Lazy Sunday

Here is my video piece for my color photography class. I'm quite proud of it. That is, I find it really amusing. Thanks Lindsey for the idea at the end. ; )







Also, I have my other piece, which didn't take nearly as long, but I still find it fun. It is supposed to resemble the American Idol ads.

And then the image off the billboard.

With the video, I took pictures from my bed (I love my homework). I tried to make the first pictures abstracted, because the person is waking up and nothing really makes sense. But then as the sleeper stays in bed and slowly wakes up, the images become more clear and readable. I created the inside of the eye lids in Flash, exported them as jpegs, imported them into Final Cut, and added the blur in there. There is probably a better way, because I had to blur every single frame. Which wasn't too bad for this assignment, but for anything longer, that would have been really annoying. But this way I got to control how much blur I wanted in each frame. At the beginning of the eye opening and the end of the eye closing, the blur looks way to heavy at 100%, so I the beginning and end have around 30% and it works it's way up to 100%. Surprisingly that looks a lot more smooth than all frames being 100%.

The Darth Vader thing was a suggestion of one of my friends, Lindsey, as a joke. I did it anyway, and it was hilarious late at night when I was working on the piece, I still think so, but it didn't get much of a reaction from my class at 8:30 in the morning. Which is great in itself. But, yeah, the Darth Vader thing isn't part of the piece, really, and if you visit my vimeo, you'll find that bit missing.

As for my American Idol billboard, I just tried to look to the actual American Idol ads. Just to capture the spirit of the ad while making it look like it maybe came from a different season. I shot my friend in a unique, rock-star-y and hip-hop-y outfit holding a guitar, so it kind of speaks to all types of musicians: country, rock, pop, R&B, etc. I tried to keep the treatment of the type as close to the original ads as possible. It's a different font and texture, but I think it matches pretty closely, and I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Blog Prompt #23

This picture here by Thomas Berger is amazing! It was literally the first picture I clicked on, simply by random. But when I opened it I got so excited! It looks like a pop-up book, yet it is an image that, to me, looks like it was done in Photoshop. It's still great if it wasn't done in Photoshop, perhaps more so. I think this might be something I would really love to explore. I love creating depth to images in Photoshop, which of course is fake depth. I always try to make it look as real as possible, but here, Berger acknowledges the fact that it's completely fake and uses that to create a beautiful surreal landscape.
I naturally assumed the rest of Berger's pictures would be equally amazing, but a lot of them looks like ordinary photos. But the pop-up pictures are truly inspiring.

Sarah Blumé is an artist who is responsible for this image. It's very similar to the idea I had of recreating my comic book I wrote in high school. Drawn images with real background. Well, "real" in my case, but still. People who create images like this are without a doubt creative. Even if this idea is not completely new, a person who wants to play around with a camera would probably go outside before photographing an image like this. I think it's very inspiring and hopefully something here I can use in my own work.


Mark Jenkins is an example of a photographer who's work is based more on content than style. His work is sometimes humorous and sometimes I-guess-it's-funny. He has one image that has a red carpet, the epitome of glamour and fame, that leads to a manwhole in Washington, DC. A large portion of his website is dedicated to photos of plastic bubble-like children doing interesting (or not interesting) things around the city, such as pulling down signs, climbing statues or billboards. It reminds me of Jan von Holleben, who I would also say his work is more about content rather than having the perfect "look". I think it is a admirable quality in a photographer, because these are the works that speak to us rather than just being something nice to look at. I think every photographer has something to learn from photographers like Mark Jenkins.

A Lazy Sunday

Here's what I'm currently working on. It's a video, but it's not for my Time and Motion class - it's for my photography class! Imagine that

What this video is supposed to represent is an eye opening as the person rolls over in bed, contemplating getting up. I'm hoping to make the eye movements smoother. I exported the flash file as jpeg, but I think there needs to be more jpegs to create a smoother transition. I'll see what I can do.

Save the Library (If You Can Turn Back Time)!

I previously posted this video, but it looked very strange with ghost images making it difficult to see what was going on, so I finally fixed it up and here's the final video! The purpose of this video is long since redundant, but hopefully you will still manage to find some merit within the tweens and voice-overs.




Save the Troy Library at the November 2nd Election! from Kim Berens on Vimeo.

