Vacation without photoshop

Graphic Design Work

Here is some pretty low level photoshop work I did for a cult film club called EOM. Calling them graphic design works might be a little bit over the top though.

These are older photographs I took in Boston, and to me the sum up the feel I get from the more corporate business districts of the city. Which I guess is the feel of too-cleanness, the singularity of objects in unmarked, grimless environment. This goes especially the top photograph, which feels like its in a sterile vaccuum.

Here are two photos from an earlier trip to New York. I like the top one because of how its such a contained space for these people to stand. It feels almost hermetically sealed. Also, look at the guy in the grey peacoat, you can see this look of contempt almost as he notices in his periphery hes being photographed. Also I think the bottom pic of occupy wall street kind of sums up a lot about our culture. I guess it kind of speaks for itself in a humorous way.

Well, here are two cars with white fake animals near them. A weird trend of that day of shooting. The town I went to take pictures in was really strange in an understated way. Strange enough that I could walk off of their main street and find this yard of cars with an old fake pony. That street with the junkyard led out to a big empty lot and a baseball diamond. I think one of the greatest pleasures in photography is finding places. It's kind of awe inspiring to use photography to unfold all of the small pecularities of a place thats just a square cm on a map, and to think that there so many other "unknown" towns.

These are street shots I took on a day trip to NYC. I feel wary about the choice of doing black and white conversion, I converted one and figured why not the rest. This could definitely be looked at as trying to emulate classic street photography but I dont know.. I feel like iconic places and cities are are cliche traps for photographers, mainly just because of sheer saturation of images from these places, but, there also exists enormous amounts of photographic material. My two favorites are the girl on the escalator and the old David Carradine look-alike behind the glass. If a photograph gives you a strong  feeling of being looked at, at almost having active communication with a still image, then I think it works on some level. There are two I could give or take, the guy tieing his shoe, and the sneering military swagger guy. I wish I got the guys face who was bending over, and I wish I had just a little more sharpness and focus on swagger guy. There's one photo I took at occupy Wall-Street that's not included because it didn't feel right in the collection, but its pretty funny. It's a woman holding a starbucks coffee and taking pictures of shouting protesters with an I-Phone. Maybe a little too much of a visual political joke, but an interesting moment nonetheless.

For Worcester kids, Halloween was postponed this year, which is just a really strange thing to think of. When I went out to take photos during the storm, I was looking for things that didn't feel natural in snow so, Halloween decorations and a drive in screen. That drive-in screen is probably my favorite picture I've taken so far for this class, I really like the idea of its function literally fading into the environment. It's off-season and just there out in the woods.

I did some edits on the laundromat interior-- brought down brighter parts to the right, and brought up the mannequin, but to me it might look too photoshopped. I took the other three pictures while my girlfriend was shopping for Halloween costume stuff. The picture that I connect the most with is the image of the mattress underneath the flourescent lights. In the night there is something special about areas of localized light. It has the effect of "interiorizing" the space that is lit. That picture just wouldn't work for me in daylight. There would be no presence to the mattress or the scene. I wanted to omit the dark areas of night outside of this scene, to let the feeling of the scene fill that data in for you. I also really like the shrivelled and stained mattress lying before the upright one. It's kind of bizarre and fleshlike, like a dead whale or something. For some reason or another it really makes the picture for me.

The sense I get from all of these photos is lonely objects in the moment before night. I took photos of the times where they would be last be seen by some passerby. That sunset/dusk light gives a quality to things of "just being seen" for the first time. What I guess affects me about them is that they remain long after my photographing them. I think that I might want to go back to this racoon who died in an closed drive in theater and continue photographing him.

I met this man while out biking, he runs a sound system/spotlight business, with tons of great old trucks and a ww2 era anti air spotlight. The real gem of his shop was 2 old restored band organs that were in the back. His friend had devoted his life to restoring these things and writing scores for them(which are paper rolls with plugged out holes marking notes). They are "self playing", one was piercing and shrill, but had a great snare, and the other was warm-toned and gorgeous. He also had a bunch of letters from people commending him for his mobile sound work, one was Ted Kennedy. I was using my friends camera when I took these, and forgot to set to camera RAW, which sucks since I couldn't work on exposure and color which all of these desperately need. Nonetheless, I like these pictures because it was the need to take them that led me to meet this man and see all of this history. I think their value is less about artistic form and more about narrative and documentation.

These were taken in Boston. That trip for me was a foray into the world of street photography, which I appreciate because I love characterful people. There's always the dilemma of feeling exploitative when photographing someone for their strangeness. I think as long as the picture works and doesn't feel exploitative it's fine. One picture that I missed on this trip that I wish I had was of a plasma tv in an open air restaurant with a picture of recently executed death row inmate Troy Davis on display, while all of these younger women celebrated what was presumably a 21st birthday.

This photo was taken when I was out walking with my friend Monika at night taking her picture, "hangin" out. It was a weird day, my roommate and I had stayed up late talking and drinking and it got so close to dawn that I figured I would just stay up and take pictures of people at dawn. The day was divided into the two very different worlds of dawn and dusk. What drew me to this house? I don't know, the door was open and I've always liked the relationship of interior lighting and outdoor lighting. I used a flash because I was handholding, and although built in flash usually sucks I think it kind of works in the picture, the way it creates a fading perimeter of light. Theres also this weird connection in my mind with flash at night and 50s police murder photography I also love the colors of this scene, especially the slanting paint on the road, and the deep neon colors in the toy truck and the flowers. The picture makes me want to see what is in the interior of the house. I can only hope lots of that wood panelling.

The inaugural post.. This photo is of my neighbor's garage and house, which looks like a barn to me. I was walking past one day and looked and thought that it looked out of place-- a building for another part of the country, or at least not in this part of Worcester where the buildings have an ungraceful age and unkempt look. It reminded me of a cold pastoral part of coastal Maine, where the pastoral leans more into the sad than any other romantic folk art notions. I took it at night, coming out from taking pictures in our basement and right out of the bulkhead I set my tripod down. For some reason I really wanted a photo of this building at night. I like the way strange lighting is pulled out from long exposures at night.. It gives tiny lights enough time to pool and glow out. The white paint of the building gives it a really ghostly presence, and there is almost a stare behind the way it faces out. Presence is what makes this picture to me. I had some ridiculous hot pixel issues with the picture which you cant really see in the jpeg, and on the larger photoshop file I still do. I'm like a minesweeper in some postwar country trying to spot out all of these green pixels. I guess there's something satisfying and entrancing about scanning and clicking them out a couple thousand times...