Ted Turner is an American entrepreneur, television producer, media proprietor and philanthropist.
The Turner family owns 23 properties across the United States — each with a goal of conservation.
Mastering photography is not solely about technical skills but also about cultivating a creative vision. Drawing inspiration from diverse sources is crucial for developing a unique style and staying motivated. This insightful explores how you can harness creativity and inspiration to elevate your photography.
Coming to you from Alex Kilbee with The Photographic Eye, this engaging video emphasizes the importance of being a “visual magpie.” Kilbee discusses how legendary photographers like Joel Meyerowitz and Dan Winters continuously find inspiration and turn it into compelling images. He suggests that you should not solely rely on expensive photo books or aimless internet searches but instead collect visual ideas from various sources around you.
Kilbee illustrates his point with personal anecdotes, such as discovering Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” during his school days, which significantly influenced his taste in music and art. He highlights that inspiration often comes from unexpected places and that it’s essential to ask questions and seek recommendations from peers. This proactive approach can help you find new photographers and artists who can spark fresh ideas.
Kilbee also addresses the misconception that inspiration should only come from within the realm of photography. He argues that looking beyond photography to other visual arts like painting and film can prevent creative stagnation. By analyzing the techniques of classic portrait painters or noticing the cinematic techniques in films, you can bring a broader perspective to your work. This helps avoid the echo chamber effect seen on platforms like Instagram, where trends and styles often become repetitive.
Expanding on this concept, Kilbee recommends maintaining a visual library of ideas. He shares his habit of carrying a notebook to jot down thoughts and inspirations as they come. This practice enables you to build a reservoir of creative concepts that can be drawn upon during shoots. Kilbee recounts how his appreciation for the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” and the visual elements he observed in it subtly influenced his photographic style. He encourages you to reflect on your interests and experiences to identify what visually resonates with you.
In the practical application of these ideas, Kilbee discusses how studying the works of photographers such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Bob Carlos Clarke helped him develop his style. By merging elements from different sources, he created unique compositions that reflected his influences while maintaining originality. He provides an example of combining Mapplethorpe’s intense style with Clarke’s distinctive props to produce a memorable image. This blending of inspirations illustrates how diverse influences can be synthesized into your work.
Kilbee’s insights underscore the value of continuously seeking and integrating inspiration from various sources. Whether it’s through music, art, film, or the works of other photographers, broadening your scope of influence can lead to more dynamic and original photography. He also emphasizes the importance of practical steps, such as keeping a notebook and actively engaging with different visual mediums, to cultivate a well-rounded creative approach. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Kilbee.
Artist Mikaela Shafer, Hopi, Coyote Clan, talks with an attendee during the grand opening of her first solo exhibition, Matrilineal Memory at the Center for Native Arts & Cultures on May 10, 2024. She says her work explores memory, emotion and cultural preservation.
Jarrette Werk Underscore News / Report for America
This story originally appeared on Underscore.news.
The smell of burning piñon pine filled the air at Portland’s Center for Native Arts & Cultures on May 10, lending itself to the dreamlike feeling of Matrilineal Memory, an exhibition by Hopi artist Mikaela Shafer.
Viewers’ eyes gravitated to the left corner of the room when they first entered the art gallery. There sat a rusted, antique bed frame covered in twigs and tumbleweeds. Three sheer, silk chiffon fabrics hang above the bed with printed images of the artist as if she is floating above the bed, almost like an out of body experience as she watches from a dream.
“You know that dream state that you’re in when you’re waking up from a dream, or from a daydream, and you’re in between that here and now — I wanted to create this feeling of being in that kind of dream state,” said Shafer, Hopi, from the Coyote Clan.
In another section of the room, over a dozen silk chiffon screenprints of her art pieces hung from the ceiling with viewers invited to walk among and interact with them.
Three sheer, silk chiffon fabrics with printed images of featured artist, Mikaela Shafer, hang above an antique metal bed frame in the corner of the gallery room of the Center for Native Arts & Cultures building.