Blog Prompt #23 (actually #22)

My roommate has this really interesting piece on her wall that another student from MSU created for class. I'm not sure what type of camera the images were taken with, but it was printed and then glued to board to give it structure and depth. It was then left outside for a night and leaves stuck to it and it was slightly damaged, but that was the look the artist was going for, I think. I'm probably way off with the description on how this piece was made, but it was similar to that, at least. When my roommate told me about it, I was impressed that she had even come up with that idea. The image is a tripdych, but the three pieces are different sizes. I think it's a great way to display an image and have it also be a sculptural piece.

Stop motion is also a great way to combine photography with other media, because it is essentially photography, but you have to have a filmmakers thought process when creating the piece. I love it because I have always been interested in film, and I love photography, so be able to combine the two is so much fun. But the possibilities of stop-motion are different than the possibilities for film, so you get very different type of work from the two.

A wearable version mixing photography and mixed-media is placing photos on clothing. Screen-printing, iron-ons, and other methods are used all the time to create t-shirts for groups. It may not be considered "art" by many people, but it is definitely something that helps create a sense of unity between a group and represents that group to the outside world.

Another method is projecting an image onto something. I think projecting an image can look pretty awful, but if it is done correctly, can look amazing. I'm thinking of the movie Adam, where the character Adam project the image of space around his apartment. It looks amazing in the film and to be able to see that in an actual space must be amazing. It reminds me of the few camera obscuras I've been in.

Work in Progress for Photography

Here are my images where I use the cloud tutorial from before. I'm not sure how I feel about them yet, but I'm starting to like them. I think my issue is that this is not what I had originally planned, so I don't know where I'm going. Because I actually don't think they're that bad, just unexpected.

Blog Prompt #21

Everybody constructs their perceived identity by one's appearence (clothes and hair), perhaps by their interests and activities. People like to feel part of a group, and sometimes that feeling leads people to become a stereotype or almost like a stereotype of who they are. A person's, say, musical interest often reflects upon other aspects of that person's life, such as his or her clothing. In my daily life, I actively try to be nice to people because. I wouldn't call that a "performance" because that makes it seem like I have different thoughts in my head, but it is definitely something I have constructed about myself, because that is the way I wish to be perceived.

But it is not just our personal selves that are being constructed. The cultures of people are always being constructed. Cultures don't just pop out of nothing, they start from something and build. That's construction. Every person is influencing everybody else and adding on to that culture. Store shops and magazines also construct our environments, telling us what to like and dislike. Teachers constructing our knowledge on a particular subject.

Our environment is very much constructed as well, the obvious road and building construction aside, the amount of side-walks in a city is a deliberate decision and very much constructs the way a city is used. Cars, needless to say, have very much constructed a new way of traveling farther and faster. The style of buildings gives an area completely different feelings, which is why people may chose to live in the city or the country. Those two places and different constructed environments.

I do not think that constructed is the antithesis of "real". I don't believe it means the same thing as "fabricated". To me, constructed means "built", which means it could still be very real. But there are plenty things that seem fabricated in life. Feelings are often fabricated to hide a person's true sadness or giddiness. People's critique of other people's artwork I think is also constructed. I use the word constructed because it probably is close to that person's true opinion, therefore not fabricated. But people, including myself, phrase our critique carefully so as not to sound too harsh. It's a very constructed response.

Amazing Cloud Tutorial for Photoshop

I'm in love again! I'm nearly as excited about this cloud tutorial as I was about this smoke tutorial!! I love Photoshop. I love love love love love Photoshop. I think I told everybody I knew about that smoke tutorial. Even people I didn't know while working at the cafeteria.


Here's the cloud video:

Save the Library!

So I did my video on how people in my hometown can save our library from closing at the November second election. Well, the assignment isn't due until the ninth, but I still had to get it done so that it could actually teach people about how to save the library! Anyway, for some reason it exported really oddly into Quicktime, so I'll have to work on that. I still want to improve it for my class, but I have it mostly done, which is a relief. Hope you like it!

Here is a what I'm thinking of doing for my next Photography assignment. I want to reshoot both the "clouds" and the subject. In fact, I might not even do a person anymore, but we'll see. I'm thinking a lot of the film Science of Sleep. I don't want it to be exactly that same (obviously), but the idea that it doesn't look like an actual Earth-space I really like. Here is my ten minute collage that I did this morning just to help you get the idea of where I'm heading. Again, I plan on reshooting, so it will end up looking completely different.