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.