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Finishing my final class with James Welling, we were asked to expand on an idea that was brought up in class. There were far too many interesting ideas that came up so for internet’s sake ill try to be concise and answer a few questions in my opinion about photography.

How much humor is acceptable in contemporary photography?

As students of art, anything we create will be contemporary art whether its visual language looks like craft or a Gursky print. It’s simply a highly conscious dialogue of art history combined with contemporary practices and our current world we live in. In our class, a  student made photographs of himself posed as Lady Gaga. Another student made a highly refined photo of himself posing as a rapper while he forced the entire class to listen to an amateur (yet catchy) pop-rap music mp3 that he recorded. Both of these works were technically rigorous, however, so they weren’t easily ignored. I think anything pushed far enough has potential, especially in a body of work. Yasumasa Morimura made his entire career out of photoshopping himself into celebrity’s faces and historical images. Wolfgang Tillmans, who embraces humor himself, in his recent show displayed a massive image of an adorable Toucan. If an idea is well thought out in terms of technique and concept, then it can transcend humor and reveal real social implications.

How can the internet be used successfully for image making?

We read an article called: In Defense of the Poor Image (http://jameswellingadvancedphoto.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/in_defence_of_poor_image.pdf) The article discussed the implications of the .jpeg, copied, ripped, remixed, edited. I personally have a problem with contemporary artists who use the internet. Mostly because they’re “noobs” (in internet language) or inexperienced when it comes to using the internet. Frankly, any art that relates to Second Life is not going to be interesting to me because Second Life is outdated software with horrible graphics for those who lack the time to play video games which are much more immersive and have far more complex social interactions. Thomas Ruff did a series in which he printed internet Jpegs at massive scale. This is irrating for me because inevitably, most people will end up seeing these images on the internet anyways, and the only commentary comes from the decision to manifest the digital image into a large scale print for elite consumption.

This camera looks like an absolute beast of a tool for photographers. We have our “main” tool, our DLSR, our versatile tool which takes the clearest pictures. But they are cumbersome, expensive, and too precious to carry in extreme situations. The Pentax WG-1 is “waterproof, dustproof, shockproof, coldproof, and crushproof” which means its suitable for the surfer, the rock-climber, the snowboarder, the alcoholic, or anyone under 200 pounds who happens to unintentionally sit down with their camera in their back pocket.

Pentax really deserves some props for the mountaineering-equipment look of this camera. Not only is it durable, but looks like it’s meant to sustain the most extreme of environments.

But it gets even crazier. This cam is equipped with a GPS, so you can know exactly where you took every photo. Whether you’re skydiving over Palm Springs, or blacked out drunk, you can map out your adventures with photographs.