Site Unseen

Visually impaired students from the Miami Lighthouse Project recently took a unique tour of SunLife Stadium. Instead of filing past the Don Shula memorial like other football fans, they 
 stopped to run their hands over the statue’s feet, getting an idea about the height of the bronze players from the size of their shoes. They tried on a Dolphins player’s helmet, learning that the crunching sound they hear during games comes from 7-pound helmets crashing together. On the field, they held handfuls of the cool, cropped grass.

Watching the students through my camera, it wasn’t they used their hands to experience the stadium -- it was how they related to each other and to the people around them. They leaned in to each other to talk, and they verbalized all their actions so that the others could follow. They got close to the objects and talked their way through their experiences so that a friend on the other side of the statue would know to move his hands from the shoe up to the calf muscle to feel how strong the bronze player was. Their relationship to each other was more fascinating than the fact that they had to touch all the objects that people without vision problems take for granted.

I was struck by how extroverted the students were as they passed around the helmet and shared handfuls of grass. One of the students asked what I liked about photography, and I said that I liked expressing my experiences through a different language, a visual language. It occurred to me that I was watching the students speaking in a different language, too, and it made me wonder what vocabulary they use in school, at home or out in the world without their teachers.

JKay

Between the Lines

Lines can be a pictorial element, lines can form patterns and shapes, lines can lead your eyes to specific subject, and lines can help you frame your subject.  Lines are to be read leading and transforming complexity to simple composition.  Hence it takes a really good eye to read between the lines. 

Lines are the architecture of the Holocaust Memorial - lines are everywhere. There are the long horizontal lines of names, all the victims lost. These lines are the background to the human figures sculpted at the heart of the memorial. Everywhere you look, behind and through the bronze figures, the names of the dead fill in your view.

The last name in the list is Zusha Mamber, and whild that line stops abruptly, the story isn't finished.  The memorial leaves plenty of blank black granite where more names can be added at families' request.                                                                                               

A trip through the entire memorial takes you around in a circle, but straight lines in its design keep visitors moving in the right direction. Diagonal lines of stone point toward the giant hand and the tortured figures climbing up its arm at the heart of the memorial. Narrow shafts of light shift throughout the day in the tunnel that leads to that hand. These lines do more than guide visitors, they pull them toward the memorial's center of grief.


JKay

iPhone Vs Camera

The previous blog set the stage: One vacation, many cameras. I shot most everything twice, trying to line up the composition so that the only real difference was the focal length - one I could control with an SLR or DSLR, or one that I could not control with the iPhone 4. With the camera phone, I tried to keep the filter consistent and subtle so that the images were not overly distorted. I wanted the iPhone images to capture the same element I sought with the "real" cameras - the way the soft, warm light of late August, even on overcast days, enhanced the textures of water, faces and wood.

Sometimes, the iphone gave me a perspective that I didn't realize I had when I looked through the "real" camera's viewfinder - it really gave me height, the ability to focus while holding the phone above my head. The extra room around my mother standing in front of her classroom blackboard, for example, gives you more information about her classroom than the saturated colors picked up by my DSLR. However, the lack of a filter on the DSLR led to more saturated colors - the colors of summer that I was trying to convey - such as the green grass stains on my mother's white tennis shoes as she mowed the lawn.

  

I added my digital point-and-shoot, with all it's shooting options and zoom capabilities, to the mix? What else would have been revealed about the subjects? Or does the filtering options on the iPhone inherently add an interesting element unattainable with a "real" point-and-shoot camera? That's the exercise I have planned for my next trip.I found both camera options to be valuable tools and successful in their own ways. Now I'm curious: What if I had added my digital point-and-shoot with all its shooting options and zoom capabilities into the mix? What else would have been revealed about the subjects?  Or do the filtering options on the iPhone inherently add an interesting element unattainable with a "real" point-and-shoot camera?

Urban Safari

 
Strolling Jungle Island can be a great opportunity to practice photography as there are a wide variety of subjects to challenge one's creativity and technical skills. Particularly, when you get to go with your photography professor and three very energetic kids running ahead of you!

