New favorite artist (of the week)

When I was in San Diego for Christmas, my family and I went to see a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego of Tara Donovan's work. I wasn't familiar with her work but it looked cool online so we all went. It was amazing! She makes work out of everyday objects on a monumental scale.

This was the piece that was on the website and made me want to go see it. It's made of styrofoam cups.

This was my favorite piece in the show. It was made of millions of drinking straw stacked against a wall. Some were pulled out at different lengths from the wall of its had a wavy effect. The coolest thing though was that as you moved around it looked completely different. You could only see the holes in the straws you were right in front of. The holes make the straws look brighter so as you move around, the bright spot moves around also. It was very neat!

Top Photos #1

It's finally here: the reveal of my favorite photo I've ever taken. I took it my second semester in grad school when I finally figured out what having a concept in your images meant. It's the earliest photo that I'm the most proud of.

Top Photos #2

My second favorite photo I've ever taken is from my thesis show, Uncertain. I love this photo because it works really well on a couple of levels. First, it illustrates perfectly what the idea of the series is. It's probably the images that can best stand on its own from that series. Second, I think it's just gorgeous. The 4x5 gives so much detail that you can see more on the seed pods in the image than in real life. Even the viewer that doesn't look for meaning can still enjoy it.

RIP

I went to a memorial service for a very talented photography student this weekend.

Patrick, you will be missed.

Top Photos #3

Of my top five photos, this has the least of a story. It's actually just a picture I really like. It's from my Coming of Age series. A few birthdays ago, my sister got me a really cute fish tank so I went out and bought four guppies. Two of them died almost instantly so, rather than have them die in vain, I used them for art.

Top Photos #4

This photo is in my top 5 not because I love the photo, but because of what it represents. This is the very first photo I ever printed. It started my love of photography and being in the darkroom. It was taken in 2000 (Wow, this is my 10 year anniversary of being addicted to the darkroom) at Austin College. The assignment was to shoot an entire roll of the same subject. I chose eyes.

Top Photos #5

For the next 5 days, I'm going to count down my 5 favorite photos I have ever taken.

My number 5 photo was shot in 2005 in Los Angeles. When I got done with grad school, I made very few photos. I was so convinced that it was pointless to make a photo unless it fit into a series and had some deep meaning that I just didn't make any. One day, I decided that I was going to force myself to take some pictures so I went walking around this shopping center that was under contraction. I shot about half a roll of film and that was pretty much it. About a year later, after moving to Houston, I found a roll of 120 film that wasn't processed and I had no idea what was on it. I took it to be processed and found this image from that shoot. It's one of my favorites because it illustrates exactly how I was feeling at the time...completely blocked.