Anna May Wong?

I have a number of persons whom inspire me as an artist, photographer, etc.

When I play around with my self portraits, there's 1 in particular that most people don;t understand. I often say "Anna May Wong" or "Ode to Anna May Wong".

So, What does that mean?

Yeah, I get that alot....

OK, so obviously, Anna May Wong was a person.

But, WHO is ANNA MAY WONG?

Well, back when movies, or motion pictures were invented, not only were they black & white, but they also didn't have any sound. NO audio! (In case you didn't know that... believe me, lots of people don't know that.)

 The motion picture industry in California were usually cast by Caucasian actors. But, they cast a woman whom wasn't to be the villains, or a victim. She was litter ally THE 1st ever Chinese movies star, and it's was in Hollywood.

Generally, she died in every film shot in Hollywood. But, she also was in films in Europe.

Silent film actors had to tell the stories through acting but without words, so it was very common that they wore dark eye make-up and used their eyes & body gestures to convey mood, intention, anticipation, character, and so on.

Since Anna was generally the villain character, there were often scenes of her eyes looking from side angle. Her promotional photos were often similar. She was very good at this.

I also like to use my hands in photos, which most people don't do.

But, generally when I say "Anna May Wong" I mean her facial poses with her side glaring eyes.

I started doing it off the top of my head, just to be funny and try something different, when I realized I actually liked the results in my portraits. So, sometimes I will still use it.

I can show you what I mean:

 So, that's pretty much what I mean...

The Thinker by Rodin on The Benfranklin Parkway Philadelphia

Probably 1 of the best known sculptures ever made: The Thinker

This is located in front of The Rodin Museum on The Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia on the outskirts of Center City in Fairmount Park, literally down the street from The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and not far from my old apartment, down the street.

Ben Franklin Parkways a very lovely! Let me show you!

Walking towards the Art Museum, away from Center City, on the right hand side of the parkway, after the Barnes Foundation, you will wander along the sidewalk path... like this:

This was in September, it was very hot, and I liked the angle of the sunlight at the time I shot this.

 It's a really lovely park. You keep forgetting it's a park, or even in a City sometimes, because it's so vast!

It's really nice! You will always see people jogging, pushing baby strollers, walking dogs, and sometimes even someone on horseback, usually a cop.

Then, off to the side here, if you take notice, you'll start to notice a building structure... with columns.

You probably won;t notice the statue, yet, but it's there...

So, as you continue walking, you will come across a path which leads to the buidling gates to the courtyard of the Rodin Museum...

But, before you would even be so bold as to enter, you will notice HIM: THE THINKER

As I stood there, trying to find great angles, many times other folks would seem to pop up out of no where and stand there for a looooong time just gazing at him.
This is typical of ART... I would know, I'm an artist...
So, I would wait for them to go, so I could continue shooting... but, also this was a popular cellphone photo shooting place! ben Franklin Parkways is LOADED with popular places where you will see tourusts or locals shooting pix on their smartphones!

Tone Mapping n stuffs...??? In PA...

So... my friend gave me a Pro version of this program... 1 of the typical programs, for the HDR stuffs...

I have no idea WHAT THE HECK I'm doing... the Pro version is unlike the evaluation versions... and, I am entirely clueless as to how to do a batch in Photoshop... I also don't always like the results people get with the Photoshop stuffs...

Er... um... sorry if these suck.... or if you hate 'em....

Anyways, it was still fun to play with the program... which also crashed my comp multiple times.

Um... so, here's my stinky tone mapping, and other such stuffs.... I guess:

 A lot of these it took me hours to tweek. I'd shot so many exposures, but because my tripod is SO friggin' OLD, and my remote at the time was on a short wire/chord there was a wobble. So, many of my exposures were just out right useless, and went into THE TRASH! Sometimes, as much as 30 frames, just TRASHED!

 I did 2 major photo shoots behind The Philadelphia Art Museum. On the day I shot the ones above, I really started to chocke the life out of that battery... it was already dying, but, man, I seriously tortures it for my art!

Something I often complain about is the OVER USE of certain filters, usually I see most folks OVER USE the UV filter... and ALSO the Polarized Filter...

That's me speaking as AN ARTIST... since Photographers of the college degree sort have entirely different opinions of Photography than ARTISTS, or Film Makers do... But, in my opinion the the UV filter doesn't necessarily "give you better colors" like the packaging on virtually ALL UV Filters claim/allege...

Having said (or written) that, if CAN give you better BLUE color exposure in MID DAY, especially in THE SUMMER even if you're shooting on a Landscape aperture... and... um... yeah... I gotta admit that NOT ONLY do I have a TENDENCY to UNDER USE the UV Filter, because I TEND to have a HATEFUL BIAS towards it...

In which case.... in retrospect, I think this shoot would've benefited a LOT more if I'd actually used the UV Filter....
And, in further conclusion... hence the reason why THESE SUCK! 

Marcus Hook somewhere... some abandoned factory... I actually shot SOOOOO many frames of these... I haven;t even played with them all... but, the program seems to want to "match the clouds" more than "matching the features"... which screws up the batches... It's weird because I've done clouds/sunset batches before in a lesser sophisticated program by the same company... without ANY problems... 

Also, these batches crash my comp alot.

I got more... but, haven;t played with them yet...

What's great about HDR stuffs, is how you can see stuff you wouldn't even notice in the regular photos... Like, in these, the graffiti is just SO noticeable!

Anyways... sorry they suck...

*dies*

LOVE Park Goes Green in Philadelphia (Evening Experimental)

These were a number of projects I'd been wanting to get to, but everything got screwed up for me. So, I decided to make the most of my time, since my body was suffering from exhaustion... so, I just headed into Center City, and decided to just let myself go wherever... 

I was thinking Fairmount Park... But, no idea what, nor where... and since I had NO CAR The Plateau was out of the question, PLUS my friend bailed on me, so I couldn't do Plateau nor The Morris Arboretum like I wanted... but, that's how the cookie crumbles... *shrugs*  

So, since I noticed that LOVE Park was FRIGGIN' GREEN I thought I'd do an eveing shoot on the way back... needless to say there were SO many friggin' people at LOVE PARK, MORE than normal! For crying out loud, it's September, AND a week-night! I didn't even see that many folks there on a Saturday night IN THE SUMMER! 

It's because the WATER IS FRIGGIN' GREEN! 

There were taxis just droppin' people off to see the GREEN! AND, they're just hang out! I'm not talkin' skaters & stoners! NO, I mean, like ANYONE! EVERYONE! 

So.... anyways... I experimented with anything that came to mind on this one!