Irving Penn, Photographer (MP6)

In the summer of 2016, the Dallas Museum of Art had an exhibit featuring the photography of Irving Penn, called Beyond Beauty. I had the pleasure of viewing that exhibit, and I thought it was incredible.

Irving Penn spent a time working for Vogue and, as a result, focused much of his photography on fashion. His photographs are brilliant and striking. He did not simply shoot the newest trends. Instead, he focused on the form and architecture of fashion. Take this photo for example:

Issey Miyaki Seaweed Dress, New York, 1987
© The Irving Penn Foundation

The photo is so interesting because you see the craft behind the dress and the unique way it moves. It goes beyond the runway.

Another thing Penn did when taking photos was look for unique angles and ways to look at the world.

Eye in Keyhole, New York, 1953 

© Condé Nast

This is one of my favorites. Penn also took "beauty" pictures for the magazine, and he strived to take photos that would stop someone in their tracks. This particular photo is well framed. The reflection of the keyhole in the eye is right on the pupil. There is certainly beauty here - human eyes are quite beautiful and natural. It goes beyond that, though. It is so much more interesting than just an eye. I could stare at it for hours.

One of Penn's main jobs at Vogue was to take portraits of celebrities and others featured in the magazine. Penn was not about to take ordinary, boring portrait. He made sure to capture the subject's personality in each portrait. Take the following portrait:

Miro and his Daughter, Dolores, Tarragona, Spain, 1948
© The Irving Penn Foundation

What a beautiful picture of a father-daughter bond. There would be so much less personality if he had simply captured a typical head shot of Joan Miro, a painter. His daughter is not him, but she is an important part of him, so why not include her?

I personally, love this last category of photos Penn took. Some were taken for Vogue, some were personal projects. They are still lives. Penn had the incredible ability to take the most boring, mundane objects and turn them into art. They are all beautiful, but there is a particularly interesting project he did where he took trash from the streets of New York City and photographed it. How can someone make litter look like art? Take a look.

Cigarette No. 17, New York, 1972
© The Irving Penn Foundation

I mean come on. Those are just cigarettes he found on the street, but he put them in the right light and added the right contrast to make them look incredible. Penn was able to take the most boring things and turn them into the most amazing photographs. It is incredible.

Penn is definitely and inspiration, and, although I will not be able to achieve the same level of talent in my unit 3 project, I do plan to keep his art in mind while I am working on it.

If you want to see more, go to https://irvingpenn.org/ and look under "ARTWORK." There are so many more amazing photos to see and each one is unique and beautiful.

Images

This class is called "Multimedia Authoring: Image and Hypertext." One might assume that images are an important component of this class and the projects we do in it, and they'd be correct. One of the challenges I have faced in my unit 2 project is finding and taking the right pictures to put on my website to help my argument.

I can easily go around TCU and find images that back up my claims about TCU, but it is harder to illustrate my vision for the future. Fortunately I have a wonderful sister living at a university that has exactly the sort of bike-friendly things that I envision TCU having. She has sent me some really cool images to add to my site. She attends Colorado State University and the campus is cool. It's super cool that I have these images that can show my audience what other universities are doing.

My main reason for writing this particular blog post is to share these super cool images from CSU. I love how bike friendly the campus it. It is so cool. I hope that my enthusiasm for these images is something my audience feels as well. I definitely think images are beyond important when it comes to persuasion.

Coding

Coding is frustrating.

I think being able to code (or write HTML and CSS, as the case may be) is a valuable skill in the world we live in, especially for those looking into the writing field. But... it's hard. I don't understand the language. I don't know what words to use. I have a picture in my mind of what I want my webpage to look like, but I cannot bring it to life because I don't have the coding expertise necessary.

Dreamweaver makes things a little less difficult by allowing you to simply insert things into the page while it adds the code for you. That's nice, but you still have to figure out how to get it where you want it to go and how to color it a certain way and how to get words on it and how to get the words to look the way you want.

I wish I could say I knew what this meant.

I persevere. My final project will resemble the website in my head. I like a good challenge and this certainly is one.

Research

One of the hardest parts of any college assignment, in my opinion, is doing research. The best sources are ones found through the library databases: peer-reviewed, scholarly journal articles that have the information you are looking for. I want straightforward data. The articles have very specific research on very specific things. For example, I want examples of bike-friendly cities in the United States... so I search "bike friendly city."

My first result is promising at first glance. It is titled Havana: A Bike Friendly City? However, if you weren't aware, Havana is in Cuba and not in the United States.

