Sunday in Park with Cece Olisa

I spent a lovely afternoon working with my dear friend and fashion blogger, Cece Olisa on a photoshoot for her The Big Girl Blog right here in our Harlem neighborhood. The morning sky started out really grey but we managed to catch some really good light in the park and I was really happy with the way the pictures turned out. The image to the right was among my very favorite. I really like everything about it, from the color of Cece's elegant wrap dress, her relaxed pose and facial expression to the seasonal Autumn leaves at her feet and the trees and buildings in the background.

I don't consider myself an expert when it comes to directing people in photoshoots but I've been working with Cece for a while now and It also really helps that she has a strong and clear vision of what she wants. This image is part of the Facebook page Zanography which I created to showcase what I feel is some of my best photographic work. Feel free to visit and "like" me!

Orange

It was through the lens of my camera
That I suddenly opened my eyes to autumn,
That the secrets in the heart of a dying leaf
Unfolded inside the brief shutter release,
And injected these shades of orange.
Colors that danced in the hearts of bonfires
I had always passed over for Spring
But one day the dying of Summer was for me
Like a fire, which lay everywhere singing.
Like a fire which lay in gutters and parks
On sidewalks and brownstone steps,
Were the voices of colors that burst open and soared
colors that receded and slept.
Autumn leaves a trail of melancholy sunsets
As keep sakes at my feet.
They reach out with bold humility
Inspiring me to behold and retreat.
With undulating complexities beyond my grasp
They usher in a blinding white
Devoid of any complexity at all
And as thick as any night.

-Zenzile Greene
10/25/12

Instagram: Share Your World

I hate to sound like a spokesperson for instagram but I guess I am. I mean I think it's a genius app for sharing your world in a creative way. And it's free! But I think at this time it may only be available for iPhones.

My phone is with me all the time so as I go about my day doing whatever, there are many things I see each day that catch my eye, not just as a photographer but also as a curious person. I love to be able to just pull out my iPhone, click away and share what I see in real time. I can post it to Facebook, flickr, twitter and a whole list of other networks or I can just share it with my instagram contacts. Sometimes just picking up my phone to see what other people in my network have shared that day, where they've traveled and what interesting way they've chosen to compose and edit their subject  is enough to cheer me up when I really need it or to inspire me and an make me smile as well. I have people in my instagram network who I know, and some whom I've never met or even seen but seeing what they see is almost like seeing another part of them. The pics I've included here are just some of the pictures I've taken in the past couple of weeks, things that caught my eye, that I think are beautiful, light or color or symmetry and reflection that I liked. They are very different than planned photography where I sit and compose carefully or arrange things to appear the way that I like. They are found captures. All I control is the filter and the frame.

Reflection on the Highline

Neighbors

Curtain

Rushing Home

Photos of The Day

I took these photos at the Central Park Conservatory this weekend. I can't tell you how hard I worked to get these just perfect. I've been shooting in manual mode on my Nikon more often and I love it. Manual is literally just shooting the way you would with a regular film camera if you can remember what that was like. There was no auto focus, no little red light or beeping alert telling you what to do. It gives you control over focus, light metering and depth of field. Fortunately, my Nikon give me the option to go back to a somewhat analog style of shooting. I don't have a macro lens on my camera but I thought I would play around in manual to get this somewhat macro close effect. It came out so much better than I imagined.

Can we talk about how absolutely miraculous the structure of flowers are? I was just in awe looking at these forms of life up close. There is so much going on in the world of plants that we don't know about. As insignificant as it may seem to us, our survival is dependent in many ways upon their ability to function in a balanced eco system. I now begin to understand why Stevie Wonder was moved to make a double album about them for the soundtrack of a small documentary of the same name. There really is a secret life there.

Hipstamatic Lenses (My Faves so Far)

Roboto Glitter

 

 John S.

Bettie XL

Kaimal Mark II

Dali

The Lucifer lens is characterized by deep dark moody purplish tones and I haven't had the opportunity to use it very often. The Dali lens which just came out a few weeks ago is one I'm still getting a handle on. It really pushes the boundaries of the Hipstamatic format translating images and composition to more of an "art" form by using producing random double exposures and deep dreamy tones. You don't get a lot of control here but it's fun just to shoot and see what happens. The least impressive of the lenses in my opinion are the Helga Viking and the Jimmy. I still have yet to understand the look of the Helga Viking. It just doesn't really seem to have a distinct character to me, at least not yet. And the Jimmy lens just makes everything way too yellow for my taste. But I will continue to experiment with both all my favorites of course. And as always I will continue explore the work of other Hipstamatic addicts for inspiration and tips.

