In which I struggle to learn how to work a non-cellphone camera

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Miscellaneous Works 

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Module 3: Assignment 9 Personal Interest

Task: A personal interest project is one where you decide on a subject that is of interest to you. It is selfdirected, and your motives and photographic approach should be consistent through-out the entire project.  10 photos based on a series of your choice. Think of the many photographers and photographic genres covered in class and how they can influence your work. Pay close attention to the techniques we have covered in class such as; Vantage point, framing, detail, depth of field, shutter speed, lighting, etc. How can you apply these elements to showcase your creativity? How will you create a unique and powerful series of photographs that speak to your own experiences? But most important of all, have fun while shooting!! Description: For this assignment I decided to blend two recent interests for a final work, photography and fortune-telling. In this image I artificially selected cards for use in a celtic cross tarot reading. The subject in the reading has powerful images that denote hardship and manipulation such as the nine of swords and the devil, but also have hopeful readings for future success and perseverance such as the empress and the wheel of fortune.  I used empty pill bottles, and colored plastic cups to shine artificial light on the setting, refracting off of the crystal ball. I played with numerous sources of lighting, all while keeping a regular vantage point on the work. Comments: I may be presumptuous, but I feel that this is my most successful work. I utilized multiple concepts in this work, such as lighting balance, which I explored initially in week 1, then addressed once again in this week with raking light. I also explored vantage point, which we explored multiple times, such as this week’s assignment on the photographer’s eye. I feel the most powerful imagery comes from the distortion of the glass crystal ball, where light radiates around the perimeter of the sphere and the cards observed through the ball are warped. 

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Module 3: Assignment 8 Raking Light

Task: Investigating how the use of light in a series of images can articulate photographic meaning, mood or narrative. Find instances where light is beamed either at an angle, slanted or distinct, remember The Golden Hour! Create a series of 10 images where you can clearly see the effect of the light on your subject. Keep in mind that you are creating mood and narrative. Please check how the photographers in the Ranking Light Presentation have utilized light to create specific meaning with light.  Description: I utilized a solitary light source from an emergency lantern to cast a captivating shadow on the subject. My instructions to the subject were to swing the lantern around so I could play with the features of movement and the rotating cast of shadow against an off-white wall. The light is bright, creating very pronounced raking shadows, in addition to imparting a blue hue onto the wall, suggesting a theme of underwater, etherial glow. Using the concepts of direct overlay of light onto an opaque target, I played with conventions of shadow length and size, as well as shadow angles and depth.  Comments: I felt that the images combine movement and light in dynamic ways. Embracing the bright wash out of the light allows for dynamic overexposure in a way that I felt emulated with suggested inspiration from the works of Rinko Kawauchi. 

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Module 3: Assignment 7 The Photographer’s Eye Task: This overview of the fundamental challenges and opportunities of the photographic medium will strengthen the compositional decisions made thru your camera’s viewfinder. You will be able to gain a better understanding of your own individual visual literacy.  Read The Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski, Catalog Introduction to The Photographer's Eye exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art. PDF located in MODULE THREE. Watch John Szarkowski’s The Photographer’s Eye presentation Watch The Photographer’s Eye Artist Examples presentation Choose a person, place or thing. Make 5 different photographs of that person/object. Utilize the various photographic strategies discussed in The Photographer's Eye to describe your  Description: Have you ever played The Sims? If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a house-building, life simulation, world crafting game where you create your character(s), customize their houses, and customize their environments. While today I can make complex housing complexes, when I received my first Sims game my houses were rudimentary. Having no concept of housing, I’d neglect windows, leave walls disconnected, etc. My biggest error was simply having no house at all. Furniture adorned empty plots; ovens functioned without any gas lines, refrigerators chilled produce without electric input, even the tv worked right in the middle of the grassy plot. Seeing this isolated oven in the backlot of my apartment complex was immediately nostalgic. I imagined a scenario crafting a life with the appliances and law furniture. In this work I wanted to emphasize the absurdity of large appliances simply existing out in nature. I utilized Szarkowski’s five tenants in the following ways: Image #1: Time As I crawled down the narrow pathway from the sides of the adjoining apartment complexes, I used each step as an interval to take a photo as a sequence of travel towards the oven. Using the partial obstruction of the back of the refrigerator, which partially blocks the pathway, I wanted to convey that the timing of my progression into the backlot was arrested in a singularity. Had I had additional images for a series, I may have shown more obstruction in the images to suggest gradual changes in distances from the oven. Image #2: The Thing Itself My closest image reveals the industrial blue tape interwoven into the grill of the oven. From here you can also see the knobs and doors with decent accuracy. Here is the most pure, uncomplicated view of the oven.  Image #3: Frame I used the backdrop of the neighboring pink house to provide framing and adds to the obscurity and out-of-place element of the oven in the backyard. This image appears as the farthest view from the source of the subject, in order to provide the full framing device of the house’s wall.  Image #4: Detail In this image, the visual grooves of the stovetop, the shadows under the handles for the oven door, and the blue tapes flittered in the stove, are all exemplified with the more light-exposed image of the subject.  Image #5: Vantage Point For my final included a different viewpoint of the image, scaling up a fire escape to capture the subject from an elevated vantage point.  Comments: Originally I had attempted to mix all five elements into each picture, rather than selecting the individual components from different images. With that in mind, some images are more successful capturing their intended components than others. I feel that the first, third, and fifth images convey the broadest appeal on all five criteria. 

