appropriating is stealing

Appropriating images in my own opinion is definitely stealing. You are not paying the artist for their images that you are taking. Although you may not be making money off of your own work, it is still stealing! I'm not saying I never did it in college; I find that college students need to in order to learn from different artists. I'm not saying it's right though. Do you think that the artsits we are stealing from, stole from other artists when they were in school and learning? I believe they probably did. This isn't the first generation that all of a sudden steals images from other artists. You need to learn from somewhere and sometimes your professors just don't cut it. After we learn, hopefully noone has to appropriate images any longer, although some people still will and call it their own. I understand we recycle everything we can, but that's somebody's artwork!! Yeah, sure it's great to recycle certain things, but I don't think anyone would appreciate it if they were talented to create their own piece of artwork and then a few years down the road see someone take your work and then make money off of it!

Age vs. technology

I have read Amy's response to Age vs. technology and it really got me thinking. Our culture is soooo extremely obsessed with technology today that we really forget about the important things in our life. OR is it that these technological devices are the important parts of our lives. Why is there still a desire to preserve our past? What is wrong with how it's going right now that we need to cherish old customs? Maybe I do not fully understand what Amy is tryign to say, but I think it's important for us(the American culture)) to figure out what we need to do so when the next generation is being raised, they arn't more confused or more messed up than our culture is today. Amy, I think that when commenting on our future it must be paired up with our past because todays society looks down upon the NOW and how good it USed to be. SO, in other words, people are scared to see what the future will look like if it is already fucked up. I think?

post, 2/26

This chapter discusses how different mediums of art are created for the purpose of making money. I believe that film, painting and photographs are all created in order to make a profit off of it. YEs, of course all artists enjoy creating peices of art just for the sole purpose for themselves, but most artists do not want to starve and must use their talent to make some money. I believe that being a great photographer definitely has its side to making some money because of your great talent. Every photographer, if talented, will be able to sell their work to someone. Everyone has different tastes on what is beautiful. Some photographers are lucky enough to get into the commercial aspect of photography and their clients who will be paying for these photographs will be high end companies and can probably afford to pay more so these photographers might make some extra cash than fine artists. I might be biased by saying that, but it's just my own opinion.

post for 2/19

I was not able to see the poetry archive, but from being in class afterwards made me wish that I could have been there. It seems that it can be an extremely helpful resource for researching important things from way back when. It must have really been an amazing experience to be able to see and touch some original photographs from famous artists that have made history. Even though I use the digital process of photography more often than using film, I still think it’s important to know the different processes that were used back in the beginning of when photography was first discovered. I still think that the digital process has become an amazing tool for the process of photography. I think being able to learn the process of photoshop and its many features is an incredible experience. Bdeing able to transform a whole photograph on the computer is still kind of mind-boggling to me.

January 24th blog

Everyone in this world would agree that each individual has different needs. Everyone has different, important use-values. The use-values that become commodities to each individual are things that they use each and every day. Some people’s use-value for things are different than some others. Most products on the market are priced extremely too high for what they are really worth. Most of these products are commodities for individuals, so why should they have to pay so much for a certain product that shouldn’t be sold as much as it is to begin with. Because a product’s use-value is high, a consumer shouldn’t have to pay more for that one certain product. It’s really not fair! Most of these products are things that people most likely need but a lot of people, especially us college kids, learn to live without certain things because of its high cost.

Documentary Photography

I think it is absolutely wrong to set up a shot if you are trying to document something. If you are setting somehting up it then becomes a staged photograph. Timothy O'Sullivan was considered doing documentary photography although in his photograph Harvest of Death, the entire thing was staged!!! How is that documenting somehting?!?! It's not real, although it looks real and soldiers were really dead on the ground, he placed certain men in specific areas on the ground in order to capture the "documentary" photograph he was supposed to. That to me is not documentary photography. Documentary photography is somehting you are capturing in the heat of the moment... Am i wrong here?!?

Stereotyping Images

Some images and ideas that we're not usually exposed, we tend to place stereotypes on. Some examples shown in class were photographs of Arabs in normal everday outfits that they wear. In the photograph they were placed in front of a city. We(the Americans) tend to think it looks wierd because when we think of a photograph of an urban setting we think of a man in suit and tie. It's not normal for us to see people in different types of clothing in an urban setting, so automatically we think it's wrong or funny looking. This is absoulutely terrible of us to stereotype like this, but sometimes we forget about being open-minded. This is one reason why I think it is so important to travel; to become accustomed to other cultures unlike our own, and to make us more open-minded. One specific example of a photograph we spoke about was a man on a camel with a car and a Mountain Dew can on a pedestal. It's terrible for me to say, but i laughed to myself as it came up on the screen. It was wierd for me to see such an old view(man on a camel) with a contemporary car all in the same photograph. This is their life but "we" think it should be different for them just because our life is different. We just don't know, and it is wrong of us to stereotype.

class- April 4th

Joseph's presentation on his photographer I thought was an extremely well-chosen choice. I believe his work to be very controversial which may be good at some points and was very interesting to learn about how this photographer works. I would love to see this photographer's work in person in a gallery to be able to look at the photograph and hear the audio all at the same time. I do feel the photographer was putting these children down by typing out exactly what they were saying to make them look stupid. I understand he was trying to make the viewer understand what type of environment they were coming from but there was no need at all to make them look stupid at the same time. There was really no need to have the type next to each photograph. I agree with mostly everyone that just the audio would have worked fine with the photographs.

Conceptual vs. Commercial

I recall the course title for this class to be Topics of Contemporary Photography. When we were first given the assignment for our presentations, the directions were to pick a PHOTOGRAPHER of our choice to present. This is the reason I chose the PHOTOGRAPHER Timothy White to present, not becasue I'm in love with his work, but because I think he is an amazing person and has a lot to offer an individual. I was fortunate enough to intern for him over Christmas break and I know that he has taught me alot, maybe not about taking pictures, but about the repoire you must have with clients to be successful in your career. Everyone in this class will try to obtain a career at some point in their life, and if you don't have the social skills or business knowledge to go about doing that, you're basically fucked. I don't believe I am at the wrong school for what I want to pursue in my future because I do need to be conceptually educated. I was actually complaining to Timothy White about the fact that this school is extremely conceptually based and not commercially at all. He turned around and said that it was important for me to be here, where I am today, because I have learned to have a keen eye for composing photographs. He explained that being at a commercial art school, one isn't always fortunate enough to obtain that artistic ability.

experience over photograph

The experience one goes through during a photo shoot is a very important part of a photograph. I think that sometimes that one particular experience can be almost more important than how the photograph turns out. I am very interested in Dan Budnik’s, the artist that Amy presented in class last week, photography but more because of the experience he goes through meeting these amazing artists. Being able to interact with them and see how they work is quite the experience. Timothy White, the photographer that I will be presenting in class today, is another photographer who I think the experience must be very important. He takes photographs of celebrities and is able to meet them but more importantly is able to speak with them and interact with these famous people. Being a photographer who can interact with these famous people and not be star struck and treat them like normal people is an extremely important part of his job; possibly one of the most important aspects of his job. Of course the final photograph is important, because he has high end clients that have certain expectations of him, but I think that his experiences are just as important. The photographs pay the bills, but his experiences make lifetime memories and sometimes nothing can beat that. I actually believe that living the experience is one of my favorite aspects of photography and being able to capture that experience perfectly is something that I am drawn to. Does anybody else feel the same way about living the experience?