 
It is a great location to practice how to overcome certain challenges. For me, the major issues were the distance to the animals and shooting through glass or bars. In these situations, sometimes tightly cropping to an animal's face, or body, helps getting a shot with real impact.




Moving subjects can also be challenging as rarely do these animals stay still, although I did stumble upon one or two animals in the perfect pose.

Patience is a must and for the most part one has to stick around and wait for something interesting to happen. And, of course, there is always the changing light and trying to find a good angle of view. 

 




Since I now have an annual pass, I will most certainly go back soon and try again with different exposures and lenses. As with all things, practice makes perfect!

THREE CAMERAS

I was visiting familiar landscapes in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and I wanted to capture in photographs the light and textures that I associate with the end of the summer. In my head, I know how the late August light casts everything in a soft, warm light. The cool relief of dark shadows and swimming pools. The dry blades of grass that still somehow retain their saturated colors.

I wanted to communicate those sensations recorded by the camera in my head, but I didn’t know which camera in my hands would get it right. So, I shot most of my subjects twice, often standing in the same spot and keeping the frames as similar as possible. The only significant difference between the frames was the focal length: I had no control over the standard iPhone camera lens, while with my Nikon I tended to shoot with either a 50mm or 20 mm lens set with a wide aperture.

Can you tell which camera was used for each frame? Which frames do you prefer, the iPhone images or the “real” camera frames -- and why?  The answers and my picks will be revealed in a future blog post.

One Frame a Day

IPC Visual Lab has extend the invitation to its students to produce one picture a day
for the next consecutive 70 days.  We are also extending this challenge to the public,
as part as of a photo competition where the winner wins free classes in Spring 2013
and also gets to be part of Iris PhotoCollective's exhibition in the fall.  If you think you have
the skills then please let us know at ipcvisuallab@gmail.com.  Each image must be
produced in the vein of photojournalism.  No digital manipulation or photoshop trickery,
and definitely no setups.   All images must be by a single photographer with cutlines
and other meta data information.  Good luck, now let see what IPC Visual Lab student,
Zeus Shama, has submitted.

 

Hard to Enjoy: Day 1 

September 22, 2012

This photo breaks my heart and is hard to share.  This is my wife and son sitting on a stone wall down in Key Largo, Florida.  We drove down on a Sunday morning in September to get away from the stress of my current jobless situation but it proved to be more difficult than anticipated.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

No Kids to Play With: Day 2

September 23, 2012

This image is part of the "Down Turn" series  that was shot within a two block radius of my home in Cutler Bay neighborhood of my home in Miami, Florida.  It is late September, the end of Hurricane season, and this backyard has no children as the family that lived in this home abandoned it due to being "upside down on their mortgage".  Families are fleeing their homes not because of natural disasters but man-made ones.

Barren Landscape: Day 3
September 24, 2012
This is an image is also part of the "Down Turn" series that was shot within blocks of my home in Cutler Bay neighborhood of Miami, Florida.  It is  late September, the end of Hurricane season, this is prime plot of land that was scheduled to start construction for a Mall.  But due to the economic downturn in the economy, the project has been abandoned indefinitely.

ZShama

Vacation Experiment

After spending a week in Paris, France I was looking over old photographer books owned by my grandfather.  My grandfather, Bernard, 80, was a paratrooper for the French Special Forces in Algerian War from 1957 to 1958 (Algerian War was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movement from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France  - source Wikipedia).  He rarely talks about his wartime adventures and when it is brought up he quickly changed the conversation.  He never showed me any photos of battle just training images.  When pressed, he would pick-up one of many photo books and precede to look at ones with animals.

As a mental refuge from wartime memories, Grandfather would share his photo books on animals.
Never talking (very awkward) he would just look at the pages while turning them at his own pace.

After receiving his first digital camera, Grandfather started documenting his daily life one frame at time and storing them on his computer.  Grandfather for some particular reason would concentrate on two distinctive geese that lived near his farm house.  From that point on, Grandfather would  continue photographing animals in pairs documenting the lives of his animal subjects.

Inspired by his love of animal photography, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and emulate his photographic style and ventured out to a local horse stable. The perfect opportunity presented itself when my cousin, Antoine, invited me to attend his horse riding class and visit the stable where he kept his horse.

