I've discovered the most amasing photographer!

Anto and Moe

I found this amasing photographer called Allison Harvard,

www.allisonharvard.com

What do you guys think?

Valentia

Interesting stuff alright. Do you get the impression that she quite fancies herself though.

Oriel

Dude, she an 18 year old American. I've had her on my myspace friends list for ages, and my Deviant Art friends list.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=4791974
http://allielisabeta.deviantart.com/

Her drawings are ****ed up, but there's something class about them.

Roen

Flash is the devils work.

antifuse

I guess her work is ok. The site is horrendous though, flash IS the devil's work (scrolling, ick!)

Miguel_Sanchez

Just had a quick glance through one of her photo galleries - didn't see anything there that really impressed too much. Certainly nothing that would make me call her an 'amasing photographer'.

Calina

Definitely not my taste.

elven

Call me old fashioned... but it looks like complete mince to me!!!!

Why are teenagers in the generation of brats spawned since the eighties so unbelievably self indulgent and over confident? (fajitas, consider yourself an exception, I had no idea you were just a pup until I saw your flickr profile)

MTV has a lot to answer for, I tell ya.

Hahahaha, and I'm only 26, imagine when I get past 40.

masteroftherealm

Ah betagirl
Saw her stuff on dA was was very unimpressed. Not saying mine is any better now but na doesnt do it for me

rymus

The site does need a major facelift - i.e. tear it down and re-build from scratch. Painful to navigate and definately doesn't make one want to keep clicking to see more photos.

The photos themselves aren't anything special. Nothing shamefully bad but nothing that would inspire me to keep viewing them.

Hmm, maybe the photos would look better if they were presented better? I'd agree with most of the rest of ye, defo time to ditch the root of all evil; macrofeckinmedia flash.Euch.

Fajitas!

She was on my friends list on Myspace...

Since deleted. She's not a very nice person.

Beside that, I find her art is tacky and kinda dull.

Her photos are the same.

Calina

elven wrote:

Hahahaha, and I'm only 26, imagine when I get past 40.

Well I'm 33 and I think, Jesus, that's sh1te. When I was a young wan, I took pictures that people actually wanted to look at. Look at the cut of that, would have that hanging in your front room I think not. It's like all that modern art ****e of unmade beds and stuff fools and their money is soon parted, we'd all be better off with a return to traditional values.

Mind you, I still don't like this girl's work.

sdssarah

wow, i don't know what you're on, but that girls work is horrendous, and her website is even worse. It makes me want to puke. And its incredibly self-indulgent, vain work. Just my opinion i guess

*shudders*

masteroftherealm

sdssarah wrote:

wow, i don't know what you're on, but that girls work is horrendous, and her website is even worse. It makes me want to puke. And its incredibly self-indulgent, vain work. Just my opinion i guess

*shudders*

Heheh check out her myspace it gets even better!

il gatto

HI. New to boards and all this. Wouldn't consider myself a great photographer. I just enjoy it. However, I do feel justified in saying that girl's work is terrible. I don't get it. Point and shoot flash photography or awful portraits of her and her friends. That's what I saw. It's an artless, focus-free mess. I delete or shred shots that come out like that(depending on the format). If that was my portfolia I'd bin it and start writing poetry or something. You have to admire her confidence though.

Fajitas!

il gatto wrote:

HI. New to boards and all this. Wouldn't consider myself a great photographer. I just enjoy it. However, I do feel justified in saying that girl's work is terrible. I don't get it. Point and shoot flash photography or awful portraits of her and her friends. That's what I saw. It's an artless, focus-free mess. I delete or shred shots that come out like that(depending on the format). If that was my portfolia I'd bin it and start writing poetry or something.

You got it

Ruu_Old

I didnt think much of it at all.:(

eas

I like them.

The comments above about not understanding the young of today is exactly why I like it. Old people aren't expected to understand youth or their troubles. I'm not saying that her intentions are that organized, but that's what I see in most of them, Troubled Youth. Commen theme generation after generation, sometimes candy coated, sometimes not. I'd suspect the comments above especially the "make me want to puke" one, are exactly what she'd hope to get from what she would see as homogenised society.

