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Final Blog

Overall, my successes greatly outweighed my failures in my opinion. I learned a great deal about digital photography. The portrait assignment was probably my favorite because I like to take pictures of people. Being able to apply different things I’ve seen photographers do to my own portraits was a huge success for me. Out of all my assignments, I think my photo essay could have been better but I loved the portraits that I took within that assignment. 

The biggest challenge I had was the night photography. It forced me to get a better understanding of how the different lighting settings affected the shot. It was probably the most difficult because it was cold outside at night and I had just been sick. But in the end I loved two of the four pictures and liked the rest. 

My mom has a nice camera that I used to use but I never really knew how to get the full potential out of it. I think I will continue to take photos because it is a good creative medium. 

I mostly referred to local DC/MD/Virginia (DMV) photographers. I know a lot of different artists in the DMV area and their work was a part of my inspiration for different shots. The IG @ names are in my other posts.

I think the last critique was helpful because we were able to get feedback from the entire class instead of just one person. Hearing different perspectives and ideas helps with understanding the strengths/weaknesses of your work and also with creativity for future work. 

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Week Eleven

My final portfolio will include the pictures that I had the most appreciation for out of the assignments. It will be a colored photo set. I want to use on pictures that had one subject that was the main focus of the pictures. The photos that I like the most that i have taken usually have the main subject in focus while the background is blurred. I also like pictures that have very vibrant colors in the background so that i can turn the vibrancy down and saturation up. I think I will mostly take from the portrait, composition, and photo essay assignments. 

I think I am creatively compelled by trying to recreate certain feelings or moods that I get from seeing other photographers work. I like the drama that colors and angles can give a photo. I am trying to remain creative during quarantine through learning new skills and researching things I am interested in. Whenever I learn new stuff I feel that it gives me a new perspective on things.

As far as photographers go, I have been looking at @Hubrisjon’s on Instagram. He is a friend of mine and I have always liked his photography. He continuously posts his work and others work on his story which exposes me to a lot of different local photographers. I like his color style in his photography and the relaxed street-style of them. 

Lastly, I think the critique went well. I identified some things that I could have changed about my essay but was pleased with it overall. It was helpful to hear the classes feedback on it.

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Week 10

The things I repeatedly noticed during quarantine are the things I tried to capture in my photo essay. Staying active is something that many of my friends and family have tried to stress. This includes trying to do things in the backyard like play basketball and indoor things like resistance bands. Theres also a lot of working from home/ productivity. This has included doing your actual job/ school but also things like learning to trade stocks. Another reoccurring thing is just relaxing like sitting on the porch to get some fresh. Lastly, taking preventive measures from Coronavirus like wiping everything with lysol wipes and wearing protective gear.

I think I was able to express what is going on but its not as good as I want it to be. I feel like my photos didn’t come out the way I pictured them in my mind or the way that my last assignments came out. Taking pictures in the house always come out worse for me versus taking pictures outside. But overall I think my photo essay still paints the picture that I was trying to get across.

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Week Nine

These photos/screenshots show what life is like during quarantine. I feel that I may want to focus on more of the benefits/ bright side of the quarantine like bettering yourself. I notice that a lot of people are using this new found free time to build new habits that are productive and healthy. I myself have been trying to workout and exercise more now. Doing outside activities like playing basketball and running/biking have increased a lot in my household. Also I see way less cars on the road but instead a lot more people walking/jogging and biking. I also think that the aspect of digital interaction is an interesting subject to focus on too. All interactions with other people outside my immediate family have become virtual. People that you saw everyday/week, you now haven’t seen in person in weeks. Between those two things I think I could build a cool photo essay. I think that using this time to build positive habits is important and also being able to capture the adaptability of people in circumstances like these is fascinating.

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Week 8 - Photo Essay

I think that I want to explore something along the lines of what to do during quarantine/social distancing. Some of the photos that I put above show the public aspect. Places like Time Square are empty when they would usually be filled with crowds of people. I want to photograph the activities that people are doing and maybe make it like the daily routine of a person practicing social distancing. This pandemic has really uprooted a lot of people’s lives and completely changed the way they are used to living. People aren’t able to do the simple things that they took for granted before like go to a restaurant or the gym. It also has given an opportunity for people to try and build new and healthy habits that they didn’t have before. Some are focusing on self-care, learning new skills, or trying to eat better/workout. I want to be able to capture that within 10 photos. I would likely use my family as the subjects and try to capture them doing their daily activities. The criteria of three can apply to almost all activities during this time because it is usually just the person and the activity they are doing. I also think that these pictures can go well together because the story of “ a daily routine” would flow well. I am not 100% set on this idea but it is the idea that I have thought out the most so far.