As I arrived, I noticed a rider briskly riding a horse.  I wanted to capture movement as the student

practiced trotting.   Due to lack of light, I first changed my ISO and proceed by lowering my shutter speed to 1/25 so that I capture the  motion blur to create the sense of movement.

After the trotting session and during the cool down stage of classes, Antoine approached his girlfriend and started
a conversation regarding an upcoming competition event.  During the exchange of words,
I noticed "V" created by Antoine's body, the horse, and its rider.  Quickly, I made a frame
slightly tilting the camera in order to get the parts of the saddle. 

As a avid sport shooter, I am use to shooting action. Grandfather taught me the art of slowing down.  To be more observant and finding other ways to express myself other than using words.  

How do you slow down? Share with me your thoughts and pictures that has caused you to stop and ponder.

EBitton

Deering Estate

The Deering Estate at Cutler is a 444-acre preserve at the edge of Biscayne Bay south of Miami. It was the winter home of the Deering family for 70 years before the property and its historic buildings were acquired by the state and Miami-Dade County in the mid-1980s. Now open to tours and nature walks, the estate offered an opportunity to try shooting two subjects I don't often seek out: interiors and nature.

The Beaux Arts home that Charles Deering built in the early 20th century has remained largely unchanged since his death in 1927. Largely empty of furniture, the ballroom and other interior spaces all incorporate natural elements in some way. The ceilings of the ballroom and exterior passageways incorporate shells and ocean imagery, while humidity bends the light from electric lamps. Lush views of palms and pine-rockland habitat through upstairs windows fill rooms now empty of anything except artwork on the walls.

An 18mm-55mm lens gave me a wider perspective than I do with the 50mm prime lens I normally use, allowing me to capture some of the vistas unique to the estate -- specifically the water and the imperiled pine-rockland and tropical hardwood hammock, accessible only from specific paths.  

Golden orb spiders, suspended in a large web, guarded the entrance to one nature trail. They're not poisonous, but they're intimidating; the large one was roughly  the size of my palm. 

JKay

IPC VISUAL LAB FALL CLASSES

IPC Visual Lab is a 10-week photojournalism program is total immersion experience designed to provide instruction and hands-on training in the art of digital photography.  Students are encouraged to be creative, but are also taught to think of each project as a concise statement of artistic, documentary, and/or journalistic intent.  You will learn concepts that range in scope from beginner theory on the technical control of your camera settings to advanced topics in post-production and composition.  Personalized attention and review is provided by award winning photojournalists Carl Juste and C.W. Griffin, whose teaching is refreshing, fun and very engaging.

You can save ten percent on tuition by registering for classes by August 17, 2012.




Attend our Open House on September 14, 2012 at 7pm and meet our instructors, lecturers, and tour our facility at the Little Haiti Cultural Center.  Come for fun, food, and photography.

IPC Visual Lab classes begin September 22, 2012 and ends on November 24, 2012.
IPC Visual Lab offers Beginning, Intermediate, and Advance Study classes for both adults and youths.  Registration for classes is $20.00 and tuition is listed below.  Tuition and registration are not refundable. 

Future workshop are free for IPC Visual Lab students, but the public is welcome at a
cost of $20.00/workshop. 

Contact IPC Visual Lab for further details or attend the IPC Visual Lab Open House.  Please RSVP for classes and workshops in advance since space is limited. 

IPC Visual Lab 

Little Haiti Cultural Center
212 NE 59th Terrace
Miami, Florida 33137
305-796-4718
E-mail: ipcvisuallab@gmail.com


Youth/Adult
Beginning Class 400.00/600.00
Intermediate Class 500.00/800.00
Advance Studies TBA/1250.00

Blue Encounter

The setting was perfect, perfect for a photographer who's having trouble making images of real, live people. I hesitate to engage them -- but I'm getting there. 

Still, a dark, narrow gallery crammed with exquisitely dressed mannequins was ideal -- people, sort of, that I didn't have to talk to, plus they stood still.

The show at the Keni Valenti Gallery in Wynwood featured classic gowns from the '30s, '40s, '50s and '60s along with Haitian flags on the walls. Very dynamic -- sequins sparkled everywhere.

