Third Floor Photo Society

I found this site the other day, their index of artists is pretty extensive and definitly worth checking out. "Eyestorm is the leading online gallery of limited edition contemporary art. Founded in 1999, Eyestorm came under new management in 2006 and has refined its operations to make buying the finest contemporary art easier and more enjoyable than ever before. Come and visit us at our new Bankside gallery next door to Tate Modern in London"

Here is an interesting article on websites I thought everyone who may be thinking of building their own out there may find useful and humorous. Check out some more posts there to find interesting artists and topics of debate.

From Lee Whitmarsh, Director of Communication Art at Universities Center Dallas: "We would like to extend you an invitation to join us for an open house at the A&M Commerce Communication Arts Lab in Downtown Dallas. We will be giving a facilities tour, talking about requirements for entering programs and taking the mystery out of the portfolio entry requirement. Interested students will get a chance to talk to current students in the program, see some student work and ask lots of questions. So join us, Wednesday November 14th at 5 pm , Universities Center at Dallas, for an introduction to what pursuing a BRA in Art Direction, Design or New Media involves. We look forward to meeting you."

Lawrence Lee, a 2002 alumnus from A&M-Commerce, will be discussing his work in a public lecture on Tuesday November 6th at 2:00 pm in Room 111 of the Main Art Building. Everyone is invited so you should come by and see what he has to say.

On Tuesday November 6th there will be an opening reception for the New American Talent Exibition from 5 - 7 pm in the University Gallery in the Art Building at Texas A&M-Commerce. In case you can't make that, the gallery hours are Mon-Fri 1-5 or by appointment, and the show will run until the 30th of November. The image shown here is "You Are What You Love: God!" by Sarah Martin

Hey all, on Wednesday October 31st at 5 pm, you should come by the Third Floor of the Journalism Building for the opening of the Road Trip show. The work is from a trip taken by a group of A&M-Commerce students over this past summer on their way up to Maine to drop off some friends on the Appalachian Trail. Remember, Wednesday at 5, BE THERE!!

Stockland Martel is an agency that has a lot of neat work and information on its site. It's sort of like Art Department where there's a long list of photographers to look at, but you can view them by category to narrow down what you're looking for. Almost all the work on there is pretty clean, commercial looking stuff but there's a good selection of different styles other than that as well. The shot here is by Martin Sigel.

Over at the Fine Art Photography Gallery and Forum , I found this work by Peter Gasser . There's a lot of black and white work here, portraits and landscapes. But if you want to go to the list page here , there's a list of some great photographers to look at for inspiration.

Over at PDN 's website I found this link with a few photos by Catherine Leutenegger and and short article about her work photographing studios of artists and photographers.

On Wednesday October 31st at 7 PM, The Roadtrip Show will open as the next show by the Third Floor Photo Society. The work is from a group of students from A&M Commerce as they took a roadtrip up to Maine to drop off some friends who began hiking the Appalachian Trail. If you enjoyed last year's show from last spring, I think you'll enjoy this one too.

I found this artist from the James Cohan Gallery website, they have a lot of contemporary artists' work there. You can also find work by Trenton Doyle Hancock there, who is an alumni from the art program here at A&M-Commerce.

Siggeir M. Hafsteinsson is an awesome graphic designer I found, a lot of his work almost looks like light paintings. There's another guy who has a myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/lichtfaktor who does graffiti like light paintings and has posts about how he does it and photos of what he uses.

On THURSDAY NOVEMBER 1st, Mac on Campus is coming to A&M-Commerce to hold some workshops and show some really cool equipment, stuff you can try out and play around with. "The Mac on Campus workshop program demonstrates real world applications of the tools used by today's top professional photographers. Come use, learn, and play with professional digital cameras, color management programs, studio lighting, digital light meters, radio slaves, and medium and large format cameras in a working studio set-up. Fuji roll and instant films will be provided. Plus recieve details on discounts available to students." These guys are a lot of fun, you should look for the flyers on the Third Floor and remember to show up on Thursday.

If anyone wasn't already aware, The Third Floor Photo Society has a myspace page at www.myspace.com/thirdfloorphotosociety So a good way to be updated on what's going on, or to give any input back to us on what you'd want to see, is being our friend and checking our posts on what's going on.

