In hand-burning an underexposed corner, in crooning sappy songs while you work, in gliding through the pale yellow light. There's no Photoshop filter for that."

Happily, there are still darkrooms around, and we are able to offer classes where students shoot film and develop their work by hand. The darkroom that we use is Translight Photography Center. For the staff and owner, it's a labor of love, and we're glad they're around to open peoples' eyes to the beauty and reward of darkroom printing. Below are a few images created by the manager, Christine Caldwell (on film, of course).





Elegy for the Darkroom (Kevin Savetz on Salon.com)
Translight Photography Center

Class Photos

Our Winter quarter wrapped up a few weeks ago, and one of the photography courses that just ended was Environmental Portraiture with instructor Josh Sanseri (Josh does amazing portrait work, which you can view on his website www.sanseri.com). One of the students in the class, Dwight Buhler, took photos of his classmates throughout the day, and I wanted to include a few here, since they provide a insider's view of the classroom experience. You can see more samples of Dwight's work on his website, www.dwightbuhler.com.


Here's Josh photographing one of the students in the class (Westwood residents may recognize the alley behind the building where we hold most of our Arts courses).


A student takes a turn shooting the instructor, with the help of a studio strobe inside a soft box.


The students and instructor view their recent images on a laptop, giving critique and suggestions for improvement.


A student hangs work for the end-of-class show, held in the gallery space at the 1010 Westwood Center.


A student poses with his work in the gallery.


Success! The class meets for the last time for dinner in Westwood. Congratulations to Josh and all the students for the wonderful work they produced!

Notes from the Jury Box

The American Gallery of Juror Art is pretty much just what it sounds like - sketches, musing and photographs from our fellow Americans stuck on jury duty. On each page the doodler or photographer introduces his or her work (example: "I am an illustrator. I like donuts and pie") and we get to see a little glimpse into their bored, daydreaming minds. I always liked looking over random doodles and sketches from notebooks and margins because they often seem like a window in the cluttered, unedited subconscious. That + jury duty = awesome.

American Gallery of Juror Art (via Boingboing).

Nicole Gastonguay's Crocheted Creatures

My sister, who has a fascination with alternative representations of food items, introduced me to artist Nicole Gastonguay, who crochets adorable characters with tiny yarn smiles (or frowns) on their faces. Gastonguay says she doesn't use patterns to create her toys, and that she makes things up as she goes along. I've included a few of my favorites below, but you can visit her Flickr page to see all of her creations, or her blog to see shots of her crochet process in action.



This cannoli looks nice and cozy.


This shrimp lo-mein is super detailed! Yarn looks like noodles.


For all you photographers out there, an old-school Polaroid and his buddy. They are best friends.

Instructor Interview: Craig Havens

Craig Havens teaches Introduction to Digital Photography, which is often the course students start out with in our program. He's a successful and productive photographer in both the commercial and fine art field, so I thought it would be interesting to hear a little bit about his process and experience. In the below interview, he talks about his latest project, Soundings, which you can view on his website, craighavens.com. His commercial work can be found on studio642.com.

Can you talk a little bit about your Soundings project? What's your vision, how do you set up the shots, etc?

The imagery of Soundings depicts phenomenological occurrences set mostly within the nocturne landscape. The work is created by handholding a camera for as long as twenty minutes. During this time the camera settles into a state of stillness, allowing the phenomenon to unfold while releasing attachment to the outcome of the exposure.

This state correlates to many pan-religious descriptions of epiphanies of the sublime. The final creation and display of large-scale silver prints of these images mimic the intricate rituals and resonant metals of religious iconography. In essence, I am engaged in constructing a meaningful mythology around these moments.

How is the creative process different on commercial shoots than when you're doing your own work? Is working for clients "paying the bills", or does it just feel like another creative enterprise?

I have always felt that the artist's intent is the determining factor between personal artwork and professional work. My art-making fuels everything else as far as inspiration and personal fulfillment is concerned.

With regard to commercial work as a creative enterprise, it varies greatly depending on the project. For example, I just completed shooting an editorial piece on San Onofre State Beach for Huck Magazine - a beautiful surf and skate magazine out of London. It was a completely solo shoot because my client was in England and had asked me to interpret the subject matter independently. I was able to spend 3 days just walking the beach alone and meeting surfers young and old while documenting the atmosphere of this unique Southern California beach.

On the other hand, I recently shot a national print campaign for Comcast Communications that involved a crew of almost 30 people on set. While producing and delivering a shoot like that can be nerve-wracking, I am fortunate enough to be working with a lot of professional creative people who are great at what they do. In the end we had a wonderful shoot and delivered above and beyond what the client was expecting.

You just sold a piece - congratulations! What were the circumstances, and what does it mean for the project?

Yes, I was recently honored to be asked by the curator of the Armory Center for the Arts, Jay Belloli, to participate in the Pasadena Armory Biennial Art Auction. This is a great event held every two years to support the arts in LA. The event was a great success and a wonderful collector and patron of the arts who is very active in collecting photography acquired my piece. Any time a collector is willing to add an artist to their collection by acquiring a work, it affirms the convictions of the artist that there is an audience for their work. So I was very pleased to be a part of the event and am looking forward to completing the series and showing it in full over the course of the next year.

What's something you've learned by experience that you wish you could go back and tell your just-getting-started photographer self?

I've definitely learned that making art takes patience and perseverence. I always had deeply personal reasons for creating and that has sustained me through the hard times. I've learned that no matter what may come, the work always continues. Over time the process becomes less and less about defining your success against exterior measures. Eventually an artist's measure of success becomes very personal and the greatest challenge becomes the act of creation itself.