Posts Tagged ‘san francisco’
The Story Behind the Photograph: Doggie Love
© 2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Doggie Love.
I frequently get asked for the story behind certain images. Because this is a frequent request, each Monday I have decided to share a story behind one of my favorite photographs. This story, I shared a couple months ago in my monthly newsletter.
I captured this image back in February while I was out shooting in the Haight. Living in San Francisco, I come across so many interesting people walking down the street each day. I often make up stories for the people that I see reguarly and am curious how my stories compare to their real lives.
In a quest to learn more about the people around me, I’ve begun taking a few street portraits. This is something I’ve been wanting to try for more than a year, but up until recently my fear of how people would react has prevented me from starting this process.
This particular morning, while walking to the Haight I decided that I couldn’t go home until I had asked at least 5 people if I could photograph them. This lovely woman was the first person I asked that morning and even though it was her doggie’s feeding time, she graciously allowed me to take a couple photographs of her and her dog and learn a little about them. Her kindness buoyed my courage and allowed me to ask four more strangers if I could photograph them that morning. This photograph is my favorite of that morning, probably in large part to her kindness.
Doggie Love
© 2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Doggie Love.
This image I’ll be featuring at the 200 Yards third show opening at Free Gold Watch this Saturday. The opening will be from 6-10 pm, March 12. The story of this fun street portrait I told in my March monthly newsletter. If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do!
Winter Summer II
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Winter Summer II.
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: the gorgeous weather we have been experiencing as of late here in San Francisco. My roommate and I have begun calling it “Winter Summer.” On Sunday, I went for a walk from my house in the Mission up to the Haight to once again try to capture some interesting photos to submit for Round 3 of the 200 Yards project. The weather was perfect and as I was returning home I stumbled across this view, I love how this image perfectly summarizes the good parts of this City: the hills, the weather, Muni, and the old buildings.
Hills Brothers Coffee
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Hills Brothers Coffee.
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: this lovely brick building down on the Embarcadero (yes I know I’ve been spending a lot of time down there lately). I like how this processing effect made the image look older than the present day (although there are lots of hints that we are in 2011 San Francisco).
Da Wharf
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Da Wharf.
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: this building that I found along the Embarcadero wharf the other day. I loved the ladder to nowhere and the pipes along the right hand edge. A little iPhone processing brought out the worn details in the building and I really like this image.
Embarcadero Juxtaposition
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Embarcadero Juxtaposition.
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: this juxtaposition of old and new along the Embarcadero. The other day while walking down the Embarcadero I was noticing the layering effect that you get when looking towards downtown. In the distance, there are the shiny glass buildings of SOMA. While across the street there are old brick buildings. At points you also have the stark concrete of the Bay Bridge. At some points (including the one above) you get all three in one frame.
Bel Air
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Bel Air.
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: this shiny, vintage Bel Air that I ran across the other day in the Financial District. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car this shiny and pretty.
Winter Summer
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Winter Summer.
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: a little corner of the San Francisco Mission. This week we in San Francisco have experienced one of the about 10 seasons we seem to have in this city, the winter summer. Sorry to all of you that have been bogged down with snow and rain, but this week we’ve had sunny skies and temperatures in the 60s. I went for a walk earlier this week to enjoy this lovely weather and liked how the blue sky contrasted with the yellow of the cross and with the white of the adobe.
Golden Hour Reflection
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Golden Hour Reflection.
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: a reflection I found the other day while wandering down Market Street during the photographer’s favorite hour AKA “The Golden Hour.”
Vents
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Vents.
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: this row of vents along the side of the SF MOMA.
Benday Dots
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Benday Dots.
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: a closeup of an art installation I ran across on the Embarcadero the other day. I was in the middle of reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and the dots reminded me of old school comic books.
Lingering Christmas Lights
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Lingering Christmas Lights.
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: some lingering Christmas lights I found while walking to the grocery store last night. I much prefer this lingering piece of Christmas over the piles of discarded Christmas trees on every street corner in the neighborhood.
