Identity

I really enjoyed the Identity project! It is always interesting for me to photograph my friends, as the end results on the contact sheet always seem to reveal something than more than meets the eye. I'm glad I decided to do two rolls of film instead of one, as my first roll of dramatic lighting didn't turn out nearly as well as I had hoped. To me, I feel like identity can only be defined by the individual, which is why I didn't want to title this identity project. Simply, I am capturing the identity (superficial identity, that is) of my friends. The rest, the underlying layers, are up to them to define. Maybe my pictures can convey their identity, and maybe they can't.

5x7

5x7

5x7

5x7... with a little contamination from not being fixed long enough.

5x7

A 5x7 of my 8x10

8x10

Still Life

Contact sheet for the Still Life project. This was a bit of a challenging project, since it took a lot of time and thought to create the different scenes and compilation of objects to shoot. I enjoyed the overall outcome though, and it was pretty fun to get creative with how I arranged the subjects.

5x7; what I like about this shot is the angle. It gives an interesting overview of the apple, making it seem smaller than it really is.

5x7; Peep war. Neither side really won. This was one of my favorite subjects since it was my most comical set of shots.

5x7; this is one of my favorite shots because of all the different outlines of the silhouetted shoes. The spaces between the heels of the shoes really caught my attention. Plus, trying to set up four different shoes to stand on each other was a real challenge, but somehow it ended up working.

5x7; I really enjoy this picture because the food coloring I put in the water made beautiful patterns as it settled to the bottom of the wine glass. Even in black and white, the streaks of would-be color just look amazing to me.

Landscapes

Here's my contact sheet for the landscape project. I really enjoyed trying to think of interesting places to photograph, but unfortunately there really aren't too many interesting options around Tualatin. So I decided to head to the beach, which was ended up being some of my favorite shots from the roll. Heading out to Sauvie Island was also an adventure, as I really enjoyed the desolate landscapes.

8x10; Sauvie Island

5x7 swatch of the 8x10

5x7; Sauvie Island

5x7; Seaside

5x7; Seaside

5x7; Sauvie Island

The World Is My Oyster

This is my contact sheet for the "Word" project, and my theme was "The world is my oyster." I took this to mean that the world was my oyster to harvest, and thus I had free artistic reign on the subjects I could photograph. Most of the pictures are of two of my close friends while we were downtown; it was there that I really felt like I understood the meaning of how much the world is truly a person's oyster, and that there is so much in life to take advantage of.

I felt that one of the most important things to capture in this assignment was the appearance of youth, since I feel like "youth" is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of the world as my oyster.

What I also tried to accomplish was to capture the natural emotions of my subjects, although most of the expressions tend to be fairly enigmatic or neutral.

This was one of the more planned and directed images, as I purposely wanted an over animation of something so simple as going down an escalator. I wanted this picture to have a link to working class America, perhaps poking fun at both how much of our lifetimes are wasted working and commuting.

I enjoyed this picture because of the emotion and the carefree aspect that I found in it. While I still dislike the lack of symmetry (in that they aren't facing the same way) in my subject's hands, I find that it can offer more of a carefree look than if I had directed more thoroughly.

Architecture

So this is my contact sheet! I went downtown around OMSI and an area near it. I found the bridges particularly interesting because of how many different shapes and lines are involved in their architecture. I really enjoyed the waterfront in front of OMSI, too, because the bridges near it were just beautiful.

This is my favorite print from the roll, since the multitude of lines and different shapes really caught my eye. I found the angle in which I took this to be interesting, too, since it gives a different view of how we usually see things. (5x7)

This is my 8x10 print, taken of a building around OMSI. The windows and large pipe sticking out of the roof enticed me because of the different shapes. The way the light was hitting the structure was also eye-catching.

This is a swatch of my 8x10 print.

I also enjoy this print due to the variation in color of the window tiles. This building caught my eye due to the interesting shape it had, as well as the line repetition throughout.

David Hockney

Hockney began working with photocollage in the late sixties and early seventies, using varying number of small Polaroid snaps or photo-lab prints of a single subject to arrange a patchwork that would make a composite image. These photocollage images appeared mostly between 1970 and 1986.

What I enjoy most about Hockney's photocollages is that they aren't typical. They include multiple perspectives that he joins into one image. The appearance of this is quite unusual, and I found it quite eye-catching. The details of the photocollage aren't as apparent as they would be if he took normal photographs, making the exploration of his work that much more interesting and challenging. The way Hockney puts together multiple perspectives is obviously quite different than most photographers' work, which in a way allows the viewer to gain more perspective.