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Final Project

For my final project, I wanted to incorporate my love for night photography in it somehow. I figured that since I already like the cyberpunk style that the glitch effects might go well with it. I took a bunch of photos that might fit well for the background and composited a silhouette in front of it to add a subject. Then, I added other pictures with a lot of lights and bokeh with a blending to only add the bright parts. After, I took it into a glitch effect generator and started to add specific effects that I wanted to create the glitch look. Some of them are more glitchy than others but I wanted the viewer to be confused and disoriented upon looking at them.

Artist Research

I chose to research Gregory Crewdson for my project. As soon as I looked him up on Google, I knew this artist was unique and I took an interest in his style. Crewdson's photography can be described as a cinematic story that rides on surrealism. Every image that he produces appears so unreal because of what is happening yet very tangible. Crewdson puts a lot of work into the production of his images like a Hollywood movie. He prepares different sets, lighting setups, and props to create each photo. Overall, Crewdson has impressed me with how he manages to create such different images and the messages he tries to convey in each of them.

Final Project Proposal

I intend on making some kind of composite with my night photography with glitches added on top. I want to convey more of the dystopian cyberpunk aesthetic with this series of images. This means I will be using colors like blue, purple, and hot pink. I think this series will be quite similar to the work you have seen in the past but a little more cohesive. I don't have any specific ideas on what to shoot or show yet, but I want to replicate popular cyberpunk films.

Art Tour Blog

Andy Warhol

In Andy Warhol's exhibition, a strange variety of photos were displayed. One specific photo that caught my eye is The Last Supper shown below. At a glance, I thought this was the side of a building or a parking garage of sorts because of how dull it looked. But after closer inspection, I figured out that it was a tessellation of sixty images. These sixty images are a copy of a copy of the original Last Supper by DaVinci.

The intent of this image was to honor the death of his partner Jon Gould. Similar to the Last Supper where Jesus dies the next day, Warhol's partner died. During this time period, homosexuality was looked down upon and this painting was bringing some of that media attention to Warhol. However, Warhol was not an activist and many believe this work was strictly to honor his partner's death. I think Warhol conveyed this message clearly with repetition as if it were repeating in his head.

Lynn G. Fayman

My first impression of Fayman's exhibition was very abstract. Fayman uses a lot of different ideas and principles to vary his work. From lines, shapes, textures, and colors, Fayman utilized almost every concept of design to create a different form of art for this time period.

I think the intent of this art was either strictly to explore what someone can do with traditional art or it may be expressive of what the artist was feeling at the time. In either case, I think that message comes across well as this artwork seems very unique and progressive. Creating art that was unthought of at the time helped push new media to the forefront and create what I think represents modern art.

Video Art Blog

Video art changed the definition and bounds of art by creating a whole new form of art. Prior to video cameras, artworks could not pass with time. It was either a still image or a series of images. With video art, an artist could create more meaning and depth into the works. This opened up a new dimension to artwork. For example, Nam June Paik created a work called the Electronic Superhighway which is a large sculpture of the US with LEDs that have TVs occupying every state. This artwork proposed the idea of how media and electronics will consume every facet of this country being the number one way for citizens to collaborate. Other artists, such as Martha Rosler, also showed the usefulness of video art by explaining the stereotypical tools a woman may use in the kitchen to show the oppression of women. Although it was a very weird video to watch, it got the point across. All these artists have a message that they want to spread and an intent to do so that's what makes these artworks great.

Artists and Photographers

Sabato Visconti

Their work consists of a variety of different types of glitches. From gifs of flashy, glitchy images to jpgs with all different types of glitches. The glitches may remove certain pixels, stretch lines out, shift different hues and colors, or completely look like a messed-up image. Regardless of the glitch, it seems as if this artist almost always photographs a person first to have a focal point.

Heitor Magno

With their work, they appear to be doing a type of glitch photography that resembles double exposure photography. They have a subject, often times a person, that creates the border and bounds in which the second exposure lies in. The second exposure has a bunch of different shapes and textures that create a lot more interest in the image. On top of some of his double exposures, he adds on a glitch effect that uses rectangular blocks of RGB colors to distort the main focal point, the faces usually.

Blog Prompt 9 - Passage

My interpretation of passage is the travel through time. In my video, I decided to show the passage of time by recording my daily commute to work and speeding it up in a hyper-lapse type fashion. Driving to different places can take up a lot of a person's time and it adds up. From 10 minutes to get food to 30 minutes to go to the mall, driving ends up taking a lot of hours throughout our lifetime. I wanted to show a portion of that time mindlessly wasting away as I head to work.

Blog Prompt 7 - Glitch

Shot on SONY A7SIII with natural lighting.

On the left is my attempt at trying to create a glitch effect and the right image is a generated glitch effect. I think this effect changed the meaning of the image by making it more pessimistic and cynical because of the context behind a glitch. In this case, it makes it seem like a corrupted future or some futuristic dystopia. I also think that the image itself adds to this feeling.

Blog Prompt 7 - Joiners, Triptych, Grid

Shot on SONY A7SIII with natural lighting

For this assignment, I knew from the previous assignment that I had pictures of this building from multiple perspectives. Thus, I thought it would be cool to put them together in a grid to see how they would fit together. Of course, it is not seamless or even lines up perfectly, but I think it fits together well overall as you can still see the shape of the building. My purpose was to show the different perspectives of this icon of Dallas and I think I achieved this.

