can't concentrate

This week, this whole damn semester has sucked. I can't concentrate on my work, I'm not happy with what I'm doing, my dad's back in the hospital tonight. Our fucking health care system sucks ass and they keep fucking up my dad worst everyday. 7 months going to the hospital every 20 days because he was loosing blood and they wouldn't give him that DAMN PILL he needed to know what the hell he had. HOw inhuman are we that we let this happen, for money? WE won't provide someone with the medical attention they need because of money? AND don't give that bullshit that we shouldn't help put drug addicts or smokers, whatever...MY DAD IS None of that, he's just been unfortunate in life concerning his health. Letting someone almost bleed to death is inhumane, immoral, and downright evil. PEOPLE who have never been in this situation obviously don't know or care to know what other people feel, but when it happens to them, then they will know. A man with terminal pancreatic cancer and they let him bleed for seven months, oh and the doctor has the balls to tell him " why are you wasting money at the emergency room!" hhhmmmmm I don't know maybe cause I'm bleeding to death.
This just shows how insensitive and malicious our system really is. GOd bless America, but not those who need medical attention. SOrry i'm ranting but this pisses me off, I'm trying to finish my photographs and I can't even concentrate. I know It's no excuse, but fuck I can't take it anymore.

going crazy

trying to finish this project...I hate printing...

photoshop...

So I got a couple good tips today in class, I always thought fixing the image was always better in photoshop, but I stand corrected, you should do some general fixing before. I'm still new to this digital phenomenon haha. So many different ways to do one thing...

work in progress....

So I think I may scrap my whole first idea, at this point I'm starting over, kinda hard when working with 4x5 and don't have that instant gratification factor, but what can I say, I love it. I'm still working on the dream sequence but embodying it in this character that represents the unknown, that what we cannot really see or feel. Monsters always pop in my dreams, so this is a representation of that.





These are my new images in black and white and color...I would love some feedback :)

photoshop tip 6

Fix Blow-outs...



Your highlights are unrecoverable, but you can kind of make it a little better.
Hit Ctrl + L
to get into the levels dialogue. Then, under OUTPUT Levels, change the white value to 245 from 255. This will make it not print paper white.

photoshop tip 5

Print size secret! only for CS4 :( Boooo


This is to see how your image will look like in print. Look at your display settings to determine the width of your screen in pixels. Using a ruler, measure the width of the imageable area, and divide the pixels by the inches. That's your screen resolution. In photoshop, open Preferences, go to Units and Rulers, and enter that value into the screen Resolution field. Click ok. Then choose View > Print size. It's now rendered accurately thanks to support for openGL. - Deke Mcclelland

photoshop tip 4

Fade a Fix...


If you want to see slightly less of the change you just made, but you don't want to lower the opacity of the whole layer, fade it. Go to EDIT > Fade and use the slider to reduce the amount of only your last action.

Photoshop tip 3

Great Eyes...


For a portrait that pops, use the lasso tool, set slightly feathered, to select the eyes. Hit Ctrl + J to copy them to a new layer and use Levels or Curves to add a touch more contrast to them. Then sharpen them slightly with Smart Sharpen. If the effect is too much, drag down the Layer's opacity.

Photoshop tip 2

Better Contrast...



When using CURVES to enhance contrast on a color image, make sure to set the layer BLEND MODE to Luminosity. You'll avoid undesired shifts in color and saturation. - Katrin Eismann

photoshop tip 1

Super soft skin...

maybe you already know this one, Their are different ways to do this but this is one way.

To subtly soften skin, duplicate the background layer and choose
FILTER > Other > Highpass. Use a radius of 5 pixels. Select IMAGE > Adjustments > Desaturate and change the layer Blend Mode to Softlight. This will sharpen the entire image. Now choose IMAGE > Adjustment > Invert to add a softness to the image. Use a layer mask to control the effect's location. - Katrin Eismann/ popphoto

Other ways are to choose Gaussian blur and fade it with the history tool...but this may look a little too fake, unless you want that look.

work in progress 499 class

This is what I'm working on for Mark's class...I won't be using both these images, but I'm just trying to see what works...I welcome any suggestions or opinions...

Miyako Ishiuchi

Miyako Ishiuchi

Miyako Ishiuchi was born in 1947 to a country whose culture had been infiltrated by the influence of the US servicemen living on the naval bases in major ports and cities during the military occupation post World War II. The presence of the western soldiers had a profound effect on Ishiuchi’s early childhood, and inspired her to produce her first body of work- ‘Yokosuka Story’. Miyako Ishiuchi was one of a renowned group of Japanese photographers, including Shomei Tomatsu and Daido Moriyama who confronted the trauma of post – war Japan and the dawning of a new era by using their cameras as tools to express, record and explore what it meant to be Japanese at this pivotal moment in history. Her work is much admired by both her mentors.

