Just a little digital preview of a photo I took today for my series and sequence project. I shot it in both black and white and color, so we'll see how it turns out.

And these other two, I was just messing around. I figured if I had lighting set up why not have some fun. I've also somehow managed to make digital look like film! And I'm not even sure how.
I was talking to a good friend the other night about my project. He liked my sequence of oranges but said it was too predictable and I needed to think about the consequences of making photographs that look like paintings and what does it mean putting that out there. He's very good at working with concept and historical and cultural relevance. I knew these were things I needed to think about and know but he also thought my work should reflect those things. For example, that painting is an original art form and I am now mimicking with one of the most evolving technologies. He suggested taking the photos with a cell phone camera to make a statement about that. I told him that wasn't what my project was about and that making those images wouldn't be satisfying to me no matter how "smart" they may be. When he finally understood that I really just wanted my photos to be about the shape, form and lighting and making an image just to be beautiful he suggested that I needed to make my critique a performance piece and pretend to show them images, again on the cell phone, as if they were my real project to get my point across that I just wanted to make images about beauty and not concept. And I just thought to myself why does it all need to be a big performance or a huge statement? Because I know if I did something like that and did it intelligently I feel like most university art teachers would love it. But I know if and when I show most of my photos they sneer and go it looks like an advertisement. Why can't my concept be that I wanted to create images simply for aesthetic pleasure? And if it can be why do I have to shove it in their faces by making it a conceptual performance piece? I am sure there will be several pages of research on this in my sketchbook soon. Any thoughts, feelings, musings or other things on this topic would be interesting to hear.















































