Camilo Jose Vergara. I've bookmarked this guy so I can look through his stuff more in depth later. He focuses on poverty and the inner cities and ghettos. One of his big projects is returning to the same spot and recording a building/ area's decay or growth. I think its a grand idea. A lot of patience and passion to do a project like that.







http://lightbox.time.com/2013/07/09/from-the-inner-cities-to-the-white-house-photographs-by-camilo-jose-vergara/#1

So who came before Ansel Adams? Joseph Nisbet LeConte. He was born thirty years or so before Ansel, and was taking photos in the Sierra Nevada Range before him. He was a jack of all trades really, photography being just one of his interests. He was a mechanical engineer, so his fascination with the camera itself surely had a lot to do with him picking up the hobby. Carrying the equipment then was a burden, so simply being the first to get images of certain things made his work fairly famous. That doesn't mean the work wasn't good however. Adams himself is quoted saying "Never intentionally 'arty', most of his compositions reveal a sensitive reaction to the finest moments of the mountain scene. It is this quality that differentiates between a mere record and a creative, sympathetic statement." He loved mountaineering. He was a member, even president at one point, of the Sierra Club, a map maker for the area, and played a big part in carving out the John Muir trail.

His work isn't nearly as easy to find as Ansel Adams, and he's not nearly as famous, but Adams met Leconte, and was certainly inspired by him. He was exploring his home and photographing many of the same places Leconte had before him. Leconte's work isn't by any means better, but I feel that it deserves more recognition.(He did get a few things named after him in the park though, so there is that.)

I've avoided doing a post about Ansel Adams the whole semester, because I have technically heard of him before. I know that he's one of, if not the, most important and influential photographers of all time. However, by avoiding him, I think I was doing myself a disservice by not exploring such an accomplished artist. And beyond that, his work covered much of the same scope of things I point my own camera at. So, with my mind on Yosemite still, it seems like a fitting time to list Ansel Adams.

He was born in San Francisco, in the early 20th century to a wealthy family, though they we're knocked down to near poverty at one point. He became very fascinated with nature at a young age, becoming a follower of Ralph Waldo Emerson's work and philosophy. Joining the Sierra Club while still a teenager.  In 1916 he was given his first camera while in Yosemite Valley, like Shawn Reeder would years later, and his affinity for the art grew from there. The effects of the valley.

He had a 60 year career, expanding many subjects and mediums, but his work of the mountains in the Sierra is what fascinates me the most.

http://www.anseladams.com/

Multiples Assignment

Shawn Reeder is the most impressive outdoor photographer I've found so far. I've seen thousands of pictures of Half Dome, from all different angles, and this one really stunned me like no other one has. Photography and travel, that's his bag. He has a short vid on his site as a little bio. He basically took a trip to Yosemite when he was 18, used his buddy's point and shoot that he was neglecting, and then made a career and a home. He shoots landscapes and people; hikers, climbers, random tourists, and even weddings. He gives tons of praise and credit to Yosemite for making him what he is. He says the place is magical and beyond words and I have to agree with him. I went to the valley last summer and it was like nothing I'd experienced before, it is hard to explain. Props to him for submerging himself in it. He's expanded to other places, New Zealand most recently, but Yo is still where he calls home. I can't say enough about how stellar his work is.

http://shawnreeder.com/

Ok last graffiti centered artist. For a while at least. This guy's name is Ozkar Gorgias. He's European. I'm pretty sure German to be exact, but I can't be sure. I Know Germany has a huge graffiti scene. It's really something else. I've scene docs where they hit trains or a building in large groups and blow up the spot in a matter of minutes. It's a unique thing to watch.

Ozkar is more focused on the activity rather than the art itself. He captures the people he's with squeezing through drain pipes and cracks in wall. Lots of scaling buildings, sometimes via ladders, sometimes more creatively. Also, a large amount of the work I've seen are shots from rooftops. I think he may see that as the fruit of his labor. Sitting on a rooftop where you're not supposed to be, looking over a giant sleeping city is a very soul lifting experience. And I get the feeling he really tries to capture that feeling.

The piece in the art show that really drew my attention was a found object sculpture title Bored. It is a marked-up, hacked-up large dictionary. The hard red cover and simple letters make me think the dictionary itself is from the 70s. The art screams of that decade as well. In a school today, there is no way a kid could get away with vandalizing a book like this, but 40 years ago... maybe. The cover is lifted just slightly and you can clearly see a DeadHead drawn on the title page. The rest of the doodles are more jumbled and less clear, but the Dead emblem stands out and there is no mistaking it. The skull carved out of the corner of the pages is the center piece and obviously the artist's main focus/challenge. It shows incredible precision and talent as well as patience and vision.

