Birds in Flight -- a light installation

"Fly Light," a light installation by Design Drift of Amsterdam is something I've never seen before. It was designed with the lives and movement of birds in mind.


"Fly Light is a collection of 160 light infused glass tubes hung at various heights in a swirled configuration. The arrangement is scenic enough when dark, but when someone approaches, the individual bulbs flicker and dash in a pattern that resembles the waxing and waning of birds in flight."


When I find something considered art, what draws me in is the visual alone. What keeps me is the idea behind it. I think that "Fly Light" is extremely intriguing visually. It reminds me of a trip to a museum called Mass Moca in Massachusetts, where I saw an installation using clear discs of different sizes hung in patterns throughout an entire room. As a photographer all I wanted to do was photograph it, and I did. I would love to photograph "Fly Light."


my photograph at Mass Moca:

"The 160 lights are programmed with a bird’s “digital DNA” and equipped with ultrasonic sensors, which means they illuminate in random sequences depending on the “intruder’s” proximity. The result is a spontaneous display of phosphorescent evasion and approach as, like birds, the individual lights must stray from the threat without falling off the back. The most alluring aspect of the installation is its unpredictability. The lights alight in a non-repetitive way, taking their cues from the density of the approaching mass (meaning a more dramatic response for more visitors, or an especially frantic reaction when flanked on multiple sides)."


Fly Light

"What Happens When - A Temporary Restaurant Installation"

In Soho, New York City a restaurant called What Happens When will be open for 9 months. This temporary restaurant serves as an artistic installation, in which every month, the entire restaurant's decor and theme will be dramatically changed in order to create a new dining experience. You would think that this type of venture would be extremely expensive, but it's actually the opposite. Kickstarter, "a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, explorers, etc..."helped out the creative group behind the restaurant.


Because the space in SoHo is a flexible one, it is easy to re-create with the exception of time. "Transition time between the themes is tight, the team has from midnight when the restaurant closes to 3pm the next day to finish each movement—sounds like being back in design school!"I think this idea is a very interesting one. Other than to the food, people pay a lot of attention to the decor and atmosphere of a restaurant. To re-create a restaurants atmosphere and keep the quality of the menu, that's a huge advantage to making a dining experience that much more memorable for customers.


What Happens When...

"Anxiety on the Fault Line"

A lot of the time, when people think of modern art in Japan, "Hello Kitty" comes to mind, especially because of its enormous commercial quality that has impacted the world starting in the 1970's. They also think of Gwen Stefani's Harajuku Girls. There is so much more to Japan than just the feel good commercialized and colorful brands. Japan is a nation of uncertainty. It lies on fault lines and has gone through its share of historical turmoil.

Nowadays one can find art that goes against the popular images. There is more feminism and politically charged art as well. In the Japan Society show, "Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art", all of these types of works are being shown. Especially with what just happened with the earthquake in Japan, "no one, of course, could have known that the show’s images of material fragility and decay would end up being seen in the light of real-life disaster."

Anxiety on the Fault Line article

Photographs of artwork

What are my aspirations?

To become a professional photographer
To photograph live music, bands, artists, alternative lifestyles, etc...
To drive cross country, write, take pictures, meet people
To live in New York City
To open my own business whether it be a studio, coffee shop, bar, etc...
To play more guitar and learn more instruments
To write a song

All of these aspirations are supposed to go into creating a logo, but I want to focus on the fact that in my professional life, photography is what I want to do. I like minimalist design, therefore I want to make a 'lens' shaped logo with a simplified shutter design in the center or something resembling a frame.

Possible logos:

Inspirational pictures:

BRAND SCAPE:

Re-created You Tube Video Still

When I hear the phrase 'film still,' I'm flooded with memories of movies that I've seen where the cinematography is breathtaking and it reminds me why I love being a photographer. By definition, a film still is "a photograph taken on the set of a movie or television program during production by a movie stills photographer...shots can be taken as part of the filming or separately posed."Source1

I think that the best definition of 'film still' comes from an article I came across called "The History and Aesthetics of the Classical Film Still," written by Steven Jacobs. "In several languages, the English term ‘film still’ refers to images taken on the set with a still camera and to an extraction of one of the sixteen or twenty-four single frames that together make up a one-second piece of film. In film publications using a more accurate terminology, the reproduction of a film frame, which Roland Barthes called a photo- gramme, is usually labelled as a frame enlargement. These frame enlargements often show a somewhat coarse-grained quality because they are magnifications of a single frame from an often battered celluloid 35-mm film strip. In addition, frame enlargements are often blurred because the movie camera operates at a shutter speed that is not always fast enough to freeze movement. On the cinema screen, the picture does not appear blurred because twenty-four separate frames of it – each one pushing along the action, each one with its own individual grain pattern – pass through the projector every second. Hence film frames that work perfectly on screen are often unsatisfactory as still pictures." This article is great because it explains in so much depth, the job of being a still photographer, how these photographs came to be and the importance they had on serving a film. A lot of the time, a film still is what actually sold the movie. "The aesthetics of the film still, which implies a specific kind of dealing with light, focus, narrative, time, temporality and the instantaneous. Finally, it investigates how these elements were taken up by some prominent contemporary art photographers and video artists." From the early 1900's through the 1950's, the way movies were shot had completely changed. The lighting sets had improved, the locations were chosen carefully, etc...Yet still, the major aesthetic stayed, the way an actor was posed, the 'statuesque beauty' that never left a photograph are qualities that have carried over to today's films. 

The History and Aesthetics of the Classical Film Still link

Some stills that I think are wonderful:

From "Bright Star" (2009)

From "Into The Wild" (2007)

From "Gone With The Wind" (1939)

From "Atonement" (2007)

From "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961)

For our film still/self portrait project, I chose a still from "Breakfast At Tiffany's." I love the style of the 1960's celebrities and Hollywood in general from that time period, plus everything that went into the film is great--the clothing, the hair/makeup, the use of Manhattan as the scene, the story itself, the cast, etc...

When thinking about film stills, it's hard not to think about the focus of them, which are the actors/actresses--celebrities. What is a celebrity and where did the term come from?

The idea of a celebrity has definitely changed over the years. The word was first used in ancient times, to describe someone with immense power and notability, with effect on the lives of the people, such as the Gods, Olympic champions, religious figures (saints, popes), up through the Renaissance with the great artists, etc...-- A History of Celebrity. link. Through the years the idea of celebrity became less about personal feelings of "the common people" and more about regular people getting their '15 minutes of fame.' Actors, actresses, singers and bands, and more recently reality television stars began to take over Hollywood and other cities notable for entertainment. I can't turn on the television at 7:30 pm without hearing about Brangelina's new adopted child or that a real housewife from New Jersey punched someone and got arrested. While I think there are many 'celebrities' who use their fame and money to make things better in our world, the amount that selfishly just want the fame outweighs the prior. As entertained I am by watching "Jersey Shore," I think that it's us who helps them achieve celebrity status. I guess it has always lied in the hands of 'the regular people,' right?

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Many artists have been inspired by film stills, a lot in the Pop Art Movement such as Andy Warhol, etc...Cindy Sherman of course, a photographer who re-created film stills of her own self-portraits. In a 2007 Vanity Fair photo shoot, Annie Leibovitz and Michael Roberts took a film noir approach to "Killers Kill, Dead Men Die," in which they shot celebrities taking the rolls of a 1940's crime film. This is a clear example of being inspired by film stills and the history of films in general. 

Killers Kill, Dead Men Die link