week 5 Photography and Up close with Flowers

This weeks guest lecturer was Craig Hickman, a photographer, multimedia designer and computer scientist who works here at Oregon. His presentation had many other photographers work and focused on the details that their work consisted of. Mr. Hickman started in high school doing photography work, which I found pretty interesting. To be able to find something you like and last you a lifetime at an early age is simply amazing. What I find interesting about photography, unlike other types of art form, its exactly what the artist sees. I have a friend that graduated from Brook’s institute of Photography and she puts so much time and thought in every picture she ever snaps and has to know why that angle, and why exactly that picture it can get pretty intense. It is like seeing the world through the photographer’s eyes in that moment. Mr. Hickman also stressed the fact that art includes colors, subjects, lighting, and the way it is developed. The pictures that really caught my attention was the work of Tony Mendoza. He did close up shots of distinct flowers; the pictures were taken from a flower perspective up close and from the ground. The color in the pictures were magnified and intensified to make the picture of the flowers really come to life. Mr. Hickman explained to us about Mendoza’s work how he focuses on the scene and presents it with more light to bring more balance to the photo. After a long semi dry lecture Mr. Hickman makes an argument of when art can be photographed and when it cannot. He tells us about how we know when its ours and how do know how to document it. Mr. Hickman says that the purpose is to find the relationship between the world and photography. Toward the end of the lecture he logged into his Facebook and showed us some of his work, one that caught my eye as I started packing to leave the class was one picture he photo-shopped to make an elephant with a sign on the its back. I found his work to be quite amusing and clever the way he photo-shopped the sign on the elephant.

As for the reading this week It was on Errol Morris. The reading was mostly based on how photography can be used as a so-called “weapon”. How deceiving pictures can actually be. It would really hard to tell if a photo has been messed with, unless you’re a professional at detecting fraud pictures. I really cant see how you can use pictures as weapons maybe as propaganda but it really depends on who is trying to convince people and for what purpose. I really did not care much for that article. The other reading was on Alfredo Jaar he was an installation worker and also made videos. One that was good was the “The Ashes of Gramsci” I found it to be a cool piece because of its pictures of space. To tell you the truth I would’ve not known if the pictures were real if I didn’t see what he made the image with. It was another good week in art class hopefully we have another good speaker like Mr. Hickman but not too monotone.