I'm not sure why we would be commenting on her website design skills in the first place. And I'm not sure why I'm commenting on your comments about her website design. I guess this thread has an element of linear thinking that I don't agree with. But for you Jacob Neilson fans - Flash is a tool, just like any other tool, you can't blame the tool on how a person decides to use it. To me that would be the same as saying you hate cameras because people take awful pictures.

Valentia

I do find the photos interesting though. The flash is pure crap but at least there is an option to see the pics normally. There's a kind of mad freshness to the pics and I like their roughness. A bit samey after awhile I agree.

Sinecurea, what's with this dude stuff. Have we been transmografied to the USA. I hate that shaggin word, especially in an Irish context.

Zombrex

antifuse wrote:

I guess her work is ok. The site is horrendous though, flash IS the devil's work (scrolling, ick!)

Yeah I agree, I'm not really seeing the fuss here?

Firstly her site is appaulling. The way the window for each photo is fixed and you have to scroll around the photo to see each corner is ridiculous. That is hidious interface design, and who ever designed the page should be shot. I hate flash for site design (games, banner adds, movies its fine, but XHTML and CSS do websites perfectly well while keeping the user in control), but even by flash standards this website is all over the place. If it is a chore to actually figure out how to view your photos no one is going to bother. Imagine making everyone viewing your photos in a gallery look through a small window.

Also not really seeing the fuss about her photos. They are kinda interesting, but most seem like posed portraits with a lot of out of focus and bluring to make them look spontanious and "arty" ... which is kinda faking in my view. When she does take a proper photo they are rather uninspired.

She is fecking hot though, I'll give people that.

elven

Old people eas? I take it that means those over 25?

Of course, because I did well academically, have a 9-5 job, wear ‘ordinary’ clothes, try to make my house look nice, and I take pictures mostly of pretty flowers, I'm not going to understand the "troubled youth" (...although I’d have given the same response at 17…) I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s a good few of us were an awful lot more ‘troubled’, and actually managed to hold it together and not have to go expressing it through something like this, and calling it art.

I think there are instances of genius that do occur, but this is so ridiculously contrived. Any kind of credibility has been stripped from these simply because she's so obviously full of herself, quoting her heroes as jim morrison, kurt cobain and random 18th century poets because she thinks it sounds cool and alternative. She's taking advantage of the consumerism of the internet, where there are millions of similar characters, a whole other arm of ‘homogenised society’ that’s been created by a childhood filled with microwave dinners and too much MTV, and believes that they are actually doing something radical and different – and in the process they end up all looking and behaving identically – it’s just funny, and yet so sad at the same time.

Morlar

Ruu wrote:

I didnt think much of it at all.:(

Couldnt agree more - I 'discover' far far more talented, capable hardworking & productive photographers on dev art on an almost daily basis.

AlisonB

Not into her work at all to be honest. Nothing eye catching. As for her being into herself - why shouldn't she be? God Forbid ! I'm beginning to wonder who is more "troubled". At the moment i'm leaning towards the viewer jumping to conclusions and passing judgement on someone they don't know?

Zombrex

eas wrote:

but that's what I see in most of them, Troubled Youth.

How is this "Troubled Youth" ... do you even know this girl has had a trouble youth? I mean a proper one, not my parents didn't let me go to summer school with my friends. There is a difference between self indulgent teenage angst and trouble youth.

I've seen photographic collections of real trouble youth and they were light years more interesting and informative that this. This doesn't actually say anything about anything. It is a collection of photographs designed to look cool and arty and thats about it.

Her photos seem to be of nothing dressed up to try and look stylish and interesting, all style and no substance. If you have to blur the sh*t out of all your photos, while twisting at an arkward angle and missing your focus to make your photo interesting to look at, then your photos probably isn't interesting in the first place.