On Tuesday October 23rd, entries will be due for the "Silver Show" for Photo Society, meaning Silver Prints only!!! The show will open on Wednesday October 24th at 7 pm, remember to enter your prints and come to the opening!!! The week after The Silver Show opens, on October 31st, HALLOWEEN!!, the Roadtrip Show will open consisting of work shot by a group of students travelling up the East Coast last summer. Definitly put that on your calendars, it should be a good show.

Recently, photographer Chris Jordan was a guest on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report. I've seen his name pop up quite a few places, so I thought he may be worth putting up here for people to look at. His work deals with the effects of our mass consumptive society, among other things, his series "Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait" is pretty amazing if you ask me.

National Deadline: October 26, 2007 - CR Gallery seeks works of art that explore the theme of silence for a juried exhibition. Exhibition takes place December 2, 2007 thru February 2, 2008 at Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, Kenmore, Washington. Theme: Silence: "(Since) nothing that can be seen can be God…then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence." —Thomas Merton The transcendent power of art can be a means to entering that silence. How: Submit up to 3 jpegs via e-mail to arts@redeemer-kenmore.org. Please include your name, contact information, and a few words about your work. Also include title, medium, framed dimensions, and retail price of each image submitted. Submission deadline is October 26th. The work will then be juried and acceptance notifications and delivery instructions will be sent out via e-mail by November 2nd. For work that must be s...

National Deadline: November 9, 2007 - Visual AIDS invites artists to participate in our tenth annual Postcards From the Edge benefit. We are looking for artists to donate a 4"x6" original work on paper for the exhibition and sale. Painting, drawing, photography, printmaking and mixed media are all welcome. We are pleased to announce our host gallery is James Cohan Gallery. Postcards From the Edge is a show and sale of original, postcard-sized artworks on paper by established and emerging artists. All artworks are $75 and sold on a first-come, first-served basis. The works are signed on the back and exhibited so that the artists' signatures cannot be seen. While buyers have a list of all participating artists, they don't know who created which piece until it is purchased and the signature is revealed. A collector might end up with a work by a famous artist or one they don't yet know. Either way, they walk away with a great piece of art while supporting Visual AIDS...

Although a lot of you may have already seen his work, Arno Rafael Minkkinen 's self portraiture exploring his relationship to the landscape is really interesting. His site has a lot of his work up as well, which is always nice.

Ok, one of the better webblogs that I've come across is at jmcolberg.com/weblog/ . He always posts on interesting topics, including discussions with photographers, opinions on contemporary art and so forth, anyway his site is worth checking regularly. The photograph here is by Vera Hartmann 's series Mars Society.

Damon Winter is a photographer working for both the Los Angeles Times and the Dallas Morning News, among others. You can see his work at his site here , and there's an interesting collection of work from Dallas photographers including him here.

Hey all you guys looking for internship opportunities, Doug Davis is an alumni from the program who always welcomes students from here to do their internship with him. His website says he is an award winning commercial photographer who specializes in food, lifestyle, and special effects studio photography. Keep checking back for more posts pretty soon about alumni working in Dallas for internship possibilities.

In an article entitled "Candid Camera" there is a pretty interesting discussion over the Leica brand and what or who it's associated with. "When you take a picture with an S.L.R., there is a distinctive sound, somewhere between a clatter and a thump; I worship my beat-up Nikon FE, but there is no denying that every snap reminds me of a cow kicking over a milk pail. With a Leica, all you hear is the shutter, which is the quietest on the market. The result—and this may be the most seductive reason for the Leica cult—is that a photograph sounds like a kiss."

Hey you guys, we had a great turn-out for the opening of the "Scapes" show this Wednesday night, here are some photographs from the opening. Michael Odom even brought his Drawing class over and after they looked through the work they started drawing around the Third Floor, it was pretty neat. Take a look....

If you didn't know about JPG Magazine already, it accepts submissions all month long of people's work, so anyone interested should go to the website here and check it out. This month there is an article on painting with light, for those in Color class and need some ideas, they have some good, tasteful, mature examples of painting with light, not just light streaks and crazy crap. Check it out here.

