Last Class! Book Sharing

Tonight is our last night of class and we all shared our books and were asked to choose one of our favorites to write about.  I particurlary liked Cathie’s book about the scenic highway 101.  The decision to add information into the book along with the pictures was great.  It was cool to read information about the certain places she photgraphed.  I have bee to many of the locations that were in her book as well.  Some of my friends even work at some of the bars/restaurants that were featured in the book.  You can tell that a lot of time and effort went into the creation of the book.  And you can tell that it payed off because the end result was awesome.  I would recommend her book to anyone interested in the subject.

A Few Screenshots from my Book

Here is the front cover and back cover

A page with some facts about the Oceanside pier

more pictures

Another descriptive page

My Finished Book

The Beaches Of…

By by: Donovan Olson

Book Preview

The Ordover Gallery in Solana Beach

The Ordover Gallery in Solana beach featured work from many  photographers including Lisa Ross, Christopher Burkett, and the Tuscany exhibit by Elizabeth Carmel.  These photographs features objects with lots of textures and colors.  If you were willing to drop alot of money you could even own one of these pieces.  The Tuscany exhibit also had panoramas and landscapes, which I take a particular interest in because the book I am making for my class deals alot with landscapes.  There were so many different techniques used in the work in this gallery, it was a real learning experience.  I show a great appreciation for all the beautiful images I saw in the gallery, and if I was incredibly rich, would probably buy a piece or two.

The Ordover Gallery at San Diego Natural History Museum

The exhibit in the Ordover Gallery at the San Diego Natural History Museum featured work from many artists and was headlined by National Geographic Photographer Ralph Lee Hopkins.  This particular exhibit featured gorgeous photographs of Baja California.  I have always been a fan of nature photography, especially pictures in which you can see wild animals and how they act in their natural habitats.  And these pictures definitely did not dissapoint.  The patience it must of taken to get certain shots such as the underwater photos is incredible.  There was also a close up picture of a whale’s eye that shows a view of an animal that most of us will never get to see in real life.  After viewing these pictures it really makes you want to go out and see this side of baja for yourself.  I would reccomend this exhibit to anyone interested in nature photography, for it is an incredible experience.

MOPA “Beloved Daughters” Fazal Sheikh

The exhibit at Mopa was by the photographer Fazal Sheikh.  The exhibit featured powerful images taken by Fazal of women from two different communities in India. The images from the first community were of widows who have committed their lives to “Krishna” and the cycle of life and death.  The pictures from the second community were focused on young women and girls who are severely suppressed by the laws.  The black and white photos in my opinion are so strong and make you focus on the face and the emotion of the women in the pictures. There were also testimonies from the subjects in Sheikh’s photos.  It was nice to read them and put a story with a face.  Fazal Sheikh did a great job of capturing the solemn faces of these poor women.  It really makes you realize how lucky you are  for what you have and can show you how much you take for granted.  

Collier Schorr

Tonight’s video was on photographer Collier Schorr.  In the video Schorr goes to boys wrestling matches in order to take photographs of them.  She says that masculinity has always been black and white, there is no gray area.  She likes to capture the wrestlers in certain moments.  She says she also likes to capture their sexiness.  It came across a little creepy the way she would describe it, but her photographs were interesting nonetheless. She talks about her trips to Germany and how she has been photographing the same boy since he was nine.  Schorr says she likes taking pictures of the tall muscular blondes, for that is what she grew up being afraid of.  You can tell that she is very dedicated to the idea of masculinity in her work.

Panoramas

Here are a few Panorama shots I took for our pano assignment

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Project

For the book project we will be doing in class my subject will be the beach areas of North County San Diego, like Oceanside pier, D Street, Moonlight, and others.  I will try and add images to the book that I’ve messed around with in photoshop, as well as some of my own drawings and sketches.  I might even decide to add some of my own writings into the project too.  Here are a few examples of  photos I’ve taken that would be included in my book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

War Photojournalist James Nachtwey

The video tonight was on James Nachtwey, a news and war photographer whose pictures are rather powerful.  Nachtwey has covered several wars dating back decades.  The images he catches tell the stories of the victims of war and violence and can at times be truly graphic.  Some contained famine victims, and even military in the act of firing their weapons.  You can’t question Nachtwey’s courage, for he’s had to put himself in extreme danger to capture the photos that he’s taken.  In the video he says that at one point in his career he started focusing more on critical social change in the world.  He described his arrival as a “elevator to hell.”  One of his images was of a man who had lost an arm and a leg and was trying to support his family.  People saw the image and donated money to a fund in the man’s name.  It is learned that the man now lives in a house and is able to support his family.  All of this just because of James Nachtwey’s photo.  Nachtwey also took pictures of the terrorist attacks on 9/11.  He said that for the past 20 years he thought he had been covering several stories but had finally realized that he had been covering one single story the entire time, the story of violence and humanity. It is up to photographers like James Nachtwey to reveal to the rest of the world the true effects of war and violence on earth and its inhabitants, and not what some politicians would like us to believe.