Born into Brothels

http://www.kids-with-cameras.org/bornintobrothels/
I just watched the most moving documentary on children in India that are raised in brothels in the red light district. A young female artist by the name of Zara Briski went to Calcutta to photograph the women in the brothels and while she was there she developed a strong relationship with the children being raised in this terrible environment. She remained living there to teach these children photography. She started a class with 9 children and got all of them cameras so they could document the way of life in Calcutta. These children became such wonderful artists. The documentary only features photographs taken by these children and so many of these photos are ones that I would wish to own. Despite the terrible conditions, abuse, and hard physical labor these children are subject to they have wonder attitudes and such beautiful inter spirit. The children discussed their firsthand experience taking pictures in public and how they receive many negative responses from people living in the village. Zara Briski made it her mission to assist these children in receiving a better education and environment where they could obtain a more prosperous future. The documentary showed the processes which she had to go through to fight for these children to get an education. Many of the students were accepted to boarding school although some children were not allowed to go and others were pulled out of schools by their families. One child was even accepted as 1 of 7 child photographers for a special world conference in Amsterdam. It really changed his life and that young boy is still continuing his education to brighten his future.
I'm a little embarrassed to say that watching this made me cry. It was all so sad and really made me feel ashamed about all the little things we stress over in our daily life when people around the world are suffering and do not have the tools to have a better future. There are even children in our own country who do not have support or proper education. What are we doing to help?
I learned about a program called "Outside the Lens" which helps at risk children learn about photography to increase their self esteem and attitudes towards learning.

Mark Laita

This guy takes the cake. I LOVE his stuff. Mark Laita has been a professional photographer for 20 years and has worked with many major companies and definitely has the portfolio to prove it. Not to mention his site rocks... you have to see it…. http://www.marklaita.com/

In his portfolio he divides his commissioned work from his uncommissioned work, and in the uncommissioned section you can really see his artistic style. Everything is elegant and dreamlike, and sometimes even looks fake. I was drawn to the nature section and the ephemera section which I sampled for you here. The nature photographs have such a soothing mood to them with the warm tones and monochromatic theme within each photograph. The photographs all have a very defined focal point which is created by the framing and the wonderful background choices. I just love his pictures!

Bryan Corey

These photographs are by Bryan Corey. I happened to find the picture of the black and yellow leaves on Google and I was mesmerized. I felt like there was a story behind these leaves. Are they grey because there was a fire? Did the real site look like that or is it photoshopped? Where was it taken? My mind just kept running through these questions. But when I stop and looked it critically as an art piece I find it has wonder composition. The two yellow leaves are perfectly places and facing the right direction to lead the viewers eye through the photograph. The colors on these two leaves and the small one on the lower right keep the piece interesting, but do not overpower the rest of the image. The viewers eye can still examine the details of the grey leaves after grazing the yellow ones. It's beautiful and so are his other photographs. I encourage you to check them out.


This is Bryan Corey' Web Site is http://photography.mrpunkin.com but you can his gallery a little better on this photoblog: http://photos.vfxy.com/photoblogs/3964.

John Corney

Looking at these flowers makes me want to skip work tomorrow and take pictures of flowers all day!! All of his floral photographs have such vibrance and energy. The details of the objects are so clear it feels like you can touch it. The flowers are nicely defined as the central focus by edited background colors. The Red and Yellow Flower above is featured twice in his gallery once with the nature colors in the background and then edited with them changed as you see here. I think it is really unconventional and rather nice to see the difference in a gallery because it is hard to know what is altered in photography. I like to see how it effects the over composition as well.

Check out the gallery of flowers: http://www.photographybyjohncorney.com/galleries/flowers/

Rolf Hicker

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes"



This statement was said by Marcel Proust and is Rolf Hicker's motto. I think this is a beautiful and extremely true statement that is wonderful to live by. Just being in this class and expanding my photography has changed the way I see things. I notice more intricate details and begin framing things with my eyes as if it were a lens. I feel like everything should be photographed now. I've always carried my point-and-shoot camera with me at all times, but now I actually use it everyday because I notice more thing that I was to document. I have new eyes!

