Grace's Art Place

      I can't believe it's here already. It feels like just last week I was wandering around campus, taking pictures of everything I walked past, thinking "could this be art?" I'm not sure that all of it really was, but I was trying really hard. I was excited to learn about visual literacy, because I had no idea what that even was, let alone how to use it.      Since then, I definitely still have a lot to learn about the elements of art and how to use them well and what looks good and how things could look better. But, I've certainly come a long way in this area and understand way more then I did coming in.     I've been able to learn skills like photo editing, illustrating with vector graphics, and audio production. I think the vector poster might have been the most time consuming assignment for me. I was excited to work with Adobe Illustrate for the first time, and wanted to take my time getting used to it. This involved watching a 3 hour long tutorial v

      Night photography was something that I really enjoyed experimenting with this semester. I even got to drag some of my friends in to have some fun with me. I tend to be attracted to darker things, and night photos that I had seen before were always incredible to me, but I didn't understand the challenge of having very little source of light at night. Now, I've learned that a little light means a long shutter speed. This means that you definitely need a tripod unless you want a very blurry image, and that movement in the frame will definitely be noticeable.      I wanted to try this thing called light painting that I'd heard about before. Pros use tons of fun and colorful lights to make amazing light paintings. Living in my dorm, I do not have any fancy lights, but I do have friends with smart phones, and flashlights on their smart phones!     It was so fun to see how excited everyone got when we saw that an image worked out, no one really knew what to expect, but the e

              Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer. In 2000, he published a book of a series that I find fascinating. It's called Theaters, and I learned of it from my Photography professor. In this series. Sugimoto decided to photograph a variety of theaters, using only the light from the film being projected. This means that he would leave the shutter open for hours and sometimes this would not only mean a sharp image despite the limited light source, but some other cool features that couldn't be created any other way.           For instance, some of the theaters he shot were outside, drive in theaters like this one. He shot the Union City Drive-in in 1993, and you can see the passage of time with the shutter speed open from the trails that airplanes left throughout the duration.      Theaters are a thing that a lot of us utilize all of the time and often possess a lot of beauty. I think this series allows people to appreciate their architecture, purpose, and style mor

        Richard Misrach is an American photographer, well known for his introduction of color to fine art photography. These photos are from his series On the Beach, taken from the balcony of his high-rise in Hawaii, with an 8x10 camera. I was very intrigued to read that these were also in reaction to the 9/11 tragedies.           I was introduced to this photographer during an in-class presentation by another student, and these beach pictures that she showed us really stuck out to me. He takes an environment that is always associated with fun and relaxation, and photographs it in a way that is full of tension and mystery. Since he is so far away from the individuals in the photos, they all appear tiny, especially in comparison to the vast sea that surrounds them. The colors are gorgeous in all of them, but I think the dark patches create some suspense, like something bad is going to happen.           The uneven rhythm of the people arranged in photos like this one definitely add to th

             Humans are weird. Sometimes I forget this, but then I remember how we have squishy, sugary versions of animals that we like to eat, we have thousands of styles of shoes, we make entire cellophane bags and only put like five chips in them. We don't have to do any of this stuff, but we like to, and a lot of times, this stuff seems to play off of the things that we get naturally, like animals, flowers, and bugs. I wanted to make photographs that could comment on these parallels between the natural and the unnatural, and were also cool to look at.      I bought some hair clips earlier this year and after wearing them like everyday, I noticed how they looked a lot like spiders. So, when I got the idea for these photos, these clips were one of the first things I thought of. I'm actually really scared of spiders, and honestly these creep me out a  bit. I think the diagonal line of the net gives them some sense of movement.               These may take a minute to find, bu

      I'm going back to my music-loving roots to talk about another music video. This one is to a song by one of my favorite bands, Panic! at the Disco. This video was directed by Mel Soria, who I recently found out directs videos for lots of awesome bands.         Compared to the rest of his work, this video is pretty tame and simplistic, not as flashy. But, I think the aesthetic appeal and composition of each shot is just gorgeous that it sucks you in and you can't stop watching.      The first notable choice is that the video is in black and white. I don't think the video would be nearly as effective if it were in color. The black and white really emphasizes the lighting, creates a lot of contrast, and there's no color to distract from composition and the subject matter. Plus, it fits the speak-easy type vibe of the setting.      After introducing Brendon, the lead singer, sitting alone, drinking bourbon at a table, we see this shot of the stage as the song begins, w