Photography

Puerto Vallarta!

DamonZ — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 10:20:00 GMT

I've finally posted the pics from Puerto Vallarta! Enjoy! Please comment!

Sorry!

DamonZ — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 09:57:00 GMT

Sorry it's been so long since I posted an update! Been busy with work, school and life!

I got sucked into this huge project on a strict timeline at work. It has 4 of the guys on our team working full time on it (there's only 6 of us!). I'm gonna be busy over the next week or two to get it wrapped up so it can move into testing. Phew.

As far as school goes, I'm taking a class called “Alternative Photogaphic Processes.” We're essentially doing two main processes in this class: Polaroid (both Emultion Lifts and Image Transfers), and Cyanotypes. Just yesterday we did our first take at the Cyanotypes (the last few weeks we had been preparing negatives to use). Then the storm came and took away our sun, and then the sprinklers came on and got everything all wet! So we called it a day and took stuff home to finish up.

Earlier this week, there was a call for submissions for a juried art show at the school. I entered two of my Polaroids (Cheryl and Yavapai County Courthouse). When I went to find out the results they told me I had won the Best of Photography award! I was so excited! They were in the process of hanging them at that point, so I gathered up my friend's one image that they didn't select to display and headed home. Yesterday when I showed up for our Cyanotype Saturday lab, I went and was scanning the list of artists to see who won the other prizes, I noticed that I also took the Best of Show prize! I was (and still am) so excited! If you're interested in viewing them, they are in the Scottsdale Comm. College Art Building (AB). The main lobby has several works, and mine are right around the corner as you start down the hall. They will be on display until Aug. 22.

Anyhow, hopefully I'm gonna start writing more frequently, I've been bad about it lately. Toodles!

Catching Up!

DamonZ — Thu, 06 Jan 2005 22:52:00 GMT

A few quick notes!

1) Pictures from November's trip to Rocky Point are now online.

2) Microsoft has released a beta of their new anit-spyware program. Check it out.

3) I had a *BLAST* in Houston for NYE, and those pics should be going up before too long. I can't wait to go back in a couple weeks for K&J's wedding! ;)

Faces

DamonZ — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 22:20:00 GMT

My most recent b/w photo project, FACES, is now online. Let me know your thoughts!

I agree!

DamonZ — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 13:11:00 GMT

Today, in Eric Sink's “Miscellaneous Stuff for a Friday” post, he says: “A photographer is just a different flavor of geek, substituting glass and light for chips and logic.”

I happen to agree!

Seattle Pictures

DamonZ — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 21:51:00 GMT

Ok, well the pictures from Seattle are now uploaded!!! ENJOY!!!

Art & Fear

DamonZ — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 22:28:00 GMT

Ok, so my photo instructor assigned us to read Art & Fear by David Bayles & Ted Orland. A very interesting read, and all artists or aspiring artists, or wanna-be artists should read this one. I'm going to type out a couple paragraphs (from towards the end of the book) that really struck home with me.

Provocative art challenges not only the viewer, but also its maker. Art that falls short often does so not because the artist failed to meet the challenge, but because there was never a challenge there in the first place. Think of it like Olympic diving: you don't win high points for making even the perfect swan dive off the low board. There's little reward in an easy perfection reached by many.

But while mastering technique is difficult and time-consuming, it's still inherently easier to reach an already defined goal -- a “right answer” -- than to give form to a new idea. It's easier to paint in the angel's feet to another's master work than to discover where the angels live within yourself. If technique were the core issue in art, our nominee for the Famous Artists Wax Museum would be the lifer at San QUentin who spent twenty ears constructing a perfect replica of the Eifel Tower from toothpicks. (And well, yes, in its own way it was pretty impressive!) But that's not the way it works. Simply put, art that deals with ideas is more interesting than art that deals with technique.

In routine artistic growth, new ork doesn't make the old work false -- it makes it more artificial, more an act of artifice. Older work is ofttimes an embarrassment to the artist because it feels like it was made by a younger, more naive person -- one who was ignorant of the pretension and striving in the work. Earlier work often feels, curiously, both too labored and too simple. This is normal. New work is supposed to replace old work. If it does so by making the old work inadequate, insufficient and incomplete -- well, that's life. (Frank Lloyd Wright advised young architects to plant ivy all around their early buildings, suggesting that in time it would grow to cover their “youthful indiscretions.“) Old work tells you what you were paying attention to then; new work comments on the old by pointing out what you were not previously paying attention to. Now this would all be smooth and lovely except that new work can turn to old work in an instant -- sometimes, indeed, in the instant immediately following the work's completion. Savoring finished work may last only an eye-blink. This is certainly unpleasant -- but its a good sign.

Making art depends upon notising things -- things about yourself, your methods, your subject matter. Sooner or later, for instance, every visual artist notices the relationship of the line to the picture's edge. Before that moment, the relationship does not exist; afterwards it's impossible to imagine it not existing. And from that moment on every new line talks back and forth with the picture's edge. People who have not yet made this small leap do not see the same picture as those who have -- in fact, conceptually speaking, they do not even live in the same world.

In the end it all comes down to this: you have a choice (or more accurately a rolling tangle of choices) between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot -- and thereby guaranteeing that it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.

Just some of the few examples from within the book. Like I said, if you are an artist, you should read this book!

King Banana Birthday Party Pictures!

DamonZ — Tue, 03 Aug 2004 23:33:00 GMT

Ok, so I finally got the pictures posted from the King Banana Birthday Bash. Check 'em out. What a great time that was!

Niki

DamonZ — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 21:38:00 GMT

I just uploaded some images that I shot of Niki in April. It took me a while to get them uploaded, but I finally got around to it! :)

New Pictures!

DamonZ — Sun, 25 Jul 2004 21:26:00 GMT

Hey! I just uploaded some pictures that I took this weekend while camping up at Big Lake. Let me know what you think!