This photographer definitively has a good eye. He has so many different categories of photographs, but I really loved his architecture photos because I'm really drawn to that subject matter. I loved how he framed this building in Spain with the multiple arches. They lead you to the end of what seems like a tunnel and guide you where to look.

Look at more photographs at: http://www.hickerphoto.com/

North County: A CSUSM Performance

North County is short play written by Jose Cruz Gonzalez addressing the controversies of life for Mexican Americans in Northern San Diego. This brand new performance confronted important issues regarding discrimination, opportunity, and personal circumstances. Raising awareness about these issues through performance art is inspirational, but this performance took it a step further by also presenting a call to action for the audience.

The artistic choices and acting section for North County made this production motivating and emotional. The acting was very authentic and well done, especially for a younger group of actors. All the actors played their roles with intense commitment. This was a very crucial element because there were not many props or other stage elements to assist the actors and help relay the scenes. The actors also had to construct the scene changes themselves and use their believable acting to center the viewer’s attention away from the transitions. A great acting example I can recall is when the Latino soldier dies and he is laying an stiff as a board on the wooden prop as the other men lay him down slowly. This is a particularly hard scene to make believable because the actor playing the dead solder is playing a very lively school counselor in the scene directly prior to this one. He did such a wonderful job of accomplishing this transition through his strong commitment to his actions despite the abrupt scene change, the undistinguishable props, and uncostumed surrounding actors. He made the scene real and emotional.
The stage production of this performance was extremely creative. The set designers were faced with the task of accommodating multiple storylines and events with very rapid transitions. They accomplished this quite successfully through the use of three large wooden structures, which seemed to resemble something between an art easel and a ladder. This structure transformed into everything from a doorway to a car and more.
I feel that North County touched on so many issues it provided every person in the audience a way to connect with the content whether they were Latino or not and bring awareness to the community.

Search Engline Optimization

The basic facts of SEO are just to provide something of value for the world and most likely google will realize that it's valuable too. The more informative and relevant your site or page is to a keyword, the higher ranking you will have in the search engines. Makign sure you have a Unique and descriptive title is important as well as providing Meta Descriptions and Keywords, but since these methods have been abused google has adjusted their methods to looking at the incoming links to a site to determine it's importance. When getting links, be concerned with quality as apposed to quantity. chances are if you buddy who is also non existent in the search engines is linking to it's not passing an equity as apposed to any .edu or .gov site which is obviously credible. When obtimizing images, provide a descriptive file name and alt tag if possible. the content surrounding the image should also describe it. Happy Optimizing.


This is a video I found on YouTube done my somebody who works in the industry. I thought it was kinda funny, but it might not be as amusing if you don't know what he's talking about.

My Book is Done!!!

Unspoken Truths

A Collection of Nat...

By Jessica Lee

Book Preview

I can't explain how excited I am about my book! I sent the link to all my friends and I actually got calls from people I haven't talked to in month telling me how impressed they were. I felt so validated in all the hard work I put in. Here's a little sneak peak into "Unspoken Truths"

This is the Into:


Have you ever wondered what a historical building or beautiful flower might say to you, given the chance? I believe they would tell the tale of eternity. The story of our connectedness and livelihood; reminisce of beauty, friendship, and adventures in their midst. This is the essence I sought to capture with the photography in this book. Please keep an open heart and mind as you explore the pages. Imagine yourself in the mortar of the buildings or the greenery of the plant life. If you are a native Californian as I am, I’m sure you will feel right at home. Breathe in the rich history and ancestry of the architecture. Give thanks for the hard work on dry soil that has cultivated so many lovely varieties of native plant life. Notice also as you gaze at the pictures, the evolving life.

Borders

I've decided Borders is my new happy place. Kind of Ironic, because if you know me, you know I hate to read. But lucky for me there are books with pictures. I was having one of those day where everything gets on your nerves and your just frustrated with the world, and then I went to Borders. Surrounded by all the inspiring subject matters, I started feeling better. I went to the art section and looked at the photographic books. Much like the ones we are making. I noticed a lot of things about these books. For started so many of them were about places or a collection of people. Very little surrounded ideas. hmph. I looked at a ton of sizes trying to figure out what was exactly right for my book. The cute 7 x 7 ones got lost in all the rest. They were easy to mange and flip through, but being small almost made them seem less important. The smaller ones that were more interesting were extremely thick. The larger sizes like 8x10 were so cumbersome and heavy I couldn’t look through the pages easily. I guess it would be easier if you were sitting down, but nothing was interesting enough to take off the shelf and sit down with for a while. That brings me to another query. How do you make a book interesting enough that people want to sit down and really look at it? Or buy it for that matter? All the books that I looked through I only scanned a few pages, never more than 5. And that’s so minuscule considering many of these books were 200 pages. But every time I came across text, I just kept turning the pages. What is going to make somebody stop and read the text? Maybe it doesn’t have to be read all the time. I realized it created a break between pages to create a better page to page flow for your eyes. The only text I read was in a book of arial view pictures. I came across a photograph that was astounding, puzzling, and mystifying. And I just had to read about it. So is the answer to getting people to read your text actually in the quality of your photographs, not the actual words?

Altered Book

So, since our altered books are due I decided I would reflect back on my process of making it. When we started working on the book in class I was really inspired by the guest artist's books, but I sat down and drew a blank. I just starred at the book like it was a foreign creature. So I decided I needed to just dig into it and maybe something would happen. First I got gold tissue paper and began using it to cover some pages. Then I grabbed paint and started rigorously painting random pages. I was actually having a lot of fun, but the book wasn't looking to "Altered". Weeks past and I decided to brainstorm ideas before I started working on the book aimlessly again. Because it was constantly plaguing me I starting finding things everywhere that could transform my book. Used Cd's, playing cards, building blocks...anything could make this book into something new. I then decided I wanted a theme and after finding some vibrant Hawaiian print fabric I was set on making the book have a Hawaiian theme. I’ve always been attracted to everything Hawaiian even though I’ve never been there. I choose 4 different color fabrics with similar prints and collected shells and dried flowers. I covered the book with bright blue fabric, like the ocean. Then stamped the pages with a brown stamp pad to make them look rustic. I then made clusters of the fabric, shells, and flowers and hot glued them to the pages. The book began to stay open with all the materials filling up the pages. I loved it. My book had been transformed.

...Pictures coming soon :-)

Spreads

Photos and Spreads

Long time no see...

Hey friends... Sorry I haven't been writing. I've decided to combine my book of native flowers with my book from artist books which will now be on native Californian architecture. Even though I love the spreads below, my San Diego subject matter wasn't evolving into the personal transformation that I imagined. I wanted to be a contrast between my personal experience of where I grew up and my love of San Diego. So when I went back to where I used to live to take pictures, I realized this book wasn't really coming together the way I saw it in my head. I’m not admitting defeat, I'm going to continue to work on my San Diego book but it will not be my final project for this class.
As I was in Santa Barbara I notice all the amazing native Californian architecture. Everything from the historic mission to the current day courthouse is detailed and reflective of the original Spanish style architecture that we continually emulate in our current building style. I began to think about the contrast being architecture and nature and realized it is such as strong symbol for the different ways we live our lives. Everyone always tries to plan out their lives and inevitably changes will happen that evolve one's personality. These special occurrences are represented by the native plants of California inserted in my book. There will be text that joins the photographs to set the tone for life experience and true feelings that are never spoken.

Spreads coming soon...

Downtown Night Life

I attended the art show downtown at the Ivy Hotel which featured Eric Warner and Bob Hoste. Luckily I didn’t have as much trouble as other people getting in thanks to Grace who totally saved me and let me in the line with her. Otherwise I don’t think I would have gotten in at all. And I’m glad I did because everything was so beautiful! My favorite pieces were I think by a guy named Paul. The pieces reminded me of Rauschenberg, which is one of my favorite artists. He used most paint but also incorporated found objects and texture. The painting were pretty large scale, about 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide and some were quite abstract. I was really inspired by this mans work and it really made me want to start painting again. I hope Eric and Bob had a successful show and I look forward to seeing their future venues. Thanks for inviting me boys. ☺