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Module 2: Assignment 6 Street Photography with Shutter Speed Task: Utilizing the attributes of Street photography to gain an understanding of shutter speeds as well as elements of observation, action and chance. Street photography also sometimes called candid photography, is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public spaces. Street photography does not necessitate the presence of a street or even the urban environment. Though people usually feature directly, street photography might be absent of people and can be of an object or environment where the image projects a decidedly human character in aesthetic. Create a series of 6 photos inspired by street photography that will demonstrate how shutter speeds blur or freeze motion Discussion: Finding a consistently moving object is one of the most difficult challenges I have faced while taking part in this course. Unless you have the gift of premonition, you can’t accurately tell when the subject you are attempting to catch moving will suddenly stop, like a dog who stops short at a tree to sniff the ground, or change direction, like a pedestrian rounding the corner of a block. Sports offers predictable movement, and thus was a natural choice for me to try and capture.  I fluttered between shutter settings, trying to find a mix of images where the ball was blurred in constant movement and where the ball was frozen in time. The majority of the shots taken were frozen images, contrary to last week’s assignment where my moving object was exclusively blurred. While playing with the shutter settings, I noticed constant issues with lighting. In one included photo, the issue of over exposure is obvious, the light intensity suggests heavy lighting when in fact, the image was taken during the golden hour.  Comments: I have the most complications in my photography when the image is not static. I’m sure that’s a pretty common complaint, but when I have split seconds to decide where I want to focus, what settings I want to apply, and at which angles I want to capture my subject, I struggle with capturing those all at once. 

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Module 2: Assignment 5 Portraiture with Depth of Field

Task: The attempt to record ourselves and others has a long history via cave drawings, hieroglyphics, paintings and sculpture, and in the past 200 years, through photography. Depth of field effectively draws attention exactly to where you want it, its utilization will produce a specific mood in portraiture. This exercise applies the principles of depth of field to portraiture in order to better understand how it effects selective focus in photographs. Create a series of photos inspired by portraiture photography while alternating apertures/f-stops in consecutive order. This exercise will demonstrate the differences between shallow and deep depth of field. Description: He knew it was coming. The second I picked up my camera from the rental shop, I threatened to chase him around our apartment taking pictures of him. My boyfriend has finally begrudgingly accepted being my subject for this course. To his credit, he was an excellent and patient subject. I do, however, have quite a few candids of him glaring at me after taking upwards of 100 photos of him in various angles and f-stops.  Unlike with my still life photos, I alternated around quite a bit throughout my photos of the portrait. I returned to low f-stops, ramped up to high f-stops, and flicked around between settings and camera focal points. I chose a spot with minimal lighting so that the sparse lighting that came through the foliage planted next to us would shine in a captivating fashion. I liked how the light hit the sides of his temples, and decided that that theme of minimal light entering the photo would be a primary theme I would focus on.  Comments: How did I do with conveying that the sparse beam of light was an intentional choice in my artwork? I have ideas of broader unifying themes, but I am not sure enough about my own work to see if that point comes across. What ideas do you have about continuity between photos and how to make an image focus on the concepts you’ve envisioned? 

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Module 2: Assignment 4 Still Life with Depth of Field

Task: Photography can be used to document and record detail that cannot be seen thru casual observation. With still life photography hidden forms and natural patterns are examined and their complexity revealed. In traditional still life arrangements, objects are carefully selected and ordered to create a visually meaningful image. This exercise applies the principles of depth of field to a still life composition to in order to better understand how it effects selective focus in photographs.

Create a series of photos inspired by still life photography while alternating apertures/fstops in consecutive order. This exercise will demonstrate the differences between shallow and deep depth of field.

Description: Tarrytown’s Main Street is a central hub of commercial and social communication. Adorned on the streetlights are an array of potted flowers. Each pot has a commercial sponsor, often one that has business on or adjacent to Main Street. For instance, a popular ice cream shop has their own potted flower plant, coupled with an advertising placard. These plants are so quintessential to the main street aesthetic that I wished to capture the vibrancy, charm, and personality that not only this plant had, but that this plant suggests for the entirety of my neighborhood. I alternated from low f-stops to high f-stops evenly. The first image included was taken at the lowest f-stop achievable on my camera. The last image included was taken at the highest f-stop achievable on my camera.  Features that I have noticed when alternating between the various settings of the aperture mode are the fixation and color saturation that varies between images. In some images, the vibrancy of the deep red on the petals of the flowers are much more noteworthy than the dulled brown hay at the base of the plant, which seems comparatively washed out. In other images, the central white vascular system of the plants stands out, contrasting with a more muted red. This assignment let me play with the concept of color selection, allowing me to have control over which colors I wanted the eye to affix to.  Comments: Unlike previous, and likely future assignments, I felt that my work in this task demonstrated my understanding of aperture mode and experimentation with different settings. I felt that I learned how that even slight adjustments in shade selection, angle, and camera mode, can provide distinct images. Going forward, I’d like to experiment with lighting on vibrant images. Plants are a good subject. What other subjects might make for good still life images? I still am in search of objects that I can faithfully capture and explore photography with. 

