Media In Our Image

I was so very pleased a few months back when Sarah Ledesma, a fellow creative, muse and friend contacted me about working with Johanna Blakely, Veronica Jariqui, & herself on a social media campaign to accompany an article Blakely would be writing on social media and gender for the Womens Studies Quarterly VIRAL issue titled Media In Our Image.

It was a wonderful collaborative process, which I feel truly lucky to be part of. To be working with forward thinking women on a topic that is relatively new was exciting. When you hear Johanna speak, she has key points that make you wonder why no one has addressed these till now.

It was here that I also really learned to appreciate the value of social media platform Pinterest, which we used as an ideas board to get across the idea that we were after. Having something so visual to reference was key and I can imaging it would be a fabulous tool for everyone, esp artists working with clients.

However the real story lies with Johanna, I very much encourage you to read her blog from the Norman Lear Center Here.  Every women (and man) who uses social media should read this and keep up to date with her talks & publications. A note, Johanna has done two TED talks, both worth watching, check them out here. check it out: Media In Our Image

Back to work

Louis Vuitton ceiling on the Champs Elysees

I've just returned from a 3 week holiday in Europe, visiting England, France & Italy. It has been a wonderful journey both personally, exploring new cultures, photographically cause... well let's be honest. Can anyone take a bad photo in Europe? and finally, my husband and I had the opportunity to see some dear friends.

As mentioned earlier in a previous post, we did go to see the Helmut Newton exhibit at the Grand Palais. It was a real treat, seeing his work in gigantic print. The collection did not disappoint. If you have an opportunity to see it before it closes, GO! I did shoot on film and while I have my Paris pictures back I'm still awaiting the Italy & England pictures from A&I, which I only dropped off yesterday.

Excitingly now, I'm in final preparations for my B&W class at Julia Dean. It's going to be a fun week!

Scanning Black And White As Colour.

©Jasmine Lord 2012

I work with some rather amazing photographers at Lomography. I feel rather privileged that I do. Even though I teach here and there when my schedule permits, part of what I can't let it go of, isn't just about sharing knowledge about their rad fun cameras, it's the people. One lomographer (there are many) whose work I admire very much, is Satomi Sugiyama. Satomi is based in LA and you'll find her often in the lab at the West Hollywood Lomography Gallery Store. Satomi's attention to detail is sharp and her knowledge of film is phenomenal. I will blog more about her incredible body of work another time. For now I would like to share something interesting that she shared with me.

I have, for sometime, steered clear of C41 black and white processed film. I find it bland. Really bland. I just plan don't like it. Till now. I saw a series of images from a collection Satomi was working on called Nightmare and her pictures had this green tinge to it. Anybody who knows Satomi knows that none of her work is has had photoshop correction done to it. EVER. It's almost like it's against her religion. Everything she does is in camera. (again, I would love to get her permission to share her work rather than just talk about it, so I promise a future article to come)

I had to ask... what stock she used? It was Ilford XP2, which needs C41 processing. Satomi then explained to me that she had the images scanned and printed in colour, resulting in the green tinge. The results looked great and suddenly there was new life to C41 B&W film stock.

So I took the image you see above on Kodak 400 C41, the same day I was testing pushing the TriX from 400 to 1600. I then sent the negative to Satomi via the Lomography Gallery Store & had it scanned in colour...and this is what I got back. I have to say, I'm pretty excited about it. I have more experimenting to do with it. I had actually forgotten what stock was in my SLR, it had been that long since I shot with it, so now I would like to go out and run more tests.

I defiantly recommend giving it a go yourself. As for Satomi's work, check out her recent stuff on www.lomography.com/homes/satomi, in the meantime, I'll see if I can get her to agree to an artist interview. ;-)

Happy shooting!!

Polly Chandler

Polly Chandler is fine art photographer whose work I truly admire. I was first introduced to Polly last year while in Chicago for the Filter Photo Festival. Two pieces of mine had been selected for exhibit at the Black Cloud Gallery and I thought why not make the most of the festival by attending some of the seminars and workshops. The seminar I went to first was Polly's talk on the Inner Narrative. Something I am yet to master.

Polly's work is mysterious and sometimes sad, but not in the negative way. It's haunting, but there is a peace with it. It's moody. Drawing on her own emotional journey through life Polly really has mastered the telling of story in her images.

Shooting on polaroid with large format cameras with shift & tilt lenses it's hard to not be in awe of her body of work and inspired to try the equipment for yourself. Although Polaroid film is not longer being made, the resourceful artist has access to some making the rather smart large bulk purchase when polaroids game was up. When I last spoke with Polly she had been working on a series called You Build It Up, You Build It Down, that was inspired by the lyrics of Tom Wait's songs. To my knowledge a set gallery is not on her website, however she does have images up on her facebook.

I thoroughly encourage you to visit her site and marvel at her work. Polly Chandler is a true fine art photographer and it's hard to not be inspired by her work.

Tweets & A New Gallery

Can you believe it? I've actually started a twitter account. Not that I feel that I need to write anything more on other social media platforms, a dear friend recommended it to connect with like minded photographers and keep the inspiration going. So I guess this is where I am meant to say, follow me @JasLordPhoto.

Twitter will be strictly be used for photo/cine related posts.

©Jasmine Lord 2012

In other news, I have a new gallery at Jasmine Lord Photography. The gallery show's a very small collection of my work taken on a camera phone that I'm quite fond of. As much as I get frustrated when I see people on the run way shooting shows on ipads or iphones, they are great little tools and the editing software that is available for the masses is phenomenal.

Amber Heard For Equality by Tasya van Ree

I'm a huge fan of LA artist Tasya van Ree and I feel silly that I only now have just watched some of her video work. This one in particular is beautiful and I thought to share it with you as this weeks bit of inspiration.

We Are Handsome

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of Sydney label We Are Handsome.

So here it is in all it's glory, their first runway show in Sydney.