popsicle sky

Independent #3: Color For this project, I wanted to experiment...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:25:00 -0500

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Independent #3: Color

For this project, I wanted to experiment with the effects of color (or the absence of color). I wanted to see how prominent colors could become in a photograph, in a way that the photos would be totally different in black and white. Sometimes I tried taking photos of things with lots of color, but sometimes I placed boldly-colored objects in contrast with colorless ones, like in photos 1, 4. and 5. Those three photos are unedited because I really like the effect of the black, white, and red without any use of Photoshop. In photo 2, I removed the blue to emphasize the beautiful colors of the scarf against the white snow. It’s interesting to find colorful things that just happen to be there, instead of saturating them or changing them in any way after taking the photo.

Independent #2: Tim Burton’s Tragic Toys Lately I’ve...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:11:00 -0500

The Pin Cushion Queen

Stain Boy

Mummy Boy

Staring Girl

The Onslaught

Independent #2: Tim Burton’s Tragic Toys

Lately I’ve been fascinated with Tim Burton’s work, especially his sad little creatures, all with tragic stories. I love (and I’m intrigued by) my little figurines of the creatures from Tim Burton’s The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories, so I decided to use them as my subjects. I wanted to show them for more than the creepy things that make my friends flinch, and I did this by adding mood to the photos. I tried desaturating and adding blue tint to Stain Boy’s photo, but he ended up looking a little too miserable and overdone. Instead I left the natural colors of late afternoon which make Stain Boy look less ghostly and more forlorn. I toned down the colors and boosted the saturation on Pin Cushion Queen; this close-up made her look more sad and relatable. I like the effect of the tired-looking, faded colors and deep blacks and whites. I tried to make some of the photos humorous to contrast with their sad subjects, like Staring Girl’s awkward, fearful sidelong glance at Beethoven, and the last photo’s title “The Onslaught,” dramatized because they are actually only two or three inches tall.

Event With an event as informal as a family buying and...

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:29:00 -0500

Event

With an event as informal as a family buying and decorating a Christmas tree, I had many different types of things to photograph, and I could really try to capture the feeling of the event. I like the way a whimsical theme came out, with the warm feeling of decorating for the holidays and the bright colors. In the photo with the pine branches for sale, I thought making it black and white would put more emphasis on the tones. In the photo with the girl putting the ornament on the tree, I distorted the colors a little because it made that moment more dream-like. The photo with the ornament of Peanuts’ Linus on the stage is also peaceful and dream-like to me because of the blurry, colorful lights in the background and the darkness surrounding it.

Independent #1: The Informal “Family Photo Album” At...

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 12:21:00 -0500

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Independent #1: The Informal “Family Photo Album”

At the beginning of the course, we looked at many different kinds of photos, and I remember one in particular depicting a mother and son eating dinner at a table. The colors were dark and added to the mood, and the whole photo looked very theatrical, with the way it was framed and the models’ expressions. Later we looked at photos by Eggleston, many of them portraits of regular people in the 60’s or 70’s. These intrigued me, too, and they gave me the idea to try taking portraits of regular life at its most interesting. To accomplish this, I didn’t do a lot of editing, except adjusting the colors to make them more natural. Sometimes I tried to make the photos look like frozen frames of movies, either through their subject matter or the way they were framed. I think photos 2 and 3 were more successful at looking like shots from films. I like the humor in 2, with the two dogs in a separate scene below, unnoticed by the people. I like that 3 is a little quirky, with the model’s very informal position and the different heights of the two lamps. I thought photos 1 and 4 fit the theme because they are thoughtful and might evoke emotions in the viewer; for example, photo 1 shows that feeling of excitement and intrigue a child might have on Christmas morning.

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Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:14:26 -0500

David Hockney is a painter and photographer. Many of his works...

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:57:00 -0500

David Hockney is a painter and photographer. Many of his works are similar to cubism, showing different parts of people/objects in one image. He makes lots of images like this one, by combining many photos to make it more interesting, keeping the viewer’s attention for more than a few seconds.

While Hockney used printed photos and arranged them by hand, we used Photoshop to make our collages. The most important Photoshop tool for this was image size adjustment, which could be used to shrink photos. This was a better option the manual sizing tool, which would be much less convenient. Also, being able to adjust the brightness was helpful for this to make photos that might have had different light settings look consistent.

I really like that this kind of photo can create a stronger effect than one image alone. I could show all different sides and emotions of the model, and it almost made the room look three-dimensional.

To improve my initial shooting, I would have chosen a time of day when there was more light. I took the photos in the morning, when it was cloudy and the sun was low. There wasn’t enough light, so most of the photos came out too blurry to use. I could also have used a tri-pod, but I didn’t realize the photos were blurry until I saw them on the computer much later. The problem with making a collage is that it’s difficult to re-shoot only parts of the photo and make those parts match the lighting of the old.

My favorite part of the photo is the heads in the center, almost appearing to be floating up. I like the effect of the different angles and the model’s different positions. I think it shows the calm feeling of coffee on a Sunday morning. I particularly like the image where he is holding the dog because it’s so sweet and quiet.

by Diane Arbus I like this photo because it’s not what you...

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:32:00 -0500

by Diane Arbus

I like this photo because it’s not what you would expect to see in a portrait of a little boy. It’s a little jarring to see the toy hand grenade and his expression, but at the same time it’s endearing. He’s just a boy playing war without realizing the full meaning of his game. I like the way the angle and the cropping emphasize his stance, making him look a little distorted. It’s also humorous how one of his straps came off his shoulder.

