Michelle Schwartz http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog The online portfolio of Michelle Schwartz Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:45:34 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 en Photography: Digital - Chicago http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/08/06/photography-digital-chicago/ http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/08/06/photography-digital-chicago/#comments Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:30:38 +0000 michelle http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/?p=15 I spent the summer of 2007 on a road trip from New York to Vancouver with my friend, Gen. I had borrowed a telephoto lens and was excited to try it out. While we stopped for a few days in Jersey, I discovered the joys of using it to capture candid images of people.

Photos taken with a Digital Rebel XT.

Loop

Kids

Gehry


Loop
“Riding the Loop” July 17, 2007

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Light
“Millennium Park” July 17, 2007

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Gehry
“Guarding Gehry” July 17, 2007

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]]> http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/08/06/photography-digital-chicago/feed/ Photography: Digital - Brickworks http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/08/06/photography-digital-brickworks/ http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/08/06/photography-digital-brickworks/#comments Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:36:13 +0000 michelle http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/?p=14 Toronto is a city of ravines and valleys. Often, I will be walking along a major street and notice a dirt path obscured by some bushes. I’ll walk down a hill and find myself standing on a beautiful nature trail in the woods, as if five seconds earlier I wasn’t standing in the middle of a major downtown area. These photos were taken when I discovered the Don Valley Brick Works for the first time. For this set, I was really focused on texture.

Photos taken with a Digital Rebel XT.

Drums

Light

Wall


Drums
“Drums” May 10, 2008

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Light
“Light” May 10, 2008

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Wall
“Wall” May 10, 2008

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]]> http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/08/06/photography-digital-brickworks/feed/ Photography: Digital - Typewriters http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/05/06/photography-digital-typewriters/ http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/05/06/photography-digital-typewriters/#comments Wed, 07 May 2008 00:47:51 +0000 michelle http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/?p=13 One day, while Stark and I were walking back to the apartment, we cut through an alley that is the dumping ground for all the discarded furniture, old bathroom fixtures, and rejected home furnishings from the many surrounding bulidings. Placed right on top of a pile of broken dresser drawers was a pair of old electric typewriters. They were missing the plastic shells that should have been covering their inner workings, and Stark and I found ourselves engrossed by the tiny gears and springs. We took some photos and then absonded with the golf ball type elements.

Photos taken with a Digital Rebel XT.

Typewriters

Typewriter Closeup


Typewriters
“IBM Selectric Typewriters” September 28, 2008

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Typewriter Closeup
“IBM Selectric Typewriter” September 28, 2008

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]]> http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/05/06/photography-digital-typewriters/feed/ Photography: Digital - Self-Portraits http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/04/11/photography-digital-self-portraits/ http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/04/11/photography-digital-self-portraits/#comments Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:29:12 +0000 Michelle http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/04/11/photography-digital-self-portraits/ Last year I found a group on Flickr that was called 365 Days. The idea was to sign up and post a self-portrait of yourself to the group every day for a year. I tried to complete the challenge, but I only made it a few months before I started feeling guilty of rampant narcissism. I also ran out of ideas for photos. After self-portraits at the dentist, on the train, at work, and watching TV, I decided to move on. These are a few examples from the project.

Photos taken with a Digital Rebel XT.

Snow Hat

Low Saturation

Brooklyn Hat

Snow Day


Snow Hat
“Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not” January 15, 2007


This photo was inspired by the cover of an Arctic Monkeys album that I spotted in a magazine. It ended up looking nothing like the source material, but it sure got me a lot of compliments on my hat.

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Low Saturation
“Low Saturation” April 14, 2007


The 365 days project came at a good time, as I had just bought myself a 50mm lens, a remote shutter release, and a tripod. This photo was a result of me playing with my new equipment.

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Brooklyn Hat
“Brooklyn Represent” February 7, 2007


When I wasn’t using the tripod, I had to take the photo by just holding the camera up with one arm, a method that my friend dismissively termed “MySpace Photography.” If I had a MySpace account, this would be my profile photo. I was trying to look tough in my new hat. As the hat was given to me by my mother, I’m not sure whether I’m pulling off the tough thing very successfully.

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Snow Day
“Snow Day” January 19, 2007


This was my favorite shot from my several months of impromptu photo shoots. Early morning, going to work in the freezing cold, this photo perfectly captures the start to a miserable day.

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]]> http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/04/11/photography-digital-self-portraits/feed/ Photography: Restoration - First Attempts http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/04/01/photography-restoration-first-attempts/ http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/04/01/photography-restoration-first-attempts/#comments Tue, 01 Apr 2008 21:52:54 +0000 Michelle http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/04/01/photography-restoration-first-attempts/ After finding a disintegrating paper bag full of hundreds of old photos in my parents’ basement, I felt inspired to try my hand at digital photo restoration. My grandfather had taken to creating photo albums by haphazardly stapling decades worth of photos into spiral notebooks. I resolved to undo some of the damage he had done. My original goal was to restore a photo of my grandmother as a teenager as a gift to my mother, but the process became addictive.

All photos were scanned and then edited in Photoshop. I was using my father’s scanner at the time, and it couldn’t handle higher resolutions, so I didn’t get the detail I would have liked. I would love to get a new scanner and try again.