Talking With Light

Fall leaves at Storm King

"If you don't understand light, you shouldn't be a photographer because light is the main reason we take pictures. You can tell a story, but if you don't have the right light you can't draw the viewer in. It's just a flat picture."
-Frank Ockenfel
"Professional Photographer Magazine"

I've never been so happy to see Autumn arrive. Every day I look out the window I'm greeted by the brilliant fall color of leaves turning yellow and red, pink, orange and all the shades in between. I look up all the time and am stopped in my tracks. And the light         changes in the Fall. Light in the Fall seems richer, a little melancholy,  profound, nostalgic. I spent most of Sunday morning with a couple of trees in Marcus Garvey Park. I took roughly over three hundred pictures and then came home to edit and upload to flickr which is probably one of my favorite things to do. Listen to music, edit eat and compare notes with other photo enthusiasts.

I may have mentioned this before but I prefer to shoot using natural light only. I hate shooting under nasty yellow florescent lights or (UGH!) overhead lights and I rarely use flash unless I'm at an evening event that requires it. If I have to take pictures using interior light, I prefer studio track lights like the kind used to light art exhibitions in museums and galleries.

One of my pet peeves is when people use flash to take pictures in the day time. Just why? Natural light tells a very different story than flash, although flash in many instances when it's not too harsh can be just as effective at capturing a moment or a portrait effectively and with emotion. It's just not my favorite method. Flash makes me think of parties, paparazzi and I don't know...catching someone off guard. And those photos can be great as well. What I hate when using flash is when details are washed out by the harshness of the light. Even sunlight does this which is why there are specific times of day that I prefer to shoot in. It took me a while to discover that direct sunlight does not necessarily, a good picture make. Depending on the subject, the noon can kill details just as dead as General Electric. And even laymen who don't even care about pictures know this without really being conscious of it.

The light that draws the viewer into an image most often is one that reflects the complexity and layers of human emotion and unconscious inner goings on. It's what we feel but often cannot explain when we watch the sun rise and set, watch the seasons change, watch the day come and go. It's what poets write about and why artists paint why music exists. Light is one voice in the many conversations which attempt to communicate so much about the conditions of life. Brilliant studio lighting artists can replicate natural light so closely resemble natural light that the human heart understands the message and responds accordingly. This happens in the best of stage lighting sets for numerous theatrical plays or in studio portraits lit with soft boxes and back drops or processed in Photoshop.

I also like using candle light to light subjects, something which I have only experimented with extensively on one occasion last winter. I never understood how it was done before and I won't bore you here with technical stuff but the effect is just so quietly stunning. I think that as I evolve photographically I am beginning to notice certain definite themes that I am drawn to when I take pictures. I'm a fan of irony and the absurd, romance, haunted isolated feeling places, emptiness, space, fun, childlike themes, sensuality, nakedness, nature, food and color although I love black and white.

Kirk at Union Square

People are my least favorite subjects to photograph for many reasons. People are so complex and self conscious and always there is this fight for control and that control prevents creativity from flowing. But I understand fully why people fight so desperately for this control being a person myself but as a photographer, I do best photograph people when they are unaware and so my favorite shots of people are usually candid. I'm not like my father or my fiancee who both have this innate gift for making people feel at ease. I'm a bit of a thief when it comes to getting good pictures of people. I envy people like Peter Souza, the White House photographer whose job it is to spend so much time with such an incredible  subject that perhaps they are able to tap into something which is not readily apparent within the first few weeks of shooting but which unfolds through time and journey and relationship. I would give anything to disappear into the wall of any room with the President where natural light is diffused by soft transperant curtains in the afternoon and I can just shoot frame after frame. Obama is ridiculously photogenic and clearly very at ease in front of a camera. The relationship between a photographer and a subject is a relationship much like any other. There has to be some give and take in order to produce anything of quality. Souza and Obama seem to have that relationship. You can see that in his work.

I have yet to find that relationship with anyone besides my fiancee and my collection of dolls. I had that relationship with a few friends in High School and in College but as the subject, not the photographer. As the daughter of a photographer, basically born in front of a camera, I've no real problem being the subject but I finally grew bored of that in my late twenties as did the rest of my body. I prefer the control that comes with being on the other end of the camera and in the last five years or so, I've preferred to take my own pictures of myself.  I know my angles well, where to position my self in the light and stuff like that.In that respect I am comfortable with myself to some extent.

