Julie Lee's Artist Statement

This past semester, I have truly learned the meaning of what it takes to master photography, and how important it is. Photography is used all over the word. It captures everything: from sceneries, people, nature, and more. It is used to express people’s thoughts and feelings. It exposes the truth and sometimes the fake of things. It is even used as an advertisement. Photography is a way to show everyone what I see through my own eyes, letting others understand my point of views and feelings. From the previous projects in media arts, and looking through my photos, I’ve discovered that what I really like to do with photography is capture the beauty and elegance of natural things. Also to rearrange objects so they look the way I want them to look, and capturing them in a certain angle to draw more attention for viewers. Three words pop up in my head when I think about what my work is. Elegance, beauty, and lighting.     
     When paying homage to Clarence John Laughlin, it was indeed a hard thing to do. He was a surrealist, capturing the dark and mystery of things. Whereas I captured the beauty of things, which didn’t give much of surrealism feel to it. However, at the ended I ended up with two to three photos that showed mystery and surrealism in then. One including “Prophecy of Sisters” where I used geisha dolls as if they were real. From Clarence, I learned that I could find places that have both shadows and light in it. I learned that beauty could come from anything, giving me a larger view of photography.
    Lighting is the most essential ingredient to photography.  Without it, every photo work is a work of darkness. But with lighting, viewer’s eyes are more drawn into the picture. Take Annie Liebovitz for example. Her work of arts is simply gorgeous, and lighting plays a huge role to why. The way you chose your lighting can affect everything, from the mood of the picture, to the colors of your objects. If I were to compare myself to either Annie or John, I would pick Annie because in my photo’s I deal more with lighting than surrealism.
    With lighting comes editing your photos. This semester, I’ve learned plenty about editing, by using Adobe Photoshop CS3. By de-saturating and blurring images, I can both make a picture look vintage and retro. By using the sponge tool, I can make everything white and black except for the object I choose to stay in color. This creates more attention to the object I want the viewers to see first, making it pop out from the other things. There are other tools in Adobe I used, such as the gradient tool used for typography, and the magic wand tool to cut out an image and place it into another one.
    Although I haven’t yet mastered the art of photography and probably wont anytime soon, I am one step closer than before. From taking Media Arts, I’ve learned the insight of photography, lighting, typography, editing, and more.
  

Famous Photographer Annie Leibovitz

From the stars George Clooney to Whippy Golper, Annie Leibovitz has shot them all. At first, she always thought she was going to become an artist teacher. But that changed when she held a camera in her hands. Her fame of photography began to rise when she began to work for the famous magazine Rolling Stones.  Now she is the chief photographer of Rolling Stones. She also began working for top elite Vogue, which tremendously increased her rank and name of photography, giving her the chance to shoot the best of the best.
Annie Leibovitz's work of art is truly to be reckoned. Lighting is a key thing in her photos, because the way she works her lighting with her objects is what makes people so drawn to her photography. In the begining, she  only took basic picture, white backgrounds, and basic colors/poses. However,  throughout the years she's learned to control and use lighting, and take pictures of people in great poses. She even learned colors by herself.
Throughout the years,  some of Annie Leivobitz's work caused a great deal of controversy to the media. One famous one was a photography shoot she did of Miley Cyrus, who only had a towel one. Another famous controversy photo was when she took a shot of Queen Elizabeth 2 without her crown.
    Despite these shoots, Annie Liebovitz's work was still the top bests. Her photo's bring a unique feel to the viewers, and only Annie is able to give the viewers such pictures. Annie Leibovitz's Dream Work for Disney is indeed my favorite. In these, there is great great great lighting, color, editing, and angles.

Snow White

Sleeping Beauty

Cinderella

Little Mermaid

 

My Typography

In this project, we were assigned to take pictures and add fontings to them. The pictures and the lines from the poems we used had to clash well together. The poets our class used were Connie Wanek and Louis Jenkins. Using adobe photoshop we were about to use many tools such as gradient tools, and blur tools to adjust and edit our photos. We also downloaded many varieties of fonts to use. In my photos, I have a total of five Connie Wanek works, and ten Louis Jenkins work.

my WORK of Typography..

Daisies by Connie Wanek

April by Connnie Wanek

Helvetica

Helvetica.
This one font style is significant into bringing new and interesting designs that capture the eyes of people. I learned that helvetica is a font that seems to be plain but it isn't. Unlike sandscript, helvetica does not have hooks at the ends of its letters. (All of what I'm typing is in HELVETICA font) I didn't notice how helvetica is used so commonly in today's world. Helvetica is used everywhere, on the streets, in books, magazines, walls, etc. It is the mose widely-used typeface. Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann. It's significant includes the ability of being used for many variety times without bringing the same taste and feel to it. Otherwise, those signs would become boring and old. My response to the movie is that it was boring. I found it unappealing, and not interesting. Although I find the idea of helvetica and it's importance interesting, the movie lacked excitement that would catch your attention.                                                                                                 

Slide Show

For this slide show I focused on vintage and retro looks, but I also included some of my own best works from previous projects. All of these photos are inspired by my artist Clarence John Laughlin in their own ways. They include some of my previous works that were up on my earlier posts on my blog. For some reason my photo "Gieshas in the window" appears blurry during the slideshow. So I have it seperated so that you can see how it looks like. Photos 1, 2, 3, 6, and 9 are the photos to which I combined my work with my inspired photographer's work. In that process, I dealt with unlocking, combining, and adding layers to make the image seem as if there was nothing pasted into it. In the first photo, I have myself pasted into there. In the second, I had a geisha head pasted onto a topless doll body. In the third, I inserted a flower into one of the sister's hair, making the viewers believe it was her hair accessory originally. In the sixth, I have the fountain and arch merged into the background. And for the last I took a picture of the hallway and added John's ghosts into it, giving the hallway an eerie feeling.

This Week's Project: Retro and Vintage Look

This week we are focusing on taking a object/part of one of our photo and pasting it onto one of our inspired photographer's photos, or the other way around. The objective of this project is: to make the object that is pasted into the new photo look as realistic as possible. Our goal is to make that object look like it was originally taken with the other surroundings in the picture. We are expected to use Adobe Photoshop during this project. In Adobe Photoshop, we will be using tools that include: Magic wand, blur tool, transforming, Hue/ Saturation, earser tool, and more. At the end, we are to display 5-10 pictures that have been completed from the project, and a print out of our best work.