The mannequins were an otherworldly blue, and the exact same color was on the walls.

The light was awful, a challenge. Luckily, Carl had introduced me to "white balance" a few days before.

I was able to get up close and personal with these inanimate "people," in their faces. The constancy of the blue amid the swirl of all the colors of the fabrics was odd but calming, something to focus on.

But then, another face appeared, human, exotically adorned, and I suddenly realized just how lifeless those previously exciting mannequins were. I needed to capture the warmth, the expressiveness, the eyes of a human being. I forced myself to ask her if I could make an image. Turns out, she forced herself to say yes. I snapped her, and she fled. We talked a little while later. Bridget confessed that people have been taking her image all night and she was tired of it all. I confessed that I don't like to ask people if I can make an image. I congratulated the two of us for going beyond ourselves.

                                        Nancy Ancrum

Visual Perspective

IPC Visual Lab has a new feature, "Visual Perspective", which features the ideas, concepts,
and opinions that generate thought-provoking viewpoints through the eye of the lens.  Feel free to share your thoughts as IPC Visual Lab students engage the world through the power of their own visual voices.

Apocalypse Now

I shot some pictures at the July 4 fireworks on South Beach. I went to the fireworks with this Mike Sinclair image in mind: 

http://www.20x200.com/artworks/1479-mike-sinclair-fourth-of-july-2-independence

I just like how the haze of the smoke and the light freezes the action on the hill. All the spectators look like they're frozen in some kind of post-apocalyptic reckoning, but a reckoning they willingly awaited. It's the light reflected in the grass, not the lights in the sky, that is the focus of this spectacle.

I was surprised of a post-apocalyptic scene of sorts on South Beach, too.  The much-maligned police watch towers and paddy wagons that had been deployed during Urban Beach Week over the Memorial Day weekend were set up for the Fourth of July crowd, too, even though the holiday was on a Wednesday. I found my view of the fireworks obstructed by one of the police watch towers, and another tower was in view just a block up the beach. It was like, "Happy Independence Day, you're under surveillance!"

I set my camera on a tripod and tried to make the best of the obstruction.  After the main show in the sky over the beach, I turned toward the impromptu fireworks display set off in the sand by people on the beach. Their figures became silhouettes outlined by the smoke hanging low in the humid night air.


                                                                                                                      JKAY

Project Memorial

What started out as another public gathering I had assigned myself to document has turned into an ongoing project at the Holocaust Memorial on Miami Beach.

I had planned to shoot a Holocaust Remembrance Day event April 15 at the monument just off Lincoln Road on South Beach. I was working that day, though, so by the time I showed up, the event had already started. I was faced with rows of people sitting in chairs and listening to a program of speakers at a podium, with the monument's signature giant metal hand rising in the background.

This wasn't what I had expected, and I didn't really feel like I could freely roam through the seated crowd, and without a long lens, I couldn't create individual portraits. From the back, I tried to get at least one shot that conveyed some information about the event taking place. I thought about Seamus Murphy's image, taken from the back, of men wearing top hats at a horse race, and I framed two men wearing yarmulkes with the monument's giant hand looming before them.

Since I wasn't going to be able to shoot the crowd pictures I had planned, I walked through the monument. It was my first visit, even though I've lived on South Beach for years. The monument centers around a giant metal hand that seems to rise from stone and water. It's only when you get closer that you realize the stricken, traumatized figures that are clinging to the metal arm supporting the giant hand. The curved path that leads you to these figures is hidden from the road, and it's not until you start walking the path do you realize that the curve is leading you down to these figures that representing the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

In lieu of photographs of the living people holding a memorial service, I tried to find lifelike elements in the monument to highlight. At certain angles, the main, central hand is clearly defined amid the lily pads in the monument's reflecting pool. As you follow the path around the pool, the hand becomes framed by green vines and blooming bougainvillea. At the heart of the monument, the tragic figures that climb up the central arm make eye contact with visitors.

On a second visit to the monument, I started exploring its scale. The anguished, distorted figures are roughly life-sized, and they reach out toward living visitors. At various angles, the figures frame the names of Holocaust victims etched into reflective marble walls.

