Matthew Dixon DA 255

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Candy

These are my final shots for this class. I grabbed some colorful paper from michaels that I knew would compliment/contrast the colors of candy which I got from Walmart. I tried to do macro photography, but I didn’t have a lens for it. I heard a magnifying glass would work, but I couldn’t get it to work. 

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Stranger’s Portraits

This assignment was among the top 5 most difficult things I have ever done. I was born “shy” if you asked my parents. I consider myself anti-social or an introvert. This assignment helped me realize an obstacle about myself that I need to overcome. Below are some people that I met in public. I do not remember any of their names except for the older man who is slouching. His name is Jack and he said he used to play for the Yankees and that his daughter lived in California. He was waiting in the lobby of Eldorado waiting on his wife to finish a massage. He enjoyed talking to me. 

I don’t remember this man’s name, but he was very nice and I helped him get a hotel room. 

Jack

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Light Photography Set 1

This is a bit late...

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Light Photography Set 2

Lights are attached to objects like wheels or a ceiling fan. 

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Float

this looks terrible on here. idk how to fix that.

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Urban Patterns

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Urban Patterns

Places I will visit for my next assignment:

Downtown Shreveport: I heard some students mention that they needed to go somewhere else than downtown because it is the only place they go to for photography, but I’ve never really have gone Downtown to take pictures of patterns of the urban architecture. 

Centenary College: Beautiful campus 

BPCC: another pretty campus

Main Street Blanchard

Cemeteries 

Shreveport Municipal 

Cathedrals/Churches

LA State Exhibit Museum 

New Orleans:

French Quarter

Central Business District

St. Louis Cemetery 

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Faceless Portraits

This is Alexander Fuller, my best friend. He’s an experienced model because his mother is a photographer. By the way, he is a mama’s boy. He takes pride in his hair and also everything else about him. He works hard to learn as much as he can and he never judges himself. 

The long hair makes for an aesthetic shot. I only wish I would have broken out of my shell while taking these shots. I should have prepared and brought materials to be creative with his hair. He also was not prepared to be photographed because I did not tell him I was doing this. He thought we were just hanging out. 

This is Tayllor Longoria. She is an exceptional human being. She loves unconditionally. She will do anything to help out another person even if they’re a stranger. And she lets her heart lead the way everyday. She inspires me to care more for other people and to be more optimistic. She inspires me to love myself as well. 

Tayllor is a natural artist. Everything she looks at she paints in her head. She leads with her emotions and allows them to influence her. She finds beauty in everyone and everything. 

For this project I tried to keep quiet and allow my subjects to do whatever they wanted. I didn’t even tell Alex that I was going to take a picture of him. I wanted things to be natural, but I also didn’t quite know what I was doing since this was the first time taking a picture of someone that wasn’t my girlfriend. I felt uncomfortable to tell Alex and Tayllor where to stand or what to do and the cold temperature didn’t help with the thinking process. 

I should have set my camera to aperture priority so that way I could focus more on the lighting and subject rather than my ISO and shutter speed. I would have also given more time for exploration and thought more about the weather conditions. Since it was so cold that night we were impatient and ready to find warmth, and no places were open except the bars.

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Diane Arbus

I relate to Arbus as I struggle with a lifestyle that I wish was easier to change. Like her I desire to be independent from wealth and materialism. Arbus “revelled in settings that money couldn’t touch, or in surfaces where it had left its scratch marks: Brenda Frazier, pictured in 1966, twenty-eight years after she had been crowned ‘débutante of the year,’ appears to be held together by powder, paint, and pearls.” (Lane)

Arbus’ willingness to crawl away from the social class she was born into contributed to her art. According to the New Yorker Arbus frequented porno cinemas to have sexual relations with strangers, and she also had sexual relations with her sibling Howard from adolescence until the year she died. I can say that she crawled too far from the social responsibilities that she found displacement, but her willingness to break outside of any kind of social boundaries and lifestyles that she did learn inspire me to also change and be who I want to be.

           Arbus photographed beyond strange people, but she did not feel as though she was an outcast among these outcasts. “Freaks may abound in her art, but not once do they freak her out.” (Lane) She was simply fascinated by anything that fit outside of the boundaries that she knew of. “If she was a pilgrim on the fringes of society, it was fascination rather than compassion that drove her there, and many of the outcasts she discovered, far from being ground down, had elected to cast themselves out. The balding and shirtless figure who glares at us in “Tattooed man at a carnival, Md.” (1970) requests not an atom of our pity. Indeed, he puts our undistinguished bodies to scorn, brandishing the art work of his torso as though to holler, ‘Get a load of me.’” (Lane)

Diane Arbus inspires me to not give a shit about the judgment I may receive when I wish to be who I want to be. Not only does she inspire me to find my own fascination outside of the boundaries that I know of, but she inspires me to find comfort outside of those boundaries.

Works Cited

Lane, Anthony. “Diane Arbus's America.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 18 June 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/06/06/diane-arbus-portrait-of-a-photographer.