Final Assignment

I had a particular difficult time thinking of possible ideas for a subject of my final. I really liked the idea of making a series, and I’d like to create something that relates to everyone. Since I was stumped, I took a look at what my classmates were choosing to do. Big mistake for me, because I then choked up since they all had brilliant ideas! I would skim through a couple and after awhile think, “That’s so cool, why didn’t I think of that?!” While freaking out, like most people, I decided to check my Facebook and saw that I had an inbox. Someone had sent me a website with a love quote, and it started to get me thinking of all the different ways that one can love someone or something, since everyone defines love differently. I realized that this would be a great subject for me, the difficult part would be trying to reproduce the different feelings of love aesthetically. I chose to express the love for music, love for food, friendly and romantic love, as well as love for self and love for animals in this series of photographs, and I hope that some of the emotions that I attempted to reproduce are some of which that my audience can relate to as well.

Six Shades of Love

 

Suggested revisions for Assignment 5:

Jade Clarice..

“I really like your artist statement. I like how your relating it to things in everyday life. However, I was a little confused when I was looking through your picutres until I read the artist statement. You might want to have the artisit statment in the begining. I like photos 3, 5, and 6. I like how the subjects aren’t looking at the camera, it seems more genuine.”

Anya Chumachok..

“I like your ideas for the final project. The everyday life and that you’re just taking pictures of family and friends. Make sure to include your artist statement on the top. Try take more pictures and related them to each other. Some of your pictures are a little dark. It’s really hard to shoot inside with room lighting. You can try to adjust the exposure and also you can try to reduce the digital noise on photoshop.Great job though! Your pictures look very genuine and happy. Good luck!”

Blog 5

Melissa Djonlich:

What a great idea! I think your shots are awesome, and I agree that your statement is very straight forward and you accomplish what you set out to do beautifully. I like that the colors and lines of the dye movement stand out right away against the white wall in the background, but the table that it rests upon somewhat takes away from this, since it cuts right through your subject matter. Overall, great job!

Elizabeth Foreman:

Great job on your artist statement, and I think that your idea to take close up photos of ordinary objects to “take in the big picture” was really creative! There were a few photos that I was readily able to recognize from things I experience in my own life, and then there were some that left me wondering what objects they could be. You really did an amazing job and I love that you left me wondering and thinking about what it is you experience day to day! Very nice!

Ian Fortune:

I have to say that after checking out everyone’s work, yours is definitely the most creative that I have seen. My favorite photo is the “apple of his eye”. You did a great job bringing these sayings “to life” and illustrating what they mean to you. Overall, very nice work, and great photos!

Assignment 5 (First Draft)

A lot of the photos that I took did not come out the way I wanted to.. I plan on reshooting the ones that didn’t turn out.

Brainstorm

I had a particular difficult time thinking of possible ideas for a subject of my final. I really liked the idea of making a composite, and I’d like to create something that relates to everyone. Since I was stumped, I took a look at what my classmates were choosing to do. Big mistake for me, because I then choked up since they all had brilliant ideas! I would skim through a couple and after awhile think, “That’s so cool, why didn’t I think of that?!” While freaking out, like most people, I decided to check my Facebook and saw that I had an inbox. Someone had sent me a website with a love quote, and it started to get me thinking of all the different kinds of love that most people can relate to in our society today. I realized that this would be a great subject for me, the difficult part would be trying to reproduce the different feelings of love aesthetically.

Just some ideas I had:

An older couple cooking together; a younger couple just spending time together; siblings; a mother and her children; grandparents with their grandchild; the obsession that our culture has with technology; love for music and self-expression; love for life; broken hearts; love for God; love for food..