It's hard to find someone else who will let you just peer around in their soul with a camera and not get all fussy and nervous about it. LOL!! And that's what I'd like to do inevitably. I like pretty, beautiful and fun themes clearly. But those are not the themes I like to explore primarily with people.With people, there is so much more going on. I have taken pictures of people in the past that have revealed a lot of vulnerable, awkward and occasionally disturbing things, simply in their facial expressions. And I guess, depending on the goal of the project and the relationship to the subject, one has to be more clear and selective about what they're looking for when photographing people and portraits. At the moment, I'm not all that clear about what I'm looking for when I photograph people. But I  like to be able to explore.

The Second World

It is kind of a juggling act having two flickr accounts but as a typical Gemini, it is often necessary for me to experiment with duality or rather to have two or more of everything I really like, such as cameras, journals, blogs facebook pages,etc. You get the idea.

It's important to me to get a critical sense of my photography outside of the world of "It's so cute! She's so cute, that's so cute" doll land. Not that I don't take that photography just as seriously but I need more serious feedback in order to challenge myself.

At first my "The Wandering Eye" account felt a little lonely. My Zanalee account is securely established in a gigantic and probably growing community of well established doll collectors, craftswomen, photographers and just really cool people who pay attention to my work, constantly comment, respond to questions in group pools and are very supportive and fun, full of humor and creativity. In turn I love looking at their stuff and commenting on their amazing pictures. I have almost a hundred, if not more contacts, people whose work I look forward to seeing, whose clothes I love to look at and buy and people whose photographic aesthetic always blow me away. But in the world of Blythe, it all really comes down to her, not you. That's cool, but I also really just want to have a space for non- Blythe pictures where I can start to explore and expand my photographic voice again.

Early in my Zanalee flickr career I became a huge fan of a Baltimore photographer named "boyghost". I was incredibly inspired by his stuff. Personally, I'd just never seen anything like it and I was constantly moved by the composition and subtle unforced details of his work. He's one of the main reasons I wanted to get my Nikon D60.

Almost immediately upon opening my T.W.E. account, I discovered a photographer named "setsuna" who takes just some of them most amazing nature photos I have ever seen. It's not that she just takes a picture of something beautiful in nature which is relatively easy enough to do, but she shapes a way of seeing in that is incredibly intuitive and ethereal without being overly reverent or imitative.

View from Belvedere's Castle


This week she left a nice comment on the picture I took shown above which is great. I harassed her a little bit about her technique and printing so I'm glad I haven't scared her off. I also got a few other comments/criticisms from others this week, so I'm really happy about that. I need it and it's really wonderful to be able to do that on flickr, especially given how difficult it is to get people together to do this sort of thing in real time. Although at some point I would love to do that as well. Flickr just allows you to access work and present your work in such a diverse and freeing way. You're really traveling all over the world when you look at pictures, and not just geographic or proximal worlds, but inner, emotional and sensory worlds. Familiarity with strangers. Not so strange really.
: )

Lensbaby Cometh

Apparently, I will have a lensbaby long before I have a real baby. Lensbaby is a set of three dynamic lens attachments for the digital camera that allow the photographer to create all sorts of beautiful, unique effects! My dad just emailed the info to me on the B&H Camera website. I am sooooo excited!! This could really move my look of work in totally new direction! I love camera tricks, and focal isolation and blur enhancements! OH!!! I want it now. I won't go into too much detail. I'll just show you what I come up with when I get the lenses.

There are three different kinds, The Composer, The Muse and The Control Freak. Each one gives a different effect when attached to the camera body as a lens and each lens has additional attachments, which enhance their effects even further like the Lensbaby creative aperture kit! Omigod, I can't even explain how fucking amazing this is.

In other news, I'm constantly on flickr, posting pictures, commenting on pictures, responding to comments on pictures, contacts and generally talking to people I've never met about photography, technique and Blythe doll obsession. Recently I was looking at the profile of a young lady, age eighteen who spends as much money as I do on impractical photo props. I like reading people's flickr profiles. Sometimes they are very insightful and will tell you little bit more about what they like about taking pictures and how it relates to their lives. Hers was very short and simple and frankly included way too much mention of unicorns and bubbles for my taste but in the last sentence, she says "Basically, when I'm alone, I'm off in my own little world." That one sentence described me totally when I was a little girl and frankly, still describes me now.

