Tyler Mobley’s Visual Diary

The following are links to my comments on Heather and Jen’s blog posts for their final projects.

Comment on Heather’s blog:

Update on my assignment

Comment on Jen’s blog:

http://jmstevens.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/mark-wiltse/#comments

This is one of the last shots I got before Lauren left and my personal favorite.

I tried to get some close, more intimate objects shots before Lauren left.

My sister is a notorious, mid-photo blinker, so she was getting tired of me trying to get a devent portrait by the time this was taken. Still, I think it best caught her personality.

So for my photo project, I’m covering my sister preparing and leaving to join the Peace Corps in Botswana, Africa for 27 months. While there’s plenty of story to tell here, the main issue I had was getting enough information/photos before she left. See, she left this past Saturday, so I have officially taken all the pictures of her that I can.

I’m filling out some of her backstory with some older photos and objects that reflect her personality.

Lauren was a public defense lawyer for years before she recently decided to quit and join the Peace Corps like she’d always wanted. Initially, about a year ago, she was sent to the vountry of Georgia. She was there until a conflict broke out with Russia and she had to be evacuated with other volunteers out of the country. Since then, she’s been sitting around my parent’s house, working a minor job, and waiting to be re-assigned. The last month or so, she’s been preparing to go to Africa, and this past Saturday she finally left. My goal is to encapsulate that story.

So I ask you:

Can yall think of any shot ideas not directly involving her that’d fill out the story better?

What portion of the story I just told you seems the most interestin? What do you want to know more about?

Funch created this scene out of a number of different images

Peter Funch is a Danish photographer living in New York City who has created a series of composite New York scenes. Basically, he took hundreds of photos of individual locations over long periods of time, found recurring elements/people in those shots, and used Photoshop to combine them into what I suppose you’d call a “photo illustration.”

The resulting images are strange and entertaining. I can’t imagine how much time this took in Photoshop either.

Again, this was not originally one image but was cut together with a ridiculous amount of skill

While I was still freaking the hell out trying to come up with a final project idea after my intial one fell through, I went ahead and checked out Jennifer’s blog!

She’s posted a shot of the photographer who’s responsible for that distinctive, photoshopy style o f Gatorade ad, Tim Tadder. The ones that look like HDR images or something. It was interesting to actually connect a name with a style I recognize, and Jen’s other photo posts were impressive looking.

You can visit my comment on her post here.

This week, due to a recent lack of photos that have really struck in a way that’s different f rom my earlier posts, I’m posting a video of a tiny robot dancing. That makes sense…

Anyway, this little bot is called Keepon, and  he was actually developed to interact with autistic children as a way to create non-threatening eye contact and social interaction. In this video, though, he just jams around Tokyo with his creator.

The song is “Don’t You Evah” by Spoon, and, if you watch, you can see a couple of the band members around the video. Both the white guy who stops to give some change to Keepon and the other white guy in sunglasses behind the duo on the escalator are members of Spoon. The video was produced by Wired Magazine.

Not photography, I know, but aspects of it do, in fact, fit an aesthetic style that I tend to be drawn to. Tokyo, in particular, is an entity unto itself  that has always attracted me for constantly changing reasons. At this point, the meeting of clean modern lines and somewhat dirty city settings create an interesting combination for me. Like the interchange photos I posted a while back, the combination  of clean design/lines and rougher/urban setting intrigues me.

But, more importantly: dancing robot!

Jonze's take on Max. Image originally from USA Today.

So I suppose this week will be another not necesarilly photographic but perhaps visual post. Beloved children’s book Where the Wild Things Are wil be coming to the big screen. In production for quite some time now, the film is directed by Spike Jonze with a screenplay co-written by Jonze and author Dave Eggers. The movie actually seemed like it might be in trouble last year, as studio execs were not pleased with the dark tone of Jonze’s vision. They sent him back for some more kid-friendly reshoots, and yesterday everyone got a first look.

The trailer, linked below, shows the monsters in action and really looks impressive. I’m curious to see how this turns out and if it became a really watered-down kids movie or not. I guess we’ll see.

Where the Wild Things Are will be released on October 16, 2009, so anyone who’s excited has a while to wait yet. Still, a nice 2-minute trailer is always good to get people riled up.

