Ruben Pagan - Kevin Cooley - Still Burning

Kevin Cooley's project "Still Burning" includes images regarding wild fires in Los Angeles, one of which got close to burning his property, political smokescreens, environmental degradation, and the regeneration that hopefully follows any tragedy. His use of different technical techniques intrigues me. In the first image he uses long exposure of what appears to be the sun setting down to the horizon. It intrigues me because I'm curious as to how closed his aperture was considering the fact that he has a wide depth of field and the exposure had to be quite long with plenty of sunlight remaining while managing to make sure the photo wasn't overly exposed. In the third image, he also did a long exposure using a light source out of the frame and red laser pointers along with smoke exposed by the light to capture an essence of smoking embers of what remains after a wild fire. The color and liveliness of this image help give a positive outlook effect on life persevering after such tragedies.

I believe the artist's intentions are solely to grab the viewer through the usage of vibrant and subtle colors captured in powerful images on an issue. This was done in order to make one aware of the crumbing of our planet in an environmental sense. Also, he wanted to show that "life always endures, adapts, and continues. I believe he best captures that idea in the third image through displaying the perseverance of the plants through the smoke and embers left behind.

The artist's message is clear to me upon analyzing each piece in this project. I think that he portrays his message very well through the sole visual aspect that the lens provides to the human eye, or vice versa. I agree that it is important in today's society, not just in this country, to shed light on the environmental issues that we have set upon ourselves throughout the last century. Things will only get worse for the generations to come if we don't take a combined, serious effort to stop the harm we are emitting on our planet. However, the attention we should've given to this issue is long overdue.