Destruction
©2010 Kiffanie Stahle, Destruction
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: some sort of construction equipment that created a huge mess while tearing down a building.
Raygun Gothic Rocketship
©2010 Kiffanie Stahle, Raygun Gothic Rocketship
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: the Raygun Gothic Rocketship that has been installed on the Embarcadero since August. I love the retro-aspect of this sculpture and attempted to emphasize it with my iPhone processing.
Dial
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Dial.
This image was taken on the same walk to the SFMOMA as the iPhone photo I posted last week. True to my photographic fascination for old objects, signs are no exception. I loved the colors of this sign (which I admit I have enhanced via photoshop) against the sky. I also find it amusing that the crop I selected resulted in the sign stating “Dial.” As always I enjoy hearing your feedback about new images.
Cracked
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Cracked
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: my roommate and I walked from our house to the SFMOMA to check out the Henri-Cartier Bresson exhibit. On our way we decided that we would take pictures along the theme of ‘cracked.’ This odd little plastic thing implanted into concrete was my favorite shot. I like the pop of color in the gray background.
Old School Bike Seat
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, Bike Seat.
Every semester I have grand plans of being able to keep up on both my art projects and my schoolwork. And every semester (about a month in) the art projects seem to fall by the wayside and school takes over my life. While I have more free time in my last year of law school than I did my first year, I still have yet to find the right balance of art time and school time. While that is no excuse for not updating the blog, that’s where I’ve been.
Earlier this week, I was avoiding doing some school work and looking through my photography archives. The main reason I started back through the archives was because I am craving a trip to Abbey Country. But in the process I came across this image. I took it when I was out and about shooting for the 200 Yards Show at Heart a few months back. While I ended up settling on another image of the bike for the show, there is something about this image that really resonated with me this week. In playing around with this image, I settled on a browner-tinged single tone image, rather than traditional black and white and like how it turned out. Hopefully, it resonates with you this week as well.
37.751151, -122.420147
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, 37.751151, -122.420147.
This is the second image that I’ll be featuring at the 200 Yards show opening tonight at Heart (24th and Valencia). The other I posted a few weeks back. If you are in San Francisco please stop by tonight and say hi, or stop by Heart anytime before September 20th and check out the show.
Shelly Kerry
Before meeting Shelly Kerry, of Em’s Studio, I don’t think I wore earrings for more than 10 years. But I love Shelly’s style (and it doesn’t hurt that she is a fantastic person) and over the course of getting to know her, I’ve learned more about her craft. This knowledge has made me appreciate the art of jewelry making and has translated into the beginnings of a handmade jewelry collection based on pieces by Shelly and other local artists.
©Shelly Kerry
Shelly grew up with really crafty women in her family and she can recall making projects with them during the summer months and vacations. Some of Shelly’s earliest memories are of spending days entertaining herself with a pencil and crayon, drawing and doodling on the floor of her living room.
She dabbled in many art forms before she fell in love with jewelry making. This love affair started when she realized that she could make jewelry better than a lot of the cheap pieces she was purchasing in chain stores. She learned by deconstructing pieces, taking them apart and figuring out how they were made. She then took questions to her jewelry maker friends and after taking a few classes, began selling pieces at local shows. For Shelly jewelry making satisfies her love of manipulating little things – twisting wires and playing with delicate pieces. Her style often leans towards big and raw, but there are always small, precious parts to each of her pieces. Her pieces often contain the juxtaposition of a raw, rough stone with a glitzy chain.
©Shelly Kerry
Shelly draws her inspiration from color and textures. Something as simple as the pattern on a dress or the color of an unknown plant are examples of items that have inspired a new line of pieces. She also takes 30 to 45 minutes each day to look through art and design blogs and magazines in order to get external inspiration. From personal experience, I am inspired regularly on Shelly’s ability to draw inspiration from the most unlikely places. She has the ability to keep her eyes and mind open to the possibility that anything could be inspirational. Another important aspect of being creative to Shelly is to live each day creatively, not tucking away things at 5 pm, but living every second of life as an opportunity to express yourself. She fosters this by surrounding herself with creative and supportive people and maintaining her home/studio in a visually and mentally stimulating way.
