Melissa Pangan

Baker Artist Awards

2011-01-10T22:10:00.000-08:00

Five days left to nominate yourself! Check out my Baker Artist nomination page.

Travelogue: Centralia, PA

2010-10-29T16:49:00.000-07:00

I took a Sunday off and had a great day trip with my friend and my boyfriend. We got breakfast and lunch at the farmer's market under 83, drove up to Centralia, PA and took a bunch of pictures, and then finished the day at Field of Screams, a scary mini attraction park.

Here are some pictures from Centraila, an old coal mine town that caught on fire and is still burning underground today. Me and my friend Kelly were told so many times about Centraila by our photo teacher Tom, so it was pretty nice to actually go there.

InEveryRoom

2010-06-08T06:26:00.000-07:00

My friend Amy is on tour with her band InEveryRoom and they made it onto Pitchfork!

Brazzaville in Baltimore

2010-05-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

My friend Lara somehow is having a house concert for the band Brazzaville. I don't know too much of Brazzaville's music, but is pretty mello, which I like. Also some of my pictures from Hawaii will be on display during the performance, which is another reason why I'm promoting the show. It should be fun!

Business (Trading) Cards

2010-05-15T13:18:00.001-07:00

My favorite part about the Commencement Show is picking up everyones business cards. I'm really impressed at how creative people got with their cards (we do go to art school after all). I was happy to find that after a day and a half, the first batch of cards I put out with my show were all taken. If nothing else, at least other MICA students like my work and I'm perfectly happy with that.

UPDATE: All 100 of my business cards are gone. Me and my family stopped by the opening reception at around 2pm and I found that my shelf was bare and a friend said that she overheard people saying they liked my work. A lady passing by while I was talking to my family about my work said that my pictures were beautiful. Hooray for a well received thesis! Now off to graduate.

Commencement Show

2010-05-13T12:05:00.001-07:00

Print Exchange

2010-05-09T12:25:00.000-07:00

Our photography department had it's second annual print exchange and this was my print for it. Thanks all who submitted! I can't wait to buy frames and hang some great art in my apt.

Mark Making Bag

2010-04-29T14:25:00.002-07:00

Photos of me taken by Lauren Hastings
Close-up photos of the sand taken by me

Powdered Chalk

2010-04-15T19:00:00.000-07:00

Latest Chalking

2010-03-28T17:15:00.001-07:00

I once was lost, but now it is found...

2010-03-06T10:49:00.000-08:00

The new direction I'm going for thesis.

Double Exposure

2010-03-04T19:34:00.000-08:00

Half of my final for Large Format was in-camera double exposures. What I wanted was for the double exposure to be subtle enough that the photo looked like a nice, beautiful image of nature and landscape, but when the viewer came up to take a closer look they'd realize that there were some things off because of the double exposure.

It was such a difficult project, for every successful negative, I had three failures. This is the only one I consider a complete success.

Art Made By Walking

2010-03-04T18:53:00.000-08:00

Walking A Line In Peru

A Walking And Running Circle

I have such an artist crush on Richard Long.

Diamond Head

2010-02-08T12:02:00.000-08:00

Here's the last of my photos from HI. On the last day of our trip me, my brother Anthony, and my Dad hiked up Diamond Head. Diamond Head is volcanic crater on the island of Oʻahu.

Yes, I took my camera out to take pictures in the snow!

2010-02-06T06:17:00.000-08:00

It definitely reached the two feet mark they were predicting. I went out to shovel the stoop this morning and saw that the tree at the end of the block split in half! Poor tree, it's weird seeing it standing yesterday and now it's in half and before you know it the people will come in and take it away.

Hawaii Photo Dump

2010-01-23T16:09:00.000-08:00

Here's a few more pictures from Hawaii. A few from our helicopter ride (which I got a bit motion sick, didn't throw up though but was close), a few from the beach we could only get to by driving through a harden lava field (did some off-roading in our rental car), and a few from the North Shore (where all the surfers surf, but it was red flagged that day).

A little bit of HI

2010-01-20T20:32:00.000-08:00

After hours of scanning, I'm only half-way through my negative of Hawaii. Here are a few of my favorites so far. More to come.

Random DC

2010-01-15T14:48:00.000-08:00

Went back into the archives to post a DC picture for the blog randomdc; check out my picture!

This time its a funny one :]

Howard Steinberg

2010-01-14T20:28:00.000-08:00

Steinberg's work was being shown in the San Fran airport and you probably can see why it caught my eye. In the artist statement, Steinberg says he collected the dying leaves and photographed them capturing the interesting forms the dying leaves took. He used a large-format camera to capture the beautiful details in the leaves. Hah, I love his leaves way better then my leaves.

Here's Howard Steinberg's site.

Random NYC

2010-01-14T07:04:00.000-08:00

is a Tumblr site that post submissions of pictures taken in NYC. I submitted my Hotel Carter picture and its on the site now.

Check it out: randomnyc

Btw, tumblr has a lot of great blogs for photography. I'm so addicted in trying to find more photoblogs to follow.

What I left today,

2010-01-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

but I will return! More pictures to come.

Ok...

