Hunger Prevention

Obtaining enough food for an active, healthy life is the most basic of human needs. Yet due to the recent economic downturn, approximately 49 million Americans now don’t have the means to meet their basic food necessities. Food insecure households, many with children, cannot achieve the fundamental element of well-being which is necessary of a healthy, wholesome life. Which is why organizations like Feeding America are stepping up to help and annually provide food to 37 million Americans, including 14 million children who have fallen on hard times. Because of hard economic times many people have had trouble providing for their families and have had to cut down on basic necessities like food. Government programs and aids like food stamps have succeeded for 40 years as the nation’s most fundamental public program, safeguarding against hunger. This program has gotten extra support as a response to the recession with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provisions which boosted the program’s spending to $57.2 billion. Still the help has failed to reach the many that have fallen through the cracks and so it’s up to all of us to step up and make a difference.

Warhol

Andy Warhol

·         Real name is Andrew Warhola (8/6/28-2/22/87) (Became Warhol after a misprint)

o   Born in Pittsburgh, PA, Parents from Czechoslovakia (does not exist anymore)

o   Father worked in a coal mine

·         In High School, kicked out of art club because he was “too good”

·         Graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (Bachelor of Fine Arts)

·         Graduated with degree for pictorial design & wanted to become a commercial illustrator

·         Designed advertisements for women’s shoes

·         Used Polaroid camera

·         Fear of hospitals and doctors, hypochondriac

·         Favorite print making technique was silk screening

·         Friends & family described him as a workaholic

·         His sexuality was speculated upon and how this influenced his relationship to art is “a major subject of scholarship on the artist”

·         First solo expedition in 1952

·         Coined the term “15 minutes of fame”

·         1960s: iconic American products (pop art)

·         Created The Factory, his NYC studio from 1962-1968

·         Celebrity portraits developed into one of the most important aspects of his career

·         Made films (first one called Sleep – 6 hours of a man sleeping) (1963)

·         1965 said he was retiring from painting

o   1972 returned to painting

·         Designed cover for the Rolling Stones’ album Sticky Fingers (cover made out of real jean material)

·         Produced Velvet Underground’s first album

·         Started a magazine called Interview, worked for Glamour Magazine, Vogue

·         Shot by Valerie Solanas 3 times for being abusive and “too controlling” (6/3/68)

o   Solanas authored the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, a separatist feminist document

o   "Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television – you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television."

·         Marilyn Monroe = favorite model (not painted until after death)

·         Wore silver wigs until he dyed his hair silver

·         Practicing Ruthenian Rite Catholic who described himself as a religious person

·         Died of a heart attack brought on by a gall bladder surgery and water intoxication

·         $100,000,000 for one of his paintings (highest amount paid) (“Eight Elvises”)

·         Referred to as the “Prince of Pop”

With this photograph I had the opportunity to explore Photoshop and use the techniques learned and my imagination to create an entirely new image. First I started by adding color to Tommy, the dog, with the threshold tool. To do this I lassoed his entire body and duplicated it ten times. Then I went to threshold and adjusted it from lightest to darkest going down each layer. After that I went back to layer 10 and lassoed Tommy, adjusted the tolerance to zero, pressed delete, selected a color and pressed ctrl and clicked on the layer then pressed ctrl again and pressed delete. I followed this process for each layer selecting a different shade of color, lightest to darkest. I decided to go with a brown/yellow color scheme with Tommy so I wanted the background to match this so I went up to filter and selected adjustment and then color filter and added a warming filter to 41%. I also wanted to add a gradient so I made a new layer and selected the gradient tool and then went up to color/style and selected chrome gradient and customized it by choosing the noise type with a roughness of 50% and picked the linear option. After this I created the gradient using the cursor and then picked the multiply option so that it would show up in my background. To this same gradient layer I decided to add an artistic filter to it so I went up to filter → artistic and selected plastic wrap. After making all these changes, I thought the background could still use some modifications to fit better with Tommy so I boosted the saturation to 100% in the gradient layer. I then turned to the background layer and boosted the saturation to 75% to bring out the red in the rocks and make the image more dramatic. After making these changes I was satisfied with how it came out and thought best to leave it as it was and not do anything else to it because it might take away from the image and just make it seem like Photoshop mess.

extra credit Photshop

This image is blending image where I took two images and made them into one. First I made both the images the same size. Then I duplicated the background layer and went to image-apply image. I decided to blend these two images because they were both related since they were both in the rose garden. The idea was to have the image of the rose garden reflected in the rocks.

