Final Reflection

The best experience we had this year by far was going to New York City.  We had so much fun walking around and taking pictures.  It was really great just to explore the city, even when we weren't taking pictures.  There was a lot to experience there, and even more to photograph.  We got to go to museums and see the works of famous photographers and artists.  It was probably the best experience I've had in the past four years of high school.  I got a lot of practice taking pictures quickly, with a variety of angles and exposures.  New York is a fast paced city, and since we were moving we didn't have as much time to take pictures.  I had to learn to take pictures as I saw the composition, which was incredibly useful.  The museum exhibits we went to were also inspiring: the surrealist photographs we saw influenced my surrealist collage.

I also really enjoyed learning how to use photoshop more, especially in regards to tilt-shift photography.  I first saw a tilt-shift photograph a few years ago, and ever since then I've wanted to learn how to do it.  I got to teach myself how to imitate it, among other things.  This year, I got a chance to work on my own and teach myself photoshop, and I've become a lot more adept towards using it as a result.  I can merge photos well, I can imitate tilt-shift photography, and I can easily edit my photos like I want them.  This year was very independent, and I've definitely been given a huge opportunity to grow and learn because of it.

Swordfight/The Fall

Visual Story Stop Motion Gifs

Visual Story

The feedback I got for my visual story was mostly positive.  A few of my photos were a little bit too overexposed and lacked definition, but for the most part they were pretty good compositionally and the tone fit the story well.  I added the third photo because my classmates liked it and thought it fit in well, and the 7th photo was changed on Elise's recommendation.  Overall, there wasn't much I had to change, but there were a few photos that I changed from my original choices because they had better coloring or composition.

Final Project

For my final project, I want to emulate the photographs of Sally Mann.  Not just the portraits, but her style and full body of work.  I want to do black-and-white portraits, black-and-white landscapes, and abstract art using body parts and alternate ways of showing scenery.  She's weird, but her photographs are interesting and I'd like to try and emulate them.  It's possible that, in order to properly emulate her, I'll need to try film photography, but my plan is to do digital for most of it and see how far I get, and possibly include film as an addition.  I like her edgy, strange portraits and photographs, and that's what draws me to her.  As such, I want to take pictures in an interesting way that show different situations, and take careful use of light as that's a huge part of her photography.  A few of my friends agreed that they would model for me, and it should be fairly easy to find somewhere I can use for a landscape.

Still-Lifes

All of my objects I chose because they have personal connections.  I have my ribbon from my only horse show, nail polish, an acceptance card from my college, and a key that I like to use as a necklace.  Later, I even decided to include my show.  Some of these objects hold more significance than others, but they are all connected to me.  They are all things I like or need, things that make me happy, and overall, things that are a part of me.

I was fairly successful in capturing my images.  I tried to be creative in placement and how I used the different objects – after I felt I had exhausted angles and placements of what I had, I added dandelions to create more interest.  I experimented with a lot of different angles, exposures, and focal lengths.  It’s hard to create an interesting photo with only objects, but I think I was able to do that with at least some of them.  Next time I think I’ll bring in more, smaller objects.  It’ll be easier to rearrange them in interesting ways, and being able to add or remove objects as needed would help change the way each photo looks.

Free-Choice: Tilt-shift/selective blur

My assignment to myself was to experiment with selective blur, especially in the context of creating false miniature photos.  I’ve seen pictures of them online, and always wanted to learn how to do it myself.  The challenge for me here was finding out how to edit photographs in photoshop so that I could create this effect.  The way that tilt-shift photography works is that in creating blur on both sides of the photo, it mimics a shallow depth of field that makes things appear to be far smaller than they are.  It was really cool to learn about the different tools photoshop had that I’ve never used before, but will be incredibly useful in the future.  I had to figure out how to use them myself, and so it was challenging, but much simpler once I learned.

The biggest impact of this assignment was teaching myself even more about photoshop.  I learned how to use quickmask with the gradient tool, which creates a gradient that functions as a layer mask; I learned how to use different types of blur – guassian is my favorite, but lens blur and box blur also create an interesting effect; and I learned how to use the history brush, which undos certain edits to a photo.  I also found out what, exactly, tilt-shift photography is and how it works.  I’d seen it before, but I couldn’t figure out what made it look the way it did.  Since starting this, I’ve put together how it works and, possibly, how to do it without the use of photoshop in the future.  If I can create a shallow enough depth of field, I may be able to create photographs like this on my own, using just my camera.  I plan to experiment with it more in the future.  Another thing I learned is how to create a fals focus, and how to best choose a subject of a photograph through blur.  In this case, I had to carefully select my photographs, looking specifically for ones that were looking down and had a fairly interesting composition.  As a result, this project gave me an even better understanding of photo composition and how it relates the the type of photography one is doing.