When I'm alone, I slip easily into my own little world and to be honest that little world is pretty big. It's why I need so much alone time. I've never really felt alone when I'm alone which may be interpreted as crazy in some circles and dysfunctional behavior for a child. My mom always worried that I preferred to play by myself and not with other kids. But I wasn't lonely. Get me? And I can never really explain how that works. I just know I'm not "alone" in that feeling. I think many of the women I've connected with on flickr are like this and that photography allows us to sort of bring back artifacts from that inner world in a creative, inspiring and functional way. It's not something I've ever really thought about as weird until recently, mostly because it was never discouraged in me but as I get older I find that I have to consciously juggle the act of being a "public me" with the "real me" which is just slightly more complex. It makes me wonder if what is more easily accepted is more "normal." But when I see what the majority of people define as "normal" it often seems like what I define as crazy, so I just embrace what makes me me feel good and the company of people who allow me to be "myself" and go with that. And when all else fails I just go off by myself into my own little world.

Avedon at ICP

Fridays are pay what you want at the International Center of Photography Museum so I dropped by after work today to see a collection by one of my favorite photographers, Richard Avedon.


It’s hard for me to describe pictures that I truly like, because what I’m really saying when I say I like a picture is that I like the feeling it gives me as well as the way it looks. So while I can describe the aesthetic attributes of an image it’s more difficult to try and convey that it maybe makes my chest tight or my heart beat faster or that it corresponds to a memory deep in my subconscious of something that maybe never even existed, maybe something sentimental, quiet, melancholy, joyful, or even perverse.

So there exists a true intimacy between the viewer and the photograph, no different than all the other intimacies experienced in the relationship between people and each other and art and nature. It’s one of the many things I love about photographs.
I remember seeing a program on Avedon years ago, which sparked something in me unconsciously, a new appreciation for photography I had never had before. There was some documentation of a controversial shoot he did of his dying father. As he deteriorated day by day, Avedon took a series of pictures of him.

There is something at the heart of the artist, which does not observe boundaries set down by society. It steps over the lines because it knows the truth, however frightening is there. I watched this program with some reservation but never did I feel that Avedon was immoral or even crazy. He said something at the end of the program, which has always stuck with me. He said that a photograph is "the death of the moment." It captures something, which is at once frozen and yet instantly gone. To capture does not mean to maintain. It only means to remember. Which is what photographs are essentially: commemoration, documentation, remembrance…dying. It’s beautiful.

My Fourth Blurb Book

Available to view and order.

After Photography

"The digital photographer and all those who come after her-potentially plays a postmodern visual disc jockey.

Once the world has been photographed it is never again the same. (This is where Eve and the apple come in) Once the images begin to replace the world, photography loses much of it's reason for being. Into the vortex, then, comes the digital."
-Fred Ritchin "After Photography"

I walked into B&N this Saturday with the intent to kill some time until Vanessa's bus got into the city from Philly. I've been studying photo essays there, thinking about some of the experiments I want to do with my own picture taking. Last week, I'd spent almost an hour looking at a Taschen Collection of Polaroids. They were amazing, nothing like the dark, yellowy pictures I used to get when I used the family Polaroid in the early 90s. On Saturday though I walked into the photo essay isle and picked up a book of critique on digital photography. Some words on the subject that were not purely instructional were way overdue. And I expected the first thing I read to be about how wonderful and expansive digital was, how it gave so many more people so many more possibilities. But instead I was given this totally legitimate if a bit morbid view of the way in which digital photography is like this monster of technology which will eventually consume itself because of it's overwhelming accessibility and tendency towards endless post production manipulation. Of course people have been manipulating photographic images for centuries, since the advent of photography but the difference then was that only a select few had access to this capability and even then, they never manipulated images on the same scale that people do now. Who had the time?

When I went to go see the orchid show, I have to admit I had to block out the sheer number of people and children running around with digital devices, clicking and recording and basically experiencing everything through a lens! Including me of course. I noticed it at the presidential inauguration in D.C. as well. But it was at the orchid show that I realized in an unavoidable way that something slightly disturbing was happening and that I was a part if it. I think it was because when I was little and my mom used to take my brother and I to the botanical garden in Brooklyn, we were able to have this very present experience of everything. Sure, my dad was the designated photographer but he didn't take pictures all the time. He couldn't. With film, there is always an inherent finality. The roll will be done. You have to wait to see the images. You put the camera down and get on with life. But with digital you can conceivable take hundreds of photos a day, even thousands if you carry around extra memory cards. I bought two extra memory cards myself recently. 2 gigs each. In this way, the documenting and recording never stops. You could go all day never connecting with anything, merely capturing and collecting moments but never really being apart of them. It's addictive in this myspace, facebook age of connecting as peripherally as we do but only rarely ever checking in fully. It certainly appeals to me but at the same time when I see this same sort of lifestyle replicated so massively everywhere I go I get a little nervous. That's why I still try to shoot film as well as digital. Thank God I was born in the 70s.

