Day trip to the city!

One of the benefits to living in Woodstock is that I'm only about 2 hours from the city, and it's an easy trip to the city from Poughkeepsie to Grand Central Station. Chelsea, Nikki and I went down for the day...

Above is Nikki and Chelsea, we're on the train heading to the city.

George Washington Bridge!

View from second floor down to the sculpture court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was an art filled day from a Francis Bacon Retrospective, Model as Muse--an exhibition about fashion photographer's such as; Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Juergen Teller and Steven Meisel, to an exhibition on "The Picture Generation" which included works by Barbara Kruger, and Cindy Sherman.

After hours of looking at art and wandering around the city, we decided to stop into this cute little diner, and have a snack and an afternoon coffee!

(From Left: Chelsea, Nikki and Jessica)
I wish I had taken a picture of our waitress, she was lovely and reminded me of Joni Mitchell for some reason?!

This sign was too funny NOT to take a picture of...I believe this will go into my "Only in New York City" file...

Ending the evening with a delicious Mexican Dinner in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, and then back on the train to Poughkeepsie, all in all a great day in the city!!

Workshop #2 How to use a Canon Digital Camera

For this workshop we had an rep from Canon teach the workshop. I shoot with Nikon equipment, so this was an interesting workshop to attend. I was able to compare Nikon to Canon and see which one is better for me. I'm happy to report that I'm still very happy with Nikon, but am now more familiar with Canon.

photo by Chelsea Deklotz

In the above picture, I am using a flash while blacking out the background. Below you can see the image I took of the roses, in complete daylight--though it looks like night.

Not really the type of photos I take, but it was an interesting technique to learn about flash!

The Art and Craft of Portraiture

Our first workshop was "The Art and Craft of Portraiture" with Platon.
It was an informative weekend, and a great start to my internship. We started the workshop with some exercises to get us comfortable with looking at a stranger's face. We had to line up in front of someone and stare into each others eyes for about 2 minutes, though it felt like an eternity. This was a very intense exercise to be followed by closing our eyes while someone touched our face, and then we traded and had to do the same. This exercise was a way to explore the face, textures, lines etc, very interesting. Next we did some contour drawings, (which I hadn't done since drawing courses years ago) to do this you draw the face of a person without lifting your pen and without looking at your paper. This is harder to do than you may think, but the outcomes are quite interesting and fun.

A little background on Platon:
- he has photographed an astounding number of famous personalities, many of which can be seen in his book “Platon’s Republic.”- he is one of the few people to have taken a portrait of Vladimir Putin; this photo awarded him the 2008 World Press Photo Contests’s 1st place.
- he shoots for a range of publications including The New York Times Magazine, Time, Esquire, and Rolling Stone.
- he shot this recent portrait of Michelle Obama for the cover of Time.

The second day was about setting up the scene for a photo shoot and learning about Platon's workflow. He has two assistants and three interns who are there to help him at any given time. Each of us got to practice being the model and being the photographer.


At the end of the day Platon asked us to choose the image we liked best of ourselves and then had us all get in a circle and give our image to the person next to us, rip the image into four pieces and hand it back to the person. He then instructed us to tape our image back together. He said we should keep this image as a reminder that when we get torn apart, we can always put ourselves back together...

Cottage in the woods!

What I will call home for the next few months! An image of the driveway and Cleo in front of our little cottage!

A different shade of green!

This is why I named my blog "A different shade of green" it is so green here, not like home, more lime, so vibrant! I've been feeling like I'm walking around with a green filter over my eyes!

Welcome to Woodstock!

Two views of the village green, very quaint little town I've found myself in!

Thanks Adam and Char!

Thank you both for your hospitality and for showing me the city! Got some great images at the bean!

Chicago!

After years of wanting to visit the "windy city" I finally made it! Although I didn't see Oprah and the Obama's are now in DC, I had a great visit!! I found the people to be quite friendly, lots o' dogs, a great dog park in Montrose that was right on the water (Cleo really enjoyed that) and some exploring of the city!

My friend Adam and his wife Char were kind enough to take Cleo and I in for a couple of days, and Adam showed me around. We rode the "eL" which I learned stands for "elevated" train, went to a few galleries, the Hancock tower, Millennium Park, ate deep dish pizza for the first time (it was good, but I think I still prefer thin crust) and I even got to meet up with my old friend Shana for dinner...all in all a great time!

Definitely a city that I will be going back to!

Stopped in South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore, here it is from two different views...I'm glad I went but I have to be honest, my first thought was "That's it?" Not that it wasn't impressive...just not what I expected.

Yellowstone

Here are a few images from Yellowstone National Park, such an amazing place! The hearth inside the Old Faithful Inn was huge, I wanted to curl up in one of the cozy chairs with a glass of wine and a good book, but alas more to see and more driving to do! Then of course there was Old Faithful itself, which I only had to wait for about 15 minutes to blow, very exciting! Besides that, many bison, elk, deer a plenty, and I got to see a bear! That was the first time I'd ever seen one, (besides at the zoo) I took this image from the road (as close as I could get) with about 20 other people standing along side 2 park rangers, it was intense and very cool!

BIG SKY

When people use the term "big sky" for Montana, they really aren't kidding! Stunning!
Such a beautiful place, I didn't spend much time there this trip however, just passing through via 1-90, heading to Yellowstone...

It all started with...

It all started with...this little idea that maybe, just maybe I could do more, more than what I was doing in Bellingham, a town I dearly love...so I began searching for possible places to work or intern relating to photography. Long story short, I was accepted as an intern for the summer/fall workshops at The Center for Photography at Woodstock, www.cpw.org.

I began my journey across the country from my Dad's place in Woodland, WA at noon on Wednesday May 7th and arrived in Woodstock, NY at 3:45pm on Wednesday May 13th. The next couple of posts, will include some images from my road trip...more to come!