Influenced By..

These would be the two different photographers that I would want to base my last project off of. Halsman did the first picture of the cats, water, chair, and artist (Salvador Dali) flying, as well as the second picture of Marilyn Monroe jumping. The second picture is done by Diane Arbus. I found these two photographers inspirational because they are not afraid, whether it be the fact that they are trying to catch a moment such as the wonderful moment caught in the first picture, or if they are photographing controversial subjects such as the second picture. This lack of fear is something that I would want to explore within my last project, not only because it is my last chance of the semester to produce pictures within this class, but also because I like to push myself past my comfort zone so I do not fall into any "safe" habits, which can lead to boredom. 

Additionally I have a dance background and the first picture really interest me due to the fact that I would love to capture some moments within the air that happen within dance. I think that the ability to be able to capture a moment in the air is something very valuable because a viewer can observe what happens in the air within the photograph, consequently learning a great deal from photographs. 

Finally Diane Arbus's photography of controversial people/things that are not always pleasing to the eye interests me because body image and what is considered beautiful to people has always been such a compelling subject for me to study. 

12) Still Life Project: A Group of Photographs that Share a Relation

These are the photographs that are the product of our latest assignment in Photo I. We had to shoot pictures of still lives, although the trick was to make the still lives look extraordinary. I had a very difficult time with this project, from thinking of interesting things to shoot, to trying to shoot up close without coming out with a blurry image, to finding places within my apartment where there wasn't a distracting background or even just trying to figure out how to block out the background. Although, even though it was frustrating I think that these pictures are something to be proud of, considering my struggle, hence the reason why they are the ones I picked to post on here. 

Before I go into how they relate I just wanted to state that I cold not pick just three that relate, as Professor Micheals asked, so I came up with two sets of four. I also focused mostly on food while doing these still lives, considering food seemed to give me the most successful, interesting outcomes. 

I think that the top four have a relationship to each other because they each are obviously photographs of food, but they all each have the foreground in focus, and the background out of focus. I like this effect a lot, I think it gives a good range of dept and I enjoyed working through getting my camera to focus on the foreground and blurring out the background. I also think that there is a slight color relation going on within these four photographs above. The cucumbers and the bananas relating color wise, as well as the roasted red peppers and apples relating color wise. 

The photographs below are the other set of four that I think share a relationship. Unlike the photographs above where only the foreground is in focus, this set has the food all within the foreground, almost eliminating any middle or back ground in almost all four of these. I also think that these four photographs relate because they really distort what the picture is really of. For example the first picture is cheese crackers with peanut butter on the inside, I think it now looks like little volcanoes erupting from a bird's eye view. 

11) Abstract Spaces (better relationships, RECENTLY revised as well)

This is a second posting on the Abstract Spaces project. Professor Micheals wanted me to crop the bottom photogrpah to clean it up a little bit better as well as to have a better relationship between the three photographs, so this is my revised pictures and post. 

This post is recently edited, again. Professor Micheals wanted us to add one more abstract space photography to the ones that we have already put together as having a relationship between one another. I choose to add the top photograph in this post. I think that all of them still relate due to the triangular shapes and the play with lines within the photographs. If I had to pick one that I think worked the best out of these four it would be the third phtograph from the top. This works the best in my eyes because I do not think the viewer can even tell anymore what exactly this is a picture of. This phtograph also works best for me because geometric shapes within the background of the photo strengthens the abstract space idea, if the background was just black, I do not think it would have worked as well. I also like how my camera captured the detail of the smears on the glass, as well as how there aren't any very obvious distractions like the bright almost white dots in the last photograph (yes this is a picture of a glass window on a door, I guess I had to give it away =p ). Finally I think that this photograph works well because I feel that the ligther rectangular shape in the background pulls the viewer in, past the triangular shapes. 

10) Different White Balances

This post is a little bit delayed, but this was another lesson learned in Rebecca Michaels Photo I class here at Tyler. This was a part of the four seasons photography assignment. For each portrayal of the seasons we had to take the portrayal in all the five different white balances. As one can see the different white balances can drastically change the feeling of a photograph. For example the bottom photograph looks a little more "sci fi" to me considering the snow is almost glowing due to the odd blue shade that using the wrong white balance for outdoor lighting caused. Although using the wrong white balance can do some nice things, such as the very first photograph posted on this blog entry of my portrayal of winter. I think that the vintage feel of using the daylight white balance (if I remember correctly) adds a nice touch to this winter wonderland moment I was able to capture on Temple's campus. 

9) Abstract Spaces

So far I think that this was my favorite assignment. We were to take pictures of the abstract spaces that we could find within the architecture of buildings. I took some pictures in color, as well as some pictures in black and white while doing this assignment. Even though the color photographs had some elements to them that the black and white photographs did not, I still think that I am in love with the feel of the black and white photographs. I also think that the black and white photographs let a viewer focus in on what the purpose of the photograph really was, which was to analyze the abstract spaces. Some of the difficulties I had with this assignment was the element of the cold weather outside. I would've loved to stay out all night taking pictures, but the cold weather sent me running inside sooner than later. I also had some issues with not being able to zoom in close enough to some buildings. I do own another lens, which would in able me to do this, but I did not want to pull out this lens in the middle of the street, while standing on ice, usually in the dark of Philly. I also didn't realize that as you uploaded the pictures onto your computer the black and white effect of the photograph would be taken away considering these were shot in the RAW format. I was thankfully informed that I could easily turn the photograph back to black and white using Adobe Lightroom. After these small dilemmas, I was very happy with the turn out of this assignment, as well as the process of learning even more about my camera! Enjoy the photos. 

8) Different ISO's of the same image

This was another part of the abstract images assignment in Photo I. My classmates and I were required to take a photo of the same image, in all of the different ISO's available on our camera. In my case I was able to take photographs in ISO's of 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and 3200. I think I can start to see the difference in the detail of the texture(s) of the walls when one looks at the photographs one by one from the very top photograph to the last one. In my opinion I think that the third photograph from the top looks the best, as well as shows the most texture. 

7) New Relationships With Four Seasons Assignment

In Photo I we were also assigned to take the four most successful "four seasons assignment" photographs and to crop them using Adobe Lightroom, and then post them on our blog. These photos were not necessarily the photgraphs that I thought were most successful on their own, but when cropped and placed next to each other, therefore making new relationships, these were the ones that I thought worked the best in this manner. 

After reviewing some things with Professor Rebecca Michaels I did some editing within Adobe Lightroom to my cropped four seasons variation. The above photograph is not only cropped, but I also did some enhancing to the color(s) as well as the image sharpness within each individual photo. I also decided to juxtapose the images a little bit differently. I might make yet another variation, but this is what I have come up with so far. We will be printing these images in class as well, which is a pretty awesome deal considering the printers/ink here at Tyler are free when taking a photo class, which supplies us students with some wonderful end results to add to our portfolios of work.