Now for a piece that I wasn't too fond of. I don't want to totally lambast someone's work not knowing what the exact assignment was, but the one I really found lacking was titled Terror Ride, from an illustration class. I found it to be simple and lacking detail. The lines ran together and didn't seem to take the most effort. The piece looked like a page from a coloring book really. But with the class being illustrations, maybe that was the goal.

Found another graffiti photographer. I actually found one of those top ten lists (because what doesn't have a top ten list). I've been going through them all, but I don't want to flood the blog with them. Probably just one more after this maybe. The dudes name is Keegan Gibbs. I really like his stuff in the graffiti scene because he focused on the taggers and the adventure more than the art. He did a great job of capturing some moments, and that feeling of being out in the middle of the night creeping through the city. There's a lot of grainy stuff, black and whites, shots where he obviously used a telephoto and got guys scaling buildings from across the street or from down the block.

He has other good work, but not much that interested me as far as subject goes. Surfing mostly.

http://keegangibbs.com/

The shoot I did in the train yard last weekend was one of, if not the most fun shoots I've done yet. It was similar to most trips I take with my camera, being in a more rundown area where most people wouldn't go. Trying to see things most people don't see, or notice. This was different though being that I had a more specific subject to shoot. Being able to shoot the graffiti artist instead of just the art made it different. It was the same dumb hood-rat kind of stuff we did when we were kids, but somehow legitimized by making art. Each of us. It's a world and a culture I want to try to capture more of.

That being so, I went on a search for photographers after the same thing and found one of the most impressive people I've come across yet. Martha Cooper. I've kept an eye out for more female artists but (ignorantly) didn't expect to find one here. I'm not sure why.

Her dad owned a camera store in Baltimore and gave her a camera in 1946 when she was a little kid. So shes been making photos for half of the life span of modern photography, as she reasons it, since the first Kodak in 1888. So do that math. Shes in her seventies and is huge in the street art world. I love how old people can surprise you. Her big book was Subway Art, published in 1984. Her work really shows the feel of the graffiti/ hip-hop/ Bboy scene in the cities in the early 80's. Buy beyond that stuff, her older work, Street Play, done in black and white is killer. Showing kids in NYC's lower east side making the most fun out of a poor neighborhood. Playing with tires and jumping off fire escapes onto mattresses. It's another culture she was able to make you feel like you're in through a few images.

She's by far one of my favorite artists I've come across so far, but without a doubt she's the one I would like to meet the most. I imagine hanging out with her for a day would be a blast.

http://www.12ozprophet.com/index.php/martha_cooper/

I've been a little slow with the blog lately. Spending my time looking at the work of artist linked to in moodle. They've been great artist, and informative. I've found a few that way that stole a large chunk of my time. I may make some entries based on one or two of them, but I need to get back in high gear of exploring artist on my own.

Kurt Markus is where I'll start. The one photographer who's work I covet and spend the most time on is Jimmy Chin. Recently he teamed up with Markus on an assignment. For NatGeo maybe. He's shot travel and climbing like Jimmy, but he's really a jack of all trades. He did work with an array of athletes, not just climbers. He does landscapes, fashion, nudes, portraits, musicians, and anything else that he can. He does film and writes as well. He's really all over the place and uses wide range of tools and mediums.

The work shown on his site is limited, but he gives in depth descriptions on his take on each type of work. His idea of portrait taking was really insightful for me, and pretty in line with how I feel about it. Wanting to many times surrender control to the subject.

http://www.kurtmarkus.com

I've always been interested and angry about poverty. Fascinated by the poor and homeless. A little while ago I finally got around to reading The Grapes of Wrath, and it instantly became one of my favorite books. Steinbeck has the ability to invoke a ton of rage as well as respect and pride. I feel as if Dorothea Lange has the same effect with her photography. I admire all the work I've been able to see so far. I can look at the picture of the boy in overalls with dysentery and feel pitiful and cringe for him (Not feel pity for him, but actually feel pitiful) and then look at her photo of migrant farmers playing baseball and feel their resilience. I have to imagine these events took place near each other in time and space. While the ball game surely didn't help the boy, maybe her photographs did. Its admirable, I think, that a well-off studio photographer decided to go out into this world she wasn't cast in to, and try to reveal it to the rest of the country. I have a lot of respect for her and her work.

