Eduardo Javier

This is an image I took in the summer. I forgot how weird it looked because I retouched his ass real good. I need to make images the way I want to again. Editorial was interesting because I explored other ways of shooting. Not my thing though. People think that all of my portraits have a dead look to them, which I can understand. I guess my goal is to do that over and over and make it better with time. If you look at each of them, they all have a different quality to them, not saying that I have perfected that or anything but its something I am working on. Going to take lots of images this weekend..hopefully

I am not totally sure how I feel about these images. They are different then what I normally do. I just wanted to try on location lighting again. There are things I would change as far as lighting but under the circumstances I think I did well. My intention was to illustrate the tension you might feel if you were in this type of situation. Usually I wouldn’t use lighting to this extent to do that but I wanted to, you know…branch out. I still have work to do on the files but I dont think Ill have time to put up the finals until the designer puts text n things on it.

*update – I added what the designer came up with for our project. If there are any designers out there who can give input on that aspect I would love to hear it.

Purpose is a Web Magazine from France that focuses on addressing the work of established and up and coming photographers in a pretty interesting format. You will see in their about page that they present their work with original music. I am not sure how I feel about this considering that the photographic work is coming from so many sources that applying sound may not work with every photographers series. Of course you have the option of turning the sound off but I am not sure if it is at all needed. The pictures above are from David Moores series Office. I can not find his website so if anyone finds his other work let me know, I really enjoyed these portraits.

My holiday has been spent watching many videos, I wanted to show you some of the highlights. I find a lot of new insight watching these people perform and discuss topics which hold significance to me. In between watching South Park and SNL clips, I try to keep my brain functioning on some level.

This first video is an interview with Quentin Crisp. He is an icon of gay culture, world culture. He couldn’t be anything but himself and when he spoke this line, ” Enlightenment does not produce tolerance, tolerance is the result of boredom,” it really stuck with me. It is true that gay people are in fact tolerated and not accepted. We have traveled from the abhorred to the tolerated, we are ok now, except for the sex.

This one is Nina Simone performing “Feelings,” someone on FB put this on their feed and said it made them cry. It may have had me tearing up too. I think the thing that had me so engaged was that it wasn’t her singing, it was an experience.

Here are a few more videos that I think are worth taking a look at.

TED talk with  Sunitha Krishnan

Taryn Simon speaking about her photographic projects

“CNNMoney.com put out a list of the worst 15 jobs that are stressful and pay badly, and wouldn’t you know it, commercial photographer was ranked number eight.  CNN lists the average photographers salary at $43,600.00 and the stress level percentage at 100%.  ”The job may sound glamorous, but commercial photographers, who capture models, merchandise and landscapes for books, advertisements and catalogs, have to contend with long days, picky personalities and demanding deadlines”. While I can definitely attest to this being a stressful job at times especially as of late, it’s also very rewarding. I mean come on – we take pictures for a living, not such a bad deal.” (VIA)

I wanted to share this VIDEO of one of my favorite portrait photographers Shen Wei ( I dont know how the hell to embed this shit). I am sure a lot of you know about this site – Zoom-In where they have more videos from young artists. I really related to the way he spoke about connecting with his subject.

I am not the most social person, bordering on anti social but I don’t like to say it like that really. Anyway I relate to Shen Wei’s idea of feeling a depth within a relationship while you are photographing a person, that is not present outside of those 20 minutes. While my work is not generally conceptual, my intent begins with energy, I want you to feel something first, analyze if you want second. This is not art, and that’s totally fine with me. What am I drawn to the most is photography that affects me almost viscerally, or at least that is the work that I admire the most.

I am uncomfortable attaching the idea of art while I am creating, I just do it. Even if I am referencing other work or have a process which is similar to a fine artists, I would never tell you that. My work is not meant to work on that level, just fucking look at it and enjoy it, or not. But if you choose to create work that is supposed to work within ART, then you should know that people will always hold you accountable. Don’t give me some nonsense about your work if it has no depth. It may be beautiful, and it may affect you in a great way, but it is not ART and I do not like when people elevate their work when it doesn’t deserve it. (end bitchy tone)

Hope everyone is having a good break! Comment, let me know how much Im wrong and what not.. I dont know, I’d like to know how people feel about it definitely.

Eduardo Javier