Grandma

Bath

Group


Grandma

“Agnes, 1928″ March 3, 2007


This was my first attempt at restoration. I used the healing tool to even out the creases and some stains on the paper, and sharpened the image.

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Bath

“Bathtub” March 4, 2007


This is a photo of my mother and her brother, I’m guessing from some time in the early Fifties. This time I had to remove both creases and staple marks. The rest of the photo was in pretty good shape.

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Group

“Group Shot” March 15, 2007


This photo of my family and their friends took considerably more time to restore. It was dirty and wrinkled and the staples had torn holes through body parts and the checkerboard tablecloth. In addition to the healing tool, I also used the brush tool to paint in some of the missing pieces.

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]]> http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/04/01/photography-restoration-first-attempts/feed/ Photography: Film - Diptychs http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/27/photography-film-diptychs/ http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/27/photography-film-diptychs/#comments Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:17:52 +0000 Michelle http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/27/photography-film-diptychs/ Recently I received a Holga camera as a gift. I had grown so accustomed to shooting digital photos that it was almost disorienting to return to film. The photographs of sheep were on the very first roll of film I shot with the Holga. I accidentally advanced the film too far, leading to the strange dividing lines on the photos. The second set of photos were shot from my balcony at night, using a tripod.

Photos taken on 120mm film using a Holga.

Sheep

Buildings


Sheep
“Sheep at Riverdale Farm” January 15, 2008

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Buildings
“St. Jamestown Buildings” Date

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]]> http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/27/photography-film-diptychs/feed/ Movies: Road Trip, March 26, 2008 http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/26/movies-road-trip-march-26-2008/ http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/26/movies-road-trip-march-26-2008/#comments Wed, 26 Mar 2008 23:19:04 +0000 Michelle http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/?p=8 During the summer of 2007, my friend and I took a road trip across North America. She was going to be going to the University of British Columbia in the Fall and needed to move her stuff to Canada. I volunteered to help her drive there. We left Brooklyn, drove across the States on I-80, put her stuff into storage in Vancouver, and then drove down the West Coast, ending in Oakland, California.

I shot a huge number of videos and photographs on our trip. This was my first attempt to pare that massive amount of material down into one short movie. It was shot using a Canon Powershot SD-800, edited in iMovie HD 6, and compressed for YouTube using Final Cut Studio’s Compressor.

Higher resolution file available for download upon request.

Music: “Roadrunner,” performed by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

]]> http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/26/movies-road-trip-march-26-2008/feed/ Photography: Digital - Toronto - The Annex http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/23/photography-digital-toronto-the-annex/ http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/23/photography-digital-toronto-the-annex/#comments Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:51:30 +0000 Michelle http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/?p=7 A selection of photographs I took in the Annex, Toronto. A friend was working on a proposal for a movie about the gentrification of the neighborhood. He wanted to focus on an old church that was being converted into condominiums and asked me to accompany him on a walk around the neighborhood, taking photos to use as visual aids in his presentation. These are some of the photos I took of the condo showroom inside the church. All photos were shot with a Canon Digital Rebel XT.

Potential Buyer Thumbnail

Church Showroom Thumbnail

Organ Thumbnail


Potential Buyer
“Potential Buyer” November 18, 2007

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Church Showroom
“Church Show Room” November 18, 2007

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Organ
“Showroom and Organ” November 18, 2007

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]]> http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/23/photography-digital-toronto-the-annex/feed/ Movies: Saints in a Bush, March 10, 2008 http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/23/movies-saints-in-a-bush/ http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/23/movies-saints-in-a-bush/#comments Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:49:01 +0000 Michelle http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/?p=6 This is a movie I made of saints, angels, and various lawn ornamentation that can be found on lawns in Marine Park, Brooklyn. I love religious iconography and so I always found the Catholic lawn statues that litter the grass in yards all across New York City to be wonderful. I grew quite spoiled by New York and thus am always a bit surprised when I arrive in a city where everyone hasn’t bought their own personal Virgin Mary and built increasingly ornate shrines for her. I took these photos with my Digital Rebel and made them into a slide show with iMovie ‘08.

Higher resolution file available for download upon request.

Music: “Plastic Jesus,” performed by Jello Biafra And Mojo Nixon

]]> http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/23/movies-saints-in-a-bush/feed/ Photography: Digital - Europe - People http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/23/photography-digital-europe-people/ http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/2008/03/23/photography-digital-europe-people/#comments Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:45:33 +0000 Michelle http://www.michelle.koenig-schwartz.com/blog/?p=5 A selection of photographs I’ve taken in Europe. I studied abroad in Florence during a semester of my Junior year at NYU. After the semester was over, I spent an additional three weeks backpacking across Eastern Europe with a friend. It was during this time in Europe that I first became passionate about photography. My parents had gotten me a 4 megapixel point and shoot that came with a copy of Photoshop Elements, and I ended up shooting thousands of photos. Now I wish I had been in Europe with a better camera and more experience, but there are still some photos from the trip that I love to this day.

All photos shot with a Konica Digital Revio KD-400Z.

Polish Street Musician Thumbnail

Children in Venice Thumbnail

Tuscan Punks Thumbnail


Polish Street Musician
“Krakow Street Musician” May 21, 2003

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Children in Venice
“Children in Venice” February 23, 2003

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Tuscan Punks
“Punks in Cinque Terre, Italy” April 5, 2003

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