Jarrette Werk Underscore News / Report for America
From painting on the walls as a young kid to making her own clothes in high school, Shafer has been an artist all her life. When she became a parent 16 years ago, Shafer put her art on the backburner to focus on motherhood. Now, Shafer is the mother of two daughters, 16 and 11.
As her daughters entered adolescence, Shafer’s partner encouraged her to start creating again, and she began to paint. Last fall, the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation (NACF) announced Shafer as one of the 15 LIFT – Early Career Support for Native Artists award recipients.
The year-long, $10,000 award includes professional development opportunities and marketing support for artist awardees.
“This is our first time partnering with a LIFT artist to hold an exhibition of their project in our space,” said Laura (Cales) Matalka, Chickasaw Nation, associate director of programs at NACF. “So this really deepens the work that NACF does to support emerging Native artists.”
At the art opening on May 10, Shafer provided a home-cooked meal for people to enjoy while experiencing her art. She spent nearly four hours before the opening in the kitchen with her dad, cooking 120 tamales and a Hopi stew made of hominy, meat and chilis that she says is common at family gatherings.
“When people are coming to this opening, I want them to feel like they are being welcomed into a familial space,” Shafer said.
Shafer will be at the final exhibition days, May 24, 25 and 31, and will host a discussion about her work on June 6.
Attendees interact with more than a dozen art pieces printed on silk chiffon fabrics that hang from the ceiling of the Center for Native Arts & Cultures building during the grand opening of the “Matrilineal Memory” solo exhibition by 2023 LIFT artist Mikaela Shafer, Hopi, (Coyote Clan) on May 10, 2024.
Jarrette Werk Underscore News / Report for America
She hopes Matrilineal Memory stirs something in viewers, and that they take part in the healing process that Shafer experienced while creating her work.
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“I hope that it’s a healing experience for people to think about memories that they have that maybe they’ve been repressing or maybe they have shame about or maybe it’s a good memory,” Shafer said. “We need to share those memories and preserve them and connect through them.”
Framed original paintings hang along the walls of a square room at the Center for Native Arts & Cultures, with a large tumbleweed sitting in the middle. The pieces are all part of the Matrilineal Memory exhibition, an exploration of what it means to heal.
“It’s about how people can hold generations of trauma within them, but they can also hold generations of strength,” Shafer said. “Each painting is kind of like an unboxing of a memory and then the healing and sewing it back together in my own way.”
Walking clockwise around the room, Shafer displayed her work to tell a story. It starts with the moon, followed by the sun rising over a desert landscape and fades back into the sky and the moon, according to Shafer.
The watercolor pieces are full of texture — layers of paper, thread stitches and dried kombucha leather, made from the culture of bacteria and yeast called a SCOBY, which is sometimes referred to as a “mother.”
Between each piece, Shafer displayed some of her poetry, stitching all the work together.
My stomach feels like a galaxy
You are there,
and ancestors too
And everything is orbiting
so fast I lose my footing
and stumble into the street
Displayed next to the above poem is Shafer’s favorite piece: “My belly is a galaxy.” Burnt orange, olive green, mustard yellow and shades of blue crowd the frame.
To create this piece, Shafer hauled a generator out to the ocean in Seaview, Washington. She sewed on the beach, blending the colors of the desert with pieces of the ocean.
“It felt like I was connecting my homelands to the land that I live on now, the desert to the ocean,” Shafer said.
In creating each piece on display during the exhibition, Shafer focused on healing and reconnecting with her Hopi culture.
“It’s very important to heal yourself in order to heal your mother and grandmother so that you can preserve culture,” Shafer said. “It’s really important to do the work to heal ourselves so that future generations have stories of resilience.”
Now she has her own story of resilience and healing to pass on to her daughters.
Underscore News is a nonprofit investigative newsroom committed to Indigenous-centered reporting in the Pacific Northwest. We are supported by foundations and donor contributions. Follow Underscore on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.”
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Marian Dowling, a local photographer who captures nature and wildlife images, will be one of nearly 70 exhibitors at the South Coastal Delaware AARP Artisans Fair. The show is set for 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, May 25, at Lord Baltimore Elementary School, 120 Atlantic Ave., Ocean View.
