Artist Statement

Jackie Weller/Artist Statement.

My Photography is me expressing myself and showing the world what I see through the lens of my camera. I really like taking Photographs of landscapes, buildings, animals, objects, capturing a moment, and people only if they’re not looking or posed. I really dislike pictures of people when they’re posed and it is trying to be passed off as Photography, I feel as if they are just snap shots and not Photography. I want people to look at my photos and say, “wow, isn’t that beautiful? I wish I could do that.”

This semester I learned a lot about photo editing. I actually didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know anything about adobe Photoshop, or how to use it. I always figured, when not take the picture how you want it so you don’t have to edit it? But now I know sometimes they look better when the contrast is higher, or if you make it brighter. Some other tools we used were desaturating photographs, which was cool because you used the “sponge” to suck up all the color and you cold leave a certain thing colorful to draw attention to it. This is a very good technique that advertisements use.

This semester I studied Berenice Abbott and Annie Liebovitz. I Really like their work, because I can relate to it. Abbott was my favorite at first, but now that I learned about Liebovitz, she is definantly my favorite Photographer. I would like to be like her some day. Taking photos of famous rock stars, and always making the cover of the ‘Rolling Stones’ magazine. I had a lot of fun paying Homage to her with my ‘Alice in Wonderland’ photo shoot.

I have always wanted to be a photographer when I get older, but this class has really made me want to even more. I know a lot more about it now, and I really feel like I could make it.

- Jackie Weller ☺

Annie Leibovitz

We watched a video on Annie Leibovitz called "Life Through a Lens". It was a really interesting movie about her life and how she became such a good photographer. As a young girl she took lots of pictures, that were good even then. But she took a interest in photography the summer after her sophomore year that her and her mother spent in Japan. When she returned to San Francisco that fall she took night time photography classes.

In 1970 Annie approached the editor of 'Rolling Stone' magazine and with her impressing portfolio, she got her first assignment: shoot John Lennon. Her photograph made the cover, and 2 years later she was named the 'Rolling Stone" chief photographer. She also worked for 'Vogue' and 'Vanity Fair'. She has 2 kids and lives in New York. I believe she has a house in england also. Annie has a very Daring style, i hope to capture some of this in my own Photography.

Typography Project

My typography

This is my best picture out of my Typography collection. It is of my friend Aileen.
We had to take parts of Connie Wanek poems, and put them into pictures. We also did Louis Jenkins poems, those are yet to come!

BOTDF concert!

Typography/Helvetica

    Since i wast here for the movie we watched on Helvetica, i am going to talk about what i already know about it, and typography. Helvetica is a font that can be used for pretty much anything. I usually find it a pretty boring, non attention grabbing font, but it can be interesting depending on the context. Typography is the art and technique of arranging type, type design and fixing type glyphs. We will be doing a project on typography. We chose from some Connie Wanek poems and will be taking photographs on our take of the poem, then putting words into the picture from the poem. I chose the poem 'Radiator' by Connie Wanek. i plan on having some one walking away from me on a deserted street, or bridge and having them off center. The words will read:

"If they seem sad, it is only the same sadness
we all feel, unlovely, growing slowly cold."

=)

This is a picture i did for fun. I combined two photographs of my cousins girlfriend. I hope to fix it up more in the future if i have time. I think it is a pretty interesting combination. It looks as if shes watching herself pose for a picture.

Homage to Berenice Abbott

In editing these photographs on Adobe Photoshop, i learned a lot. I had never used Photoshop before. We had to take part of our photographers photograph and put it into our own, or vice versa. My favorite is of my cousins Girlfriend on the bridge. I put her walking on it 3 times, but farther away so she had to get smaller. I also made her darker or lighter depending on where she was, and flipped her around. I had to blur the edges so she didn't look completely out of place. I also changed the color of the whole photograph a few times which is why there are a couple of them.

My Homage Photography to Berenice Abbot

    I am taking photographs to pay homage to Berenice Abbot. Homage is special honor or respect shown or expressed publicly. Berenice Abbot inspired me because i really like her pictures. Also she is a female photographer. I would like to be a photographer so she is a good role model. I have been taking pictures up buildings, like she did. I have also been playing with other objects. My final picture is a shadow on a white wall, with a pink teddy bear in front of it. We had to put our pictures in black in white, so we desaturated them and left one colored part in it to draw attention to that piece of the photograph, this is used in advertisement. Below is my final picture. My model is my friend Aileen, i was just taking a picture of the teddy bear "Senor Rawrrr" when i saw her shadow and i told her to come into the picture more so i could get it better. I like how it turned out, it is very different which is what i strive for. The other close up picture of "Senor Rawrrr" is one of my favorites. I love how pretty the beads are on his necklace, and how they stand out so much.

    Another picture i did for fun was a picture of a tiger i have had. This is the picture that made me decide i want to be a photographer. When i desaturated it it doesn't look much different because the bricks look almost gray already. I would like to find out how to make the eyes a bright green. I think that it would look awesome.

Berenice Abbott

    I will be paying homage to Berenice Abbott. She was born July 17, 1898. She was best known for her black-and-white streetlife photography and architecture of new york citys during the 30s. She was born in Springfield Ohio, and started shooting photographs in 1923. From 1923 to 1995, she was an assistant of Man Ray in Paris. There she made a series of portraits of well known artistic and literary people in the 20s. The picture above is of Berenice, but Man Ray took it.
       In 1925 she helped Eugene Atget gain international recognition for his work. She began documenting New York City in 1929 and published some of her work made in 1939 in her book named Changing New York, which was supported by the Federal Arts Program. In a way, Eugene Atget was her mentor. She used a large format camera, and photographed New York City with the same attention to detail and diligence as she learned from the career of Eugene Atget. 

   

    She was part of the straight photography movement, andher style of straight photography helped her by making important contributions to scientific photography. In 1958, she made a series of photographs for a high-school physics text book. Not only was she a photographer but she started the house of photography in 1947 to sell some of her inventions. Her inventions were a distortion easle and the telescopic lightening pole. The house of photography lost money due to poor marketing and then two designers died, so they went out of business. After a trip documenting the scenes of Route 1 from Maine to Florida and back resulting in over 2,500 negatives, she had to get lung surgery. due to city pollution, she decided to move to a little house in Maine for only $1,000 where she lived until her death on December 9 1991.
  

American Photography History

    I think it is interesting how when theres a bad storm like a tornado or even a fire, people miss their pictures the most. I can see why though. Pictures are how memories are passed on. An example is you would never know what your grandparents or great grandparents looked like if all your pictures got lost or destroyed. Pictures also can be of emotional memories, like at a funeral of a loved one, or the birth of your child. I always see pictures at my grandmas house and there of her grandparents and her parents, and she always has an interesting story to go with every picture. They make her so happy when she finds them and remembers what was happening. A picture is worth a thousand words.

    The vietnam war photos were very intriguing. I can understand how people remember the pictures forever once the have seen them, because i have seen some holocaust pictures and they are very memorable. the picture below is a famous picture from the vietnam war. It is of a girl who was badly burned, and she was running down the street and screaming.
You can see the terror on her face. there are american soldiers walking behind her.

   I also find it interesting how people had to send their whole cameras back to kodak to get their film developed and new film in it. The pictures they did brush strokes over while they were still drying were very cool looking. They looked like handmade art.
    The camera below is the first camera the public could use to take pictures of their every day life. It is called the Brownie, and it cost $1.