Bon Iver

Bon Iver is my favorite artist of all time (besides Lady gaga of course). His music is absolutely beautiful and I can never seem to stop listening to him. He started to make music videos for his new album that came out this past year and every single video is incredible. They are beautifully composed and unique. One of my favorites is the video for Holocene. I love everything about it and you should all definitely watch it! Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/boniver#p/u/2/MjxA25Tj1Ks

Here are some stills from the video:

Week 4, Part I

Chloe Dewe Mathews is a 29-year old documentary photographer. In 2011, she won the British Journal of Photography award for her series, Caspian. The oil boom of the late 90’s brought wealth to the Caspian basin, though the once thriving regime has now become a crumbling concrete jungle. The water is polluted with oil, and across the desert of Azerbaijin, people bathe in it, believing in its “therapeutic properties.” The series is quite lovely though disturbing. I recommend flipping through the rest of her work on her website: http://www.chloedewemathews.com/. Her portraiture is really eerie and beautiful in this series and others. Check it out! 

Lady Gaga + Annie Leibovitz- Alyssa

I saw the magazine Vanity Fair on a stand in Sol's this evening and was first attracted by the awesome photo of Lady Gaga on her cover. And then I saw that Annie Leibovitz was the photographer and I immediately took it over to the cashier. I both women I find incredibly inspiring and I am totally stoked to see them in combination! Annie's use of lighting and her photographing style are so unique and almost whimsical. I adore her work! Here is a link to the online version of the article:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/11/lady-gaga-january-cover-nude-photos-tony-bennett

Terry Richardson- Samantha

Terry Richardson worked on a project with Lady Gaga that came out in November. The book will contain 350 images and will cover their 10 month period together. I had never heard of Terry Richardson before I heard this news so then I went onto his website and looking at his other work, it makes a lot of sense why he worked with Lady Gaga, his stuff is just as crazy as she is. All this work is on his Diary website, so I'm not sure if it is more rushed than his normal stuff, but I'll keep looking on his website and see what other work he has.

Humorous Photography- Alyssa

The came across Judy Olausen's photographic book Mother, literally an hour before I had to go to the airport to come back to RIT from break. I spent a solid 10 minutes laughing out loud as I looked through it, so I decided to buy it. Looking more in depth at her work, I really appreciate her use of humor in the photos. Which lead me to wonder what makes a picture laughable, and how to achieve funny photo. So I looked through the internet and I came across several articles compiling supposedly funny photos.

http://pixeltango.com/inspiration/photography/best-of-humorous-art-photography/

This article shows a wide range of techniques with humor in photography. Some are funny purely because of the image, while others are made by the text that is put with them. Some are highly contrived and others are candid. Lesson learned? There are a lot of way to find (and make) humor in photography.

The Walking Dead-Kara

I am really into horror/apocalypse movies. I recently got hooked on a show called "The Walking Dead." It is an original tv show from amc about what happens to a group of people when there is an apocalypse and people start coming back from the dead. What really amazed me about this show and made it inspiring was that even though it was a tv show that ends at a certain point each time and has different episodes, it all feels like one long movie, or like each episode is just part of a movie. I watched the first season in one day because it was so good, and the visual effects are out of this world. I really love how the crew is able to set up lighting that mimics beautiful natural lighting scenarios. All of the special effects with blood and the zombies are also perfectly executed as well. I think the most important thing I could learn from this show is how if you can perfect lighting, you can make it appear almost as if you are anywhere, at any time of day. Since we are starting in the studio soon, I thought this show would be important for me to go back to and reference some of their lighting situations.

twins- national geographic 2012

National Geographic featured a story about twins. Twins has always been an interesting thing, because even though these people share the same genetic make up, they are different. The point of this story was to reveal how this difference in twins can say alot about humans in general.