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Ladies and Gentlemen, who is ready for blog post number three! The Third Blog Post! The Final Blog Post!

Now next week, February 3rd, one day before my birthday, two days before the Super Bowl, one day after Groundhog's Day...is critique day! For those who don't know what a critique day is, it's when a bunch of young photo students eagerly put up their photographs onto a wall. Then, a delicate ritual is performed, where the students must "criticize" each others pictures, while doing it in the nicest way possible so as to not hurt anybody's feelings. At the end of the ritual, each photographer is supposed to walk away from the experience with a clearer mind, knowing that they have yet to achieve their any of their goals exactly as they envisioned.


But who cares about the critique?! What if I just said "Screw this giant presentation and critique! For the people who truly about my work, they can view my pictures in advance on the internet!"

Well that what if is about to happen...because this blog is going to be dedicated completely to ME!

So for those of you who are going to stick around for the remainder of this post...well...I just want to tell you good luck, we're all counting on you.


PICTURE ONE!

 

Know what that is? That's an elephant. Some may argue and say an elephant can't sit like that. I disagree, just look at it! It's sitting on its legs! Perfectly normal!

 But what about taking the picture of the elephant itself? Well folks, this elephant, he sure was a tricky little fellow. See, what you don't realize is that this elephant...has white tusks! ...Well, okay, you may have actually realized that. But see, I didn't until I was photographing it. I just stole borrowed a bunch of stuff from my mom's room, basically. I saw an elephant and said "All the kids are into elephants these days! This will be great!" so I took the elephant, brought it to the studio, placed it down on the white paper, and then realized exactly what I said nobody had realized before I made a mention to realize it.

So I walked the tight rope of getting the white background along with the not-actually-as-white-but-still-white tusks. Step one involved positioning the elephant correctly, so that one tusk was surrounded by the dark elephant. Done! Simple! Step two? Take the picture, and tweak it in Photoshop so the tusk get a bit darker...but not too dark, you know? And thus, I achieved this happy result. Elephant Complete!

Picture #2. 

I'm not quite sure what this is. Judging by the fact that there's a $ sign on the bag, I reckon this dragon got transported back into a 1930's cartoon and just robbed a bank.

Whatever happened to this dragon, one thing is for sure. After the first photo I took of it, I was smiling like a butcher's dog. But, I still needed to pose it correctly. Get the right angle, yada yada yada. This picture...I'm not sure it's the right angle. I like everything about it...but the wing that goes behind the mouth just irks me a bit. I've asked people about it, no one has had a problem with it. They didn't mind it....but still! 

So, I'm conducting an experiment. My prediction is nobody reads this before February 3rd. So, I'm going to go into class, put this up, and see what folks say. If someone is like "Yo, what is UP with that wing in the mouth?!" I'll be like "I know! It's ridiculous!"

If everybody is silent? Well..........I'll keep it. Loose lips sink ships, you know?

The Third Picture!

This is cologne. It smells bad, since I had it sprayed on me. But it's expensive. So since it was expensive, I'd figure it would make people view me as a classy guy, which will help me at the art show in the future!

To continue with my formulaic writing style this specific post has developed, here's what went down with photographing it. The light that I was using to light everything with? See, it made everything very light. My little bottle was suddenly a very dull gray. No contrast. It was terrible. So what did I do? Well, let's just say...I "upped the blacks" ...Heh heh heh!

....But seriously, that's what I did. I upped the blacks. It really solved the problem easily.

Picture Four Time!

 

...It's so BLUE!

 

This one picture doesn't really have a good story to it. I was running low on time and needed to get some pictures taken quickly. So, I just threw it on the table and snapped a few quick pictures, then took it off. So maybe the lesson is: Don't think, just shoot!

Note: That is not a real lesson.

King Kong Bundy: FIIIIIIVE!!!!!!

 

And there it is. The grand prize. The art piece. It's colorful and saturated. It's comical. It's a white background. It's centered. It's one of MY pictures. It doesn't need an explanation. It is simply Joseph.

