Latest Project

This is my latest project down here on illumination, staring Mr. Hombrecito :)

The Fray at RWU on Wednesday

Latest Project

Hello all,

I finished my latest project last week which was focused on presentation. Our assignment was more or less a whatever you want shoot. So I set up a photo shoot with my grandparents and got some great shots.

This was my favorite. :)

This is the final photo that I framed

Streetbeat, New Orleans

My photo "Streetbeat, New Orleans" won an award in the Academic Showcase

:)

For most of this semester, my life has been all work and no play. Recientemente, di cuenta to the fact that I only have 6 weeks left at RWU. I have spent far too much time worrying about school and not just living. So, this week I have been spending a lot of time on my thesis, but then also spending time rewarding myself by seeing friends, and sleeping more. I should do this more often.

Jesse is in my lap right now, making it awkward to type, so my arm is already cramping. ... Night.

A bit of the editing process

So I'm at work right now and for the first time since I have worked here there is no one here. Its a shock, but so relaxing. I didn't bring my homework, so I can do whatever I want. So, I'm thinking about my digital media project. The advice, if I were trying to be a successful New York photographer, was that I was missing one big thing. I needed something to make people look at it and wonder. So, for the last day and a half I've been thinking about this big thing, a lot. In fact, probably more than I should. For example, I should be reading through the ESL books right now to work out something for tomorrow with my student, but I'm doing this.... Anyway, I've been thinking. I made it into two images, with a staircase in between and slight differences between the images, but it just didn't feel right. I've cropped it into a square, which seems like a good crop for it but it needs more. So I added a little thing with some tweaked out letters. But, I think that this addition might be a little too blatant. The letters are white on black, just so in your face. So, here is my new idea: letters with a high opacity, there but not really obvious, and under their feet. arranged in the same manner as they are now. So now I just have to figure out how to do this because I had to do a lot to arrange the letters in this particular manner. Hmmmph. I think I merged all the layers,... Hopefully I didn't/ If I didn't merge the layers, I can lasso out the image and cut/paste it to the bottom then change the coloring and opacity. If I merged the whole thing, life becomes slightly more complicated BUt I have the original image so I can always copy paste from that to fill in any wholes from cutting out the letters in my latest one. In fact, I think it is merged because I just opened it in light room and changed the coloring... but that is light room so it wouldn't read layers anyway. Hmmph. Will have to wait til I get home to figure it out... man I wish I had brought my computer to work!

Second Project, New Orleans

So I havent been updating lately because I set my digital media project aside to work on thesis until I got to New Orleans last week. But, I have some awesome shots of nola to post up when I get back to my laptop. I'm in the printing lab now waiting for the latest version of my final project to print out. hopefully this one looks right! I've been having problems with the colors, maybe because I edited it in lightroom and photoshop is reading that differently or something, but its always worked before. 
 Anyway, I'm chilling waiting for this to print:

Some fun I've been having lately

Art Exhibition Next Week

Hello everyone,

There is an art show next Wednesday in the library at Roger Williams to benefit Haiti Relief, and two of my prints are in it!
There are also a ton of very talented professional artists who have donated their work.
I can't wait to go see it. It will be very exciting to see my photos on display somewhere besides a critique wall :) I wonder if someone will buy them... Hope so! (I don't make money either way, it all goes to Haiti)
Today I found the link to the official site and saw my pictures on it!
http://www.mollynook.com/haiti/

So, thats exciting.

In other news, we had our crit Wednesday, and some photos were better liked than others.

Everyone really liked the flour and fluff photo of course. And thank god because it is my Favorite! :)

In fact, they liked all of my portraits except that the faces was too edited. Murray said that just having her making the faces was enough for him, and I thought of making a strip of pictures like those you get at a photobooth.
This is how it came out. I prefer it, personally, as I have never been big on blatant photoshopping either.

The candle lighting in the thunderstorm picture was liked which is awesome. I'm really glad. It was kind of a wildcard. I like it but I was not sure what the response to it would be.


I brought the nola collage to class as a collage, but the edges were cut sloppy and they said it didn't fit with the other pictures and wasn't professional. But, that it would be "Hip" as a picture of the collage with a lot of white space. So I tried this out. I'm still working on it because I haven't been able to get rid of the gray box around the fleur de lis yet, but hopefully I will have that fixed Monday. Murray says he will show me how to fix it in Photoshop.