2010-01-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

go to Kona if you want a less touristy vacation. Go to Waikiki if you want the typical tourist Hawaii. We're in Waikiki now and it's fun, but not at all like Kona. It's more like a typical city; tall buildings, lots of people, and lots of shopping. I think the shopping here either passes NYC's shopping or is close to NYC's shopping.

We did get away from the city yesterday. We went to Pearl Harbor, Dole Plantations, and the North Shore. I don't think I'll ever get sick of Hawaii's mountains, countryside, and beaches.

I can get used to this island life.

Hawaii

2010-01-05T10:44:00.000-08:00

is a place for your senses. Yes, you're probably thinking a big tourist spot and there are a lot of tourists, but they don't come to Hawaii to do the typical tourist things. So far I have not seen a tour bus or even a taxi in Kona. Tourists just rent a car and drive around the island. We're about to leave Kona and so far I've seen a volcano, walked threw a lava tunnel, drove threw a lava field, seen macadamia farms, seen cute coral graffiti, rode in a helicopter, seen whales, seen a WWII crashed airplane, walked along a beautiful beach collecting coral, and everywhere you look is a beautiful view of the ocean.

I also got to see the sun set into the ocean, my most favorite memory when we stayed at my Grandma's house in Marco Island and I got to experience it again in Kona.

Is it bad that I'm already planning on retiring here when I get old?

Beautiful Losers

2010-01-01T14:18:00.000-08:00

"Being like a painter; being a straight-white-male artist. Showing in galleries; showing in museums, all that stuff seemed like the most corrupt, the most duplicities, the least powerful, the least punk, the least interesting thing to do. So I went to art school and totally learned how to diss art..." -Mike Mills

Sometimes how I feel about art school. Highly recommended documentary.

Happy 2k10!

2010-01-01T06:01:00.001-08:00

Jolly Old London

2009-12-26T09:44:00.000-08:00

In one week I'll be in Hawaii and I'm really excited. I can't wait to relax, eat good food, and take lots of pictures in a new environment. Next semester I'm planning on printing my vacation photos in the darkroom. (I printed a few this past semester and it was nice just to print for no reason except for my enjoyment) I'm going to print as much as I can and then I think I'm going to make a lulu or blurb book to give to my family.

Here are some of from my trip to London summer before junior year. PS: Please excuse the bad negative scans.

Rope

2009-12-24T09:46:00.000-08:00

"After all, murder is - or should be - an art. Not one of the 'seven lively', perhaps, but an art nevertheless. And, as such, the privilege of committing it should be reserved for those few who are really superior individuals." -Rupert Cadell

One thing people may not know of me is I have a fascination with murder cases and mysteries. I guess it was all those years of watching Unsolved Mysteries and The New Detectives: Case Studies in Forensic Science.

Anywho, I just finished watching Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. It's classic Hitchcock and it doesn't disappoint. Rope is about two young men who murder a fellow classmate and store the body in a chest. They then have a dinner party and see how far they can go without people finding they murdered their classmate and that his body is right underneath their noses. Visually the movie is comprised of many long unbroken scenes. Since the camera moves were planned in advance, there was almost no editing. It is said to be Hitchcock's most experimental film.

It's funny, after watching the first 5-10ish minutes of the movie, I thought of the murder of Bobby Franks. Bobby Franks was murdered when he was 14 years old by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in 1924. The only reason for the murder was for Leopold and Loeb to commit the perfect crime and get away with it. However, they were both arrested and received long prison terms. It turns out Rope was based on a play that was based on that crime. Hooray for my murder history knowhow.

Large Format DC Trip

2009-11-21T06:13:00.000-08:00

The best photo girls I know!

Leonid Meteor Shower

2009-11-19T11:40:00.000-08:00

Me and my friends went out of the city to see some meteors on Monday. I thought it would be a good idea to bring out the 4x5 and try to capture a meteor. We saw a few meteors, but I don't think I captured any. I did get some stars. My teacher Jonathan told me that the arch in the stars is b/c of the Earth's rotation and the long exposure. I'd like to do this again, with the aperture all the way open and longer exposure time.

Something New

2009-11-15T17:51:00.000-08:00

So I guess to go off from my idea of collageing nature, here is a 4x5 I shot this weekend in Ellicott City. I did some in-camera tricks, i.e. double exposures.

An Idea

2009-11-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

I had a mini critic with artist Bob Kozma today. It went really well and he really liked my abstract work and my experimenting with negatives and collageing with photography. I really liked his artist talk and he said a lot of things that I feel about photography and why I love photography so much. I was a bit inspired by his work and I think over winter break I'd like to try layering different objects in nature, making my final image look like a collage. We'll see how that works out; usually if I have a concept before I take the photograph it never works out.

Here are some of Bob Kozma's work. His work is also way better in person.

Here's the link to some more of his work: http://www.enderlingallery.com/RobertKozma.html

Family Vacations

2009-11-11T17:14:00.000-08:00

So the real reason why I started this blog was b/c my friend Aiden started another blog for just our senior photography class to post pictures for each other. I have a ton of vacation pictures I took with film, but never got around to printing them in the darkroom. I posted the Hotel Carter picture on the senior blog. Here are some more from my vacation to NYC.

First Post!

2009-11-10T05:40:00.000-08:00

I guess what I'll do is post a picture. This is an image I took with my holga. I also made an enlarged digital neg, so I'm going to eventually print this in palladium.