It is MTV video editing principle applied to photograph. But least MTV know what they are shooting isn't interesting in the first place (hence the need for the off the wall shots and editing to make it watchable to people with 5 second attention spans). When applied to photography it just becomes pointless.

eas wrote:

But for you Jacob Neilson fans - Flash is a tool, just like any other tool, you can't blame the tool on how a person decides to use it.

The reason people hate Flash is that it strips control away from the user. Suddenly all the elements of web browsing one is used to with a web browser are gone and the user is at the mercy of the webpage designer.

The different elements of the interface become un-standard and in a lot of cases non-existant. Considering most webpage designers are not very good at user interface design, or have time to dedicate to designing a well planned interface, this lead to a lot of hiedious web pages.

Flash should not be used for general site design, full stop. It is a bad tool for the job, especailly no with what you can do with AJAX.

But if insist on using flash for sight design you have to do a much better job that this. They have even gone out of their way to impliment very bad interface design (such as the scrolling photographs).

The site would be better if it was just a load of image tags. As with her photos the page is style over substance. How "cool" it appears to look is more important than what it is actually supposed to do (again MTV has a lot to answer for)

Zombrex

AlisonB wrote:

As for her being into herself - why shouldn't she be?

Because it leads to silly photos ....

Zombrex

elven wrote:

Of course, because I did well academically, have a 9-5 job, wear ‘ordinary’ clothes, try to make my house look nice, and I take pictures mostly of pretty flowers, I'm not going to understand the "troubled youth"

A down to earth Irish girl who likes photography but isn't self-indulgent and isn't convinced she had a troubled youth? .... Marry me ....

[EDIT]
Just saw from your Flickr (nice macro-shots btw) that you are "taken" .... oh well ... all the good ones are
[/EDIT]

masteroftherealm

Wicknight wrote:

A down to earth Irish girl who likes photography but isn't self-indulgent and isn't convinced she had a troubled youth? .... Marry me ....

Shes taken unfortunatly ;p

masteroftherealm

Wicknight wrote:

Because it leads to silly photos ....

Silly pictures are not a bad thing?
So what if she thinks shes an amazing photographer/artist. Let her be.
Shes an 18year old girl. Shes not somone whos spent 20years honing her skills.
Everyone has to start somewhere. Shes starting with EMO, ok not where or how I woulda started but ya never know.
Saying that I dont see anything I like in her work but thats just me.

eas

elven wrote:

Old people eas? I take it that means those over 25?

I don't know what "old" is elven - I suspect a persons definition of old depends on their age. Would an 18 year old consider a 25 yaer old old? Probably. I was 25 10 years ago, so is it old to me? no.

elven wrote:

Of course, because I did well academically, have a 9-5 job, wear ‘ordinary’ clothes, try to make my house look nice, and I take pictures mostly of pretty flowers, I'm not going to understand the "troubled youth"

I don't think you doing well in school or wearing ordinary clothes has anything to do with you understanding troubled youth. I think if you ask any 13-18 year old if their parents understand them or what their troubles are, the answer would be a resounding no.

elven wrote:

I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s a good few of us were an awful lot more ‘troubled’, and actually managed to hold it together and not have to go expressing it through something like this, and calling it art.

Who's calling it art? I didnt call it art. Is there anywhere on her site that says her photography is art? I didnt see it if there is. This girl has nothing to do with us. She didnt come here and call herself an artist. Shes an 18 year old girl living in america who has a website with pictures. What makes your work more "artful" than hers? Who are you to judge what art is or isnt? How would you like her to express herself? Macros of tree leaves? Snails? Robbing people on the street?

Coming from someone who says people should take pictures for themselves and shag what everyone else thinks you're taking a rather funny side to this.

Zombrex

masteroftherealm wrote:

Silly pictures are not a bad thing?

Depends on the context.

If you know they are silly and that is the point they aren't.

If you thing they are deep and meaningful and expressing something when in fact they are a picture of an out of focus arm of someone who just happened to wander in front of your camera at that moment, then that is silly.

