Peaceful Sunrise by Charles Hooper.

48"X60" acrylic wash on canvas.

Source unkown 🖤💚🖤💚

Diego’s Statement of Photography 2023

All my life, as far back as I could remember, I was always a fan of being detailed, of finding stories and making stories, of entertaining people with what I did and made.

When I was around 9 or 10, my father signed me up to a photography class, where I began to learn the ins and outs of a camera, as well as various techniques, such as a shallow depth of field, and the concept of thirds. In that same summer, I had also taken a stop-motion class where I would rearrange lego figurines with my “classmates” and make our theater pieces. The former served as a building block to my artistic style, while the latter helped me understand the concept of a plot. Admittedly, both were a bit underwhelming in terms of what they had to offer. Nevertheless, I did feel their presence in my life was essential.

As I grew older, I would find myself photographing nature (mostly clouds) whether the timing was appropriate or not, and during my last semester before the covid pandemic, I found myself working with what I had to create the scenes I had in my head for my Advanced Videography class. The 2 years afterwards is where I started to create stories, and once again I had found myself making images in my mind and applying them in my stories. Eventually, I returned to Delaware Tech and began applying what I’d practiced and honed into creating new pieces altogether.

My portraits were my representation of everyday people. For the working class, I had to time it correctly, so that I could photograph them without them noticing, so as to get them as candid as possible. For the portrait of the older women, I asked the woman in the pink shirt to pose, whereas the woman in the white “guess” shirt (my mother) was shot in a happenstance moment, so as to create the effect of a movement blur while she was in focus.

My beach photos were taken in early October, and were done to create a sense of peace, of commercialism, and of liminality.

My higher still lifes were photographed in dark lighting to create focus on the lighter aspects of the photos - such as the eye of the spine of the book, the books in the middle of the composition, and the selections of music on either side of the multipurpose record player. The only exception of this, of course, is the wall of crosses, which was well-illuminated by the chandelier light overhead to symbolize the ascension of my aunt and grandfather seen in photographs at the bottom of the photo and who are no longer among the living.

The lower still-lifes are based on the last project of the semester, where he had to tie them together with a theme. As I struggled to think of what I could piece together, I was inspired by the season, and did a collage with the theme being the commercialization of nostalgia. The christmas tree - which is from A Charlie Brown Christmas - serves as both a pandering to nostalgia (since the movie has been around for nearly 60 years), and as a tree to display the “gifts”. The gameboy watch, commemorative Uno deck, and the Coca-Cola bottle were examples of successful nostalgia pandering, while the four-eyed Grimace doll is an example of poor pandering, since many generations - young and old - found the whole series of ads confusing, since older generations didn’t understand the impact of Cactus Plant Flea Market, and younger generations barely remember Grimace - or the other dolls, for that matter - as a McDonald’s character. The Coca-Cola bottle also serves to tie in with the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, since the original movie was sponsored by the Coca-Cola company. The final photo in this collage is a parody of M.C. Escher’s pencil drawing “Hand with a Reflective Ball”, since I felt that by using the ball, he saw a new perspective to art, as did I, when I realized in my drafts that the sphere would give my position away in the photo.

My ad was created by using a commemorative anniversary can of Barbasol shaving cream, which inspired the tagline that accompanied it.

While most of my high-exposure photos were purposeful, the bright ascending line -which was actually the full moon - was a happy accident, though one I am most proud of. The rest were also my proudest pieces of the assignment, and as such, I present them here.

Ashtray, 1952.

this weekend I was feeling fishy 💁🏻‍♀️

if you love statement earrings, you’re gonna LOVE Theydy’s Things. It was love at first sight for myself.

I’ve always been a huge fan of statement jewelry, but could never find exactly what I was envisioning. That’s where Theydy’s Things comes in.

Eva manages to craft non-stop beauties that fit exactly what I was/will always be looking for!

I’ve ordered from them so many times, I consider myself their number one fan 😘

if you visit their website, don’t forget to follow them on Twitter (X)! You get a BTS look at how they make these beautiful babies!

stunning statement piece

https://www.instagram.com.thewhitecompany

My latest obsession 🖤✨

Falling leaves

It’s Friday and our “ In the shop” YouTube video is out. These are our Autumn “Falling Leaves Dangles”  Handmade of polymer clay slab work.  These are big statement pieces but are light weight because they are polymer clay.    Please take a look at our latest YouTube video and give it a like and a share

Hal hears someone say Bruce could beat him easily and goes and beats him to death because it hurts his pride