kelsie-vang-blog

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I'll be gone for a long time on this account

I'll be logging off from this personal blog for a really long time. Don't bother contacting me on this account. If you wanna reach me, just message me on Facebook @ kelsie.vang from Minnesota.

See you there.

[kelsie-vang-blog]

Barbie Fashionistas Guide, Part II

For the dolls that were released between 2014-2016, check out this guide: [x]

Listed here are a few dolls from 2016, and everything released in 2017 (or projected for release in 2018), including the new Ken bodies.

I’m not a doll expert, just a passionate fan. I’ve changed the naming system of the post slightly, since nicknames for individual dolls have kind of fallen out of popular use. The dolls are organized first by body, then by mold. If the mold has a common nickname, I include it. I used this reference guide by Willyssa [x], this guide by Katti’s Dolls [x], and lot of guess work to figure these out. The photos are close-up screenshots of the official promo photos, and some are of better quality than others. 

Please message me if you have any corrections or additional information.

Keep reading

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Ethics & Rights of Photographers

Part 1. 

What are your rights as a photographer?

I think one of the rights of photographers is the right of copyright, & the right to respect other people’s privacy. Photographers also have the rights to freely express their artwork through their photography, either some people may find it offensive, controversial, or not.

What are your responsibilities as an image maker?

I think one of the responsibilities as an image maker is that they have to give credit, sources, & citations to whatever images they take from others & implement them into their own artworks.

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Part 2:

Without editing your orginal post revisit your ideas about your rights and responsibilities- have they changed?

They’ve changed how I feel. They make me to think critically & to feel more prepared & cautious of what can bring up when you post an image in public.

Pick 2-3 of the stories posted in the links to comment on. How do the issues impact your work?

https://petapixel.com/2014/08/11/nypd-sends-out-official-memo-telling-officers-theyre-allowed-to-be-photographed-and-filmed/

https://petapixel.com/2014/09/14/ill-photoshop-face-believe-okay/

How do they impact you as a viewer/consumer of images?

These articles make me questions the motives that each individual photographers have in mind when they take pictures. Some are photographers as career for advertisement, so of course they’re going to use Photoshop to manipulate in image to look more clean & professional. Some other people use technology of photographs and video-recording to archive a particular event or scene, albeit be the police force, or social-protesting, or etc. 

But it also makes me question what the viewers want to see from these photographs. They perhaps want an image maybe that proves a biased point, or they just want an image that’s a piece of artwork that can draw them a sense of mood.

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Final Project

My final project will be a series of scenery that will convey atmospheric mood through colors, subject, & objects. Each photo will be my interpretation how I see a certain scene, through this I want my audience to see what I see. Each photo will have different themes and genre, like a sense of glam, or horror, coldness, moodiness, & etc. each photo will have complex & chaotic composition to convey perhaps a narration going on.

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Interview with Yenefy Dominguez Galindo

1) What are your favorite themes that you like to portray in your photography? (i.e. floral, animals, colors, fashion, glam, nature, etc.)

I personally enjoy taking pictures of nature and landscapes. I haven't really experiment much taking pictures of people like senior portraits 

2) What messages do you like to convey in your photography? serenity, and the beauty of the season. I am from Mexico and we do not have change of seasons like we have over here. The change of colors over fall and the snow during the winter are such a great experience for me that I like to capture over and over again each year.

3) Besides photography, what are your favorite art mediums? (painting, drawing, pastels, arts & crafts, etc.) I like to develop branding. I like to design logos, company themes, website, marketing materials, etc. 

4) If you were guaranteed to make a lot of money with an art career, what would that art career be? I think I would choose graphic designer. I am not going for that major right now but it is something that I could think about getting more classes in the future.

5) Will you continue to create more photography projects after graduation? I think I will.  just for fun and maybe incorporate that to build my portfolio

6) What is one tip/advise that you wished you'd knew before taking photography? To save up enough money to buy my own camera and also that the VCT Lab is not open on Saturdays.

7) Would you recommend any college student (who's not majoring in any field of fine arts) to try out photography class? OF COURSE!!! it is so much fun!

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Photography Interview Reflection

In this post I will be reviewing 2 pages on “Art of Creative Photography” website that interviews 2 different photographers.

Cally Whitham’s interview was short. The questions that were asked of her were pretty basic, like any questions that you would ask a photographer. They weren’t personal questions, but they were focused soley on her artwork. But Cally’s responds really intrigues me. Though she gave short answers, her answers had a very surreal feel to them. Cally’s artwork doesn’t really look like photography, because she edits so much manipulation into her artwork with adding grains, warm tones, small lighting, & focus, that her artwork looks more like paintings. Her answers weren’t technical, but has more of a dreamy-state to them. She leans her philosophy more on the art, poetry, & history. Throughout her interview, she kept repeating ‘nosalgic,’ & kept referring to her childhood & to capturing moments in time with her camera. She also advices that photographers shouldn’t inspiration from others, but to broaden their horizons and look back to the past by the great masters of art and thinkers. I think Cally’s unique as a photographer, instead of entering in to the modern crowd of photographers, Cally stems away from them, & insteads creates her own branch of artwork. She likes to stay in her own little world. She quotes in her interview, “Work out what your own voice is; what is it that you want to say, without reference to anyone else.” My reaction to Cally’s response to the interview was certainly she practices what she preaches.