Waiting on Ink

Ok. So I realize I haven't updated lately. Sorry.
I've been slaving away though, so I've got a couple of new ones for you.

I haven't put this one up yet though I think the photos were taken last Monday/Tuesday. They took a little play to get right. Murray was write that Photoshop is something you stumble around in order to learn.

So this is a mantage of Renee's facial expressions:



















I realize its not the best Photoshop job.
I tried my best, but there are just some things I haven't stumbled upon yet it seems. Then there is the fact that you really can't put these two faces together to make it look like they belong together because they just don't fit together. Anyway, the effect is Frankenstein-like and I quite enjoy it.

In current news, I am in the computer lab and I have been sitting here so long that the last time this update auto saved was an hour ago. First, the ink was out. So, I started this blog. I called for it and apparently it is usually here in about 5 minutes, but 40 minutes later no ink. So, I called back, went to the library to sort it out, about 20 minutes later had ink in my hands and came back. Well, still no ink, no work. So, I tried the next cartridge. It said light cyan was out, so I brought Cyan. Well, cyan, my friends, is not light cyan, and there is a whole other side of ink catridges about 6 feet down the plotter from where I was, and there is the infamous light cyan which was causing all of my problems. 3 new ink catridges later, and a pissed off librarian, there is finally ink in the printer and its ready to print. BUT not quite. Because the paper wasn't loaded correctly. That's right ladies and gentlemen, I can't load paper worth a donkey's shit. So, here I am, its been 2 hours, my photos are sitting here waiting and I just can't get them off the computer. This is quite awful.

So I called in back-up. Karen just came with her roommate Steph and they figured out the paper thing, kind of, I think.... She held the pause button down after we fussed over everything in the menu for five to ten minutes, and it just reset. But now it has decided to be out of Light, light black ink. Even though it had some half an hour ago, and it hasn't let me print anything. Damn this printer to hell!!!!! Like, seriously, all of the levels of Dante's inferno.

UGh UGh and more UGh.
Karen and Stephanie are on their way to the library for me because I cannot go anymore. I will not go anymore. Upon their return, I better be able to print these freakin photos. And I will be soooo glad I am done!


On to some of the photos,
I worked on the religion one Friday with Karen. We had her meditating under two different trees out in the snow. The photoshoot only took about half an hour as it was nice and sunny out, no rain or other awful deterrents, and things went relatively well.
I tried a couple of different lenses and though my inital idea involved more of the tree being in the picture, I am very much a people person, so my favorite shot was with the 50mm, not the 24. It was an awesome shot, just the tree (which Karen picked out) and the way the sun was hitting it. Karen learned pretty quickly how to pretend to meditate. So that went well.
Yesterday (or maybe today, yes, today) I really am losing track of the days. I took a shot of our kitchen clock, and layered them together in Photoshop. Then liquified the clock, (I'm also getting addicted to liquify). It's just so useful!!

New Mudslide, the most I've ever edited a picture in my life....

Ok. So I didn't like the other one too much after posting it. I thought it looked kind of stupid. So I spent the last 2+ hours figuring out what to do with it. I ditched the filter I couldn't remember the name of and focused on the liquifying. I also edited out the rubber band.

Here it is: (and I hope this is the last you see of it)

Editing, Reshooting, and Reconfiguring

To continue the last post, the printer worked on Monday afternoon. I finally figure out the correct settings. I wasn't turning off the color management by the printer even though I had it set for Photoshop to manage colors. (rookie mistake, there's even a little reminder note telling users to do this). Anyway, I got that all set, and those three came out excellent.
However, my second attempt was not so successful. I loaded the paper into the printer. (This is plotter paper so the picture goes kind of like this: Me, maneuvering a roll of paper which is almost four feet long and heavy as hell out of its package and onto the pole that sits into the printer. Occasionally, big things get dropped) So I load the paper and feed it in and the printer just keeps beeping at me. Failure. The paper was loaded wrong each time. I got some help from an Archie but he said there was an adapter missing from the pole in the printer which we couldn't find. Nothing got printed.
I grumbled back to my room, paranoid because I now have to get these prints done the next morning but I'm supposed to be going home to fly to NOLA for Mardi Gras. Little did I know the night would get progressively worse as Southwest called to cancel my flight. After a few hours of struggle, there was no flight I could change to until Sunday, which was just not "vale la pena".
So now I'm bummed. My happiness ship is just absolutely sunk.

