Posts from the ‘Photography’ Category

Photographs: Julie Blackmon

Have you seen the wonderful images by Julie Blackmon?  I have always loved her work.

Julie Blackmon is a photographer who lives and works in Missouri.  She majored in art education and photography during college, and she began photographing seriously in her late thirties.  Her photographs are inspired by her experience of growing up in a large family, her current role as both mother and photographer, and the timelessness of family dynamics.  Many of her photographs are inspired by 17th century Dutch and Flemish paintings of domestic life.  Blackmon photographs are carefully orchestrated to include members of her own family with a sense of an uncanny.  Sometimes her photographs are made up of several images via Photoshop.  Blackmon has been quoted as saying, “I know I’m very much defined as the ‘family’ photographer, but I don’t think of it quite this way,” she says.  “I’m just looking around at my everyday life and, like any artist, trying to make sense of it.”

Prior to the COVID-19, Julie Blackmon’s photographs were on display at Robert Mann Gallery/Fotografiska New York until May 2, 2020.

All photos are courtesy of Julie Blackmon.

Artist Talk: Sally Mann

I recently came upon this very interesting and fascinating talk with one of my favorite artists since high school and college, Sally Mann.  In this talk, Sally Mann spoke with curators about her exhibition “A Thousand Crossings” at Jeu de Paume, Paris, that was on display through the fall of 2019.  During this talk, she also touches on being one of the first distinguished photographers who was both an artist and a mom.

For over forty years, Sally Mann has made experimental and haunting photographs that explore the overarching themes of existence: memory, desire, death, the bonds of family, and nature’s indifference to human endeavor.  What unites this broad body of work is that it is all bred of a place, the American South.

You can view a portion of the body of work that was on display, below.

Tips: To Document Your Family

One of my favorite things to do since becoming a mom to a little human, is to document our everyday.  I am certainly not good at all ‘domestic mom things,’ but I enjoy documenting our family and it is really important to me.  It takes effort, but if you have a DSLR camera, here are a few tips that might help you document your everyday more easily versus always relying on your phone to take images.  (I still use my iphone to take images).  I want to remember these moments of our life, and I continually make family photo albums, which I cherish.  I print the images I love and I update the photo frames in our home regularly.  I am also working on the magnets on our fridge to reflect Alex’s second year, which has been fun, too!

Have a place where your camera lives.  I have my camera ready to go with a CF memory card loaded, battery charged, along with the lens attached, and it is always in the same place in my office, unless it is in the car as I have brought it somewhere.  So, if I see a moment I would like to capture, I will quickly get the DSLR camera out and it is all ready to go making things easier to use the DSLR camera.  Alex and Victory do not seem to mind the camera, and Doug is usually pretty cooperative, too.  In fact, looking back, Doug says to me sometimes, that he did not even remember Alex looking a certain way without the images as a reference.  Having the camera in the same place and ready to go makes it so much easier to utilize the DSLR camera.

Identify ‘good light’ in your home.  I know where we have good natural light in our house, and I take advantage of those places, which makes it easy to capture our little family.  Knowing where ‘good light’ exists during certain parts of the day, as the light changes, is also good to note.  I also take note of ‘good light’ outside when we are out and about.  So, it is good to know the places in your home where ‘good light’ exists and during what portions of the day that light exists.

Have a designated memory card for family images.  I always keep a large CF memory card in the camera so I am ready to go and hopefully do not miss the moment I hope to capture.  (And, I do my best not to let the CF memory card get full.)  Additionally, I do not take images of anything else on this family CF memory card outside of our family, which makes things much easier as other files/images are not commingled.

Have a designated external drive to save the images and edited images.  I have two large external drives where I keep our family images and edited images, which is organized by year and month, which makes it fairly easy to go back and find images.  I download the images from the camera usually weekly, or when I am able, in order to not fall too far behind on editing of the images.

Know when you have taken enough images.  As time goes on, and Alex gets older, I usually know when I have shot enough to capture what I want to put in a spread of our family photo albums.  And, with a toddler constantly on the go, the moment usually is defined.

Teach your spouse/partner how to use the camera.  I have taught Doug how to use our DSLR camera after setting the settings for him, so he can also help include me in family photos.  This has been very useful.

Remember that you do not have to be perfect.  I have learned that conditions are usually never ideal, but you do your best in order to document your family.  I rather have the images of our little family versus ‘perfect images.’  I love capturing our candid moments, which are so fleeting.

Below are a few images from Valentine’s Day morning with our little loves opening their Valentine’s gifts and cards together.  And, they are getting along again so well now; and I even got a few images of our little loves together now that Alex knows and she has learned that she cannot chase Victory and pull on her fur!  They love each other so much.  Victory is back to licking all over Alex and Alex approaches Victory gently with lots of treats, which makes life so much easier for everyone!

Happy Thursday!