James Maher interviewer was longer than Cally’s. James has a funny, unique quirk. His past is rather something you’d hear from a kid, like sliding down stairs with an inflatable mattress in NYC winter, & using photoshop to make fake IDs for his friends. I find it rather entertaining & amusing though, & at the same time I was quite surprise & rather shocked how comfortable he was sharing this to the whole world. But on his serious side, James was studying into the physical field of math & computer science in college, but found photography to be his passion. At first James was just experimenting by taking photos on the streets, just trying to find a type of style o/ concept of photography he liked. But what I learned from his responses was know encouraging he was to give advices to other photographers, that you should start teaching yourself what you like, & build self-confidence. James answers were longer, and when he states his answer in his first sentence, he gives further explanations & backup stories to prove his point, which I think helped.

I think James’ answers were much more learnable then Cally’s. Cally just gives a point-&-shot answer, without going into too much detail as to they why’s. But I felt like I personally learned alot more from James from his responses. What I learn from both these photographers from their interviews was how humane their answers were. You get to feel like you connect with the photographer, & how they greatly impact their photos. You learn from them their past, & how their experiences greatly shape their personalities & style of photography.

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References:

http://artofcreativephotography.com/fineart/cally-whitham-2/

http://artofcreativephotography.com/portrait/james-maher/

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Manipulated Projects

For my next project, I will use dolls as my subjects again, but besides taking photos of them of small figurines in the real world, I will use Photoshop to maximize their scale & size as tall as humans.

 This project will be different than the last project I did with dolls. The last project was where the background took control of how these dolls will be placed & positioned, but this time with Photoshop, the backgrounds will be controlled this time & will be used to fit into a scene with a photoshopped doll.

 I will also use the environment, physical surroundings, & atmospheric touches to convey mood into these photos, to make it seem that this world I’ve created has no human living in it, but instead dolls as the main inhabitants in this world.

 These dolls will be positioned & placed into everyday life, example: such as eating breakfast at the table, sitting on the couch watching television, lawn mowing the backyard, doing dishes, & etc.

 This project will be taking as a surreal theme & manipulated immensely with Photoshop. This project will submerge the viewer into an other world, a world like ours, where dolls take over the world. I will do my best to convey these photos as life-like as possible, and then maybe perhaps publish this project as a book in Blurb.

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Book Review

I’ll be giving a brief book review of a photography book called “The Dog” by Ruth Silverman. 

The sequence of the book begins around the 1910s - 1990s.

The beginning pages of the book starts with a timeline from the early 1910s, where it shows one of the earliest photography of dogs. It starts out with some vintage photos of postcards & stamps of dogs. I like this layout because it shows us one of the early uses of dog photography, & how this type of artwork came to be.

Throughout the book, the timeline comes to progress further & further. But what each photography have in common are the dogs having physical interaction with their human counterparts. Every dog in the photobook is always standing or sitting next to their human companion.

What I like about this book was how each & every photo captures the relationship between dog & man, how dogs have such an influence on humankind, you can tell through the gestures of the interaction between them. 

This book is a compilation & proof of the physical & emotional bond between man & dog.

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The William Eggleston Challenge

When I was first introduced to a famous photographer known as William Eggleston, I was given to see samples of his work in his personal published photo books. I was expecting to see his workpieces as spectacular, mind-blowing, & something that broke the 4th wall. But... I was disappointed. His photos were boring & dull. It wasn’t anything new or out of the ordinary. He just took pictures of the things that we see everyday.

It wasn’t until I was sent a website about another photographer who was blogging about the works of William Eggleston that I began to understand his works. Eggleston did broke the 4th wall during his time back in the 60s, just not in the way that I would imagine it to be.

Eric Kim wrote the blog in his own website for other photographers to learn what he learned from Eggleston’s photos. One of the lessons that stood out to me & challenged me from what Kim wrote was two of them: #1 Lesson: Photograph Democratically & #2 Lesson: Photograph Your Hometown.

How Kim described “Photograph Democratically” meant for others that you don’t have to take photos of the most exquisite and cool scenes. But that you can also make a beautiful photo out of a scene that you see everyday. But how you can manipulate a scene to make it more interesting is a different story.

I think this lesson one of the most important to learn for every photographer in the world, because we seem to just take advantage of the scenes that we’ve seen already, & sometimes we don’t really appreciate what’s in our sight, and that we tend to always overlook them as boring, mundane, & unexciting. But I learned from growing up that it’s quite amazing what advantage I had, compare to the less unfortunate who don’t have it easy as I did. And so as a photographer, it’s my job to show others how I see the world in my perspective through my photos, & in this case, show how I see mundane things in our everyday lives more interesting & a work of art.