Cue snow day today. In the aftermath of last night's storm of disappointment, I'm thinking, "How am I going to get my NOLA picture?" The idea I'm working on tonight is to take a posterboard and draw a fleur de lis on it, then inside the fleur de lis collage together highlights of New Orleans. So I chose and re-sized all the pictures and put them on a 15x20 canvas in Photoshop to be printed tomorrow. That project will begin tomorrow night.

As far as the latest finished projects go,



The flour/texture shot begged to be redone. My professor pointed out that her makeup and earrings didn't do the idea justice, and he was 100% right. We reshot that night, Monday, and the result was perfection. I hadn't quite realized how off the first shot was until I took this one.











Some other feedback from Monday was that my mudslide shot wasn't up to par with the other photos I had taken. This makes sense as I am really a portrait photographer above anything but I had worked for hours and hours on that set and just didn't have the heart to redo it. I also was pretty pleased with that shot. He recommended playing with it in Photoshop so I toyed with this idea. Well, not toyed because I wasn't too happy about it. But I was thinking of some way to include a bunch of the different pictures and not sure what to do and just stressing over it a bit really. So feeling pretty happy tonight after my New Orleans idea, I opened it up and started playing around.





I tried almost all the filters, and found that I didn't like most of them. However, there were two that had promise liquify and one whose name I have forgotten. After some exploration, I settled on a combination of the two, and came up with this edit for the mudslide photo.

Printing Disasters

So I've been sitting in the arch mac lab for the past 2+ hours attempting to print my pictures on the giant print roll printer with the obscenely expensive paper and just failing. The print colors are coming out ridiculous, sara has a yellow blob for a neck and the red aprons are bright fuscia pink. Its frustrating as all hell and I feel like I've been here forever. I also haven't eaten all day, which adds to the ickyness of this part of the project. Thank god I started today and not next monday night, i'd be so screwed. This printer prints extremely slowly as well so it is good to do this while no one is here. I can't imagine being in a line waiting to use it. my 20x30 prints took over an hour to come out. I'm trying 11x17 now because it will take less time, and less paper, which is especially important because it keeps coming out "half a bubble off"...
To be continued

Birthday Suit Photo Shoot! A Total Success!

Well, well. It started off as a disaster with the light kit not working and the kid before not having charged the rechargeable batteries and leaving us with dead ones. How RuDE! I had to go buy batteries at Stop and Shop just to find that the lights didn't work with or without batteries. Waste of time and money :( But around eleven thirty we were made up, dressed up and ready to take a few clothed shots then get down to business!

Here is our little living room turned into a studio.


As everything got rolling, we managed to get some epic shots:
(click on the photo to enlarge it!)



This is a playful shot of the girls that just turned out beautifully. Renizzle is a bombshell with her big 80s earring.















This is Sara The Queen. This particular shot is going to be used for my class; an exploration of textures. She was covered in flour and throwing it up in the air. The sheet is straight off my bed, tacked to the wall and also covers the floor.
















This is Fierce. Makeup art in all these photos is by Sara herself.



















I have discovered that when shooting digital, your picture on the camera is like a negative, and lightroom makes a world of a difference. It's like learning to print again.









This is arguably my favorite shot from the night. I have a bunch of awesome shots, my best work ever. But, this is just, my favorite. I feel like it belongs in a magazine spread.












If anyone is looking at this, let me know what you think.
Ciao Mundo. Nos Vemos Pronto.

Mudsliding

One image down, nine to go.

This is the building process

The base is constructed with graham crackers.

I frosted it with chocolate pudding, and made a marshmellow base

I added green coconut for the grass, and a wine glass to represent the "mudslide". Then filled the glass with a cocoa mixture which poured down the front.

The best resulting picture is this:


MUDSLIDE!!!!!!

Interest Frustrations

I have to create 10 images by next Wednesday for my digital media class. They are supposed to be my top ten interests in life, but I'm not sure I quite got those right in the examination stage. I'm having difficulty figuring it all out, and getting a bad feeling.
Tonight I am shooting a nude shot with my roommates. 1st shot: I will be covering one with flour, cookie dough, and butter and making her throw the flour into the air. 2nd shot: I will be sitting them both on the oven and having them eat cookies while one has her arm around the other.
My past two attempts at pictures for this assignment have failed. One has not failed yet, but took much longer than anticipated and was not finished. With the other the idea did not jive with actual production very well at all.

So currently I am looking at some Leibovitz photos for ideas on lighting. These are a couple of her photos I found through the creative commons search engine: