Class at the Arb

Smoke bombs, Disc reflectors, and Cameras oh look!

Utopia: The Distant Dream

Utopian Delight
Utopia is an imaginary place or society with perfect laws and politics. Although I do not believe that such a place exists, societies are in constant pursuit of the utopian ideal. Throughout time, civilizations describe their cities as ideal places by its efficiency and structure. These photos, shot during the night time capture a more distant and dreamlike quality that usually surround this ideal of perfection.

Persona Project

No one picture can capture one's identity.

Persona"a second self created by the author and through whom the narrative is related.""The persona is also the mask or appearance one presents to the world. Importantly, the persona, used in this sense, is not a pose or some other intentional misrepresentation of the self to others. Rather, it is the self as self-construed, and may change according to situation and context."
The idea of this project never seemed to land on solid ground. Often times I found myself split in many directions which got me started on the idea of layering the images. Like Dada art it is noisy and all over the place. We experience the world around us through many different channels. I hardly think in a linear pattern, instead my thought patterns emerge as a chaotic asymmetrical rhythm. In this process, I gave the models the freedom to choose their persona, this way it was up to the subject to choose the appropriate identity.

Emulation

In this project I emulated Lichtfaktor, an Artists' Collective from Cologne, Germany. VJ $ehvermögen (photographer and VJ) and JIAR (communications designer and graffiti artist) experimented with the possibilities of long-term exposure and painting, thus creating light writing or light graffiti. To achieve a similar effect, using a digital camera and a tripod, the camera was set to 30 second exposures at 100iso with the smallest aperture setting. The sites chosen, indoors in a studio or outdoors on a wall or in a public setting, helped to show the different effects light has on various spaces and environments. The photos I have chosen help me to understand the effects of light within different settings and to create a dialog between the light graffiti and the surroundings.

Site Mapping

In this projected I wanted to take a look at the effects of light on bodies of water. These were selected from a series of shots at Lake Erie in Vermilion and the waterfall behind Loomis in Elyria. I took a couple of photographs with varies exposure times with a tripod. The two photos of waterfalls were taken during early sunset, these shots were taken on a balconies that were setup to look over \ two levels the water flowing down. The lakeside shot was a shot taken during the morning on the edge of the shore elevated by rocks.

Strangers

People I know