awareness of light

Light can be soft, harsh and full of neutral or contrasting tones. When you study light, it makes the world you see around you full of new shadows and patterns. Behind a viewfinder it means understanding what the light will do to your colors and details. This is how being a photographer can make you a painter too.

Week two of photography class was about lighting. At top is an attempt to capture "flare" and the others are my just-after-sunset photos. As I took these I was thinking about how I was taking pictures of what can't be seen more than what can be. 

from class

as a part of keeping my brain active, and keeping the art inside of me doing something, I decided to sign up for an online photography class.

I've been shooting photos since I was about 16, when I took a class in high school. I learned to shoot with film, and then process it in a darkroom. though I love the idea of finding myself with film in a darkroom again, this is online and digital. 

our first week was about the basics. remembering how to use a camera on manual settings, rather than the super-easy automatic. all over again, I'm trying to wrap it up inside my head the difference between a low aperture & a high aperture. which ISO is best on sunny days. what shutter speed I need for light, but to also keep the picture crisp. these are all things I learned back in that concrete-block of a high school classroom, but things I'd dropped from my experience awhile ago.

so I've had my first week. and enjoyed being with camera in hand, and taking the pause to not just frame the photo but also set the light. letting the photography be more of an art, than a point and shoot. these are some of the photos I took for the class. 

this guy came back from a hike as I was outside shooting some class photos. he found a new walking stick, and was smiling because he'd gotten to spend a few hours outside hiking by himself. and it is my favorite photo from last week. 

friday

enjoying photos on the National Geographic Found tumblr page. This is a collection of photos from the archives, 125 years worth. And it is a little mesmerizing.

(top to bottom)

-a young woman admires flowers in a Baden garden in Germany, June 1928

-people sunbathe and boat on reservoir water in Red Rock Canyon in Kansas, April 1952

-an informal group portrait of Amish children in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1937

-a trainer controls a flock of flamingos for photo opportunities in Nassau, Bahama Islands, 1957

-a herd of 2,400 buffalo roam free near Gillette, Wyoming, December 1979

friday

Lange portrait by Paul Taylor

Dorothea Lange took pictures of the people that needed to be seen.

She was born in May, 1895 in New Jersey.

In 1918, she moved to San Francisco & started working as a commercial photographer, but eventually began to record the people of the Japanese Internment camps, the poor of the South and migrant works in exodus from the Dust Bowl.

When she died in 1965, she left a collection of 25,000 negatives, which can be seen here at the Online Archive of California.

Destitute Pea Pickers. 32-yr old mother of seven. 1936.

Traveling Light. 1936. 

Country Store. 1939. 

The Road West, New Mexico. 1938. 

She even spent some time in New Mexico.

friday

the blanket weaver, by edward curtis

The Navaho-land blanket looms are in evidence everywhere. In the winter months they are set up in the hogans, but during the summer they are erected outdoors under an improvised shelter, or, as in this case, beneath a tree. The simplicity of the loom and its product are here clearly shown, pictured in the early morning light under a large cottonwood. (Description by Edward Curtis)

friday

Self-Portrait, Mendocino, 1965

Imogen Cunningham was born in Oregon, April 12, in 1883.
She bought her first camera at age 18, and majored in Chemistry after being advised it was the best degree for a future photographer. Her first job in a studio was to assist Edward Curtis. Later, at the invitation of Ansel Adams, she worked as a faculty member at the California School of Arts.

Amaryllis, 1933

Three Vegetables, 1946

Papaver Orientale, 1965

The Unmade Bed, 1957

The first photo of hers I'd ever seen was the Unmade Bed. As a teenager, I bought it as a postcard and kept it on my wall like a piece of art. 

friday

Chairs in Rain, Paris, 1931

Ilse Bing, a German/Jewish self-taught photographer who was born March 23, 1889, and lived to be 98. She lived in Paris until WWII, then leaving for New York City.

Self-Portrait with Leica, 1931

A part of the Avant-Garde movement, she was referred to as the "Queen of the Leica" because of her talent with the then new 35mm camera.

Greta Garbo Poster, Paris, 1932

Boats with Windmill, Veere, 1931

In the early 1950s she quit photography. She didn't think it suited her any longer. So she began writing poetry instead, which she said was creating, "snapshots without a camera".

sunday note

landscape, an adobe, an overturned car

not really kansas

grandma on a car, in the zinnias & with family

I learned recently that not only did my great-grandmother enjoy being a photographer, but that she & I share a birthday.

I know that her parents came from Tennessee. And I know that she never knew her own mother. She was said to be sad, and often anxious, she only had one child survive, so she adopted others. And she may have been happier in her second marriage than in her first.

She died when I was still a baby. I like to think she must have held me once or twice. I like to think that she wondered who I was going to be, or thought I looked a little like her own daughter as a baby.

But I don't know. I know that she liked taking pictures of her daughter. I know that she took a trip outside of Kansas once, and she put pictures of her trip into a little black-paged scrapbook. And visited a place with an adobe building. And from these pictures I can feel like I have a few moments of who she was.

friday

girls and flock of goats, 1910

view of the konza prairie, kansas 1975

snowy prospect park, brooklyn, 1887

street in stockholm, 1922

the winter comes, by edward curtis, 1908

winter farm in norway, 1910

winter photos from the past.

(all photos found on the Flickr:Commons, click on photo for link)

eula's dress

eula myrtle derrick. she was born in 1893, married in 1914, had two daughters, and then died young in 1925.

we're only indirectly related, as she was the older sister to my great grandmother allie.

i find myself completely intrigued by her beautiful hair, those dark, intense eyes and the amazing dress.

she looks like she had a lot on her mind, and many things to say. I hope that she was able to.

all the many words

grandma & I think, her father.

I made a quick visit to Kansas to see my grandma. because as she told me, she's "feelin poorly".
am very happy I saw her. her blue eyes & her smile will always be a part of me.
while there, I looked through photo albums. and found some pictures to take pictures of.

on the front porch at the farm

for me, every picture is a moment of a story. a clue to a day in the life. and I find I gravitate towards the pictures that were unposed, a little blurred, or maybe just seemingly abstract, simply a glimpse into meaning....the photographer had a reason behind the moment, but it might be up to us now to figure it out.

mother derrick and her chickens

las otras fiestas de taos

little girl on the merry-go-round horse

I didn't take these.
Russell Lee did, of the Taos Fiestas, in July, 1940.
The collection are in the Library of Congress.

visitors to the fiesta

crowd of people watching the dance at fiesta

visitor to taos fiesta

just another one of my new favorite photos.
this one taken by my brother.
I love that for them going for walks in a country field is just a normal day.

on the Hacienda, from SMU Library collection

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tehuana woman, SMU Library collection

Yucatan woman, from the LOC collection

viva el cinco de mayo.
(photos found on The Commons)