Travelling

NYC Reflection

It's hard to pick what my favorite part of New York was.  Honestly, it wasn't any particular spot that I found to be the best, it was when we were walking around Manhattan, taking pictures that I had the most fun.  Seeing the people, the buildings, the street art and street performers, all of that is what I want to take with me from this trip.  I loved being somewhere that was so enormous, with so many different things around every corner.  Stores, graffiti, musicians, and just the scenery with the skyscrapers and many parks.  Simply being in the city was enough of a memory for me.  I learned a lot about shooting pictures quickly during this trip.  Usually when I take photos, it takes me an extremely long time to set everything up, make sure my exposure's correct, check my focus, and everything else.  I tend to overthink it, but in New York, I didn't have time for that.  What could be a cool picture could be gone in seconds, so learning to take pictures quickly while still retaining what I've learned about the rules of photography was extremely important.  I already knew how to set up a picture, but being in a fast-paced environment made me do it faster, and that's really important for any photography in the future.

NYC: Miscellaneous

NYC: Streets and Buildings

NYC: Times Square at Night

Self Portraits

 Self portraits were very hard to do.  It's difficult for me to pose in front of a camera; even when other people are taking pictures, I prefer not to be in them.  Because of this, this assignment was a definite challenge for me.  Once I got an idea of what some of my weaknesses are, those being making expressions, figuring out how to hold myself, etc., I tried to get creative and find ways to work around that.  Because I had so much trouble figuring out what to do with my face (plus, most of my pictures were pretty boring), I decided to use light painting.  Light painting is very fun to do, plus it makes for an interesting picture.  Even better, if I do it correctly, my expression doesn't impact the overall quality of the photo as much.  Once I got pictures using light painting, I still wanted to get some that were more portrait-y, so I decided to use a mirror.  This assignment was hard, but I tried to get creative to work around the things that were holding me back, and I'm overall very happy with my work.

Surrealism pt. 2

When I was looking at Uelsmann's work, I loved how he combined natural pictures with photos of people and objects. The combination of two contrasting images creating a whole new one intrigued me a lot, and I wanted to try that. I combined two separate pictures of snowy trees with two portraits of Joss because I wanted to see how I could combine them to look surreal while still seeming cohesive. Rene Magritte's The False Mirror also had some influence on my work. In that painting, he combined a painting of an eye with a painting of the sky. I was inspired by this work to add the middle picture of the tree to the dark center of this picture. Although I intentionally erased most of the picture from the eye area to add contrast, that painting gave me the idea to continue combining my nature photos with the skin of my portraits.

I am, for the most part, happy with my results. I do think that the final photo looks a little creepy, almost propaganda-like, but I like how I decided to combine my images and where this combination occurred. I especially like how the tree picture adds texture to her face, and how her visible eye stands out from the rest of the picture. In the future, I'd like to find a more interesting background and blend the two face pictures better. I'd have to experiment a lot, but what I'd like to do is find a better way to use all of these photos without feeling like I'm making a movie poster or a piece of propaganda. Regardless, I am overall very happy with my results. I think that my choice in images works and I like the way that everything combines.

Snow

When I went outside to photograph the snowfall, my dog followed.  She was so intent on following me outside that she forgot that she's too short to walk in the snow, and afraid of being wet.  She looked lost for a moment, so I asked her to sit.  Sophie isn't very good at sitting still, and though she listened to me and stayed on the porch while I took her picture, she couldn't help but move her head every which way.  It's hard to tell if she was more curious about the snow, or just needed to have a part of her moving.  Regardless, what I love about this picture is how in profile she is, as well as how the snow is landing on her face.  The snow, I think, moves this from a "cute dog picture" belonging in a family album to a picture I'm comfortable sharing.

Surrealism

Surrealism is a style of art as well as a change in culture that began in the late 1910s and early 1920s. Dadaism developed out of WWI, with a focus on nonsense, irrationality, and silliness. Surrealism was born from this movement, with a similar focus on imagination, subconscious, and the unexpected. This art movement features unconventional techniques and subject matter, for example, many surrealists drew inspiration from the art of children and ancient, primitive cultures. Like dadaism, they began to ignore conventional artistry, foregoing realism in favor of whimsicality and dreamlike subject matter.