I haven’t taken many pictures this week because I have been adjusting to this all online courses thing. (Turns out its more work than in person classes) Also, I think my adobe account will be able to be made once my free trial account is fully deleted. 

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Week Seven (?)

Kriston Jae Bethel is a photographer in the Philadelphia area that has a photo collection detailing Nicetown, Philadelphia. Bethel’s photography details both the regular lives of the people in Nicetown and also the historical aspects of it. A lot of her photography includes the “Roosevelt Extension” that was built in the 1970s. The extension was the reason for the destruction of 400 homes in Nicetown. This left many families in the area displaced. She also depicts the current construction and renovations that are happening to the area. 

https://www.kjbethel.com/portfolio/C0000lBblbiHQQ8A/G0000MHq_4W13egg

Kateri Connolly is another photojournalist based in the Philadelphia area. This story is called Fletcher Street: Philadelphia’s Urban Stable. On this urban block in Philadelphia there is a horse stable. In this story she talks with riding instructors there and photographs the horses and groomers. This is a very interesting story to me because I had no idea that there were urban stables. It also seems to be run in a predominantly minority area which is really cool. It gives people the opportunity to learn horseback riding and interact with situations that many in their positions can not. I also like the portrait of the horse's shadow a lot. It is a cool style of portrait because it uses the subject's shadow as the subject of the picture instead of the actual horse.

https://www.katerilikoudis.com/fletcher-street-urban-cowboys-of-philadelphia#4

Ryan Collerd is another photographer based in Philadelphia. His photos interest me because he captures a much wider variety of life in Philadelphia. He also seems to show different racial aspects of the city. He shows a child doing wheelies and tricks on a bike. This is a big thing in Philly and also near where I am from (Baltimore). Dirt bikes, 4-wheelers, and regular bikes are ridden through the streets while doing amazing tricks. I feel like this plays to his racial theme because it is mostly african-american teens/young adults that do this. Overall, his photos tie together well and create a well rounded portrait of Philadelphia that I have seen.

https://www.ryancollerd.com/PHILADELPHIA/14

Overall, I think the switching to online classes will create some problems but when it comes to my photography I think I have been doing well. I don’t know how I am supposed to upload my photos to my hard drive because my computer does not seem to recognize it. Other than that, everything seems to be going smoothly.

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Week Six

Doug Mills has been a white house photographer since the 1990s. This means that he captures a lot of important topics related to our nation’s capital and our country. The first photo I have of his is of Donald Trump speaking at the State of the Union. This photo is taken from behind Trump and shows all the faces of the audience. I just thought this was an interesting angle for this particular picture because I’ve only seen the SOTU from the televised angle. The second photo is of Hilary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. I think it is interesting because of all the campaigning that is going on right now. It is interesting to see how candidates are portrayed in pictures because as we've seen in this course, pictures can be interpreted in many different ways. 

Philip Jones Griffiths was a famous war photographer. I chose a war photographer because war is a very important current event that is hard to grasp and picture for people that aren’t there. The average person can only imagine based on old footage and movies. It is also interesting to think about the degree of difficulty that it takes to be in an active war zone and still capture what is going on. The photos are of soldiers during the siege of the city of Saigon, Vietnam. The amount of clarity and artistry in the first portrait amazes me that it was taken during such a chaotic time. The second photo really shows the danger that was taking place around everyone. Griffiths still is able to capture the emotion and mood in the pictures too.

John Francis Peters was showcased in TIME Magazine’s best photojournalism of 2018. In this photo set, he captures different things going on at the United States-Mexico border. Immigration and how it should be handled is a big issue in the United States currently. It is a hot topic in presidential candidacies and affects many families. The first photo is of a border patrol agent searching for people trying to cross the border near the Rio Grande. This portrait shows both a glimpse at the conditions immigrants face and the agents of the opposition. The second photo is of a family who has just crossed the border and is now speaking with a border patrol agent. These are stories you rarely hear and the photo leaves you wondering what is going to happen next. All the photos of these photographers tell a story that leaves you guessing what's going to happen next.

Throughout the portrait assignment so far I think that I have got some pretty good photos. I am supposed to be taking a trip to Los Angeles before the assignment is due so I should also be able to get some cool pictures over there too. Overall, I think everything is going smoothly with this assignment.

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Week Five

The first photographer I chose is Hiroji Kubota. He is a Japanese photographer that has a lot of pictures that depict East Asia and the many different things that were occurring. He also has a lot of photographs that show the United States civil rights era and what many thought to be American culture in the ’80s. The first photo I chose was of a very compact line of people in China that is explained as people hoping to become rich. The line is for people getting on and off a train and more than 300 thousand people got on and off that train a day. The second photo I chose is of a man doing construction work to expand the train station because of the volume of people using it. I feel like this is a great example of a set of photos that tell a story. Also, I liked the juxtaposition of the construction site versus the city in the background.

