Drummers for Haiti

In February, my friend Chris Golinski asked me to take pictures for his event Drummers for Haiti. This was a drum festival that was working with the American Red Cross to send financial aid to those who are in need. To get into the event, all participants had to donate at least $15. This was a small price for the knowledge they would learn that day from the professionals. The drummers that donated their time to support Haiti were Peter Retzlaff, Tommy Igoe, Glenn Webber, Ron Thaler, and Jason Gianni. Drummers for Haiti took place on Sunday February 28th, here are some of the photographs that I took.

Chris Golinski, Peter Retzlaff, Tommy Igoe, Glenn Webber, Ron Thaler, and Jason Gianni.

From left to right.

Tommy Igoe, Glenn Webber, and Jason Gianni receiving declarations of their contributions from West Orange and Newark.

Series

During this semester in my Photo workshop class, we have to come up with a series. I racked my brain for weeks and came up with nothing. Over the winter break I had thought about trying architecture, as seen in my earlier posts. But I soon realized it did not hold my interest for very long and I longed to shoot and deal with people in my work again. Thankfully, with the help from my friend raz marf (his website is razmarf.com) he help rack my brain for ideas that I would enjoy to photograph. One of my favorite ideas is the one posted below. The photo shoot was to make fun of young women who carry their little dogs around in their purses. I feel like they are basically treating them like stuffed animals. So I decided to show this through photography by putting a bear in cage and having my friend treat it like an animal. I wanted it to be noticeable that it was a stuffed animal so that the meaning of the photograph was recognizable. Because my teacher enjoyed this concept, he encouraged me to make it my series and to use the same model with different stuffed animals. The second photograph is my favorite because you can really see the bear and the background does not control the scene but that is as a 8x10, I am hoping to print them both 16x20.

This photograph is from outside my room in NYC during one of our snow days. I've recently been taking photographs out of my own window during different days and have ventured to my friends rooms as well. It is just a mini series that I am enjoying at the moment, maybe it will become something more one day.

Digital Imaging

In my Digital Imaging class, our assignment was to scan in a set of color and black + white negatives. With these negatives we will be editing them and then printing them using photoshop. Because I took a digital imaging class in high school, I've already learned some of the basics of editing. So I decided to go ahead and edit some of the negatives that I scanned in.

Book of Poems

For next year, I am applying to be a RA at The School of Visual Arts. To complete the application, it is required that each applicant create an "About Me" presentation. This presentation is to be a work of art to show who you are as a person and how you express yourself artistically. To complete this project, I decided to create my own book. This book is going to consist of photographs and poems. I have always loved writing and reading. So I figured this would be a good way to show my two greatest passions. Shown here are the cover and a page (with a photo and a poem).

Click to enlarge

Watercolor with Photography

Monday nights, I have symposium classes, which mean that they change every six weeks. During the past few weeks I've had class with Allen Frame. During last weeks class, he showed us slides of many artists work, including Darrel Ellis's. He did a lot of paintings based on his fathers photography. Who had died in Harlem when his son was a boy. Within his work, he had done some water color work where he had painted over the photographs. This gave me the idea to try it for myself.

"During his lifetime, Darrel Ellis created a large body of work that was based on family photographs taken by his father, who suffered a brutal death at the hands of careless police officers a month before Ellis was born. Ellis himself died an untimely death at the age of 34 from AIDS. " 
(excerpt from http://www.artingeneral.org/projects/112) 

Scan Something

The other day I was scanning images for Raz Marf ( you can view his website at razmarf.com). In his note book he had marked the pages that he wanted to scan with little strips of paper. When I had finished I had all of these little strips of paper and I decided to see what it looked like when I just scanned them in. Then half way through the scan I decided to move them around while it was scanning, and this is what happened.

After scanning the pieces of paper I decided to see what would happen if I scanned my own face. I rather like the out come and I also edited the contrast and the levels. I hope you like it.

~Flurt~

The other day, my friends and I decided to get some frozen yogurt. In the freezing New York weather, of course. Flurt was our frozen place of choice, with its many toppings and original yogurt yummyness. I thankfully had chosen to bring my camera along on our adventure and decided to snap some pictures. Although I love bringing my camera with me where ever I go, sometimes I don't so that I can not look at the scenery so objectively. I suppose this happened while we were at Flurt because while I was taking pictures, all of a sudden I realized that everyone else was half way done with their yogurt! While I had only tasted my own. So I put my camera down for a few moments to finish my yogurt, then continued to document the excursion.

I won't bore you with all of the pictures so here are some of the pictures that I altered from that night.