Polly Borland

Polly Borland

A leading portrait photographer before moving to the UK from her native Australia in 1989, Polly has earned her reputation for specializing in stylized portraiture and off-beat reportage. She shoots regularly for numerous UK and US publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Independent and Dazed and Confused.

In 1994 she won the prestigious John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award. Her work has appeared in numerous exhibitions, and a selection of photographs from The Babies was exhibited at the South Bank’s Meltdown Festival in 1999, curated that year by Nick Cave.

The National Portrait Gallery in London and Australia have acquired a number of Polly’s photographs for it’s collection, and in 2000 both exhibited a solo show of her work. Powerhouse published her first book The Babies in 2001 with an essay by Susan Sontag. In that same year she was one of eight chosen photographers to photograph the Queen for her Golden Jubilee.

Polly has recently collaborated with Lauren Child on two children’s books for Puffin, reworking the fairytales The Princess and the Pea, and Goldilocks and The Three Bears. Michael Hoppen Contemporary will exhibit her Bunny project in 2008 – a series of portraits of a giant girl called Gwen.

Jeff Bark

The subjects of Bark’s previous series, exhibited at Michael Hoppen Contemporary in 2006, were captured in moments of self-contained abandon in formally constructed urban interiors. In Woodpecker, his subjects are pictured in naturalistic outdoor tableaux, sometimes interacting in couples or groups but always with the suggestion an internal isolation. The rich detail, vivid self-contained illumination and the complexity of the constructed surroundings in these photographs draw the viewer into the dense pictorial allegory.

Occupying a space between the classical artistic categories of photography, painting and film – Bark moves against the lure of instantaneous photography. The collaborations, castings, set construction (the swamp took one month to sculpt in a Brooklyn studio) and illusionary narrative in the series bring the act of photo taking closer towards the highly considered processes of both the Old Master tableau and the younger art of cinema. Nothing is built by Bark beyond the edge of the frame and his subjects are snatched out of real time, so the audience is viewing an enactment, a constructed diorama rather than reality. Held together in a film, cinematically constructed, dissected and reassembled - the works can be looked at as individually structurally significant, and also as part of a larger extended narrative.
In these photographs, scenes of dream-like concoctions coexist with unembellished realism. The muted moonlit tones soften the human forms and the watery illumination lends them the appearance of otherworldly creatures indulging in their private fictions, desires and escape. The images are heavy with symbolism: the swamp, at the fringe of urban sprawl is a no mans land between civilization and the wilderness: the swan, recalling the erotic motif of Leda and the swan but also signifying, light, self-transformation and the higher self. On first glance, the location is a rural idyll but on closer inspection urban debris is revealed - a pram, crates, tyres, mattresses, telephone wires, bed frames and a car are strewn amongst the rotting landscape. The corruption of the scenery is mirrored by the corruption of the youth - drugs, disillusionment, violence and sexual behavior, referencing Eric Fischl and his depictions of psychosexual malaise of American prosperity.

work in progress...

I can't upload my other picture...I think the file is still too big :(

Alex Prager

http://alexprager.com/











I love her lighting...

work in progress

here is my work in progress...had to drive up to A & I to develop my color 4x5 film. Kind of an inconvenience but I'm willing to do the drive. I only have a point and shoot so I'm using my large format camera.
shoot can't upload the image...damn it

Desiree Dolron

Desiree Dolron
For years now Desiree Dolron (Netherlands, b. 1963) has travelled around the world. Whatever corner of the world she finds herself in, she has invariably returned with uniquely personal records of her journeys.

Dolron’s acute vision meshes traditional reportage photography and computer enhancement to create a richer version of a genre that many believe to be tired and overused. The stillness and subtlety that is evoked by her seamless work has created a 21st century vision at odds with traditional photographic practice. Her references are obvious, but the results are a revelation. Perfection, often disappointing in practice, is in Dolron’s work, a newer vision.
Michael Hoppen Gallery has previously exhibited Dolron's Te dí todos mis sueños (Cuba) series of work in 2003 which followed by the much talked about Xteriors in 2004 on the contemporary floor.
Since then Dolron's reputation and recognition as one of the leading contemporary artist has excided our own expectations - supported by her first retrospective show of work from 1990-2005 presented by the Fotomuseum den Haag (The Hague Museum of Photography).