 

Art Shows

Who's ready for BLOG NUMBER TWO?!?!

 

Alright! Nice!

I'll add a lot of space so you guys don't take seizures while viewing this.





Right then, art ahows! The title of the blog entry! That means I will be talking about art shows! Or...openings. Or galleries. Whatever you want to call them. The point is, I will be talking about them.

Why? Well, that's a darn good question.

The other day, while sitting in my lovely photography class...a discussion broke out! Intense debate! Fearsome rhetoric! Only available on PPV!

Here's what went down, for those of you reading this in the future/not present for the event and have no memory of what happened.

Someone menitoned something like "What if we didn't go to the opening, nobody would know, right?" and someone else was like "Why wouldn't you want to go to the opening?" and the first person was all "Yo, I'm going to the opening!" and then other people were like "Yeah dawg, we're all going to the opening! Who wouldn't want to go to the opening?! Art openings rule! Woo!"

I may be exaggerating here, but that's basically how I heard it.

Well my friends...I have a confession. I do not want to go to the art opening.

Yes, it's true, it's true. But hear me out!

The average normal photographer would love the idea of having a bunch of people look at his or her work. I mean, you take a bunch of pictures, and what good are they if nobody views them? So you get a giant place to put them up, and then a bunch of people go and look at them! You promote yourself! You get feedback! Your hard work gets appreciated! Shouldn't this be what I want?

Well baby, there's a lot of things you don't know about me! (I've always wanted to use that line.)



See, there's this man I look up to. His name, is Darin Morgan. Darin was a writer on the X-Files back in its early seasons. So, he took this dark, serious show and made comedic episodes. People loved those episodes! I know I did! Hell, one of them even won Darin an Emmy! But....there was a problem. After his first episode aired, Darin got his fan mail...as well as hate mail. People claimed he ruined the series forever! Poor Darin was then plagued with self-doubt. Confidence issues. Darin Morgan wanted perfection, and thus, he would only write three more episodes for the show before quitting, citing he was burnt out.

Now, I'm not going to say I'm exactly Darin Morgan. My photography skill is certainly not as good as his writing skill, although that's a very Morgan-esque statement in and of itself. But the self-doubt, that resonates with me. I want perfection just as much as Darin did. I don't want to overlook a mistake and then learn from it. That should have been seen in the first place! The problem arises when I make a picture that I like, and then other people don't like it. When that happens, everyone contradicts each other. One person wants to change A, one person wants to change B, but there can not be A and B coexisting at the same time.

Then, imagine this on a bigger scale. Sure, everyone may not be as vocal....or maybe they will be. You can't predict a crowd. But the fact is, there's going to be tons of people there, looking at what they will perceive as imperfections. There will be different opinions of my work. And I don't like that. I loathe that! I basically go in, say "This is the best I have to offer!" and have people reply back "That's great, but let me begin to tell you why you suck."

Look, I may slightly be exaggerating a bit here, but the overall theme is true. So at this point, I find that people give two replies. The first think people will say is "How can you survive in this business if you can't take people rejecting your work?"

Easy. If I were hired for a job...I wouldn't exactly view that as "my" work. Sure, I'm the one who took the pictures. I made all the photographic decisions. But the goal is to not do what I think is best, but to do what I think the client would think is best. So at the end of the day, I may be told "These suck, you aren't getting paid." That's actually not that bad. It comes down to being a business decision, not a personal one. I can live with that. It didn't fit into this one particular client's vision. At that point, all you can do is man up and adapt. So while it may be disappointing, it is not a direct criticism of my idea of perfection.

Which brings us to point two: "Do what you want to do."

Well, I do. But I wouldn't do what I want to do for money. If I took a nice picture, or even, an artistic picture, I'd be worried if people actually wanted it. That's my picture! Mine!

