Third Floor Photo Society

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.