I like the selective focus to make the subject the most prominent part of the photo, which is often important for a portrait. At the same time, I like the patterns of the trees’ shadows behind him. Also, the tonal range is nice, with the darker tree and shadows and the light in the far background. The subject isn’t the brightest thing in the photo, and he’s not lit strongly from any side, but I like that soft-lit effect, because it looks more natural for this more informal type of portrait.

Formal portraits I think my most successful photos in this...

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:56:00 -0500

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Formal portraits

I think my most successful photos in this category are #3 and #5. I like 3 because the different expressions are funny, showing all different parts of her personality. I also like the contrasting colors between the black and white and bright pink. I told her different stories to get the different expressions out of her, and I like the way they came out. My other favorite is #5 because I like the way she appears to be clinging to the Earth. I also like the expression on her face and how brightly lit it is. To edit this one, I burned the midtones on her face to make her features more visible. I also desaturated it because the colors were distracting, with her bright pink shirt clashing with the green grass.

Photo #4 was intended to be like a “magazine” shot. I emphasized her makeup and boosted the contrast to make it more dramatic. I also changed the colors a little to add interest. I like the way 6 came out after putting the 3 photos together. 2 needed some color correction. In 7, I selectively colored only the subject, but I desaturated that part a little too, because too much color made her appear to be floating, taking attention away from the mood of the photo.

Feedback from other people helped me a lot, especially because I noticed interesting photos I hadn’t noticed before. I wasn’t originally going to use 1, 2, or 5, but other people noticed them after I had passed over them multiple times, and now 5 is one of my favorites. Partially desaturating the subject in 7, burning the midtones in 5, and putting the three photos together in 6 were also suggestions from other people.

Informal portraits In this set, I think my most successful...

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:19:00 -0500

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Informal portraits

In this set, I think my most successful portrait is #4. I love the quiet scenes between the girl and the dog, and I think pairing these two together made both of them look good. I also like how the dog is in focus in the first photo, and in the second the person is more in focus. To emphasize the muted tone and to make the photos more coherent, I desaturated them both a little.

For these informal portraits, I only cropped them and changed the colors a little. I like how simple they are, with not much going on besides the subjects. In 1, 2, and 5, cropping helped balance the composition. I especially like how the focus in 2 is on the end of the guitar, not the subject’s face; this is a less traditional way to do a portrait, and I was trying to make some photos more unique. In 5, I adjusted the tones to make it warmer, trying to add to the emotion.

Feedback from small groups was helpful because I got new ideas about how to crop in different ways and put multiple images together. It was another person’s suggestion to put photos together, and that’s how I got the idea to make #4. Also, it was suggested that I burn the dog in 5 to make it less washed out. That didn’t work as well as I wanted because there weren’t many midtones to be brought out to begin with, and simply darkening the whole dog looked fake.

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Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:54:33 -0500

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Pure Nature shots My favorite photo in this category is #6. I...

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:57:00 -0500

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Pure Nature shots

My favorite photo in this category is #6. I did not originally intend to take this photo; 6 and 4 are both pieces of one larger photo. It’s interesting to see what new shapes/patterns/subjects can emerge with extreme cropping. The idea of cropping a photo to make a more interesting one (or several) came from group critiques. I love the colors and textures that are prominent in #6, and I like the abstract effect created by the ripples, water plants, and tree shadows.

To make the photos more interesting, I saturated many of them and cropped them to bring the focus to specific parts of the photo. I think #1 especially benefited from being saturated because it brings out the colors very well. 3 and 5 also have vibrant colors that looked even better saturated.

In photo 7, I really liked the tall tree and its colors, and I thought the long composition of the photo emphasized the tree.

After critiques from other people, I got the idea to crop photos to create multiple interesting shots from one big photo. I also discovered that some photos I had skipped over earlier were unique.

This set of images was more difficult to shoot than that of nature with the presence of humans because we see so many pure nature photos everywhere, and it’s really difficult to find images that are not like many you’ve seen before.

Nature with the presence of humans This category was more...

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:54:00 -0500

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Nature with the presence of humans

This category was more interesting to me than the pure nature photos because there are so many possible ways to show humans and nature existing together. My favorite photos in this category are 2 and 4. I really like the colors and composition in both of them. I think the bold colors and strong lines in 2 make it look striking and modern. It is a subtle way of showing nature that can grow even from the structures humans have made. I like 4 because it’s pretty, and I like the effect of the snow with the brightly colored flowers. I also like how it shows that humans can manipulate nature (grow flowers) in a nice, appealing way, not always harming it.

I saturated the colors in 1 and 2 to make them more bold, but I desaturated 3 and 6 for the opposite reason, to reduce some of the activity all around. Often in nature it’s hard to take a focused photo because there’s so much going on. Black and white can make the photo less busy and more pleasing to look at. I didn’t really edit the other photos (other than adjusting the levels to make them look more natural) because I like the way they look now.

After group critiques, I got the idea to crop photo 6 to balance it out more and give it a more interesting composition. Originally there was too much “stuff” crowding the photo. I also noticed some interesting photos I hadn’t considered using before, like 7, after peers’ suggestions.

by Edward Burtynsky...

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:16:42 -0500

by Edward Burtynsky (http://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/bao-steel-2-shanghai-china-2005.jpg?w=655&h=524)

I like the irony of this photo. It’s colorful and beautiful and almost playful, but it also clearly shows how human development is affecting the landscape. The deep colors and bold lines, partly created by the specific angle, make it look like it could be a child’s play area. It’s pleasing to look at. Still, it shows civilation’s effect on the landscape in a very negative way. There is nothing living in sight; it’s all steel and other artificial materials. The clouds of smoke coming from the factories and the smog hanging in the air above add to this negative feeling.

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