Tricia doesn’t like Halloween, but I like it to the point where others get annoyed. I have been known to play Elvira’s Haunted Hits on repeat for HOURS, force friends to carve pumpkins, hand-out Halloween stickers with great cheer, eat chocolate to the point of exhaustion, and even make Halloween gingerbread houses (toasted coconut makes for excellent fall leaves).
For Halloween I have been costumed as: The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, a piece of a graffiti wall (with friends), cowgirl, witch, The Green Goblin (yes, the pumpkin-throwing villain from Spiderman), a zebra, a blind mouse (one of three), a Trick-or-Treat bag. ALL HOMEMADE (mostly by my excellent-sewing mother).
Highlights of this week include a dynamite interview with Dyna Moe (yay Mad Men!) and an exclusive Stickers & Donuts contest (click here to go directly to the entry form!)
Usually I don’t re-post directly from SwissMiss, since that means pretty much the whole interweb has seen it already, but my favorite-favorite thing from the blogs this week is the Poladroid. Download it, and turn your photos into greeny-yellow, polaroid-edged photos. The program is super-fun, and, believe it or not, I’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting for something exactly like it!
Remember when I went to the New York’s World’s Fair Grounds? Well, I knew those pictures would be perfect in Polaroid. Don’t you think?
I’ll be back in full-force soon! In the meantime…
The photos in the “Dreams of Flying” series by Jan von Holleben are creative & fun. (They remind me of Yeondoo Jung’s work.)
The kids all look like they are doing super-cool things (like flying in outerspace) but they’re actually laying on the floor with common household items!
Go to the web-site to see all of the photos (there’s a lot more, and they’re fun to flip through).
Note from Maria: This is another post (with an interview!) from Tricia, who recently (yesterday!) did her ultra-successful first S&D post about pencil cases. I *love* question five!
FACT! I am obsessed with critters, which is probably one of the reasons why I absolutely adore L. Bates Jaffe’s photography!
Her animal mask photos remind me of my favorite scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s when Holly and Fred steal animal masks from the five and dime store. The above photo is from her “animal masks” collection.
I love how she plays on proportions in her “one pill makes you smaller” and “animal crackers” collections. The naked woman is literally on the brink of being consumed by a mysterious black hole!
…and her other non-critter photographs are utterly beautiful as well. The top is a sample of her “decades” project, which features a series of 18 epoch (which sounds like EPIC..har har…) inspired photos. The bottom is a portrait of a little weeee.
And now for a special Stickers and Donuts sprinkley treat: a little Mad Libish interview with L. Bates Jaffe. (JUMP TO IT!) (more…)
To continue my obsession with photographer Thomas Allen, I’d like to point out two things:
1. Thomas Allen put all his pictures from Oprah magazine on his web-page, including some more photos that didn’t make the cut (I spilled the beans on some of these a few weeks ago with this post, but he put up even more on his blog, so I recommend stopping over and taking a look).
2. I was recently informed that TA did a photo exclusively for the Aperture Foundation. The photo (as seen below) is on sale now in limited edition quantities, and apparently they’re going like hotcakes (contact Kellie McLaughlin Kmclaughlin@aperture.org, Manger of Limited-Edition Photographs if you’re thinking about making a purchase!).
“Inspired by a love of the pop-up books of his childhood, Allen revels in creating his scenarios from vintage pulp fiction novels” (Aperture Foundation).
If fine art is out of your price range, you can at least admire the photo and read Allen’s comments about the photo and artistic inspirations on the bottom of the page.
From Thomas Allen’s Uncovered (signed, as you can see!), which made it on amazon.com’s Best Books of 2007.
The baby-board-book style collection contains dozens of photos of books cut, twisted, and coming to life (and includes my two of my favorite pictures, Bookend and Red).
I continue to think this is all so incredibly cool and am showing off my new book to everyone today! Click here to see my other posts about Thomas Allen.
Last week, I posted about Thomas Allen’s recent work for an article about memoirs in Oprah Magazine. Allen cuts people and things from books, carefully folds them into a scene, and then photographs it all with a meaningful depth of field. His work for O Magazine took over a month of work, more than a 40 count box of X-ACTO blades, and over 700 digital samples. The completed project included 6 (amazing) photos — how’s that for hard work?!
Thomas Allen has generously given me four of the digital camera proofs that didn’t “make the cut” for the O Magazine article. These aren’t printed or published anywhere else at the moment, so I am incredibly thrilled to be the one to share them with you!