Flickring Away

It's 1:04am. I'm on flickr. Boyghost has left like three really cool and helpful comments on some of my pics and I am both honored and embarrassed to be honored. I'm also deliriously tired. But I can't seem to turn in just yet. The thing is he notices stuff in my pictures that I don't even notice, like the identical water towers in the picture above that I took earlier today. That's why I need his feedback! Because of stuff like that. And at the same time I worry occasionally that I might be getting to influenced, or even developing a censor when I shoot. I don't think it's a real concern yet though. I still love looking at other people's stuff. I have to look at other people's stuff. My pictures are no different than my writing. Sometimes I'm just to close to them and I get crazy and need to step back or I get bored or stuck. But when I see the amazing stuff people do on Flickr I'm reanimated! I just get so inspired.

I was at ICP on Friday after work. They had a fashion photography exhibit and Fridays are pay what you wish day for museums in NYC. I wasn't really into it though. The pictures were way too high concept, bursting with color and harsh digital effects. I liked some of the older stuff but mostly I liked the black and white stuff in the ICP collections room, pictures from what seemed like the 20s and 30s. After about an hour I wandered out and into the gift shop. I walked over to photo essays and reached for a Richard Avedon book but decided to go for an interesting looking book just one spine to the right. It had no title and was covered in this wierd plastic lace pattern. It was called "Jesus and the Cherries" by Jessica Backhaus. They were a collection of very plain very quietly profound color photographs of families, their homes and neighborhoods in Germany. She has an amazing eyes for the natural composition and beauty of everyday things. Her color detail is amazing, really makes you rethink the whole idea of photography and what makes an interesting photograph.

Boyghost Envy

Its official. Boyghost is my photography idol. And that's probably not a good thing. But there it is. Haruki Murakmai is one of my favorite authors. Boyghost on flickr is one of my favorite photographers. I've been scrolling through his pictures using Cooliris for almost half an hour now. Each picture is even better, more interesting, subtle, poetic and expertly composed than the next! When I think about it now, I realize that he's the reason I wanted to get the Nikon D60 in the first place. I'd seen a bokeh shot he'd done and flipped! I had to know how to do that and what camera he used. I was convinced it had to be his equipment that turned out such amazing work. But I can see now, that it's not. Some people can make masterpieces with a box, a mirror and some film.

He's just got a way of capturing the majesty, the mood of quiet spaces, loneliness and childlike curiosity. Also, the titles he gives his photos like "Won't let go"and "Never you mind" or the "A place in time" the title of the picture shown above, really add a lot to the viewing experience because it really makes me wonder what these pictures mean to him. I read his profile. He's got nothing but glowing testimonials. He's a Baltimore area photographer. His relationship status is "taken" and oh! He's on FACEBOOK. Excuse me...I'll be right back!

Cooper Union Digital

Above is a picture I took last night while I was walking to class. I adjusted it to Sepia and blurred the edges a couple of times for a softer more haunting affect. I like low light photography and the way light creates mood in pictures

My first Copper Union photography class with Marget Long started yesterday. It's actually at the YMCA on Houston and Bowery off of Second Ave. I really like it so far. I was afraid it might be too easy or not cover things that I really need to learn but I think I picked the right course for me. Marget had some trouble with the slide projector but eventually we did get to look at some slides and she explained a bit about the first chemically projected images in the 1800s and camera obscura which I love. She also suggested we all get flickr accounts. As you know I have that fully covered. I sat next to a guy in the back when I walked in. In the second half of the class we talked about our cameras(we both have SLRs), showed each other pictures we had taken (we both had pics of the Washington Monument) and chatted about the pixel range and stuff like that. It is so nice to take a class in something I actually love. I am so psyched!

Bokeh Fix

Been using my new Nikon D60 to experiment with Bokeh in night photography. It's sort of put me in another place inside myself. All I do is look at lights wondering how they would look out of focus through my telephoto lens, what kind of shapes I would see. It's trippy. They remind me of things I don't yet feel like trying to express in words. Mostly because words are useless to express such things. It's too simple, too precious, too pointless to hold on to. I may grow sick of it by tomorrow, but right now I'm just happily curious and searching for shapes in the night.

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Lake Sebago Beach

Summer 2008

By Photograps by Zen...

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