A Book of Electronic Fun

A Book of Electronic Fun by CJ Signorino | BOOK INFO

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MoPA

Seeing Beauty, located at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, is an exhibition in which the viewers discover the beauty of photography through the eyes of various photographers, including Bill Brandt, Walker Evans, Mary Ellen Mark, Edward Weston, Minor White, and Aaron Siskind. The gorgeous pictures people expect to see consist of the many genres of photography, like portraiture, abstraction, landscape, and still life. When I was in Fine Arts in high school, I became aware of these concepts and knew how significant they can be in society. Since my panorama of the view outside my house wowed everyone in the classroom, I knew it was a good idea for me to submit it to the Arts Contest, in which three winners would be awarded 100 dollars. The photographs in the exhibition really do feature elements in the context of aesthetic beauty, and they remind me about the fact that my experience of looking at art can be affected by the question of how our personal interpretation and notions of what constitutes beauty. Nigel Poor’s pictures of flies suggest that beauty of a creature can become obsolete as time goes by. One picture, Lima 89 (taken by Aaron Siskind in 1975), is one of an L painted on a wall and an homage to Franz Kline, a painter known for abstract expressionist paintings that appear in black and white. Another picture, which features Courtney Chavis and Georgiannia Oswald (taken by Mary Ellen Mark in Lexington, South Carolina, 1995) and appears in black and white, suggests beauty can exist at an age before 10. I should know that because I have a sister who competed and won in several beauty pageants when she was in Elementary school. I also noticed there were pictures of 7-year-old girls practicing for a beauty pageant taken by Susan Rankaitis, reminding me of those days when my sister was in the pageants. With my photographic eye and Photoshop skills, I’m bound to make objects look old and new depending on their appearance.

Ordover Gallery

Abraham Ordover is one of the photographers whose pictures can be found at the Ordover Gallery, which was apparently named after him. That’s because he formed a partnership with the San Diego Natural History Museum in 2006, leading to the opening of said gallery on the Museum’s 4th floor. Before changing his career, he was a Yale-educated law professor, attorney, and mediator. He became a professional photographer in 2000 and had solo gallery shows in New York City, Atlanta, San Diego, and Palo Alto. His solo exhibitions were in university museums, including University of Colorado and Georgia Tech, and his major one man shows too place at the Parthenon Museum of Nashville and the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta. Some of his Monarch butterfly photographs are truly amazing and give us a good glimpse of what nature is like in Mexico. There’s one photo with multiple butterflies, some of which are blurred with the background and a some of which are closer and higher in quality. There’s really a sense of depth in there! When I take pictures, I always like to have objects appear to be three-dimensional and the background to be a little blurry. But the pictures I’m taking are mostly electronic products, so the backgrounds are usually minor. I think it’s more fun when I alter colors of the objects I take and make them look like they don’t exist in the real world. If Abe used Photoshop, the wings of the butterflies would really stand out. There are other artists besides Ordover whose photos can be found  in the gallery as well. There’s Olof Carmel (a photographer who used archival print on canvas for his pictures in Lake Tahoe), Charles Cramer (the one who used three kinds of print for his nature pictures), and Tom O Scott (the one interested in Fuji Crystal Archive Lustre, which apparently involves the rearrangement of objects in the sand). It got me to thinking about the fact that pictures can be made to look as if they were painted, and Photoshop is a great approach. These artists sure know how to impress.

Felix J. Bonomo

Today, I went to the Kellogg Library and learned about Felix J. Bonomo, a photographer whose pictures reflect stories of places and people he saw in his travels. His deepest interest is in the rapidly changing lives and culture of China, where history has been recorded for thousands of years and recreation is taking place each day. As his career in photography matured, he found himself in international operations, which required frequent travel to Europe and Asia. He chose to go to Asia because to him, the continent was an intriguing part of the world and a natural subject for him to photograph. Now, we get to see a gallery of photographs from China he calls, “Women Hold Up Half The Sky.” While traveling through the rural areas with his camera, Felix was fascinated by the images of Chinese women working at everything from nanny to construction worker to religious pilgrim to office and restaurant workers. Like him, I, too, would be drawn to anything people would find interesting, including the long shot of the road I took from the side of my house for a panorama project. If an object satisfies me, I’m sure it’ll satisfy everyone else. This book I’m creating, “A Book of Electronic Fun,” will consist of interesting electronic products with altered color schemes, which I think many people will find intriguing. The title “Women Hold Up Half The Sky” comes from Mao making a comment about women holding up half the sky, claiming their equality with men in a Confucian society that had never considered them equal. This equality is evidenced by the fact that women became half the work force, but that’s only an anddition to the household and family work that’s been done for years. What’s interesting about Felix’s photos is that some of the Chinese people featured in the pictures didn’t know he was taking pictures of them. Sometimes, when I take pictures of people, they don’t bother looking at the camera because I never tell them to.

Paul Bowen

Paul Bowen is a commercial photographer from Wichita, Kansas, who has been shooting aerial photography since 1972. He was one of the 60 professional photographers who make up Canon’s “Explorers of Light” program. All of his pictures are photos of aircraft, which he takes while being perched in the open tail-gunner’s position of a World War II B-25 bomber, strapped in thousands of feet up. The job of taking pictures of moving airplanes is a tough one. The way he achieves this task is through the use of his headset and microphone, which connect him to the B-25′s pilot, who relays directions to the crew of the airplane Paul is photographing. As the target plane gets closer, Paul directs them with hand signals. My dad would be glad to meet him because he’s hoping for a helicopter of his own. And since Paul also takes pictures of helicopters, I’m sure he’d guide my dad through the right direction of affording one in today’s tough economic times. The way the flying vehicles appear on camera sure look amazing. They look even cooler when they’re airborne and thousands of feet above the ground. What I find fascinating about his photos are the colors that stand out from the background. For my book, I’m going for a similar approach, but with slight close-ups and fondness for technology. I’m more of an animation enthusiast, yet I know how cool objects can be when they’re positioned in a way that satisfies me. All in all, I love to show everyone that my grasp of the world around me is a colorful one.