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/lange/

Martin Parr.... I don't know how I really feel about this guy's work... but I've been looking through it for over a half hour now. He's basically poking fun at everyone and everything. Like rich people, world tourists and Americans, which I find amusing (he's British). But also many other countries and cultures I'm unfamiliar with so miss the point he's making. From what I've seen and the bios I've read, it seems like his goal is to put a mirror in front of people and show us how we actually look in reality. He does this with candid photos, up close and in peoples faces. Often he juxtaposes people with animals, or some other object, making comparisons. Some people pose for him, some people seem angry with him, and some are seemingly oblivious to him. I like this. It's disturbing. It's unattractive. It's vile. But at the same time.... maybe this guy is just an asshole. What makes him better than someone on Instagram who takes an unflattering picture of dirt poor, obese mother, at the pharmacy at 2AM buying cough medicine in her stained sweatpants for her sick kid, completely out of context with the hash-tags #thingsyoufindatwalmart? He's just doing this on a global scale getting acclaim for it. Maybe he has some astonishingly poignant message he's making with his avant-garde, colorful style, or maybe he's just a clever dick. I could be ignorant. Maybe I'm just missing every point he's trying to make..... I don't think I like his work.

http://www.martinparr.com/

Looking to find a collection, or a photographer, focused on train hopping, I found a guy who seems to have garnered mild fame for his work, and for being a bit of a mystery. His portrayal reminds me of Banksy. His name is Mike Brodie and he was born in Arizona in 1985. Its funny, a lot of people I've met that hitch across country come from Arizona. The state just breeds them I guess. The guy never had formal training, and says that he never really wanted to pursue photography. He just happened to be given a Polaroid camera right before he decided to hop trains in his early 20's. The result was aggressively raw photos of the world he was living in for 4 years. He was able to document a culture most people think doesn't exist; like its out of a Dickens novel. All because he wasn't trying to make art or live up to expectations. According to one article he's really not comfortable with the small fame hes gotten now with galleries and books, and lives a modest life as a traveling diesel mechanic. I can't help but wonder if this person is just a fictional persona of a professional. I know seemingly genuine and magnificent things have turned out to be just that before in art. I hope this is all true and raw. The work really is awesomely captivating.

http://mikebrodie.net/

In searching for another mountain climbing photographer, I found a forefather of both tasks that intrigues me. I can't find much info on him because every website I've come across seems to have the same quick list of basic info about him. There are a couple of books on him I would like to try and find though. Actually, the more in-depth information I found about him came from reviews of one book. His name is Vittorio Sella. He was an Italian, born near the Alps in 1859. His father was a photographer, and his uncle was a famous mountaineer. It seems that he took training and interest in both and just ran with them.

His photographs are breathtaking; literally. He was determined to take his camera equipment, which at the time weighed over 40 pounds, up to the summit of mountains where oxygen was thin and it wasn't uncommon for people to perish. He not only made amazing first ascents in mountain climbing, he did it all while lugging up twice the weight of what anyone else would. The shots are great in a documentary sense, for being unattainable by anyone else at the time, but also in their artistic rights as well. (Every site I went to was quick to point out that Ansel Adams always had flattering things to say about him.) Even in black and white he's able to show great detail in the mountains and really present them as how grand and sometimes frightening they are. And something that I really like about his collection of work is that he was more apt to include people in some of his photos. The other couple pioneers of mountain photography I came across rarely ever included humans in the shots. It makes sense not to, they didn't climb all that way just to take pictures of the same people that started on the ground with them. But now, 130 years later, it is very interesting to see who was climbing back then. And more so, seeing a lone person in some of these shots of giant mountains is jaw dropping, and left me staring at them for a few minutes. Seeing a picture of someone on a summit today, in a bright red NorthFace jacket, $200 goggles, iron clad, triple-buckled boots, and the latest climbing ropes and beners, isn't always that impressive. I've seen hundreds before. Seeing some poor fool do it with next to no technology gives a totally different feeling.

http://metro.co.uk/2008/06/30/frozen-in-time-the-mountain-photography-of-vittorio-sella-227881/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vittorio_Sella

James Nachtwey has had a pretty lengthy career, and some very well noted work. He's worked with TIME magazine since 1984, and was responsible for good chunk of the most seen 9/11 photos. He "has devoted himself to documenting wars, conflicts and critical social issues" according to his own website. His work has taken him to some uncomfortable, foreign places. He's captured scenes from wars and atrocities that many Americans have probably never even heard of. He has gone all over the world with seemingly unflinching bravery, even being seriously wounded during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He has a very strong passion for the work he is doing and it is obvious that he feels it is important for people to see theses things that most would otherwise choose to ignore.

I wanted to know who the most extreme wildlife photographer is. All that took was asking google who the most extreme wildlife photographer is. The instant gratification from the internet. Of course, while this didn't give me an official list or power rankings, it did show a name that kept coming up in the hits.

