Grace's Art Place

     As I have been learning more about the elements of art and things that catch people's eye and make them keep looking, I've been trying to find people, especially photographers, that I can learn from. Recently, I discovered Laura McPhee, a contemporary photographer who centers her work on human interaction with nature. This is a subject that I am continually interested in, and I love seeing how different artists can represent these ideas in a unique way.      The photo above is the featured photo on Laura's website, and as soon as I saw it, I was sucked in. All the photos I'm presenting here are from her series Desert Chronicle, focusing on time and the paradox of human interactions with nature.      In the top photo, immediately the bright yellow and green of the tree grabs my eye as it pops off of the neutral background. The contrast makes the 2D image look 3D to me, like the tree is right in front of me, and the layers of the rock in the background create leading

 Thought this was going to be a post about the music video for "Blinded by the Light" by Manfred Mann's Earth Band? Maybe next time, but for now I'm talking about blinds. You know, the things that are supposed to block the light from coming into your room at night, or at least give you some privacy. Well, sometimes those blinds don't exactly keep all of the light out, but instead create some really nice shadows!  This year, in my quest to get "art smart", with help from my art professors, I've learned about how much light and shadows can add to photos. These are picture I took in the lounge of my dorm building. Not exactly something that would be considered "beautiful" or even worth looking at, the carpet is outdated, along with the blinds that are annoying to use and break too easily. But, the shadows they create make dynamic abstract images. In the image above, I wanted to capture this perspective that would guide the eye to the center an