Liana Xiao

So much of life is about what you feel rather than what you think.

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I like to capture the small pieces of beauty in my life and I like to arrange and set up the component in my photos, so plants, natural organics, lights, animals, or object such as cosmetics, watches, and etc. are all involved into my pitures. By moveing the objects around while the light and shadow interation appears,  my work displays a simplicity and cleanness style.

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Proposal 3

My third proposal is "Constructed Graphic", this is a difficult theme and so many people couldn't really understand when I say it, so in order to make it understand easier I am presenting more pictures in this proposal than the previews two proposals. When you see my work, you will always find some sort of graphic patterns in my photos. By taking this pictures I want to show that there is always some sort of connection between different subjects, even though they seems not related but the pattern in between them connected them together.

Pictures will be taken with different objects, graphic patterns will be shown in all pictures.

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Proposal 2

Because I am a vegetarian and I love organic products and natural plants so much, so my second proposal is to capture the flowers or other plants around me. For example, the green plants in school or the the beautiful flowers that sold in markets. By shooting in different angle I want to present a idea that by seeing the natural around can effect us and make us feel happy and have a better mood.

Pictures will be taken in different places, and the objects will be flowers, organic products, green plants.

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Proposal 1

My first proposal is memory. As a Junior my 4 year college life will soon be finished and I might go back to China afterwards, so I want to capture every small moment in school, such as my friends, plants, school buildings, and etc. 

All pictures will be taken in school with different object or subject in the photos. 

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Last week was Chinese New Year, so my friends and I gathered together celebrated with home-made dumplings and hotspot.

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Because the proposal requriment requirs a sketch for each proposal, so I deleted the old proposals and re-post them with sketches. I am soooo sorry for the drawing…..I really am….

Proposal 3

This is also my proposal from project 1, but as I needed to save this only person for my portrait project 2 so I thought maybe this is the time to make this proposal happen and shoot him.

My third proposal is to shoot my brother with his car. I grow up with my brother together and we see each other everyday so I know exactly what he likes. He gives an “so-so” opinion on most of the things even we all thought it was fun, except cars! I can very clearly feel the excitment from him whenever he sees a car passing by that he likes, and he just talks all about it even though I barely understand even tiny bit of it. (Because for me a car is just a car, as long as it can take me to wherever I want to then it is a good car. :p) When we went to the Los Angeles Auto Show two years ago, he was completely lost in those fancy car world, unlike the trip that we used to go like visiting some place and take bunch of pictures and then he dunning me to leave, I could sense that he enjoyed that trip.

So, I will pick an sunny day and take the shooting on an empty street with my brother in his car driving, relaxing in the car(close-up shooting on his face and with two hands holding steering wheel), or sitting in his car watching the sunset on the mountain, etc.

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Because the proposal requriment requirs a sketch for each proposal, so I deleted the old proposals and re-post them with sketches. I am soooo sorry for the drawing…..I really am….

Proposal 2

My second proposal is to shoot my hair dresser. Due to different culture and different styles between America and China, so it was very diffcult for my to find a hair dresser who can cut an Asian hair style for me. I randomly picked a salon and randomly picked her 2 years ago and she cut my hair perfectly as I desired.  When the first time we met, she told me a lot about her personal life, she had breast cancer and had her breasts surgically removed, also lost all her hair as a women. Her younger son has autism and her husband could not understand her son’s illness and treated her son without patience, so she got divorced at that time. In other words, her life was in a miserable condition. However, after 2 wonderful year cutting hair with her, I have seen that she has totally changed. Every time I go to her I can see her life is getting better and better, she lost 30 pounds, her hair grew back and she had plastic surgery on her breast, which she told me that she didn’t feel awaked or terrible about it because as a women for her own pride she needed it, her son has also gotten much better after medication. I feel she is a very strong lady who works very hard to make her life and her son’s life better, I witnessed her life went from miserable to now that she smiles everyday, so I would like to shoot a women who has a lot of story behind. I will take pictures of her working and how much she enjoys her life right now and ask her permision if I can take her daily life at home with her son.

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Because the proposal requriment requirs a sketch for each proposal, so I deleted the old proposals and re-post them with sketches. I am soooo sorry for the drawing.....I really am....

Proposal 1 For my first proposal, I would like to shoot a friend of mine who is an international student. Through his life I see a typical international student life, as he doesn’t know much about Tucson and doesn’t have many friends, so he stays home all the time and barely go out, besides go to school or get food. He eats fast food or instant noodle at home almost all the time, and he spend most of his time on video games or video chatting with his girlfriend who is in China, so he has to wake up at 8 o’clock every single morning to chat with her in order to keep this long distance relationship. Sometimes, he has friends come over to his place, but just more people spending time together eating fast food and playing video games, that’s all. From him, I can imaging most of the Chinese international student’s life, they depend on computers a lot as all of their friends and families are on the other side of the earth, and they do not take themselves very well. Therefor, I would like to shoot his life to show a stereotype lifestyle of Chinese international students.

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For project 2, I shot one of my closest friend Tony, by shooting him my idea was to reflect how international students come to a different country and try to fit into a different culture but still feel don’t belong here. When most of the international students decided to study in a different country they all have brought an American Dream to this country, they want to speak fluent English, make tons of foreigner friends and send the group pictures back to their parents, because it is kind of a pleasure (maybe this word is not right, but I don’t know any other word to describe this situation, haha) to take pictures with blood hair blue eyes people. However, somehow most of us ended up living alone, eating the not authentic Chinese food, speaking Chinese over and over everyday, and watching the Chinese show weekend, basically it is just like having a Chinese life in the United States. Some of them tried to make friends with Americans and ask them to hang out or have dinner, but for some reason the action stopped after few times of attempting incorporate together, maybe it is because of the culture shock or maybe it is just easier to talk or to hang out with the people who have the same culture background, I don’t know. I remember one of my Chinese friend who graduated last year told me that it is such a failure that he didn’t make any real American friends and didn’t integrate into the American life through his 4 years college life, but only have a piece of paper (the diploma). Therefore, hopefully you can know a little bit of the international student’s life through Tony’s life and my pictures.

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I was watching a tutorial about double exposure effect on YouTube, and found two random pictures and made the first photo, I kinda liked the not perfect lay out. After I finished I was really happy because I know more and more photoshop skills each day:)

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