This image is a cut and paste where I picked a background image and cut out Celine and Michelle from another image and put them here. The background image was from the landscape assignment and I did some alterations to it. I added a gradient layer and a photo filter as well as increase the saturation. After that I picked a picture of Michelle and Celine in a Mercy rally and lassoed them and put them in a new layer. Then I added that layer to my background image.

This image is a depth of field where I took an architecture shot and increased the depth of field. First I took an image from the architecture assignment and duplicated it. Then I selected my focal point which was the building. I clicked on "Quick Mask" and went to filter-blur-gaussian blur and then I picked the radius. After that I exited quick mask and went to view channels, alpha 1 and then layers, select layer 1. To finish it up I wen to filter-blur-lens blur ans then depth map- select alpha 1 and invert.

With this image I experimented with the threshold. I duplicated the layer and lassoed Tommy and made a new layer of him. Then I duplicated that layer ten times and adjusted the threshold in each from lightest to darkest. I then went back and added a different shade of pink to each, going form darkest to lightest. To do this I started with layer ten and went to lasso and picked a tolerance of zero. Then I clicked ctrl and the layer and then delete and repeated the process. After that I edited the background by adjusting the color to a pink like Tommy.

With this image I first lassoed Tommy and put him in a new layer. Then I duplicated 10 layers of him and did a different threshold for each from lightest to darkest. Then I added color to each from darkest to lightest shade of blue. After that I added texture to the shot by picking an artistic filter. I then added a gradient of blue in a new layer and used a fill of 45% to add a blue hue to the whole image. Then I decided to fisheye his face so I selected it with the elliptical marquee tool and went to filter-distort-spherize.

Little Toy

Day 1: tea party at Michelle's house

day 2: sewing!

day 3: got permmit and started driving

day 4: GYM time!

day 5: went to Joans

copy/paste and blended

Michelle and Celine in an unfamilar place

blended two views of the rose garden and one of the scences reflects on the rocks

Fantasy Photos

blended image

copy/paste

fisheye

Landscapes

Architecture Asssignment

Downtown SF

Neiman Marcus SF

All Souls Church

All Souls Church

All Souls Church

Landscape Photographer Biographies

Ansel Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984)

Born in San Francisco, California, Ansel Adams is best known for his black-and-white photographs of the American West, especially in Yosemite National Park, characterized by clarity and depth. Adams primarily used large-format cameras despite their size, weight, setup time, and film cost, because their high resolution helped ensure sharpness in his images. His photographic career started when his father gave him his first camera, a Kodak Brownie box camera. In 1919 he joined the Sierra Club and spent the first of four summers in Yosemite Valley, as "keeper" of the club's LeConte Memorial Lodge. He then met Albert M. Bender, a San Francisco insurance magnate and patron of arts and artists, who kicked off his career. Bender set in motion the preparation and publication of Adams' first portfolio, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras. Adams's star rose rapidly in the early 1930s and spent a considerable amount of time in New York during the 1930s and 1940s. Some of his famous work include Moon and Half Dome and Tetons and the Snake River. Adams also was an activist for the cause of wilderness and the environment. Over the years he attended many meetings and wrote thousands of letters in support of his conservation philosophy to newspaper editors, Sierra Club and Wilderness Society colleagues, government bureaucrats, and politicians. His photographs, though, are what made the most impact for the cause of conservation. In September 1983, Adams was confined to his bed for four weeks after leg surgery to remove a cancer and later died on April 22, 1984, in Monterey, California at the age of 82 from a heart attack. He left behind his wife, two children, (Michael, born August 1933, and Anne, born 1935) and five grandchildren.