Pieter Hugo is a South African photographer that lives in Cape Town. He has photos in numerous galleries in exhibitions across the world. The photo set i chose to look at from him is called “Rwanda: Vestiges of Genocide”. I feel like we rarely learn or hear about the many cruelties that occur to nations that are predominantly people of color and/or not high on the list of wealthy countries. The first photo is of an aged sign for Rwandan airlines. This photo was interesting to me because of the plants that are almost overgrowing it. The second photo is a portrait of a man in a forest. The style of portrait is very earthy and shows a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. I feel like these stories need to be told and photos give the stories a face and humanity instead of just words and statistics.

The last photographer I chose is a french photographer named Jean Gaumy. He was born and raised in France and has done a lot of work with both still photography and films. The first photo of his that I chose is pf Iranian women in traditional clothing practicing shooting guns. This photo interested me because of the difference between most pictures of women in the Middle east. It was also shot in the ’70s which makes the photo really signify resistance to me. The second photo I chose is of a woman in the Naryn Region, Kyrgyzstan. I liked this portrait because it seems like a candid shot where the woman looks happy and joyous. The portrait sort of sticks out from the background which is a bit desolate. 

These photos can all be applied to my work in the portrait assignment. Trying to create different moods in my portraits is my goal. Using both the background, angle, and the expression of the person is how I want to achieve this. I was able to complete all my night photos and actually get photos that I like. The panning shot was the hardest one to get but after doing it over and over I got two shots (out of like 40) that I can choose from.

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Week Four

The first European photographer I chose to examine is a young photographer named Deborah Ruffel. She has worked with a long list of companies, been in many exhibitions, and has won many awards. She describes her photography as “a depiction of reality as I perceive it.” The first image I chose is of a woman playing the cello. This photograph may either use a very slow shutter speed or overlaying multiple pictures on top of each other. Either way, it reminded me of our long exposure assignment we have that relates to night shooting. This allows the viewer to get a better understanding of the range of motions of a cellist throughout playing a piece of music. Even though there's a lot of movement in the photo, it is not confusing or hard to look at. I am trying to get my night photography to have that same balance between movement and clarity. The second picture of hers that I used is a black and white photo of a sandbar or shallow area of a body of water. This image is very beautiful and captures the vastness of nature while not using color. It was hard deciding which pictures to put in black and white for our composition assignment but Ruffel seems to use black and white to its full effect.

https://www.deborahroffel.com/

The second artist I chose to use is Marta Kochanek. Her website also boasts a long list of exhibitions and awards from as early as 2004 until now. While she does a lot of commercial and advertising work, her personal work is what interested me. The first photo of hers that I chose is of a woman playing the drums in a dimly lit atmosphere. This photo gave me the same look as some of the photos you showed us in class when presenting about night photography. It makes a dark room almost seem as though it is very bright. There is also a different variation of colors that sets the mood for the picture, the colors seem to be green, purple and red mix. Her face is also very clear almost like a painting of her. The second picture I chose of hers is of a woman standing poolside with a bunch of water in the air around her. This is very cool to me because I honestly don’t know how she took this picture. The water seems as though it was just thrown on her as the picture was captured. This would need a high shutter speed in order to capture the water droplets in mid-air with such detail.

https://www.martakochanek.com/

The last artist I chose is a photographer from the University of Westminster named Marcello Bonafanti. Like the other two, he is also well established and awarded in the photography world. The first photo I chose of his is of a man walking through the city at a time right before sunset. The color and lighting are what brought my attention to this picture. The sunset gives a much different type of lighting than mid-day and gives it a movie-like look. Also, the amount of detail in the photo reminds me of new video games like Grand Theft Auto for some reason. The second photo of his that I chose is a blue door surrounded by stone at a cemetery. I feel like this photo would have fit perfectly with our composition assignment. The blue of the door really pops because of its juxtaposition to the gray stone wall. It also seems oddly placed in a cemetery and with the other photos in this photo set. All the lines and designs on the door allow the viewer to really see the detail in the photo, which I like. Overall, I liked each one of the photographers because they highlight different aspects of photography that interest me. 

marcelbon.com/bio.html

Night photography has been much harder for me than the composition but it may also be because I get easily frustrated because it's colder. But now that I have the tripod my pictures are better than last week’s. It is also harder to find subjects for photos at night because they don’t come out the way that I imagined they would like the compositions did. When it comes to the technical aspects of the camera I feel like my understanding today vs week one is like night and day.