Robert Randall

What’s interesting about Robert Randall is that he lives in San Diego, which isn’t too far from my home. He’s a photographer in advertising, fashion, beauty, fitness, lifestyle, and portraiture. Like Pete Winkel, Robert takes photos of anything the eyes can follow, like one of a golfer’s legs and club that appear straight as the golfer is preparing to hit the golf ball. The legs and club show me what I should be seeing, and the background doesn’t distract me one bit. His portrait photos are similar to those taken by Pete Winkel, as they appear to be posing for the camera while looking at the camera (Stan Lee, Michael Spatuzzi, Carlos Alazraqui) or not looking at the camera (Tim Herzog, the CEO of Oak Harbor Freight Lines). Robert also owns a BlackBerry phone, with which he can take pictures of anything that catches his eye. I, too, take interesting pictures with my phone, except most of them are a little vertical and practically low in quality. With his Blackberry, Rob took pictures of a man playing the bagpipes, a cluster of red, orange, and yellow bell peppers, legs of a fancy table, and a close-up shot of a ridgy surface of a chair.

Pete Winkel

Pete Winkel is an advertising photographer who has been working for many companies across the nation. His clients include Aflac, AT&T, Arrow Electronics, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the Coca-Cola Company, Delta Airlines, Equifax, Forbes Magazine, the Ford Foundation, GTE, the Hartford, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Northside Hospital, Panasonic, Primerica Financial Services, Prudential, the Ritz-Carlton, United Parcel Service, the United Way, and Ziff-Davis Publishing. His photos mostly feature people in places while the camera is at an appropriate angle, and the focus in each photo is well-suited. There are also photos of various buildings that are shot at first-person view, including hotels, restaurants (e.g. The Varsity), skyscrapers, and houses. For resorts, he took fascinating pictures of everything you’d see outside and inside a five-star hotel. One picture has a vase and chandelier on the top half and their reflection on the bottom half, giving it a horizontal and vertical symmetry. Another interesting picture is one of a resort along the beach. The sky and resort are above the middle line while the sand and water are below the middle line. Now that’s what I call perfect contrast. Furthermore, he takes pictures of objects of interest, including a shiny, blue glass of ice water and a skinny, blue flower vase on top of a table. Based on what I’ve learned from him, I figured it’d be all right for me to take pictures of objects of interest, like products made by certain electronic companies, like Nintendo, Dell, Microsoft, Motorola, Apple, etcetera.

Book Progress

After several minutes of thinking, I figured I’d expand my book more by filling it with not only pictures of video game products, but also pictures of other electronics (i.e. Cell phones, computers, etc.). I also thought of adjusting their color schemes in a way that was never made. For example, for my laptop computer, I altered it in a way most laptops by Dell are made.

Before:

After:

Pretty clever, huh?

I also tried out the double-page cover pictures, which turned out very nice. I’m using it for the table of contents so readers know where to find certain objects.

Here’s another one I did of a drum set made for the Rock Band games:

I actually took a picture of one half, and then the other. The quality is much higher this way.

And by the way, I’ve decided to call my book, ‘A Book of Electronic Fun’, because the pictures in it consist of electronics.

Jim Brandenburg (Extended)

Jim Brandenson, a widllife photographer, is someone who truly knows how to blend in with nature. He’s so into nature that he had his work place, Ravenwood Studios, built in the forest of Minnesota (is that the right state?). Using his camera, he attempts to capture the illusive (or allusive) spirit of the land. He took pictures of deer, a bald eagle, a hairy woodpecker, a pond, and anything you could find in the forest. He also got involved with National Geographic, which accepted many of his pictures. Part of his work once focused on the arctic wolf, which made him more renowned than ever. He and his wife Judy even wrote a book about wolves.

Oh, the things interests will do to you.

So we’ve learned more of how Jim took fascinating pictures in the wild in Minnesota. Many of them can convey mood and have someone who is looking at the pictures do whatever they can to help nature thrive more. For a picture of trees, he was able to show a sense of “here and not here.”

He also took a close-up shot of the eye of a recently shot deer, which somehow gives the viewer  an impression of how it feels to have been hunted.

Darn that poacher.

Anyway, Jim also reminds the viewers how smart animals can be. This can be evidenced in a picture of trees scratched by bears attempting to show off their dominance.

Lastly, National Geographic wanted to have Jim’s pictures of nature shown in an issue in 1997, which was sure to inspire people to care about nature and take good photos of it. If he can make the pictures look good, so can I.

Cards for Greeting

I’ve got three cards that have photoshopped pictures, and one of them was first seen in the Before and After post. What choice do I have, anyway? The first photo has my house, to which I applied a special filter. That effect gives it a ’50s magazine feel, I think. The other two pictures were taken by my dad before I borrowed his camera. The photo of somebody’s house was given a grainy effect so it appears as if someone took a photo of a building on a VHS tape. That last one of what appears to be a deck outside a restaurant by the ocean was brightened a bit and had its RGB color adjusted for its taken-in-the-’80s feel. Turning digital pictures into retro ones sure is fun!