Packaging Studio - Brand Deconstruct - Crayola

Crayons are exciting...

Photography Site - American Photo

American Photo had an interesting article about Chris Kridler. She is a Storm Chaser photographer. I've always loved photographs of lightning. She has some really pretty ones. According to the article she takes two weeks off from work in May/June to chase and photograph storms. Krinler has a lot of tornado shots as well as lightning photos. Her website, Sky Diary has all her photos on it. She works in Florida, but has pictures from New York's snowstorm and Tornadoes from Texas and Kansas among them.

When asked where her work has appeared, this was her answer, "In several documentaries, including National Geographic Explorer, and programs on the Weather Channel, The Learning Channel, the BBC, and History Channel. My photos have appeared in weather guides, books, magazines, the International Journal of Meteorology, and art shows. I get just as excited communicating work through my website. I get a lot of e-mail, especially from kids." She said she got started from taking a storm-chasing tour and photography was only a hobby of hers at that point. I think it's really neat that even if you aren't a professional highly-trained photographer its still possible to take amazing shots.

Photography Reading - "How Do We Read a Photograph?"

Whenever we look at a photographic image we engage in a series of complex readings which relate as much to the expectations and assumptions that we bring to the image as to the photographic subject itself. Indeed, rather than the notion of looking, which suggests a passive act of recognition, we need to insist tat we read a photograph, not as an image, but as a text.

This text contains an image "Identical Twins" by Diane Arbus, and it picks apart how we are supposed to 'read' the image. I quite like the image itself; there are two little girls around the age of 7, they are dressed the same and their hair is done the same, but one isn't smiling while her twin sister is. We then start to notice all the other small details and find that while they are identical twins, they are very different.

The text includes a few more images and talks about how to read them, but I found the first example to be the one that speaks the most to me.

Packaging Studio - New Class, New Purpose

For Spring Quarter we are asked to keep a blog to use as a presentation space. Our focus is "Package = Product".

Photography Reading - "What is a Photograph?"

Graham Clark's article "What is a Photograph" starts off by talking about the history of the photograph. While good to know, as I'm not a history buff, its not particularly interesting to me. It did get more interesting a couple of pages in.

What then is a photograph? It is, at its most basic level, 'a picture, likeness, or facsimile obtained by photography.' The meaning of a photograph, its efficacy as an image, and its value as an object, are always dependent on the contexts within which we 'read' it. On a functional level, then, the photograph is dependent on its context.

The text also makes an interesting note about the direction of a photograph, landscape and portrait being the two main views. The different aspect ration provides the image with different importance inherently. Other sizes, like a square image suggest voyeurism and immediacy; whether this is because of the shape itself or because that's how Polaroids were and we remember, it's unclear.

We can never enter a photograph's depth." Roland Barthes rightly complained about the frustration involved in the misplaced assumption that the closer we look at a photograph, the more we see.

That's an interesting point, photographs are flat thin pieces of paper, nothing more, but they contain the illusion of depth. They try to portray reality as accurately as possible, but in the end they are still completely fake.

Photography - Welcome to Photo Class

As part of my 'Digital Imaging Essentials' class, we are required to keep a journal. Since we are writing responses to things on the internet, I figured a blog would be a convenient format. Each week we are to look at a 'photo media outlet' and write something about something that was mentioned or linked to from there. Additionally we are to look at a famous photographer and do the same. The third part is to actually take pictures. Each week has a theme and we go out into the world and see.

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