Assignment 3

"Child with Toy Grenade" emulation

"Shiny Dress" emulation

"Two Friends" emulation

"Hermaphrodite and Dog" emulation

"Untitled" emulation

While premeditating how I would proceed to shoot these emulation of Diane Arbus’ work, I decided to use the same arrangement of people and subjects of the photograph. Unfortunately, I don’t know any dwarfs or hermaphrodites, but I had two actors that were more than willing to attempt to recreate these photographs with me! I pretty much changed everything but the subjects of the photographs. Since I knew that Arbus’ artistic style included shooting “freaks” and very non-traditional subjects, I attempted to make my photographs as outrageous as possible in this sense. Even though that nudity hardly played a role in any of these particular photographs, while researching, I found plenty where nudity was the subject. While not wanting to include nude pictures of minors to save myself the lawsuit and embarrassing shooting environment, I opted to instead slightly hint at this by aiming the lighting below my subject’s hips to highlight, even though this was not included in the original photograph.

Diane Arbus Research

The Junior Interstate Ballroom Dance Champions, Yonkers, NY Diane Arbus

Lady at a masked ball with two roses on her dress, N.Y.C. 1967 Diane Arbus

Hermaphrodite and a dog in a carnival trailer, Md. 1970 Diane Arbus

A Woman in a Bird Mask, N.Y.C. 1967 Diane Arbus

Two girls in matching bathing suits, Coney Island, N.Y. Diane Arbus

Child with toy hand grenade 1962 Diane Arbus

Identical Twins, New Rochelle 1967 Diane Arbus

Girl in a shiny dress, NYC 1967 Diane Arbus

Two friends at home, NYC 1965 Diane Arbus

Untitled 1970-1971 Diane Arbus

The photography whose work that I chose to emulate is Diane Arbus. After researching other artists, I found her work to be the most interesting. Arbus was born March 14, 1923 in New York, New York. She is well-known for her photographs of transvestites, dwarfs, twins, and mentally ill adults. Arbus’ creativity emerged very early in her life, as she expressed herself through drawings. She met her husband, Allan Arbus, when she was 13 and married him upon turning 18. It was Arbus’ husband who taught her photography. She began shooting for advertising and fashion photography, and after awhile, started to focus on her own photography. Arbus studied with Lisette Model to further explore her own style of photography. During the 1960s, she taught photography at several schools. Her first major exhibition of her photographs occurred at the Museum of Modern Art in a 1967 show called “New Documents”. In July of 1971, at the age of 48, she committed suicide.

Assignment 4

 

Blog 3

For photo 4 of Melissa Djonlich’s blog, the compositional elements that are present in the photograph are lines, texture, and contrast. The telephone cables create somewhat horizontal lines that all branch away from the telephone pole. The buildings that are lined up next to the alley, as well as the cars that are across from them also create lines that extended vertically to the center of the photograph, creating lead lines. The leaves of the trees give the photo some texture, as well as the white building next to the telephone pole. The bright sky that makes up negative space really contrasts with the dark alley since shadows are cast from the buildings. The light falling on the trees puts emphasis on the colors of the leaves and makes them stand out from the dark components of the photo. The complementary colors of green and red are present in the photo as well, as required by the assignment guidelines. The complementary colors take the forms of the green tree and the man’s green shirt, complementing the tree with the red leaves. It’s very interesting how all that is negative space, the sky, is also that which contrasts the positive space, the alley and trees.

Throughout the blog post, there is no particular set color scheme. The color scheme varies from two photos that have the color scheme of red and green, to the other three photos that seem to have the emphasis of the color blue. The photographs were named as random numbers, 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7, instead of containing a title with the date the photos were taken and the photographer’s name. It seems as if the photographer color balanced her work correctly, but there could have been more variety to her photographs. It seems as if they were all taken from the same building, and it would have been nice to see a change of scenery. Even just changing the vantage point would have made an interesting difference in the content of her photos.

Assignment 2

Red and green.

Assignment 1, Part B

I thought that the original photo had the best color balance. This test helped reveal the color balance of my original photo. For example, if the lighting of my original photo had been more yellow, the color balance of blue 10 may have helped to even out the color balance of the photo.