Moon and Half Dome

The Tetons and the Snake River

This picture caught me eye instantly because of the great use of value. The black and white in this shot is very effective because there is a long range from the truest of whites to the darkest black. The sky demonstrates great texture because of the value by the light coming in. The framing also adds to the power of the shot because the sky takes up about 1/3 of the photograph which is just a right amount and the position of the camera is elevated showing both the ground and sky. The emphasis is on the mountain which is centered on the photograph and has the stream leading up to it, bring the eye to it. The image also has great depth of field which most of the image in focus.
Carr Clifton
Carr Clifton was born in the northern Sierra Nevada near Taylorville, California. He began photographing in 1977 because of his neighbor and mentor Philip Hyde. Later, he went to Colorado Mountain College in Glenwood Springs, Colorado and received a degree in Commercial Photography. He has spent thirty years exploring the endangered, wild landscapes with his camera and is widely known for beautiful landscapes of remote regions most people don't ever get to see in person. He goes to the most remote and least populated places in the world and captures it for the rest of us. He is not only a photographer but also an award-winning documentary filmmaker.

I absolutely loved this photo which was unusually because I tend to go more for black and white photography but Carr Clifton knows just how to use color to showcase the beauty of his landscapes. Color in this photograph is part of what makes this image so powerful. The different colors in the sky and their reflection on the water look almost unnatural and stunning. The photograph was taken just at the right time of day with just the right amount of light shining through. Shape also plays a role in the photograph as the glaciers are clearly sculpted and defined as are the mountains in the distance which cut across the sky. The glaciers also show a great deal of unity as they are all scattered along the water.

Chapter 9: Landscapes

• the subject: place-located in real world with ecological devastation and human artifacts, or portraying an idealized version of what we want nature to be -pure and magnificent
• can include people and their stories but most focus on the natural world without people
• tends to be more formal than other genres

Landmarks in Landscape Photography

• Carleton E. Watkins
• wanted to capture the grandeur of the American West
• photographed in Yosemite Valley
• Ansel Adams
• also inspired by Yosemite Valley
• tried to capture the experience of being in the wildness

Timothy O'Sullivan (U.S., 1840-1882)

• learned from Mattew Brady
• photographed the Civil War
• photographs straightforward documents of extraordinary landscapes
• principle photographer for Gardner's book, Photographic Sketchbook of the War
• died of tuberculosis at 42

Photographing the Landscape

Thinking Artistically

• composition one of the most important aspects
• explore all the variations when taking shots
• value especially important in black and white
• good composition is to achieve a balance unity and variety

Composition, Balance, and the Rule of Thirds

• composition= where to place objects within the frame or space of image
• balance=how the objects relate to each other in size, value, color, and location
• 3 kinds of balance: symmetrical, asymmetrical, radial

Camera Settings

• maximum depth of field
• stop down a lens as far as it will go: f/16, f/32
• small f-stops = longer shutter speed

Light

• just after sunrise and just before sunset
• easier to deal with direct lighting for distant subjects that for closer ones
• closer views= overcast days that reduce the highlights and shadows

Film

• use 100 ISO film with 35mm cameras to capture all the detail
• fall foliage and spring flowers well suited for color landscapes

Lenses

• use wide-angle lenses that capture more of the scene
• concentrating on details or areas in the distance= use telephoto lens
• macro lenses-useful for getting close-up images; good for creating abstract images

Filters

• yellow filter-bring out clouds
• deep black skies with stark white clouds-red filter
• ultimate black skies and maximum contrast- pair with red and polarizer filter

The Grand Landscape

• is the "big view" for pictures of the great outdoors
• always include a large expanse of the scene
• wide-angle lenses will give wider view that is needed
• horizon in photograph should be placed either 1/3 from the top or bottom of image
• sky always figures prominently
• make clouds stand out- use polarizing, yellow, orange, or red filter

Landscape Details and Cloe-ups

• direct sun in wooded areas like park or garden create difficult lighting conditions
• shoot in cloudy or overcast conditions that even out the light, eliminating harsh shadows
• lighter values- opening up f-stop or slowing down the shutter speed for a longer exposure
• mostly darker values-close down the f-stop or choose a faster shutter speed for shorter exposure

Abstracted Elements in the Landscape

• images composed of lines, shapes, values and textures
• get really close to subject and photograph only small part of it
• telephoto lens for distant subjects or macro lens for closer subjects
• using macro lens on small subjects=need as much depth of field as possible