In addition to making beautiful jewelry she is one of the owners of Lightbox SF. Lightbox SF is designed to be a support system for emerging artists. They offer consulting services to these artists to assist them with things like marketing, public relations, social media, or line sheets. Their eventual goal is to create a workspace and gallery that will create a creative community for the resident artists. They also organize two art event series, The Crafty Hour and 200 Yards. The Crafty Hour is a combination of a craft show and happy hour, that features about a dozen artists who sale their wares right in the bar. While 200 Yards is a gallery show where all pieces have been created within 200 yards of the host location (yes, this is the upcoming show I am in).
Shelly is another fantastic creative person that I feel lucky to know and I hope you will take the time to investigate out her work.
37.754252, -122.421015
©2011 Kiffanie Stahle, 37.754252, -122.421015.
I want to apologize for my absence from the blog, I’ve been busy and have let my posts go to the wayside. While that is a lame excuse, it’s the best that I’ve got.
However, I’m excited to let you all know that the above image as well as another will be featured in the 200 Yards show that opens on August 18th. All the featured images have been taken within 200 yards of the host location (Heart near 24th and Valencia). This project was a challenge for me. The first challenge was the fact that 200 yards is not a large area (about one city block in either direction). The second was a creative process hurdle. While I have shot images on a theme previously, I’ve never been totally happy with the outcome. I’m still trying to figure out the creative process that works for me with themed shoots. Luckily this time around, there were lots of little details, some of my favorite subjects.
Both the images that I’ll be featuring are textural black and whites, because of that I chose a method of printing I’ve been wanting to use for a while, aluminum. I had them printed at Bay Photo, they arrived yesterday and I’m pleased with how they turned out. I’d love it if you would drop by the show and let me know what you think.
Window of Owls
©2010 Kiffanie Stahle, Window of Owls.
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: One of my all-time favorite window displays in San Francisco. It’s located right near Dolores Park and is an entire collection of OWLS!
Dump Trucks
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: A little hidden playground in the Mission that I happened upon. I love the primary colors of kids toys.
Weathered Gate
Another iPhone capture of things that catch my eye. This time: another photo obsession of mine, taking photos of objects weathered by time and nature.
Jill Allyn Stafford
I was really honored when Jill Allyn Stafford said that I could write a post about her art. I’ve known Jill for several years now and am lucky enough to have one of her pieces in my house (plus a little ATC card that sits in the corner of my mirror). Jill somehow has the time to be the artistic director of Vox Sacramento in addition to being a mom, an artist, and working full time as a legal assistant. What I admire most about Jill’s work is the way she utilizes negative space, which is something that I struggle with.
Jill began creating art in her mid-30′s. She started realizing that she had images in her head that she wanted to place on paper. Claiming that she had no natural talent for drawing or painting. Jill started by cutting images out of magazines using them to create a new story. Jill’s work has now evolved from using recognizable images, to tearing up paper and creating a piece based on colors and textures, to creating everything by hand and using images from photographs she’s taken.
Traditionally, Jill has focused on one image and using that created a piece that worked around that image. However, Jill’s latest work is inspired by her friend Jennifer Hoffmann, who died of breast cancer last year. From Jill’s description of Jennifer it sounds like she was an amazing woman and I can see why she has been the driving force in Jill’s work the past year. Jill describes Jennifer this way:
She found the strength to leave an unhappy marriage, met and married the man she was supposed to be with, and almost immediately discovered she had stage IV breast cancer. Her diagnosis didn’t deter her from living life completely and fully and with all the deepest love and affection she could have possibly wanted.