Its the difference between "Some Like It Hot" and "Battlefield: Earth" ... both are hilarious, but for some very different reasons.

masteroftherealm wrote:

So what if she thinks shes an amazing photographer/artist. Let her be.

I was "letting her be" until this thread started ...

masteroftherealm wrote:

Everyone has to start somewhere.

True, but the quicker someone gets over the I just figured out how to use a camera and everything I shoot is great art and worth keeping phase that every one new to photography goes through the better it will be for then as an photographer.

The more self-indulgent and pointless her work is the slower this is going to happen for her.

Morlar

eas wrote:

Who are you to judge what art is or isnt?

I think thats the point right there - we all judge for ourselves what is and isnt art or even what is good or bad art. In this case I'd say it might be her idea of art but its not mine (havent gone through her entire gallery just took a 2 minute look out of curiosity).

The op posted a link to this girls gallery saying it was an amazing discovery (her gallery /work) - with that in mind its not unreasonable for people who disagree with that take on her work to say so.

Its not a judgement on the girl - just that her work isnt that amazing at all. Whether its art or not is down to the individual.

ciaranhickey

Her art may be dull and boring...
Her Poetry may be self-indulgent...
Her photos may be of poor quality and lacking focus.
But at least she is attempting some kind of creative output, typically resentative of the "MTV Generation", and not just sitting around watching TV and going to the pub at the weekend.

Personally I don't like her photographs, they seem to be random snapshots of her everyday life and most lack good composition and focus but at least for her own sake she'll have a good documentation of her so-called "troubled" youth, and good on her for putting this site together (although I'll probably never visit it again).

Her flash or web-design abilities are hardly the issue here.

eas

Originally Posted by Wicknight

How is this "Troubled Youth" ...

yep, there is a differnce between "troubled youth" and "youth that feel troubled". She may be "Troubled Youth" or just troubled, or maybe shes the most well adjusted 18 year old in the world. Isaid i thought her photography has an element of "troubled youth" theme to it, I doesnt say that I know the girl or her life story. Get a grip.

as far as your designers don't know how to design and ajax bit, I have no comment.

K_user

All talk of being old, troubled youth, what is art and what isn’t aside…its not a great site, least from a photography basis IMHO.

There was just nothing there that I would like on my wall, or that I’d strive to emulate. There is however a lot of shots that I’d expect to see on the camera phone of most teenagers. Is that bad? No. Just not what I’m interested in.

Zombrex

eas wrote:

Isaid i thought her photography has an element of "troubled youth" theme to it, I doesnt say that I know the girl or her life story. Get a grip.

My grip is quite fine thank you ...

If you think this collection has an element of "troubled youth" to it, what do you feel it tells you about troubled youth? Is there real isolation, abuse, depression, longing, aggression, self-loathing, denial, hope etc in this shots. If you see that I don't. I see a lot of staged shots and out of focus people.

I see a lot of what a 18 year old girl who has watched Kids and listens to Simple Plan, Blink 182 or Good Charlot would think troubled youth looks like, but there is a big difference.

You don't have to have had a troubled youth to photograph themes of troubled youth, but you have to at least understand it, which I get no impression this girl does, which is another reason why I don't like some of the photos in this collection. The only thing worse with documentary shots that give no insight into a subject is attempting to give a fake one.

As K_user says these look like shots you would find on the average teenage Avril Laviegn fan's camera phone.

eas

Wicknight wrote:

My grip is quite fine thank you ...

your looking at her site again arnt you?

you don't see troubled youth, I see troubled youth. Is there a problem in that? Should I feel the need to defend/explain myself?

I explained in my fisrt post why i liked the photography. That's what I thougth the purpose of this thread was? To discuss the photography. If you don't agree with me, fine. I don't tell you your wrong, or expect an explanation. It's fine. It really is OK to disagree.

Zombrex

eas wrote:

I don't tell you your wrong, or expect an explanation.

Nope I'll give you that (thought the "get a grip" statements get a bit tedious), but then this is a discussion board.