A few tricks for your camera:

Camera Angle - don’t just use your height as a tripod to snap pictures, but also try something new, like kneeling down on the ground, or get up somewhere high on a chair to get a bird’s eye view to get a new perspective of a scene.

Subject Matter - get a person or an object that’s the subject of a scene, & try to exaggerate it. Like zooming in on them or get right in front of it. & think if you want the background to be part of the subject too, either you can focus the background or just blur it. Either way, it really changes the viewer’s eye to see what the photographer wants them to see.

Colors - take advantage of what’s in front of you, colors are wonderful. Use them to paint your photos to tell a picture, either it’d be metaphorically narrating a scene or just emphasize a scene to capture the moment.

For my style, I combine all of these together in one photo, & if you look at Eggleston’s photos, he uses these elements in his own artworks himself. So I use these as a format when I have a hard time capturing a boring scene & try to make it seem more interesting & thought provoking.

Resources:

Eric Kim’s blog

Photo: “Grocery Store” (1965-68) - William Eggleston

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Purple as a Metaphor:

When I think of the color purple, I think of a very calming & soothing color. Purple is such a vibrant color that can range in different hues from dullness, brightness, & darkness. Yet, naturally purple is a rare sighting to be seen organically on Earth. During the following past eras on Earth, people before our modern time had different interpretations of purple. Let’s start with Christianity:

“The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace and called together the whole company of soldiers. They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, “Hail, king of the Jews!”” - Mark 15:16-18

In the ancient days, people who wore purple were thought to be wealthy, of high status, or even of royalty. This was because purple was hard to produce & manufactured, & was quite expensive to purchase.

In this bible verse, Jesus was given a purple robe, and was called the “King of Jews.” But the soldiers weren’t necessarily hailing him nor praising him, but they were mocking him as the king of Jews, as proof for the crown of thorns being placed on his head. The crown of thorns was meant to be a makeshift crown and placed on Jesus to mock the authority & royalty that Jesus claimed to be of.

But nowadays in this modern era, purple is free for anyone to claim & wear on themselves. Nowadays, it doesn’t represent what it once was a long time ago. And nowadays the color purple is open up for interpretation for any individual who wears purple.

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Image Sources:

1st Image:  http://ingridsundberg.com/2014/02/04/the-color-thesaurus/

2nd Image: “Jesus praying at Gethsemane before being betrayed” by Warner Sallman

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Quick Colors Guide:

I love playing with colors, especially when I’m personalizing my own color palette, where I can combine colors together to form a frame of artwork for my art projects, or aesthetics, either that might be picking out color palettes for my drawn OC’s physical appearance & clothing. To me colors can bring interpretation of a character, depending on the shade of the hue, its warmth & coolness in tones.

Colors are very important in life, or it seems to be. Only through physically seeing colors, do they really matter us. Colors help us humans categorize everything, through the colors of our skin, hair, clothing, and through objects that we use everyday do we define them. But to me, colors can also give a deeper meaning, such as viewing a color through emotional interpretation. Examples below:

Red: energy, masculine, fire, excitement, passion

-- Red is a very powerful color, it’s very rich & one of the few colors that stands out the most. It’s intense & powerful.

Green: nature, vegetation, healthy, organic, natural, bare

-- Green is a color that’s very calm in either shades. It’s not a daring color like red. It’s quite a soothing color.

Blue: calm, sadness, emotional, cold, depression, water

-- Blue is a very popular color. In any shades, it can be daring, bold, or calm, & tranquil. Each individual shade is up to interpretation by anyone really.

Pink: love, compassion, feminine, girly, fun, sweetness

-- Pink is a very girly color, in all shades of pink they all feel soft & tender. This tends to be my most favorite color.

Brown: earthly, stability, comfort, home

-- Brown is a very homely color. It tends to not be a favorite color among teens. It’s a color that’s not as bright as red, yellow, or pink. But it’s more of an undertone that’s very calming & puts the eyes at ease.

But really, it’s up to the individual’s eyes to interpret the color of how they see something to be. Maybe sometimes later I might give a full guide to color symbology, but for now, this is a just a brief introduction.

~ August 29, 2017

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[top from left to right to bottom] Mochi (half-pug, half-something else) Hatchi (half-chihuahua, half-pekingese) Cooper (toy poodle) Cooper is my family's dog & he's 10-years-old, he's very calm & reserved. Hatchi is my uncle's dog, he's very affectionate, protective, & makes a great lapdog. He can't live life without a companion sitting next to him. Mochi is my dad's cousin's dog, & she's very energetic, finicky, & sporadic. She's always in a happy mood, and loves to play with anyone, she's just simply larger than life. These dogs changed my life, they taught me responsibilities of being a dog owner, & they taught me how to love unconditionally for others. I can't live life without these dogs, they taught me so much how to smile & be happy. Each one of them are my best friends, they're my soulmates. ~ August 29, 2017