Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz was born a Jew in Connecticut in 1949. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute for painting but after some time she found her passion for photography. She began her photography career working as a staff photographer for Rolling Stone magazine and then became a published portrait photographer, where she worked for 10 years. Unfortunately, she attended drug rehabilitation because she was around so much drug use through the magazine. She was the last person ever to photograph John Lennon because he was killed 5 hours after their photo shoot in 1980. In that decade, she started working for Vanity Fair magazine and photographed celebrities and she got her first book, Annie Leibovitz: Photographs, published. In 1991, she became the first woman, and second living portraitist to have her photographs in the National Portrait Gallery. She has three children: Sarah, Susan, and Samuel and Annie was very close with Susan Sontag, who died at age 71 in 2004. Her most recent book, A Photographer’s Life: 1990-2005, includes pictures that she has taken of celebrities, along with pictures of herself with her family.

trick or treat

So I was walking home from Safeway with Caleb and he freaked out when he saw a squirrel eating a carved pumpkin! He told me to quickly take a picture of it before it ran away. But instead of running away, it kept eating, took off the top, and crawled inside! And Caleb had just said how funny it would be if he did and then stuck his head out! LOOK! He did! So that was our 3 minutes of entertainment for that day.

Halloween was a drag this year. I planned on being Snooki and I bought a costume and everything, planning on wearing it Sunday night, on the actual holiday. Friday, I went with friends to a costume party and I decided to wait until Sunday to wear Snooki, so I bought a fire fighter costume and wore that. Saturday night, mostly all of my friends went out to party, but I stayed in to do homework and study for an 8 A.M. test that I had today (Monday). I decided it would hopefully be fair to study Saturday and Sunday during the day and go out at night and be back at a reasonable hour. So I did some studying Saturday night, and woke up the next morning and immediately started working. I worked ALL day, literally. The only time I took breaks was to eat or go to the restroom. I studied until 1 A.M. Monday morning, went to bed, and woke up at 6 A.M. to study some more. So obviously, I didn't go out Sunday night and wasn't able to wear my Snooki costume, which really upset me because it was really expensive and fun to plan. So now, I'm planning on just wearing the costume, with all the make up and hair poofing, randomly one day on a random weekend. I'll post pictures.

Cheeseheads

Friday night- we beat Wisconsin 4-2

Saturday night- tied 2-2

But they never beat us!

Friday night was the first hockey game I'd ever been to in my life, and I sat front row with people from my hall. It was amazing! Soooo much fun!

Saturday I decided to go all out and painted my entire face and wore a jersey with leggings and DU colored boots. I felt like Peter Pan though.

I'm planning on going to all of the games from now on, or at least most of them, and painting my face for the majority of them as well!

Yaaaay DU hockey!!!

FALL

Finally, it's fall! Cold weather is awesome.

Mad dog

I had a sociology assignment to do so I went to the park and saw this dog. I went up to pet him, but he wasn't very nice. He looks like an angel though!

The Impassioned Eye; Henri Cartier-Brasson

The Impassioned Eye

Henri Cartier-Brasson

“You just have to live and life will give you pictures.”

“It’s everything. Life. Death. Pure bliss. Everything”

Henri believed that photography was just something that came natural. You did not have to know much to make art.

He chose to look at the extremes, which were sometimes very emotional.

The eye does the framing and the camera does the work.

Eye mind & heart have to be in line and balanced

Geometry and structure

Geometry is the foundation because everyone has feelings

Most of his pictures were taken without the subject knowing because they are never looking at the camera.

When you hit the target there is no need to crop the picture

He liked doing portraits.

“Basically you just have to make people forget about the camera.”

Portraits are the most difficult because you can’t get the same smile or look after it’s gone after that instant.

He loved Mexico because of the intensity of passion, there were whores on the streets at night making love on the street and during the day there were hammer sounds because of the carpenter making coffins.

“Take care of your eye.”

A photo is like the stab of a knife. Painting is meditation.

I promise to...

My best friend Caleb decided that he was going to quit smoking. This really makes me happy :) and so I promised to make sure that he does quit, because it means a lot to both of us.

I'm not sure what to post on this blog anymore... I don't really have time to take pictures daily and post and write about them. I know it's homework... but it's just not working out very well.