You have made an assertion that these photos are about troubled youth, while indirectly calling those that don't agree "old" and implying the just don't get it, which is kinda covering your bases. Sorry if you didn't expect that to get a bit of mouths frothing with that assertion I don't know what you expected.

As elvan points out you don't need to young to know that these photos are not about troubled youth, though that seem to have been what the artist was (very badly) attempting to achieve.

In a more general sense I find the fact the in this day and age the media has warped and styilised reality so much (thank you MTV) that you would see these as photographs of trouble youth quite ... er ... troubling.

If you just want to say "I like them" and have that be the end of it that is perfectly fine, everyone is entitled to an opinion. But then don't get drawn into a discussion. This is a discussion board, if you don't want to discuss something then don't discuss it. If you start discussing something people take it that you are up for a discussion.

311

this is post thirty eight ,not bad for a thread about a site .
As a form of communication ,I'd say the site has done it's job

elven

Wicknight wrote:

A down to earth Irish girl who likes photography but isn't self-indulgent and isn't convinced she had a troubled youth? .... Marry me ....

[EDIT]
Just saw from your Flickr (nice macro-shots btw) that you are "taken" .... oh well ... all the good ones are
[/EDIT]

P.S. Scottish... (and married, but a bit of a compliment never hurt anyone)

I dunno. It was presented as art on a website alongside poetry and painting, and it was presented in this partcular thread as 'amasing' and I thought that's what we were discussing. Her her self-absorbedness simply shines through the pictures, which is why that was in question. And the troubled youth issue was brought into the discussion by eas, so I gave my opinion on that. Just because I have an opinion about some pictures, doesn't mean I'm saying that what I produce is art, or indeed any better because it's all subjective to taste. And as I've said in the past, shoot what you like, if you're shooting for yourself. You'll never please everyone. But in this case, someone else put it forth as something they thought was of good quality, and my/anyone's view was never intended to stop the girl taking pictures, or questioning her own motivation.

Most of the time these people just go on their merry way and so do I and never the twain shall meet and everyone lives happily ever after. But that's boring if it's ALL the time, isn't it?

Zombrex

_Brian_ wrote:

this is post thirty eight ,not bad for a thread about a site .
As a form of communication ,I'd say the site has done it's job

Oh no, her devilish plan worked! ...

Well I was just chatting up elven, kinda just feel into this discussion!

Zombrex

elven wrote:

and married

Married? How are you married!?

Can everyone stop getting married please! Its very annoying. Its bad enough all the good ones are taken, without them being taken forever!

grumble grumble hate being single grumble grumble

Er ... sorry ... what were we talking about?

eas

there seems to be some confusion over why I said I like these photos.

I like them.

The comments above about not understanding the young of today is exactly why I like it. Old people aren't expected to understand youth or their troubles. I'm not saying that her intentions are that organized, but that's what I see in most of them, Troubled Youth. Commen theme generation after generation, sometimes candy coated, sometimes not. I'd suspect the comments above especially the "make me want to puke" one, are exactly what she'd hope to get from what she would see as homogenised society.

I in no way suggested that old people (how ever this could be defined) would not get her photography, or the reason why people don't like it is because of their age. I'm 35?

What I am suggesting is that in her mind her photography would somehow be more valid because us older people don't get it or like it. Has nothing to do with our apprehension, it has to do more with her motivation.

I alos think that disaproval from what "she" sees as a "homogenised society." would incourage her to do more of the same, not the other way around.

masteroftherealm

Yes shes trying to be a rebel that os plainly obvious.
But ya cant TRY to be a rebel, you are one or you arent.

Zombrex

eas wrote:

I in no way intended to suggest that old people (how ever this could be defined) would not get her photography, or the reason why people don't like it is because of their age. I'm 35?

What I am suggesting is that in her mind her photography would somehow be more valid because us older people don't get it or like it. Has nothing to do with our apprehension, it has to do more with her motivation.

I'm still confused then why you like them? Is it because of he unconscious self-indulgence?

eas

Wicknight wrote:

I'm still confused then why you like them? Is it because of he unconscious self-indulgence?