Many of the pictures I have seen of Havana feature colorful cars, 

not bikes. I haven't read the article, but there is a good chance

 the answer is no, not a bike friendly city.

The second article discusses why bike-friendly cities are safer for everybody. That's great to know, but it isn't the information I was looking for. It might be included in my "Benefits" section, but it really does not help me out in the examples department.

That wasn't a very good search term, clearly, so I try "bike friendly campus." I know from my own experience that Colorado State University has a very bike-friendly campus, so that'll be one of my examples (although I doubt I'll be able to find a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal article detailing the bike-friendly nature of CSU's campus). 

I get a result for how to promote a bike-friendly campus, which is super helpful to my rhetoric. I find an article about the liabilities a university may face with a bike-friendly campus, which might be helpful in my "Challenges" section. However, I do not find a list or even a suggestion of a campus that may be bike-friendly, so I continue to seek examples.

I'll find them online through Google no problem, but those sources are not generally as trusted as peer-reviewed articles and, as a result, my ethos may be harmed. Research is a frustrating task, no doubt.

Basic Web Designs

I found a really quick read on web design. It is very helpful for people who are new to web design. https://www.sumydesigns.com/2014/09/04/basic-web-design-principles/


Its main points are as follows:

-Make sure to plan and research your idea and design.
-Layout should focus on consistency and ease of navigation.
-Design should be consistent and prominent.
-Sans serif fonts are easier to read and should be used for the body text.
-2 or 3 main colors are best. Don't go overboard.
-Use photos to add interest and break up bodies of text.
-Make sure to get someone to proofread your website when you're done.

HTML? HTML.

Hey, hey. If you came here because you were linked from my HTML, then welcome! Here are those images I promised:

If you're here for some other reason, that makes sense. I'm pretty sure only Dr. Murray has access to my HTML.Until now. See it below. If you copy and paste it in Notepad and save it then theoretically you should be able to see the actual webpage, but what do I know?

	<!DOCTYPE>
	<html>
	<head>
	<title> Mini Project Two </title>
	<body>
	<h1> Caitlin Mendoza </h1>
	<p> for Multimedia Authoring </p>
	<p> Fort Worth B-Cycle </p>
	<p> images <a href="https://caitlinma.blogspot.com/2017/02/html.html"> here</a> within blog post </p>
	</body>
	</head>
	</html>

Mini project two was a learning experience but I like the way things turned out. As a Photoshop newbie, I had a few problems that I have now resolved, but it's too little to late. I didn't originally realize that there is an extensive gallery of filters available on Photoshop. I thought I was limited to the few filters that appear when I hit the "Filters" drop-down menu. I was wrong. I could've done so much more with these images.

I do feel like I portrayed my message well. The idea of movement is certainly present in both images, which is great because bikes are known for their movement! I like the way the text bleeds off the edges of the first image. I think it adds a grid-like look, as discussed in Ocepek's "Images." The second image is certainly eccentric, but I like it. For me, it shows the idea that the bikes of the bike sharing come and go as people use and return them. It's the beauty of bike sharing!

I did struggle a lot with the placement of the words in the second image. Even now, I think they just look like they were thrown on top of the image at the last minute. I worked with them a lot, but I couldn't make them look like I wanted them too. The problem may be that I didn't have the words in mind when I was editing the image.

All in all, it was a fun assignment and I learned a lot from it. It was homework I was excited to work on, if that says anything. On to the Unit One Project!

The Art to Arranging

Reading Ocepek's "Arrangement and Organization" and discussing it in class really got my brain juices flowing and I feel inspired to make the best promotional campaign poster for a non-profit organization ever made by a student in Multimedia Authoring: Image and Hypertext.

I have almost always believed that symmetrical is best when it comes to design. Admittedly, I haven't had much experience with design beyond designing the layout of my high school yearbook.

However, my non-profit is Fort Worth B-Cycle. Bike sharing! Bikes move. They get you from place to place. A bike sharing organization deserves a poster with a dynamic layout - something that highlights the way bikes move. That probably means I will need to leave my old ways behind and venture into new territory: asymmetric design. I'm really excited about it.

B-Cycle knows design. Look at how their logo is round... like a tire wheel. More inspiration!

So I have this idea in my head. Let's hope I can execute it. In the meantime, here is a really awful, very rough sketch I did made in 30 seconds on paint. The finished product will look a whole lot better, trust me :)