View the trailer at Apple.com here.

That’s right…I have officially broken down and posted a photo of…my cat. But I can make this relevant, I swear! So I was back home over Spring Break just taking pictures of most anything to get an idea for a photo series of sorts, and, very briefly, I considered taking a series of photos of neighborhood pets, including the gentleman named Rhett you see here.

As I snapped photos of Rhett, my sometimes willing but generally apathetic model, I realized that a photo series of pets might be what I’d call “excruciating.” It takes a special kind of patience to deal with the constant movement, the lack of eye contact, the extremely light-sensitive eyes, etc of cats and dogs. You can only bounce flash and that only works sometimes. They’ll (cats or dogs) very promptly walk up and stick their nose in your lens hoping to investigate and/or be petted. And they wash themselves at the most random times.

Anyway, I think animal photography is something I need to work on like people photography. I don’t have a ton of experience with either form, so my patience tends to run thin and my photos tend to look a little rushed.

Rhett does love a fresh face....

Now, that being said, I did get a nice little one of Rhett cleaning his face. I mean, come on. Who can resist that?

Mucha's illustrations are sensual and often focus on the female form

So this week my post isn’t so much related to photography as it is to graphic design. I was looking through some of the blogs I normally visit and was sort of at a  loss until I came across a little gallery of illustrations by Alhponse Mucha. For those of you who don’t know, Alphonse Mucha is the accidental father of the Art Nouveau movement.

Art Nouveau as a style is characteriszed by fluid, sensual forms. Much Art Nouveau work tends to feel organic as if various forms grow out of one another at will. Mucha’s work was varied, but he’s best known for the romanticized illustrations of women he did for a series on the seasons. 

While Mucha apparently dismissed his famous illustration style as more commercial than artistic, he is seen as the father of the style.

If you’d like to see more of Mucha’s work, here’s a link to the gallery I found, and a Google search will yield you plenty of results as well.

The Vivitar 285HV is a favorite of the Strobist

So lately I’ve been looking at strobe flashes for my camera to see if maybe I could find an affordable model to use casually. I was surprised how much I enjoyed playing with the strobe we used for the strobe assignment, so I’m kind of curious as to what I could do if I actually had one of my own to mess around with.

The only real problem: they’re not cheap. I mean, I guess nothing related to photography is ever particularly cheap, but the prices of strobe flashes are always just outside what I’m willing to lay down for what’s basically a “fun” purchase.

I was looking at Strobist (very good lighting blog btw) the other day, marveling at how much equipment people expect you to carry around all the time, when I found a highly recommended strobe, the Vivitar 285HV. The Strobist write-up sounded very positive, so I checked over on Amazon and sure enough these things go for around $87. That’s at least $10 cheaper than anything Canon or other companies makes.

The only problem I see so far is that the Vivitar, though it apparently works great, is essentially entirely manual. There’s no TFL mode of any kind, and all adjustments are left up to you. Now, while I’m sure that’d make me a very good flash photographer, at this point I’d kind of like something a little more beginner-friendly.

So if anyone’s looking for a cheap strobe, go check out the Vivitar 285HV. It seems like if you’re willing to learn, this is a dream come true (especially price-wise).

Link: The Vivitar 285HV on Amazon

To read Strobist’s write-up on his favorite strobe lens, go here.

This photo is reminiscent of lomography with its antiquated look.

UPDATE: Now with proper spelling! Also, the timestamp for this post is 5 hours ahead for some reason

I ran across this photo at one of my favorite photo and graphic design blogs, ffffound.com. While it doesn’t blow me away, it did remind me of something I’ve been intrigued by for a while: lomography. Lomography is a sort of lo-fi approach to photography through the use of cheap, plastic cameras, leaky camera bodies, and medium format film. Photos like these typically show that circular vignetting around the border and often focus on multiple exposure and light leaks on single. While lomography, the company that sells these cameras, stresses the cheapness of their products, the niche market created by these cameras keeps them a little too pricey for a novelty. After all, I just don’t want to pay $70 for a camera that’s supposed to be crappy.

To learn more about lomography and its various products, visit here.