Critique 3

I fell in love with the location where Kristen and I shot her photos and subsequently took two more gals out there for photos shoots and they are also in the portfolio.  Tons of gorgeous colors from the changing leaves, and even a little tree frog:

Each woman is unique and I tried (but not too hard) to pose them in different ways, but there are similar poses, yet there are differences.   I am happy with the work so far, even though some people think its too soft or sentimental. haaa! You know who you are!  

So the third critique was last week (and the week before) with Election Day in the middle, so we had a bit more time to get our work together for the critique #3.  

Since Jan and Ben went back to Europe at the end of October, they weren't here for the last critique which was a bummer! So they didn't get to see some of our best work.  Many of the students felt like they got it right with this last critique's work and it would have been great for Jan and Ben to see that.  BUT we had a great wrap up last class with them and took a few hilarious class photos (posted above).  Adam Jacono did a video interview with Jan and afterwards Jan presented some of the work he had been doing with the homeless here in Columbia and talked to us about his next project dealing with national identities and using Dutch masters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer's works and creating his own photographic version of some of their paintings. Really cool!  the photos of the homeless were really incredible, the colors are vibrant and the details are really rich. There will hopefully be an exhibit of his homeless portraits sometime in the spring, in downtown Columbia, possible quite literally on the streets/sides of buildings.  I think that is a great way to get people to notice the portraits in a town that pretty much neglects the homeless and treats them like outcasts.

Class Wrap up w/ Jan and Ben

Jan and Ben flew back to Europe this past weekend and there were many parties in their honor before they left, wishing them well, saying goodbye.  It was really great to have met them and to have them in the class for these past couple of months. So for their last class with us, Kathleen told us we needed to come up with a class photo idea that included Jan and Ben.  Someone had brought a very large American flag for Adam to use during his video interview with Jan and so some people wanted to incorporate that.  We ended up in the studio and I think it was Jan's idea to get a real desk in there and we could set it up like one of his Buereaucratics photos, and so we did. Hilarious!  We piled all sorts of crap onto the desk, photo magazines, cameras, film developing equipment, even an apple!  Poor Ben was relegated to being underneath Jan's desk, serving in his role as the "intern."  haaaa!

I took some photos during Adam's interview with Jan, which can be seen here!  

 

Here are our "Bureaucratics" photos: