The magazine gave me ample room to photograph any scenario how I saw fit (which was frustrating at times when I wasn’t given enough direction) but I was able to learn first hand how to work with clients- again, something I did not have much experience doing. They pretty much kicked me out of the nest and told me to fly- most of the time by the seat of my pants.

While I did not receive any pay or credit for the internship I still felt that it was ridiculously rewarding. I have the start of a commercial portfolio, some great on-the-job knowledge and I’ve officially been published! Here are some images I took while working with Urbanite:

a very lovely bed and breakfast near m&t stadium

an elementary school that was learning about caterpillars and butterflies

donna’s delicious seafood soup (i got to eat it after!)

a great new market in mount vernon

‘tree of life’ necklace from a jewelry store in harbor east

baltimore print studio!

a truffle tree (not sure what that means)

]]> http://rachelverhaaren.com/urbanite-internship/feed 0 http://rachelverhaaren.com/studio-lighting http://rachelverhaaren.com/studio-lighting#comments Thu, 13 Jan 2011 02:45:10 +0000 Rachel http://rachelverhaaren.com/?p=187 Continuing with some more consistent posts, here are some images from my studio lighting class this past semester with the wonderful Jonathan Trundle. Normally in studio electives we will have some preliminary assignments to master techniques and then a larger final project that is more conceptual. In studio lighting, however, we chose to work through a variety of techniques during the entirety of the semester and compile a portfolio of examples for our final.

So here are some images from studio lighting!

This is my Body in Photography final. While I soon hope to have this and other more developed bodies of work on the portfolio section of the site, they’re being blog’d in the mean time.

During my time at MICA I have developed a certain affinity for plaster gauze, as seen in my work in my Accumulation and Metaphor class. So for Body I chose to work with the medium again. I cast certain sections of my body and then posed them in various positions within the confines of my apartment. The work talks about isolation and the removal of identity while still capturing a gesture or personality. I also had a lot of fun covering myself in plaster gauze. Enjoy!

In the photo dept we have to take a junior seminar class which functions similarly to senior thesis in the sense that we work on a single body of work for the whole semester. For my project I chose to finally culminate all of the work I’ve been doing with optics and the way I see without the aid of glasses or contacts. Below is my artist statement for the project:

Transformation, change, perception. When the simplest of differences can alter your experience.

I have taken photographs of objects and instances that I encounter daily, usually without notice. The one element that has been altered is that I am seeing them without the full capacity of sight. By removing my glasses I have the opportunity to reinvent the world.

The text paired with the images allows the viewer a glimpse into the new reality I have created. Without the words the image is a blurred version of the commonplace but with them, they can understand how impaired sight is not always a hindrance, but a way to heighten our interpretation of the everyday.

And some of the images:

i came up with the following images that were shown next to the ones in the previous post.

i prefer the original images but i think it was a good exercise in revisiting an idea. i have the tendency to go with the first idea that comes to me (they’re usually pretty good but…) but i know it won’t always be that easy.

the class was pretty self-explanatory, learning how to use the figure in our images. our first assignment was to choose a myth and create images inspired by that myth. i chose the greek myth of sisyphus which tells the story of a greedy and self-obsessed king who is punished by the gods to roll a stone up a hill, only for it to roll back down, for the rest of eternity.

i interpreted this myth as a person dealing with a task that can never be accomplished and tried to relate it to my own life. i was a dancer for about ten years before i had to give it up for other interests. i chose to depict myself attempting dance poses that i used to be able to do with ease.

while the final images may look graceful, the extended exposure informs the viewer that i struggled to hold the pose. this is a sisyphean task for me because i will never be able to get my body back to the way it was when i danced.

because of the time needed to establish any sort of collection, we were given only three assignments during the course of the semester. we were kept very busy, however, with great field trips, short readings and informative in-class demonstrations that related to the coursework. the three assignments were as follows:

accumulation in response to the natural world

accumulation in response to the human condition

a collection of your choosing (the longest of the three- this project spanned the entire semester and was designed to be the most extensive and thoughtful)

i chose to focus on a certain material that i have worked with in the past and has certain significance to me. plaster gauze is an extremely versatile medium and i wanted to explore what is has to offer.

natural world

my response to the natural world began by looking at coral and sea life as well as the human body. while the human condition is another assignment, the human body itself is a natural entity that has evolved and adapted over time. i chose to cast my fingers in plaster gauze and stack them in an almost honeycomb formation. the structure they became speaks to the order that sometimes occurs within the chaos of nature. the plaster gauze was able to cast a general shape (a tapered tube) while also removing some of the evidence that it was my finger.

human condition

balloons have an important role within the human condition. we find them festive and use them on a multitude of occasions. again playing with plaster gauze i wanted to remove and almost negate the identity of the balloon. while i did hang the balloons on the wall to allude to their desired height, they are heavy. they droop and sag. this is not how we know balloons to act. the color and surface of the objects are cold and pock-marked, not bright, shiny and welcoming.

collection

these plaster gauze strips were created as a collection of anxieties. the gauze, used to mend broken bones acted as a band-aid-like coping mechanism for unfortunate occurrences, big and small, that happened within the span of a semester. the grid arrangement, covering a wall floor to ceiling, gives the viewer a glimpse into the overwhelming nature of the events, especially when complied and displayed.

** a de-installation shot. the last balloon was too high and much too artsy to take down. it begged to be photographed and left for the next people that entered the room**

i’ll admit i don’t get the doll pieces 100% but it works! i really love it!

while browsing the dazed and confused website i also saw an interview with Collier Schorr. i’ve only ever heard her mentioned in a fine art capacity so it was nice to see that her work was bridging the gap between fine art and fashion photography. i do enjoy her series You Are the Weather as well as some of her other fine art works but i didn’t love what i saw on the magazine website. anyway, if nothing else it was great seeing an artist capable of reaching both audiences.

recently i’ve been hitting a sort of road block, photographically. my current employer (or internship sponsor) asked me who my favorite photographer was. i couldn’t give him an answer. sure, i like a bunch of photographers- all the greats, of course. but i didn’t stumble across a photograph and decide that, because of this mind-blowing piece i was going to become a photographer. my decision was much more selfish than all of that.

i love doing it for me. for how it makes me feel. for how it allows me to express all the crazy stuff in my head. and how it lets people understand. ansel adams is great, but i’m my inspiration.

so anyway, all of this has definitely got me thinking. my boss also gave me a ton of photography/fashion books to read. they’ve been pretty interesting so far. so i’m really going to try and figure out who i like and why. maybe that will get me excited again.

let’s get started:

i found this picture while looking at the imdb page for little ashes, a movie about the young lives of salvador dali and frederico garcia lorca. (robert pattinson just also happens to be in it). i haven’t seen it yet but it didn’t get great reviews, so i bet it’s decent.

**do i give credit to the director of photography for the image? wish i knew who it was!

i adore this image of marina gatell. i love the tones of the out of focus background (blurry is my thing) the gorgeous dress and her crazy neck/collarbones! i have a tough time photographing people, i want to do stuff like this.

i hope to see more wonderful images when i eventually get around to watching the movie.

ta ta for now. hope to see you soon