MoMA is putting on a virtual Dorothea Lange exhibit tomorrow night (April 30) at 7 pm Central. I think it’s free, but I’m not entirely sure.
I’ll definitely be logging on to check it out.
Category: Uncategorized
PSA
No picture(s) to share today, just an amazing opportunity I wanted to pass along . Ugh, that sounds like a sales pitch. But it’s not, I’m just really excited.
MoMA is offering a photography class for free! Below is the link if you want to check it out and sign up.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/photography
I signed up and started it this morning.
Cheers,
Bec
Atget and Walker and Me. Oh My!
Have you ever considered who or what influences you? I hadn’t really considered who influenced by photography until I watched a lecture given by John Szarkowski (the former director of photography at MoMA) on Eugene Atget (available on Amazon Prime!). Szarkowski started comparing putting photos by Atget and Evans side by side to demonstrate the influence Atget had on Evans’ work.
There was one pair that struck me – they seemed familiar to me, but I hadn’t seen either of them before. But then I realized I had taken a similar picture!
The first two pictures below are pictures that Szarkowsi had paired together. The third is one I took (obviously) when I first moved into my condo. I don’t recall what caused me take the picture at the time but I have a series of photographs of my bed that I took that day.
I’m definitely no Eugene Atget or Walker Evans, but it’s exciting to know that I’m apparently learning something from them.
P.S. I promise I make my bed on the mornings that cats aren’t in it.
Happy New Year!
Can you believe it’s the start of a new decade? I rang in the new year with the people I love most in this world (outside of my family, of course). We realized last night that we all rang in the last decade together back in to 2009 so our celebration last night seemed extra special.
I started this blog/website a year ago as a way to explore photography and become a better photographer. While I didn’t keep up with my photography as much as I would have liked, I managed to learn a couple things over the year:
First, taking pictures of people is more rewarding to me than photographing landscapes and objects. I particularly like taking photographs at parties. It’s so fun to go through and edit the photos afterwards.
Second, not every photograph is going to be a masterpiece. A photograph might not even make sense to another person and that’s okay. No one sees the world in the same way. My photography reflects the way I see the world.
I’m looking forward to continuing my photography in 2020. While I don’t have any set resolutions, I do have a couple of areas I’d like to work on this year. Mainly photographing groups of people and experimenting more in the editing process.
I’m so grateful for your support and interest in my little hobby. Cheers to a new year and new decade!
xoxo,
Bec
RIP, Robert Frank
I was saddened to read about Robert Frank’s death in the New York Times yesterday.
There have been several articles about him in the New York Times over the past couple of days. You’ll need a dictionary and art degree to understand most of what’s written, but there was one word that I did understand without any help from Merriam-Webster. Influential.
He (along with Vivian Maier) has probably influenced my view and appreciation of photography the most. Before seeing his photographs, I thought of photography as perfectly composed and exposed pictures. Something pretty to hang on the wall. But his work in The Americans is sometimes blurry and cockeyed, sometimes grainy, and sometimes I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to be looking at. But throughout the whole book I feel like a voyeur peeping in the windows of a funeral or watching people eat a deli counter from front window, maybe even eavesdropping on a conversation at a table behind me in a restaurant. I find his work and the feelings they invoke infinitely more interesting than a perfectly composed landscape.
Please forgive the poor quality of the following photographs. I took pictures of the pictures in the book, The Americans. I probably could have found images on the internet to use, but given the industry I work in I’m a little paranoid about infringing on copyrights. Though I’m not sure that using a picture of the picture is any better.
The above photo is one of my favorites of Robert Frank’s. There’s so much detail. You can see an empty barbershop in his reflection in the window as well as the reflection of the street behind him. You see the texture of the screen over the reflection. The photo feels peaceful to me, like he took it on a Sunday morning walk around town. I wonder what made him stop to take this picture. Are there any other chairs in the shop or just the one?
This photo makes me laugh. There is something so strange about having a shoe shine stand in a men’s bathroom. That poor shoe shiner – does he have to sit in the bathroom all day? Or does he sit outside the bathroom and follow men in(also creepy) hoping they’ll want their shoes shined after they’ve dribbled on them? Which would be worse? I don’t think I would even have the guts to even take a picture in a restroom.
Is anyone else influenced by Robert Frank? Which of his photos are your favorite?
Outtakes
I take A LOT of pictures of my cats because, well, they’re really freakin’ cute and they’re available. Sort of. They don’t sit still for very long. You’d think that for as many pictures as I take of them, I’d be better at it. For every decent picture I take, there are about 30 terrible ones. But every once in awhile one of the terrible pictures ends up being kinda funny and I use it in my texts the way normal people use emojis.
I sent the following outtake from one of Rose’s photoshoots to my friend this afternoon. I was complaining to her about a secretary who tried to pawn off her work to me because “she didn’t want to think.” If the below picture doesn’t scream eye roll and “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” then I don’t know what does.
Impatient or excited about something?
Going to an epic party or party too much the night before?
To be fair, that last one wasn’t really an outtake. I took it to show everyone how naughty mischievous Rose can be. But I think it works.
If you want to see cute (i.e., non-yawning) pictures of Rose and Elliot, check out their Instagram page @elliotandrose.
Happy New Year
This website is my 2019 resolution. I told myself that I would get it up and running on January 1st. I even wrote whole post about how I got into photography, but it needs some major edits and to be perfectly honest, I’m not in the mood to edit today. I’m slightly hungover from yesterday’s celebration and I have to do adult things today, like grocery shop and laundry *insert thumbs down emoji here*.
I’ll be damned if I fail on my resolution less than 12 hours in the new year so you’re getting half a post so my resolution can live to see another 12 hours. Please bear with me as I try to create this site. I’m out of my depth here. I struggling with setting up pages, plugins, widgets, whats its, and whatnots. The last two might be made up. Maybe? I’m not really sure.
Anyway, Happy New Year! May your resolutions last until the end of January.