I'll be repeating this assignment to explore the monument's scale, the materials used, the artist's intention, the monument's mood and symbolism, the way the figures' shadows show the passage of time, and other details sculpted into the memorial.
                                                                                                         JKay

                                                                                              

JKay: Bon Iver , Miami Beach

I gave myself a mini-assignment at the Bon Iver concert at the Fillmore last week: Try to make interesting frames, no matter how many people are standing in front of me. I brought my Leica point-and-shoot and used the zoom and the "high grain" setting (at 1600 iso) to shoot in the low and flashing light. The biggest struggle I had was holding the frame steady as the light changed and the people in front of me moved around. Though the zoom got me closer to the musicians, I found that pulling back to a wider frame held things more steady and exposed more of the contrast between the bright stage lights and the darkened stage. By going wide, I could fill the frame with more information, even when there was less light. Instead of making portraits of the musicians, I tried to capture images that reflected the atmosphere of Bon Iver's show, particularly in the moments when individual performers took the spotlight and everything else on stage faded away.

URBAN BEACH WEEK 2012

UnWelcome to Miami by Rochelle Oliver

It was the sort of thing nightmares are made of. Hordes of men and women armed with guns walking the streets. Their accents, punctuated with sounds that indicate they’re from the same tribe. These foreigners lurked around every corner. They came by air, by foot and by car. I was a hostage in my own backyard. On Memorial Day, May 28, 2012, the police, that is, were everywhere.

Nearly $2 million was spent to deter and detain party-goers during Urban Beach Week – a four-day affair. The money was used to employ 600 officers, an air chopper, high-tech surveillance observation towers, a DUI checkpoint and a one-way traffic loop. I decided to go to South Beach, armed with only my Canon G10, to find out for myself: Are black people really this dangerous?

This series of images counters the racist comments being perpetrated by the media, the police and the noisemakers (not to be confused with the masses).

Bold and Beautiful

I saw people of all shades and sizes commingling and laughing. I struck up a conversation with a detective from Hialeah who said, ‘there are people wearing outfits they have no right to be wearing.’ She snickered as she said this. I replied with a smile and told her, ‘yeah, but that happens year around. You know, in the wintertime all the beached whales are on the shore trying to get a tan.’ She turned away from me.

I didn’t understand why the sight of black barely naked bodies was so disturbing. After all, Miami Beach is topless-city central. Arguably, I’ve seen other women’s titties more often than I have seen my own.  

Purpose: I took photos that explored the nakedness of people with white skin and black skin. I tried to capture Miami Beach for what it is: A place where people – clothed, unclothed, fat, tall, tucked or taped – can enjoy being kissed by the sun.

Lighting: The fact that the sun was high in the sky helped to further my point. It provided a sharp contrast that forced me (and hopefully people who view these pictures) to place people into a box and ask what’s the difference?

But something was amiss. In the background, palm trees and observation towers were fighting for the same space. The palm trees were losing.

Police Presence 
The ultimate cost of Beach Week 2012 cannot be calculated in dollars. Business owners said traffic was slow because it was difficult to access the shops and restaurants. I approached two men from Mississippi who attended Miami Memorial Weekend last year. They said that all the police enforcement made them feel uncomfortable.

Purpose: I tried to capture the scale and voyeur nature of the police presence. I did a 360 from the visitor’s POV – looking at the cops – and the cop’s POV, too.

Parking was prohibited along main streets. Along Ocean Drive, sidewalks were blocked off with a maze-work of barricades, which forced people to walk on the streets without access to covered walkways. This was supposedly done to stop dine-and-dash patrons. But if anyone wanted to skip out on a check, all they had to do was walk onto the street. A waiter would easily get caught up with the trappings before catching the thief.

The observation towers, however, proved to be the most obtrusive. They pieced the blue Miami skyline. They showed up in my pictures even when I tried to work around them. They will surely appear in the backdrop of the thousands that descended onto the Beach for vacation. And naturally, the images will be seen by millions on Facebook giving new meaning to the saying, “Welcome to Miami, Bitch!”