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Module 1: Assignment 3 After Dark: Program Mode Task: With a camera set on Program mode you are able to control white balance settings depending on the lighting conditions you are shooting in, for example: Neon, Fluorescent Tungsten/ incandescent LED, Halogen, etc. Lighting conditions effect the mood of photographs, you can optimize this by experimenting with white balance. For this assignment adjust your cameras ISO value between 800-1600 (you can experiment with higher ISO values but keep your eye on Image Noise) Choose a location at dawn or night, can be indoors or outdoors, public or private with mixed lighting conditions to see the effect of color balance in photographs.  Description: Taken between 9:30pm-10:00pm, these late night photos attempted to depict the vibrant beauty of the sultry lit apartments overlooking the Hudson River. The apartment in question houses “The Farmer and the Fish,” a farm-to-table restaurant that emphasized fresh cuisine and locally sourced produce. As a personal favorite not only for the food, but the atmosphere as well, I gravitated towards this subject for my photography. I wanted to play with the ISO settings to observe the dramatic differences between settings. Some, I found, really captured the essence of the lights stemming from the apartments and restaurant. In those pictures, almost paint-like streaks bleed out into the Hudson River. Other pictures with different ISO settings really emphasized what little natural light remained, projecting a royal blue sky with dark, ominous clouds looming above. I learned how to play with program mode to emphasize different aspects of the same subject, showing variety in ten portraits of the same structures from the same vantage point.  Comments: In the future I want to play around with more variation in lighting. However, when i tried, my camera would freeze and lock up while attempting to take the picture. Was the lighting too minimal to support a photo? I would like to learn more about dark-light photography, preferably without flash. 

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Module 1: Assignment 2 Fragmentation of Time: Shutter priority mode Task: Shooting with your camera set to Shutter priority will give you the opportunity to blur or freeze action, essentially capturing a fraction of time that will never happen exactly the same way ever again. Choose a situation or activity that has constant motion, for example; A windy day, Candid portraits, Crowd shots etc.…where there is constant movement. You can decide whether to freeze or blur action or utilize both for your subject. Description: My first attempts at shooting a moving object were biological structures; runners/joggers, pets on leashes, seagulls, etc. The issue with capturing their movements are the element of unpredictability, will they continue straight ahead, or will they turn? Will they keep a slow pace, or will they ramp up in speed suddenly? A second attempt at finding a moving object yielded these pictures. The fire department tested their crane hose, used in managing fires on elevated apartment floors, forest fires, and other events where a large range between vehicle and fire origin are required. In this test, the hose directly emptied into a vacant, narrow stretch of the Hudson River. I attempted to capture the precise arc that the stream of water creates from the point or origin until it splashes down into the water. The powerful crash at the end of the stream creates an, although prominent ripple, one that is contained and very localized. The stream does not crash down like a waterfall, but like a very precise jet. The images capture the frozen, static captures of both the point of origin and the terminated stream. However, the images also show the chaotic blur of the stream itself, unfocused and reflective of the high intensity stream projected by the hose apparatus.  Comments: With these images, I had some difficulty capturing a fully static image. I always had a presence of blur regardless of where I set the focus of my camera. Typically it was the high powered stream in the middle of the jet that was blurred and unfocused. I would like any advice you may have to help capture a high-speed movement in pinpoint accuracy. 

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Module 1: Assignment 1 The Golden Hour: Aperture Priority Mode Task: Shooting with your camera set to Aperture priority mode during the hour beginning directly after sunrise or sunset. You can choose to include any subject you wish and/or any location you feel will be suitable. This time of day can offer some of the best natural light results during which daylight is redder and softer than when the sun is higher in the sky. Description: Taken between 8:30pm-9:30pm, this series of pictures captures the routine movement of a cluster of Canadian Geese, known as a gaggle, across the lip of the Hudson River. Happenstantially, these geese were allured towards the dock by a family tossing pieces of bread onto the shore rocks, thus allowing for captivated (and thankfully very slow-moving) photography subject. The assignment tasked the students with capturing the differential exposures of light during the sunset. Rather than attempt to directly capture the light, I chose instead to show the effect of the solar reflection in the Hudson River. In some shots, the vibrant hues of pink and orange wash away the characteristic coloration of the geese, leaving perfect silhouettes on the water’s surface. In other shots, repositioning and refocusing of the perspective and lighting detail the geese more efficiently, but simultaneously detract from some of the splendor of the sunset-illuminated river.  Comments: I would appreciate feedback on the particulars of lighting. I found it challenging to adequately provide lighting to all subjects in a single photo, and a common theme of choice between capturing the geese in their coloration, or trying to capture the sunset, became prevalent.