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Week Three

https://alexbenetel.format.com/portraits

Alex Benetel is a young photographer that has done a lot of portrait work that I find interesting. She has been able to take photos of multiple movie sets, like Star Wars Rogue One and A Wrinkle in Time. The style of portraits she takes is very interesting to me. Her shots tend to have a fantasy-like style and look very focused on the subject but hazy all around. In the shot with the red forest background, she is the center of a formal shot but the dark sky and red bushes give the picture a dark, ominous feel. Being able to create a tone or feeling without adding a different camera angle is something I want to be able to do. This could come from practicing my color and sharpness editing on lightroom. The second photo has a dusk sunlight shining directly behind the subject. This orange coming through dark brown/green forest creates a cool picture. Being able to have the sun behind the subject and not have a silhouette but instead a focused subject is hard for me to do. Benetel uses it to again create that fantasy theme in her photo. Overall, I am very interested in the way she creates tones and themes in with her lighting and background.

http://www.feliciasimionphotography.com/portfolio-item/color/

Felicia Simon is a 24-year-old photographer who lives in Bucharest, Romania and takes photos all over the world. Simon draws inspiration from cultural anthropology, tradition, family and many other things. The first photo is just very satisfying to look at for some reason. Most of the color in the photo is within about 5 percent of the whole photo. It shows two people seemingly trudging through the snow. She uses the snow to almost make the whole picture as if they are in the sky. I like this style because it really makes you focus on the two people and the background sort of fades away. In the second photo, I think she gracefully uses the Golden Mean composition. The subject is on the 1/3rd intersection of the photo and the tree branch creates a spiral. The picture seems to have multiple focus points and creates a foreground, mid-ground, and then two backgrounds. The horizon with the moon and the beach are both backgrounds. This is a cool way to create a lot of depth in the photo. Overall, I like her style because it really shows the compositional techniques while not using very complex backgrounds or subjects.

http://www.ginavasquez.com/

Gina Vasquez is a photographer who has been in over 15 exhibitions all around the United States. She photographs portraits, nature, and surroundings. She also has a piece commissioned by UN Women called There is Hope. This piece contains self-portraits that help raise awareness of Gender-Based violence. The first photo was a great example of night photography and editing. The sky, even though it is night time, is illuminated in a lighter blue. It makes a gradient color effect from orange at the horizon to purple at the top.  Also the silhouettes of the people sort of follow the Rule of Thirds. The second photo is cool to me because it has the same color scheme as one of the photos I used for my composition. The yellow/cream color of the plants with the gray/blue sky background is very similar to the one I took. The subject of the photo is what caught my eye though. The smoke matches the color of the dress so the subject really catches the attention of the viewer. I think these very calm but also dramatic feelings of these photos are what i want my portrait to be like. Combining this effect with the low angle I talked about in my previous blog would make for an interesting portrait.

I have run into some challenges with the night shooting. I am unable to really get enough light while also focusing the camera. But after I put the photo into Lightroom I am usually able to correct the lighting. I am wondering if I will have to do that for all my night photos. I feel like now I am able to predict what I am going to have to adjust ( shutter speed, aperture) when I see the lighting/ subject I am about to shoot.  I find different color lightings interesting and what to be able to incorporate that into my photography.

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Week Two

I have gotten much better with adjusting aperture and shutter speed to fit what I am shooting. The day of going out to shoot during class really helped me with my composition assignment. Night shooting and shooting pictures of subjects that are further away than 2-3 feet are giving me trouble now. When the sun is not shining everything seems to prompt the “Subject is too dark” message on my camera. I am also still having trouble with finding subjects to take pictures of that aren’t boring. 

The artist I chose for this week is @ Vinceflys on Instagram. He shoots a wide array of things but his photos of landscapes and buildings interest me the most. The dusk/dawn look of the photos makes them very visually appealing. There is an orange tint/ light that shines through on them that I like. This could be used in our nightshoot or pictures of landscapes.

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Week One

Throughout the first week, most of my struggles came with the technicalities of the camera and what to shoot. I was having a hard time adjusting aperture and shutter speed to fit the subject and lighting. Most of my pictures came out not looking like what I had seen through the lens. Learning to adjust came with practice and asking questions. Finding the proper subject for my composition was also a struggle. I couldn’t think of where to go to shoot or what to shoot.

I am looking at an artist named @ hubrisjon on instagram. The photos of his that I am focusing on are the portrait style photos of people he has taken. These could be used as inspiration for the portrait assignment that we will have. He seems does both color and black and white portraits. I like the style of a lower angle and the background is out of focus.