Hey you guys, in case you didn't already know, the Photo Society worked in conjunction with the Drama dept here at A&M-Commerce on a new production inspired by the work of Richard Avedon. Three photographers, Alex Piper, Jonathan Peterson, and Evan Wallis, shot the 18 cast members of the play with new digital equipment at the school, and made 20x24 prints to be shown on the opening night of the play, Thursday night, October 4th, at 7:00 pm. You guys should come check it out, it should be an interesting atmosphere.

Jim Fiscus is an alumni from the A&M-Commerce (formerly East Texas State) photo program, who, with his wife Lisa, have had an incredible career and effect on digital photography these days. He has a very specific style to his images, sometimes I think he takes it too far, but you should check out his site here and try to find info on how he creates his images here. It's an abbreviated explanation to his method, but still interesting.

Hey everyone The faculty members at Texas A&M-Commerce Art Department are having a gallery opening this Tuesday, October 2nd. The opening reception is from 5-7 pm, you guys should come check out what your teachers are producing. Who are the faculty members of the art department you say? Well here's a link for you. http://www.tamu-commerce.edu/art/information/contact.html

With all the recent discussion over Richard Prince's work (link) (link) , and the obvious influence that Marcel Duchamp has had on him, I thought it would be interesting to see what people thought of Jasper Johns' work. Duchamp was also a large influence on Johns' paintings, who in turn was an influence on Pop artists and Minimalist painters. Feel free to post some opinions up on here about it, anyone can. There's a great biography on Jasper Johns at the PBS site , and you can view some of his work here

Hey everybody, the next show from the Third Floor Photo Society is going the be the Scapes show, one in which you should enter any image you think could be a "scape" of something, ie landscape, cityscape, bodyscape, .... whateverscape. Entries are due this Tuesday October 2nd and the show will open Wednesday October 3rd at 7 pm. Kind of a short deadline but I'm sure we can find some work to put up right? Turn in entries to Checkout employees on the Third Floor of the Journalism Building, and come to the opening Wednesday night!!!

From the NYTimes.com, I found this article over how photographers have changed from artistically seeing and describing the world to current artists who take great liberties in creating worlds specific to their images. They mention Paris Photo, which is the largest festival for photography collecters, where 90 galleries from all over the world sell work from over 500 different artists, showing how popular photography has become in the art world in under a century.

On another blog I was looking at I found this project by two photographers who live in two different cities and shoot a photograph at 7:15 every day. I like the way it explores location and that two friends can sort of keep up with one another through their photographs. The project is totally web-based which is also really interesting. From Whitewall Collective: Michael Lease (Richmond, Va.) and Brad Walker (Baltimore,Md.) present SAMETIME 7:15, a yearlong web-based collaboration of pictures and words. Beginning December 2006, each evening Lease and Walker have made an image in their respective cities. The images and texts range from quick snapshots with basic captions illustrating the moment, to elaborately executed images with whimsical, and on occasion poetic text. Michael Lease, a Richmond-based artist who makes photographic installations, and Brad Walker, a Baltimore-based graphic designer and musician have known one another since Walker was Lease’s student at Frostburg State Uni...

So I was having trouble thinking of something to do for a class one day and I searched "commercial photographer awards" and this link came up. There is a great amount of work you can view from several years of winners from the International Photography Awards. To enter for 2008, you can upload digital images, I think $15 for one image and $30 for 2-5 in a series. The image above is by Chris Frazer Smith and you can see it again on this page

http://www.tamu-commerce.edu/tamuc-news/news-return.asp?Item=3360 "In the West," a play about Texas and Texans, will open on Thursday, Oct. 4, at Texas A&M University-Commerce. Directing the production -- a collection of 18 monologues about "your neighbors, people at church, and people on the street you wonder about" -- is Dr. Carrie Klypchak, theatre faculty member. Inspired by the 1985 Fort Worth exhibition of gritty, realistic collection of photographs by Richard Avedon, "In the West" will be presented at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 4-6, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 7, in the Studio Theatre of the Performing Arts Center. The second week of shows will be at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 11-13, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 14. Seating is limited to 70 people per show and those wishing to make reservations in advance are urged to call the University Playhouse Box Office at 903-886-5900. Tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for senior citiz...