Blog Prompt 6 - Photomontage

For my montage, I wanted to build on the cyberpunk image from my visualizing identity prompt by adding a lot more buildings together to make the image look fuller and chaotic. I also added two silhouettes in front to make it seem more cinematic. The purpose of creating this image was to convey the feeling of chaos and loss of identity. Sometimes I feel like I am not sure what I am doing with my life and this could be a reflection of that nonsense. All images were taken by me! :)

Blog Prompt 5 - A New Thing

Shot on SONY A7SIII, natural lighting

After viewing the videos on the dada movement, I really wanted to choose objects that had little meaning and would make someone say "You call that art?" Thus, I chose an almost empty plastic cup and decided to make it a tv remote holder. From a glance, this just looks like trash which is exactly why I wanted to shoot this picture. The dada movement would have done anything they wanted to do and it heavily my choice of props and made me create something "anti-art."

Reading 2 - DADA

DADA is an art movement that was anti-everything. At the core, they wanted to have a way to communicate their feelings to the outside world. By doing it in such a different manner that no one had done it before, Dadaists could create meaning out of anything as long as they intentionally chose that object to have meaning. The most popular example of an artwork by a Dadaist is The Fountain, which is just a toilet that was chosen to have significance. Dada can be seen today in artworks that are not ordinary such as a banana duct-taped to a wall.

One of the artists presented was Talking Heads who created a song in a Dadaist fashion. They randomly chose letters and words to put together and sang them. There is no meaning or sense in the lyrics of what they are singing but this was the dadaist way. This breaks many rules of music as there is no deeper meaning to the lyrics that helps the listener empathize with the artist. However, this was still music because these artists chose to put together these sounds and sing them. Many of these dadaists changed what can be considered art or photography by creating another layer of context. As long as the art is intentional by the artist, anything can be art.

Blog Prompt 4 - Visualizing Identity

Shot on a SONY A7SIII with natural lighting

I think the first image portrays me very well because of a multitude of different reasons. On the surface, this image shows my passion, my hobby, and what I love to do, while, if you look deeper down, it shows the duality and magnitude of the struggles I deal with. To further explain, I love shooting night photography and love going out downtown to explore and capture unique views. That, on a basic level, describes what I like to do. But, in a deeper meaning, the picture literally shows a man looking into a reflection of himself next to a skyscraper. This was meant to represent the struggles of finding myself and figuring out what I was supposed to do in life. Before finding photography, I was in ECS as a Computer Engineer and I struggled to find joy in what I did. I felt like I was living every day just to make it to the end of the day. Now, my struggle is trying to make something of myself as a photographer/videographer. I do feel a lot more confident in who I am with my career though.

The second picture was meant to represent how I am able to get on top of my struggles and overcome them. I know that even though I feel like I need to do better, I am doing better every day. It is a small incremental step, but every step will help me get to where I want to be in the future. This picture is also supposed to show how I am willing to do whatever is needed to get there. I was the person standing there and I thought it would make the most sense as a reflection of self to show myself overcoming my struggles.

Blog Ex - Editing

This picture was from the last assignment and orders from left to right of RAW, edit, and composite, respectively. Shot on my Sony A7SIII with natural light. In my composite, I tried to show the contrast between natural and organic to something man-made and artificial. I did this by overlaying a picture of a building, something artificial, on top of the bark of a tree, something natural. I think this changed the meaning of the photo from simply showing the texture and detail of tree bark to creating an image with a deeper meaning about the cost of societal development.

Blog Prompt 3 - Composition

For the first two, I used my phone, which is a Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus, and for the second two, I used my mirrorless camera, a Sony A7SIII. In all of these photos, I used natural lighting.

With this assignment, I tried to focus on how I split up my composition. So for the first two, I tried to think of different things that may split my composition up and settled on using my camera equipment to split it into fours. I used my black and white cabinets to create the half split. For the last two pictures, I went out into downtown and captured this man leaning against the wall at two different focal lengths.

Reading 1

Physically, a print differs from a virtual photograph in its chemical makeup. A print is made up of paper, plastic, or metal with dyes or ink while a virtual photograph is made up of red, green, and blue pixels that emulate all the colors on the visible spectrum. The experience with a physical print is more immersive by revealing all the small details in a photo and perfectly displaying the texture in every material or object. It is harder to feel these emotions in a virtual image which, as a result, may change the intended meaning of a photo.

With photography, it is incredibly important to be aware of one’s surroundings. In this art, the artist must carefully craft their surroundings to capture the perfect composition, which, of course, first involves the knowledge of one’s surroundings. I become aware of my surroundings by taking the time to look around and see if anything interests me or pops out at me. As a street photographer, I am always on the lookout for a good composition. Deciding what to include or exclude in the composition is a part of creating a good photograph. Extra details in a photograph may be distracting, while not including enough may be confusing. These all affect the descriptive qualities of a photo by providing context and information that the viewer would need to understand it.

I agree with Shore’s claim of “filling the picture with attention” because a photograph should draw the viewer in and entertain them. I subconsciously use this approach with street photography as I am trying to intrigue the viewer by finding something interesting in the streets. A photo becomes boring and flat without the right amount of attention or interest in it.

Blog Prompt 2 - Scavenger Hunt

These images illustrate texture, lines, repetition, bird's-eye view, shapes, and color from top-left to bottom-right, respectively. I shot these with my Sony A7SIII. These elements help strengthen my composition by giving the viewer something to look at and pay attention to. For example, the picture of the tree bark is interesting to look at because there is a lot of sharp detail and texture to investigate and view. I think my weakest picture would be lines because there are no apparent lines that lead to the car in the background. Rather, there are different shapes and objects that act as a frame that leads the viewer to look at the car. Overall, these elements help communicate to the viewer what to focus on and look at.

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