Basically, it's like...people would be stealing a part of me. And I wouldn't want that. Besides, for somebody to want a picture of mine, they would need to see them, presumably in public. In public, multiple people would see them, which would have multiple criticisms, which would bring us all the way back up to my original point up above.


There you go. An explanation of how my mind works, and why I don't want to go to the art opening. Now, there is a difference between what I want, and what I will be doing. For example, I'm just going to take pictures I like and say "Screw their opinions" for the rest of the school year.

And, I will be going to to the art opening, as much as I don't want to....Even if it means the whole day, my internal reaction is this:

The Good Ol' Days

HEYYYYYYY EVERYBODY!! This is Chris Hesser, in the Hizzle, of the Blogossizzle! Now who's ready to read about some Xtreme Photography?!


Sadly, we will not be doing that today.

Sometimes, I run across old photographs that I discovered a long time ago, and thought "Whoa, these are cool" only to forget about them. And I don't mean like, family photos. I mean photos that probably importantish people took...or at least photos that got dudes paid.

So, that happened today. I rediscovered a bunch of freakin' awesome color photos of the WWII/Great Depression/Ye Olde Times Era. Now, I can go on about like, technical qualities of the pictures. But that's pretty boring, who cares about that, am I right? ...Another avenue is, I can totally let my inner history nerd unleashed, and start to mark out as I explain the significance of all the pictures! But...people really don't care about that stuff.

So I'm going to do something everybody knows. I'm going to talk about...emotions. Now in depth emotions that I would only reveal to my psychiatrist....not that I have a psychiatrist...but just instantaneous, Rapid-Fire reactions...Cross Fire. Goblet of Fire. Gary Oldman in JFK with...Kevin Bacon! Yeah! Four Degrees!


Ok, so, picture number one! Go!

So we got our Coca Cola advertisement going on!

Also, for anyone who refers to "soda" as "coke" or "pop" then please stop reading now. You're not welcome here.

So the soda! Look at that advertisement! Forget the creepy, crumbling building! Look at it! Look how simple things were back then! Advertisements were so direct! "Drink Coca-Cola!" I love it! No fancy CGI Polar Bears or young, cool, much-better-looking-than-me people drinking a bottle while riding in a convertible! The ads were so simple back then! "Smoke Marlboro!" "Drink Coca-Cola!" "Buy War Bonds!" So simple! You gotta love it!

By the way, "Buy War Bonds" just so happens to be the perfect segue into...

In this picture, we get a rare glimpse of J. Edgar Hoover as he explains to children where the German U-boats are expected to deploy their spies!

Ok, I'll stop with the history jokes.

This goes back to the advertising again, but a little bit different. How awesome is it that the government put propaganda posters in our schools? Or, unawesome, I guess. Now a days, I'm not sure you can do that. If you do that, a political party will claim you're trying to start the Hitler Youth up again. So yeah, down with propaganda posters! I refuse to support Uncle Sam, and I refuse to accept that the poster accurately explains how a tree grows!

Speaking of school children... (Segue 2!)

What really depresses me about looking at these old pictures, is looking at the folks in them. I mean, dude. These were kids here, singing a song from the looks of it. Then they grew up. Got married, had kids, had grand kids, and now some, maybe even most, are dead. That's just sad.


I need to cheer myself up. Quick, think of something that can make this photo slightly happier!

I got it! A quote from the Robin Williams movie, One Hour Photo!

"And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it's this: I was here. I existed. I was young, I was happy, and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture."

 Ah, there we go. Much better. Yeah, I always loved that quote. It's one of the few photographic quotes that I like. It's also the only thing I remember from the movie....well, except for this:

Warning: Slightly Scary, no loud noises.

Ok, one last picture, no segue, grand finale, last hurrah! Here we go!

No matter how much I wish, no matter how hard I try....I can never be as manly as this man is. Wherever you are now, I humbly salute you!

Chris Hesser's Latest Youtube Movie!

The hit movie that will win Chris Hesser a Tony Award is here! Go watch Journey Into Zombiefication now!