Darren Braun is a very recent alumni from our program who works in Dallas. He came to an Advanced Digital class a few semesters ago and spoke about his work, things like lighting and Photoshop tips. If anyone remembers this cover of Texas Monthly from a few months ago, that's Darren's image on the cover and his site shows a lot of really great images.

Hey this site has a great collection of Stephen Shore's work, definitely worth checking out. And here's the Wikipedia link to learn more about what his photographs are about.

While I was looking for a site to show Andre Kertesz 's work, I found this site with a ridiculous amount of work to look at. This is probably one of the best collection of photographic work I've seen on one website, perfect for research or whatever you want.

Hey guys, this site has a lot of good photography, lots of fashion portraits and commercial shots and that sort of thing but also people like Steve McCurry and Bruce Davidson have work up. And there are categories for all sorts of things related to fashion and commercial work. The photo up here is from the series "Liquid Space" by Andrew Zuckerman

Here's a link to a map of the art galleries in Deep Ellum that are included whenever they have Gallery Walks down there, google some of the names if you want more details on where everything is.

This site has a lot of contemporary work up in their galleries, you can surf for hours without leaving their galleries. The photo up here is from a Diana camera series by Anne Arden McDonald. I'm hoping that if people come visit this blog they'll be able to have a sort of guide to finding awesome photography online a little bit easier. The whole point of all this is for student awareness and benefit, so check out these links and become a better photographer!!!!

Artists Wanted Check it out, for all of you who have contests to enter this semester.....

The British Journal of Photography , is accepting entries for a show. Entries can be sent in for $40 but there must be 20-30 images. The winner recieves a one week exhibition at The Association Gallery (http://www.the-aop.org/) and a Linhof Master Technika Classic 4x5 view camera. Entries are due by 2 pm on September 24th so you don't have much time, hurry up and enter!!!!

I found this monthly contest today, for $44 you can enter 6 images. There are seven categories, and the overall monthly winner gets $500, how cool is that? Get your entries in by the 20th of every month. Check it out!

That's right people, Tuesday Sept. 18th at 5:00 pm the Photo Society will be meeting in the lounge on the Third Floor to discuss upcoming events like movie nights, gallery trips, committees, etc. If you haven't paid your dues yet, remember to bring five dollars so photo society can use it! We want you guys to start bringing ideas to the table, making suggestions and start building a community for the photography department, so don't be shy and come hear what we're up to at the moment so you can get involved in our activities.

Third Floor Photo Myspace Hey everyone, this Wednesday at 6:00 pm the Third Floor Photo Society is presenting "The Summer Show 2007." It's been a tradition as far back as I've known that the first show of every fall semester is the Summer Show comprised of work shot or created over the previous summer break. Entries were due to Checkout by Friday the 14th, but if you didn't get a chance to enter this show, there will be plenty more this semester to participate in. So come by sometime Wednesday night about six-ish and have some snacks and look at some work your fellow students are doing.

Vaughn's mentioned this guy a lot, some of his photos were at the Amon Carter when the Photo Society took a trip last week to see Frank Gohlke's lecture and exhibition. He has a real interesting view of the landscape and has some real nice night photography on his site.

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a really great photographer whose show came through to Fort Worth Modern sometime last year, this site at artnet.com has a lot of his work on it. Hiroshi Sugimoto javascript:void(0)

It's happened people! The Third Floor Photo Society has a Myspace account!!!! myspace.com/thirdfloorphotosociety The officers are trying hard to put up events and posts so that everyone can know what's going on, like photo society meetings or gallery trips. If you have a myspace account go ahead and add us as a friend and use it to talk to us and let us know if anything cool is happening we should know about.

Susan Unterberg has a lot of close up photography of objects and animals that are neat, I thought they'd be worth checking out. Susan Unterberg

Hey guys, just wanted to put a post up welcoming you to the new weblog for the Photo Society at Texas A&M- Commerce. We hope to get a lot of information up here about new interesting work by working photographers, as well as student work, equipment information, job information, etc. If anyone has anything they feel would be interesting to someone else, send an email to thirdfloorphotosociety@yahoo.com and we'll try to put it up. This is being done to gain back some sense of community in the photography department, and hopefully it can be an easy and beneficial tool to learning more about photography and the current world of photography.