You’ll find a version of the photo above on page 182 of the August 2008 issue of O Magazine. In the final photo, the book is red, no title is visible, and you catch a glimpse of woman’s arms and legs going through the screen door and coming out the other side of the book. I actually really like the stillness of the photo above. In my mind, the open screen door and the book title generate the feeling of a peaceful summer day in the country.
A photo like the one above does not appear anywhere in the issue. It was probably abandoned in favor of something else.
Although this particular boy in the water doesn’t appear anywhere in the article, a similarly vintage family of three plays in the water of a book cover on page 179 of the magazine. The close cropping of this photo differs from most of Allen’s work — it gives a real sense that you’re in the scene, but doesn’t reveal that the pieces are cut from books.
The final version of this photo is shown below, at right; the proof that didn’t make the cut is shown above (and at left below). As you can see, three dogs were added, a new book was used, and an entirely different bed was constructed for the final photo. The two photos are very different, but work around a similar idea. Both of these were taken for a section of the O article called “Three Dog Nights” about Abigail Thomas’s memoir A Three Dog Life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures above! If you want to see more Thomas Allen photos, I’ve spent some time hunting down the top five places where you can satiate yourself (Thomas Allen is hard to google, because about 10 other famous people share his name. Also, right click the links to open in new window):
Shape + Color recently posted Liz Wolfe’s new photography: bright colors, sweet candy, cute objects, with a touch of morbidity. (That ceramic dear isn’t just covered in sugar dots, the image is called “Diseased Deer”.)
Liz’s old work is just as fun as her old — check out this “Hand Punctured with Candy Stick.” Cute…?
I love Cleo Sullivan’s photography (I suggest you flip through all of the wonderful pictures on her web-site, as long as you don’t mind occasional nudity), especially these two photos set up like scenes from popular children’s books. (In case you didn’t have a childhood those books are Where the Wild Things Are and The Cat in the Hat).
I also really like the picture below. (All of those bright colors! And fluff!)
I absolutely adore the sweet and colorful photography at LOVEPICS. Very Stickers & Donuts!
Their free pdf magazine (it takes a little while to download), is really enjoyable to flip through (especially since the pages “flip” like a real magazine).
I was so excited to find that my favorite photographer, Thomas Allen, provided art for the newest issue of O Magazine (yeah, I read Oprah, what?!). The article, about Memoirs, includes at least six specially created Thomas Allen photographs (don’t know who this guy is? look here), some of them full pages or full-page spreads.
Above and below are examples of just pieces from full imagines in the magazine, but I suggest a full perusal at a newstand near you (just flip to page 166).
Today I offer you a tour of the walls of my office cubicle. A cubicle is always an interesting amalgamation of quotes, articles, and postcards — usually little reminders of what life really means, of things you might enjoy if you weren’t at work, or your own personal version of motivational posters or cynicism.
A beautiful letterpress graduation card from Hello Lucky. (Love the typography!)
A Frida Kahlo card featuring the image above, from the Frida Kahlo ArtBox.
An Edward Gorey postcard (”Donald imagined things.”)
A 2008 Frida Kahlo wall calendar.
A postcard featuring the 2006 National Poetry Month poster design. Love the poetry & graphic design combo!
The “you’re-loved self-esteemizer” availible for download as high quality pdf from Time Out New York. (Another example of great design, and very funny!)
A friend just informed me of this cool photography project that attempts to take a picture of one child (12 or under) from every country, but the child must now live in NYC. So far, they’ve got 151 cutie pies.
The Basic How-To
Take a screenshot during expose’s “show all windows” when all of your pictures are opened. If that didn’t make sense, read more below for a full “tutorial”. This all takes about 10 seconds, especially if you already have all of your pictures opened.
Why?
My biggest disappointment when I first switched from PC to Mac was the absence of Picasa. One of my favorite features on Picasa was creating easy photo collages. Also, I refuse to use iPhoto (because I’m stubbornly waiting for Picasa to be developed for Macs and don’t want to get too emeshed in another program in the meantime!).
So, when I first received my brand new Mac, I created my own picture collage technique. I’m sure there are other ways to do this, but I usually open all of my photos in Photoshop anyway to do a little editing before posting them to Facebook and whatnot, so this is a really simple way to create a fast collage.
I’ve been taking pictures of areas in Queens (East Flushing mainly). I’m working on a Flickr set, but don’t want to link it until I’ve got a little more to show. So instead, for you, a sneak-peak below. (more…)