Rene Magritte, a Belgian surrealist, focused on challenging the conventional perceptions of reality. His paintings are both humorous and thought-provoking, combining words with art, and meshing images together into one. He places landscapes inside of objects, and objects in places where they don’t belong. His paintings are not of things he sees, but of things he imagines or dreams. Combining this irrationality with a semi-realistic painting style and otherwise-normal subject matter, his paintings are slightly confusing and very provocative.

Jerry Uelsmann is a fellow surrealist, but rather than using paints and pencils as a medium, he uses photography. Like Magritte, Uelsmann combines images together in a manner which questions reality and causes the viewer to think. His photographs are less humorous than the paintings by Magritte, but evoke the same tone as Magritte’s dreamlike works. Uelsmann’s photos blend together and combine, less to be irrational, and more to show the connection between two otherwise unrelated objects.

The Treachery of Images - 1928-9

This is my chosen painting by Magritte. It's funny and somewhat paradoxal, with a biting title and an interesting use of words within the painting. Of course this is a pipe: that is a very realistic painting and it is clear what its subject matter is. But, as you think about it, you realize that it isn't a pipe: it's a painting of one. Does the sentence then refer to the painting or its own subject? Regardless of the contradictions, this painting is cute and funny, and one of my favorites by Magritte.

Journey Into Night - 2006

This photograph by Uelsmann is beautiful to me. I love how the hands become the tree so perfectly and how they relate to each other. Hands can hold a nest, but a nest belongs in a tree. It then makes sense that the hands become a tree, able to hold the nest and still have it be as it should. The black background is a good touch, and it makes the hands stand out more. I love the composition of this photograph, with everything front and center with a few more details scattered around to be discovered, like the bird.

WORDS Video

The purpose of this assignment was to recreate the video “Words”, and use short video clips to show different words and the transitions between them.  This assignment was meant to teach us to create videos, be creative, and learn to use different mediums to communicate words.  Emily and I wanted to show the words “fall”, “throw”, and “watch”, as well as the different meanings each might have.  We wanted to not only show the conventional uses of the words, but also different phrases that include them.  We tried to be creative in what we recorded and how we set up our clips in iMovie.

This assignment taught us to think outside the box, use video as a medium, and communicate the same ideas through different clips.  In order for this project to work, Emily and I had to be very creative and clever in how we would transition from word to word.  We had to think of different phrases and meanings of each word and how we could use videos that represent each.  We had never used video before, so it was a different experience in learning compositional techniques for video and how movement and sound would affect it.  It was very different to learn how to videotape what we wanted, but it was also a lot of fun and really different.  Because we were using the same words across a variety of clips, we had to learn how to show that we were using the same words, despite having different meanings and videos to represent them.

Light Painting

Light painting taught me a lot about light, negative space, and abstract photography.  A lot of my photos were not of any specific thing, but instead just trying to show light and its movement in the photo.  I had a lot of fun experimenting with color and shape, and it was very different to use photography to take a picture of something abstract.  Not having to pay attention to realism also gave way to using negative space to create new shapes.

In the future, I'd like to use light painting in more creative and experimental ways.  Laura and Emma's paintings were really creative, and I'd like to try more techniques similar to theirs.  I'd like to try using light painting in brighter spaces and see if I can get light to emphasize things already in the photo, rather than create them.

Patterns

I wanted to photograph everyday patterns, so I did.  Lines and repeating shapes are everywhere, so I did my best to try and find them.  When I started with color photography, I realized that often the shapes I wanted to photograph became obscured by too much color and complexities in the background.  The second time photographing, I decided to try my hand at black and white photography to see if that could simplify my photos and make what I wanted to convey clearer.  I think that I'd like to try my hand at more black and white photography in the future and practice creating strong contrasts without color.

Goals

This year, I want to learn more about different techniques to improve my photos, including photomanipulation and post-processing techniques.  Of course, I still have a lot to learn in general, and I will continue to work on improving my compositions and making my photos count, but I am very interested in how I can improve them after I take the photo as well.  Photomanipulations have always been really interesting to me, and it would be great to learn how to add filters and adjust colors more effectively after I've already taken a photograph.  I've seen some great pictures in which people combine photography with painting, and that is something I'd love to explore as I continue with photography.

I'm also really interested in videography and cinematography.  Ever since I started taking photo, I've begun to notice how filmmakers choose to show a scene and how beautiful videography can be.  I've like to learn how to take what I've learned in photo and apply it to videos as well.  It would be really interesting to see what different decisions one would make compositionally when making a video compared to a photo, and I'd like to experiment with it.