Biography: Michael Kenna

I just want to start this off letting you know that I didn't find a lot of information on Michael Kenna, but I found enough.

Michael Kenna was born in Widnes, Lancashire, England in 1953. He currently lives in Seattle Washington. He is now roughly about 57 years old (I could not find his specific birthday). He attended 3 different colleges in England. He went to St Joseph's College in Upholland, Lancashire between 1964-1972. Then from there, he went to Banbury School of Art in Banbury, Oxfordshire between 1972-1973. The last college he went to was the London College of Printing in London, England between 1973-1976.
Over his years of taking photo's he has won awards from around the world. He recieved the Imogen Cunningham Award from San Fransisco, California in 1981. The Art in Public Buildings Award from the California Arts Council Commission in Sacramento in 1987. Then the Institute for Aesthetic Development Award in Pasadena, California in 1989. The Golden Saffron Award in Consuegra, Spain in 1996. The Chevailer of the Order of Arts and Letters from the Ministry of Culture in France in 2000. The last award received was Honorary Master of Arts from the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara in California.
He doesn't just do his own work, he has also done work for different companies such as:
Volvo, Rolls Royce, Audi, Sprint, Dom Perighan, and the Spanish Touring Board.
Random facts, he visited Japan in 1987, and he took 95 photos while he was there. He works with long exposure times, sometimes lasting up to 10 hours. I like this quote, "you can't always see what is otherwise noticible during the day... with long exposures you can photograph what the human eye is incapable of seeing"- Michael Kenna. The last random fact I have is that he has 18 books that are published to date.

Portfolio Proposal

Proposed by: Skyler Blue Romero
Project Title: SDSCPA
Class: Photo 3-4
Instructor: Ms.Miles
Project Due Date: 1/31/2011

Description: I will be doing landscapes because last year I found out that I was good at taking pictures of them. I want to take pictures of our school, and show how great it is. I want to take a lot of pictures from many different angles and areas around the school.

Type of Work: Landscape

Concept: I will be taking pictures of our school to show how great it is. Since finding out that i was pretty good at landscapes, the only place that I could take great pictures would be here at SCPA. The only thing I'm going to be doing with my work is making our school look even better. I want to do all the pictures in black and white.

Vision: I want people to see that andscape pictures can be as amazing or better than any other type of photography.

Inspiration: I wasn't inspired in the beginning, but after we started doing a biography project I found this photographer named "Michael Kenna". His work is amazing and it gave me inspiration for my landscape work.

Equipment: Rebel Cannon SS, 8x10 Prints, white poster board

Presentation: I'm just going to glue my photographs to a White Poster Board, and arrange them in an interesting way.

Portraits

After reading "Soaking Success" I have a better idea of what a portrait actually is. I believe it is a picture of a persons face that is taken during a comfortable moment in time for the person. It's having your picture taken when you are doing the one thing that you live for. For me, that would be getting a picture of me when I'm practicing with my band because that's what I love to do.

What I think makes Sharma's portraits so great is that she capture the person's personality in a very intimate moment.

I think that the article helped me get a way better idea of what a portrait actually is. Before, I thought it was just a picture of someones's face, but now I realize that you need to find something of the model that makes them the most comfortable and show more of their personality.

In this picture, we had to use photoshop to soften our faces. We used it to get rid of blemishes and anything unpleasant to the eyes. There wasn't much to do for this and it was really simple to do.

jnadif

The process for making this photo was really fun. we started of by going outside and having someone take a picture of us, then we uploaded the pictures onto a computer and started to photoshop them.
Photoshopping the pictures was fun because you can do anything with them and it was cool creating designs.
I recommend photoshop.

Sequence

The process of making these was a little more difficult than I thought. It took a lot longer because I had to make 7 different pictures and 2 of them that I processed came out darker. So, I had to figure out all the different times for all of these to come out right. My title came out in black and white because I had my friend Chris send it to me in an email. The darker parts of the title are actually blue, and the inside part colored was orange. As for actually taking the pictures, it was really easy because I had previously taken pictures, but when I processed them, the film was splochie and bad. It only took about 5 minutes to take the photos and I was able to process the next day. Overall, I think this was one of the best projects we have had.

The Wizard

The process of making this photo seemed to be way easier than all of the rest of the times. How this one came out is the best any of my previous photos have been. The only part that is still a bit difficult for me is developing the film. By the end of this grading period, I think that I will have everything down.

The shoot for this picture took awhile, but I had a lot of good photos in the role of film. I am finally getting how to use everything on the camera really well and I have been getting more and more better pictures than I did in the beginning of the year. So far, this is the best looking picture I have took this year. I hope all of my other photos will come out this good, or better.

In this photoshopped image I put together, there is a random drunk guy in the jungle and there's a giant freakin' frog right behind him. It's just about to nom nom nom on him.

United States of AMERICA!!!

I didn't do this to make a point or anything important, I did it because it looks funny. 

There is nothing to really interpret from this image. 

I could have chosen some different images, but I didn't. i wanted to make something that didn't make any sense what soever.