i have so much to learn, so much work to do. and i feel excited to begin. i’m referring to everything. every single thing. today i had a moment where i felt that i could be doing more, making my self better and calmer, working harder and embracing the people i care about more. i think this is the spring influencing.
rachel took this portrait of me at the Weisman Art Museum as we jumped around the rolling, shining facade. our playfulness is helping me to be a better person.
pregnancy can seem so still, soft , and meditative. it is a period of pure nourishment. i’ve photographed three pregnancies and each mother during the shoot seemed serene and filled with love. There is such gentleness in the mothers’ faces and it continues to blow me away. my goal is to shoot more maternity photos inside the mother’s home, a place where she is in her own environment, where the objects around her possibly define her and describe her.
rachel sent me some mail art. her poem ‘grain’ somehow gives me a feeling of preciseness and tenderness especially paired with the edward weston image. I’m inspired to combine her poetry with some of the image-pairings i’ve been making. she’s good. real good.
© crystal liepa
anna: the excitable, nervous talking, blue eyed, messy, black dress wearing anna. she chose her room not for the size but for the light. if anna were the objects found in her room she would be coral, a mason jar with lemon peel, crumpled tissue on the floor, and the girl in her grandmother’s painting.
anna, you are truly adorable and i love photographing you.
times are tough. money is scarce. but that doesn’t mean we have to be depressed and bored! i have been hearing more and more about people curating shows in their own home–no middle man, no rental fee and other bullshit costs, and no time constraints. Here is a great article I found on mnartists.org about DIY galleries: click here.
Here is another diptych that has nothing to do with this post. poeple don’t like to look at blogs without images.
I am finally exiting my post-graduation lull–I am taking photos again for my own pleasure. I still cannot work on anything that involves seriousness and meaning rather I have been photographing things for pure aesthetics. For beauty. For joy.
Here is a self portrait (hoping to capture how serene I have been feeling lately) and here is also a diptych of something pretty:
Click on the link to see wedding photography at its finest. Belathee’s images create a specific mood by capturing the nuances of a wedding and the essence of a couple. When I look at Belathee’s photos I feel relief because their photos provide a sense of accessibility yet professional artistry. I hope to be a wedding photographer as honest as I feel Belathee’s photos are.
Here is my own photo that I took while a couple was in between posing: 
Who doesn’t love photographing all things abandon, lonely, and empty–come on, everyone does it. On flickr I found this group called League of the Empty Chair so now I can feed my cliched fetish with 6,000 photos plus of empty chairs! Here are some of my same old photos you have seen before.
Here’s the link to the group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/theleague/
© crystal liepa 2008
My issue of whether to combine art with wedding photography on an online gallery like flickr or a website has me thinking about labels within photography and what labels do to a photographer’s reputation.
There is a dichotomy within the label of photographer: As I see it there are artists and commercial photographers. Artists create and sell their work individually, publish books of their work, and show in galleries, unlike commercial photographers who sell services rather than images.
I think the consensus among recent art school grads is that photographing weddings, maternity portraits, family portraits, etc. is second rate and compromising to a practicing artist’s reputation and work. For example, writers who want to be taken seriously but write romance novels might use a pseudonym to protect their reputation. I was just talking to a friend about whether she will advertise her wedding photography services on her website, (which is strictly showing her art) and she said she would create a ’secret link’ to her wedding services rather than combine the two. I agree that she should do this, but I can’t stop thinking about why there is such stigma around wedding photography.
Wedding photography is a service where the photographer has to essentially cater to the client and take standard photos like the exchanging of rings, the post-marriage kiss and so on, which for many artists might feel like a loss of artistic freedom. However, I feel artists can contribute to this right of passage in people’s lives by acting as documentarian, artist, and paid professional, while taking away personalized and respectable images from the wedding to their portfolio. I am in the mind state of embracing the challenge of being both a wedding photographer and artist, because I believe photographing weddings is a way to study human dynamics and relationships, to master portraiture, think fast, confront technical challenges, and be humbled by the immensity and pressure of the work!
Writing about Ray Johnson made me want to share more art that I can’t stop looking at…
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