Vault, An Art Space

Porch,"where shelter and nature converge." a retail store in Carpenteria California was originally a bank. It came with the vault. The women who own and run Porch made the great decision to use the vault as a small gallery. This month, my work is being featured in this space. Come see the show and take a look at all the wonderful things these women have found to make your life more enjoyable.

The Artist's reception is Friday, September 25, 2009 from 5:00-7:00pm. I hope to see you there. To see more of my work http:eliotcrowley.com.

Santa Barbara Magazine

Recently, Santa Barbara Magazine did a feature article about me and my work. I was interviewed by Starshine Roshell a wonderful local writer who has a fun viewpoint in her weekly colums for the Santa Barbara Independent.

I like to call these images my cactus work. They were all made using a Holga Camera, an inexpensive plastic lens, and heart... no thinking involved.

I am honored to have Santa Barbara Magazine publish my work and give me such a showcase.



The work included in the magazine is some I have written about before on this blog. The entry is called Series.


For the next month or so more of this work is hanging in a gallery called Porch in Carpinteria California.

Folio Hunt

If you missed it here's a link to an interview I did with Scott Anderson from Folio Hunt.

395 so far

Well, it has been some time since I last posted to this blog. I'm happy to say I have been very busy. Some of what I have been writing has been for the APA (Advertising Photographers of America). If you're interested, you can read it here
http://searchapa.us/wordpress/wordpress/?tag=eliot-crowley

Also, since I passed my Midpoint review I have been working on my Master's of Fine Arts Thesis. It is called Highway 395 Revisited. My projected graduation date is December 2009.

What I am actually doing is meeting strangers along US Highway 395, setting up lights and making a portrait right there on the spot.

It is a pretty exciting project and keeps me thinking, learning, and challenging my creative spirit.

Here are some of them so far.

Hey I Passed

Ok the big news is I did pass my Midpoint Review. So, I'll be out there on 395 soon. Give a wave if your going by and you see me there.

Mid-Point Review

I've just sent in my 6 bound copies of my thesis proposal. Dropped them right into the FedEx box for delivery tomorrow. One week to the day before I will stand in front of a six person panel at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. I'll let you know how it goes.

But in the mean time here are a few samples of what I am proposing.






All these photos were made on or near US Highway 395 which runs up the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. That piece of asphalt between Los Angeles and Mammoth Lakes California I have driven hundreds of times.

It all started back in the sixties when my parents put the six of us into a yellow and white Ford station wagon. On the drive, my mother would read books she had checked out of the library. Those books told us about geology, biology, geography, and history of the area surrounding 395.

If this thesis I am proposing is accepted, I will be back on that highway a lot in the next year and a half. If you are out there you can look for me. I'll be somewhere between CA 58 and Lee Vining.

Food & Home Cover #2

Here's another cover for Food & Home Magazine, as shot by me. This features Jeremy Tummell from the Wine Cask Restaurant here in Santa Barbara. http://www.winecask.com





http://www.food-home.com

More Groceries

I have continued my series inside grocery stores. You can imagine how redundant it can get photographing products on shelves. Capturing shapes and random gaps in the product lineup was my first attraction.



This time I went in with color as my mandate. I went to find combinations of colors, and relationships of colors. There are three parts of a color. The hue, which is the color, like green or red. The saturation, which speaks to the clarity of the color or the purity of hue. Meaning there is no contamination of the color by black, white or gray. The third component of color is the tone. Tone could be thought of as the amount of white or black in a color, but is really the lightness or darkness of the color itself.



I have been learning recently about color and photography. You might think with my years of experience I would know all about color photography. Well, I can tell you there is always more to learn.




For instance, analogous colors, are those that are closely related like yellow, orange and red.



Photographers speak of subtractive and additive colors. These are red, green and blue as additive colors because if you add them together in equal amounts of light you end up with white. The subtractive colors are yellow, magenta and cyan. If added together in equal amounts you get black or dark gray. CMYK is the lithographic set of colors for reproduction. C is cyan, M, magenta, Y for yellow and K is black. The printers need to add a plate of K or black for contrast.



I don't want to get too caught up in the science of this but I did want you to know there is reason and esthetics behind color and the way and how we see them in relationship to the narrative or depictive level of a photograph. Whew, that sounds complicated and frankly it is complicated but understanding it a little compounds the enjoyment of the experience.




Enjoy the experience.