That name is Jim Oltersdorf. http://www.joltersdorf.com/

I first clicked on an article about him and his technique for such dangerous work at http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/how-to/shooting/extreme-wildlife.html (a website that will go in my bookmarks), and then found his own website.

He's been doing this work for a long time, as well as being a bush pilot. He lives in Alaska, where he says he sees around 25-35 grizzly bears A DAY during the summers. Needless to say he has some great shots of these bears. He gets steady work on magazines, instructs courses and now works with video and even has his own production company.

His work is without a doubt impressive, but I think I'm more interested in the life/ career hes been able to make with photography.

Alright, I found this photographer in a similar way I did the last one; He did work in video that I'm familiar with. I first read about a documentary called The Last of the Great Unknown in BackPacker magazine two years ago, immediately looked up the website, and watched the trailer more than 20 times, I'm sure, waiting to see if it would ever be released. I finally got to see it at a showing of the touring Telluride Mountain Film Festival when it came through St. Louis last winter. The shots these guys got in the Grand Canyon slots are incredible. The only thing disappointing was the length of the film. You can find the preview for the doc here. http://www.lastofthegreatunknown.com/

Anyways, I remembered that they did a lot of the shooting with DSLRs since the remote places they were trying to get to required the lightest most compact gear, so I was pretty sure some of the crew were more photographers than videographers. And I was right.

The guy's name is Dan Ransom. Hes a professional photographer and canyoneer from Salt Lake City, Utah. Canyoneering is sort of a very specific offshoot of hiking, belaying and rock climbing. They explore deep, remote canyons, using those skills, among others, to get there. A lot of these places have never been seen before. One really interesting thing about Dan, is that the photography comes first. He is more interested in getting to beautiful places, he says. The climbing, belaying and hiking are just a means to the end for him. It is the destination, not the journey, in his mind. I really like this outlook, because in the world we live in today, everyone is taking pictures everyday. We're running out of things to shoot that haven't been shot before, so to find those things, you have to work for them. He does that, and the pay off is not just getting the shots no one has gotten before him, but getting shots of things no one has even seen before him. I imagine that has to be the best feeling for a photographer.

I think anyone will appreciate checking out his work here. http://www.danransom.com/portfolio/

The Portugal! The Man Video I posted last week made for the perfect jumping off point for discovering new photographers. The idea is pretty obvious in hindsight, but it just took a quick Google search to find out who the director of the video was, and it turns out he is more of a photographer than a director.

The man is David Vincent Wolf.

davidvincentwolf.com

From what I can gather, he is either an up-and coming artist, or just a modest professional. There isn't much info on the web about him. The most I could discover about him came from his own website, and a couple professional social websites he is a member of. Its easy to tell that even if he does have little notoriety, he still does well for himself as a professional.  He lives in Los Angeles, California and seems to pull in a fair amount of work. While Portugal! The Man isn't the most famous band, that video is sure to be seen by hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even a million. (404,575 at the time of this entry). Not to mention he has recently done work for a few little known companies, Microsoft, Vans, and Boeing. I'm sure a few people have heard of them. It would be pretty neat to see him blow up a little bit, now that I'll have my eyes trained on the photography world. Then again, maybe he is well known and even famous, and I'm just unaware.

I would guess this is his most recognizable work.

Other than the commissioned work on his site, his stuff seems pretty personal. A lot of shots of people he seems to know, and a good amount of what seems to be his wife, and possibly kid(s). Those are just my assumptions of course though.  Then there are a lot of shots from neighborhoods and places around Los Angeles. These were all pretty simple shots but they're the ones that stood out the most to me. It seems like he has a lot of noise/ gain in his stuff, which could come across as poor work to some, maybe, but I took it as more of his personal style and it resonated with me. I'll definitely be checking back to his page to see more work in the future.

I'll throw up a couple more pictures that struck me.

I was sampling some new song by these guys on YouTube. Picking random tracks off the new album and letting them play in the background while I tended to some other work on the computer. Double checking the title if one happened to catch my interest. The song brought my attention back to the tab, but the images on the video made me start it over and blow it up to full size.

From the 20 seconds or so that I saw before I restarted it I thought it was using stop-motion, and still pictures. After actually watching it all the way through I'm more convinced its video. Either way, some of the simple things it breaks down in front of you are crazy. I'd like to find out if there are effects used, or if the director somehow did most of this stuff with the camera and simple editing.

Half way to the top of Half Dome. "The big old loaf of bread in the distance", as the lady who's path we crossed put it.