“Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah-ha’.” Ernst Haas Our guest today was Dana Hursey, a successful commercial and fine art photographer...a little about Dana below "Dana Hursey is a Los Angeles-based advertising photographer who has been shooting professionally for over 20 years. Named one of L.A.'s "Top Photographers" by Hollywood Weekly, He was selected as the environmental portrait photographer for the '14 Days' project, where during the Great Britain segment he shot over 600 portraits in 14 days. A travelling exhibition of his work from the project appeared across the UK as well as in several exhibitions in the US, and he has since been named to the project's board of directors. Dana was born and raised in Southern California, where he attended Art Center College of Design, studying both Photography and Film, subsequently receiving a Bachelor of Fine Art degree. His reputation as a committed professional photographer grew and developed shoot after shoot, award after award. His accomplishments culminated in a series of one-man shows and exhibitions throughout Southern California. Dana’s expertise in photography and film have garnered him prestigious awards and honors. Dana has also been an instructor at UCLA and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena." Dana spent the first part of his career in the commercial photography arena until 2005 when he was asked to be the photographer on the 14Days Project on location in Great Britain. His work with that project profoundly changed both his aesthetic and the course of his career since. While you can see his images on his website, I have added a single picture from that series...one that he feels most connected to this very day....see below As result of this project, Dana became freer with his approach to photography and encouraged him to begin his path into fine art photography. He does both to this very day. He brought in prints as examples of both. Very recently he has taken to shoot "candy" an example is below All this prompted discussion from the group... Dana also talked about his involvement with the American Photographic Artists (APA).a leading national organization run by and for professional photographers. APA strives to improve the environment for photographic artists and clear the pathways to success in the industry. Recognized for its broad industry reach, APA continues to expand benefits for its members and works to champion the rights of photographers and image-makers worldwide. For further information contact Dana directly....His contact and website info below https://www.hursey.com [email protected] Several other items of interest... The 2019 J. Paul Getty Medal went to Ed Ruscha (we know his work) and Lorna SImpson (a conceptual photographer ...Lorna Simpson is a pioneer of conceptual art whose multimedia works challenge conventional views of gender, identity, and culture. We also noted a unique project "Do Not Erase" by Jessica Wynne who photographed the black board musings of mathematicians at a local university. Check out the NYT article (link below) and just one picture from series. Do Not Erase / Jessica Wynne Finally, a political read this week... "On Tyranny" by Timothy Snyder.
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Today the meeting was lead by John Holmes His narrative is below... “At the meeting John shared an article that began with the question are there any “Art Movements” in photography as there have been in other art genres? Photography has had trends such as “straight” photography whose followers believed that photography should be a true representation of the subject. Pictorialism expressed the opposite view that photography should be considered a fine art medium and altering an image was encouraged.” In reference to "Art Movements in Photography" http://www.howtotalkaboutarthistory.com/reader-questions/art-movements-photography/ A video about Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor vimeo.com Jerry & Maggie: This Is Not Photography “John discussed a recent development in photography…the use of artificial intelligence. Topaz Labs has a product that takes a different approach to photo editing by using A.I. algorithms. The process can be done automatically with impressive results however, manual control is also available. One of their products can enlarge an image 600% with no loss in sharpness and no noise. The use of this kind of software can be seen as a photography movement in the twenty first century in the same way as Photoshop was in the twentieth century.” Jim Staub shared some photos that he took in 1973 with a Yashica D camera. The images showed a fresh and honest view of the world through the eyes of a twenty year old and that the camera shoots both ways. Below is a list of phone apps provide by John
Retrica- Takes multiple images in on frame Double Exposure- Camera Snapseed- Editing Filterstrom Neue- Editing Union- Layering Mextures- Editing Distressed FX- Editing Formulas- Editing Diptic- Editing (Select multiple images from your library and add them to a single frame, "How I wished I’d have had a camera of my own, a mad mental camera that could register pictorial shots, of the photographic artist himself prowling about for his ultimate shot-- an epic in itself." Jack Kerouac On the road with Robert Frank, 1958 At th outset of the meeting today we talked briefly about the passing of a photography legend, Robert Frank whose iconic work The Americans still stands today as a visual monument that we all can visit, revisit and emulate. Reminder...Jack Kerouac wrote the introduction to the book. We also noted the passing of Neil Montanus who was responsible at Kodak for creating the Colorama images that were in Grand Central Station in New York for decades. Then we moved to the visual meat of our session today...the Collage Project. But before seeing our efforts,Jim gave a presentation on definitions associated with collage. These included collage itself and montage, photomontage, assemblage, As usual, I can't insert the full set of images but besides definitions he showed collage examples from famous and less than famous photographers and artists. There are thousand of examples on the internet and in every museum. We also noted "de-collage" ...a movement of destroying or taking pieces of art and reassembling into transformative new art. Below is a definition... “a piece of art made by sticking various different materials such as photographs and pieces of paper or fabric on to a backing.” Collage (/kəˈlɑːʒ/, from the French: coller, "to glue";[1]) is a technique of an art production, primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. The term collage was coined by both Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in the beginning of the 20th century when collage became a distinctive part of modern art.[2] Also remember as a photographer you can create and photograph a collage or you can directly shoot an existing work as a collage With all that being said...let's look at some of the collages from our f8 members First is a collage created by Charley Kohlhase Next ...two collages created by Kevin Hass based on his ongoing train series John Holmes contributed a number of collages all created directly in his iPhone...will show just two Jim Staub sent along one collage Kathy Wishner created a collage from her family photo collection and other things representing her mother in an earlier time...included in that was wedding dress used by her mother and Kathy when we redid our vows on our 25th Anniversary in Paris. Obviously after creating it, she photographed it as well. Bill Wishner showed 2 prints of collages he found as he was shooting his Art of the City Wall Series, one from Barcelona the other from San Francisco Just outside the room where we meet at the Senior Center is a photo-collage that I think is one of Rene Sheret's work...I thought I would include even though Rene was not present today We then saw an assemblage (not an actual collage) from Charles's wife Zofia that will be exhibited next week at a Pop-Up Art Show downtown LA...he has sent invites to all To finish our meeting this week, Howard showed several images from his recent night trip to the desert to see the stars...below is one image
Today Paul DuPont arranged a visit to POV Printing in downtown LA. The visit was hosted by the owner Jeremy Mora who talked about his background and what brought him to own this business. POV is a full service fine art and commercial print service with some very specialized services including fulfillment on demand services for artists and photographers. One of POV's very special printers is a large bed printer called a SwissQPrinter (see image below. This printer allows image making on a large variety of surfaces both thick and thin. Jeremy showed us samples of products that had print directly applied by this printer. This printer is a UV printer...we discussed the UV process in a previous post. POV is available for consultation and special projects by contacting them directly. There are some discounts available on first orders. Thank you Paul and Jeremy for making the visit happen. Below are website links and contact numbers.
y the way check out the website for some very practical information on sizing of images etc www. fineartprinting.la / (213) 587-2958 |
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