Tyler Mobley’s Visual Diary

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.