Fair admission and parking are free. For more information, go to southcoastalaarp.org.
Grab your tote bags for another summer of freshly grown produce, unique handmade local crafts and other delightful trinkets and wonders.
Riverwalk Market Fair opens this Saturday in downtown Northfield on Bridge Square from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., rain or shine. The operating dates for 2024 are May 18 through Oct. 26.
A bizarre, parasitic plant that looks like a scowling owl has won a global photography contest for the best snapshot of a plant or fungus. Nestled in dark soil, the “owl” glows an eerie emerald, according to the World Nature Photography Awards.
Photographer Chatree Lertsintanakorn snapped the mesmerizing image in a secluded wildlife sanctuary in Thailand, where the miniscule plants’ blooming bodies pop out of the ground at the base of trees.
The plant, Thismia thaithongiana, is a myco-heterotrophic species, meaning it doesn’t photosynthesize but obtains its energy and nutrients from fungi — more specifically the fungus associated with the roots of trees. In 2018, scientists discovered it in the Doi Hua Mot Mountains in Thailand.
Little is known about this plant, but its peculiar shaped body has led to its name,”Phisawong Ta Nok Hook,” which translates to “mysterious owl’s eye,” according to Nation Thailand.
T. thaithongiana spends most of its life underground until it bursts up, revealing its peculiar fruiting body.
Lertsintanakorn learned about the rare species while meeting with photographer Suchat Chanhomhuan, one of its discoverers.
Related: ‘Hauntingly beautiful’ image of a golden horseshoe crab wins wildlife photography competition
With the help of Chanhomhuan, Lertsintanakorn located the plant in the Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand’s Tak Province. “I noticed it grew primarily near the base of trees, making it easy to overlook,” Lertsintanakorn told Live Science in an email.
Its location is prime real estate for the tiny parasite. In general, some species of fungus live around and inside the roots of enormous trees. They produce an underground network in search of minerals that they pass on to the trees. In return, trees give them nutritious sugars — in an alliance known as a symbiotic relationship.
T. thaithongiana interrupts this relationship by stealing the nutrients produced by the fungi.
T. thaithongiana is only visible when its fruiting body grows out of the ground, and even then, it is incredibly tiny. “I was surprised by its diminutive size, measuring a mere 2 to 8 millimeters [0.08 to 0.3 inch] in length,” he said. Lertsintanakorn’s image was awarded Gold in the Plants and Fungi category in the World Nature Photography Awards. Founded in 2020, the competition is now in its fifth year with over 3,000 image entries this year.
“Our winners never fail to take our breath away with their stunning images. As always, it’s such a joy to see the amazing caliber of entries into the awards,” said Adrian Dinsdale, cofounder of the World Nature Photography Awards in a statement.
Other notable images from the competition include a haunting collection of olive baboon (Papio anubis) heads and skulls at the Abomey voodoo market in Benin, an orca (Orcinus orca) splitting a herring ball underwater, and a group of crabs grabbing onto the lava rock-encrusted shoreline under a wave of water.
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In June of 1902, the founder of the Keystone View C. reported that he feared for the safety of George Pratt, a Meadville photographer working in Asia, for no one had received a letter from Pratt since November of 1901 nor his shipments of photographic plates (photo negatives).
The good news is that, though Pratt had become gravely ill, he returned to Meadville in 1903.
The Johnson-Shaw Stereoscopic Museum, 423 Chestnut St., Meadville, has a new exhibit showcasing the challenges of working in foreign countries during the early 1900s.
On exhibit are 16 stereoviews showing the Asian countries Pratt visited as a Keystone photographer, as well as three views of Cuba during the Spanish-American War, which Pratt photographed. Stereoscopes will be available so visitors can experience the images’ 3D effects.
Also on display are copies of early 1900s newspaper articles regarding George Pratt, plus images of early photographers working in rugged areas since no photograph of Pratt could be found.
The Johnson-Shaw Stereoscopic Museum is open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through November.
To tour the museum on a weekday, contact Lance Johnson at (814) 720-4306 to make arrangements.
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