Again, what's so wrong with a bit of self-indulgence? If she cant do it on her "art" than where can she do it?

I happen to like the MTV Generation and also I probably see some similarity between what I explained above and how I was when I was 16ish.

K_user

masteroftherealm wrote:

Yes shes trying to be a rebel that os plainly obvious.
But ya cant TRY to be a rebel, you are one or you arent.

There is something to that.

In order to be “rebellious” pictures need to be shocking, different, or unusual enough to provoke debate.

Now the site has done enough to satisfy the last of those criteria, but the talk hasn’t been about the “art”, but more about the quality of the work V’s the age gap.

The real question on the work itself, least for me, is one I raised earlier. Would anyone here consider this “art” worth emulating? Would they consider hanging it on their wall? If so then it is art, if not then it could be considered self indulgence.

But hey, nothing wrong with a bit of self indulgence, at least the girl is expressing herself creatively.

Valentia

AlisonB wrote:

Nothing eye catching. As for her being into herself - why shouldn't she be? God Forbid !

If there is one thing that pisses me off more than anything in this whole wide world it's people that can't string more than two sentences together without the word I or me in them. The number seems to be increasing too. That's all. Surely photography is about interpretation, therefore conclusions. In the case of the shots I saw it wasn't a difficult conclusion. OK so she is fond of herself, I have no problem with that so long as she doesn't think the universe revolves around her. That's a conclusion I haven't drawn by the way.

Fajitas!

eas wrote:

I like them.

The comments above about not understanding the young of today is exactly why I like it. Old people aren't expected to understand youth or their troubles. I'm not saying that her intentions are that organized, but that's what I see in most of them, Troubled Youth. Commen theme generation after generation, sometimes candy coated, sometimes not. I'd suspect the comments above especially the "make me want to puke" one, are exactly what she'd hope to get from what she would see as homogenised society.

As regards the generation factor (just picking this post out as the first example), I'm 19, and an fine art student, studied it for the last 2 years, going into my third altogether now. And I honestly cannot see any point to her work. A lot of her work is cliche'd attention seeking, and in my opinion, terribly executed. No matter what ideas went behind it. And her ego has been blown to massive sizes because of people on MySpace telling her "omg omg ur like d best in da world!11!11" (You can read the comments left on her page for that one). She actually does think she is an "amasing" artist.

From my opinion as an artist, she needs to sit down, and re-evaluate her work. Not everything is a keeper. Not everyone is going to like her work. She could try make it big, but I don't think so. I guess we'll know in 20+ years time, if our kids are reading about her in their 5th year art classes...

Fajitas!

Valentia wrote:

If there is one thing that pisses me off more than anything in this whole wide world it's people that can't string more than two sentences together without the word I or me in them.

Hahaha! You won't like my first statment in that last post

masteroftherealm

Valentia wrote:

If there is one thing that pisses me off more than anything in this whole wide world it's people that can't string more than two sentences together without the word I or me in them. The number seems to be increasing too. That's all.

I dont see how that comment is relevant, were talking about her "art" and her photogrpahy?

Valentia wrote:

Surely photography is about interpretation, therefore conclusions. In the case of the shots I saw it wasn't a difficult conclusion. OK so she is fond of herself, I have no problem with that so long as she doesn't think the universe revolves around her. That's a conclusion I haven't drawn by the way.

Photogrpahy is about interpretations. All she seems to take is pics of herself? And her feet? Its not art? Theres no art in that? Maybe some people can enlighten me as to how its art?
I have no problem with people liking it and whatever, fair play to her shes popluar for it? But please god dont try claim that its art girl!! Its random photos anyone could take!!
As for her drawings, I dont draw so Im not qualified. There better than her photos in my opinion.
And as for her poetry/writing. Noone has any right to critisise writing as we cannot understand whats in her mind. If we knew her we might be in that position but we dont.

Fajitas!

il gatto wrote:

. Having said that I still think it's an artless expression of teenage angst