Final project- brainstorm

For this project, I want to shoot something I'm interested in. I want to shoot something I'll care about. I want to give a shit. I've been reluctant to do this in other projects for this class as I did not want to do an injustice to a subject matter I love so; I didn't want it to be ruined by crappy photos from some punk in a beginning photo class.
Now I want to take that risk. I want to challenge myself for this project and picking something I love as the subject matter will do just that.
Biking. I love it. I bike all the time. I ride a fixed gear. That means it doesn't coast and the partuicular one I own doesn't have brakes either. It's lack of bakes and gears makes it simple. It's simplicity makes it aesthetically pleasing. The aesthetic pleasure it gives makes it hip. My bike is a hipster-mobile. I don't care. It may be trendy, It may be a bandwagon thing, I may be a brainless sheep, but I love it.
When I go for a ride, I ride in the city. Where else to ride a hipster-mobile? The gang of friends I hang out with is a professional loiterering crew as much as it is a hipster clicque. We can hang around some spots for hours just doing tricks, resting, working on bikes, talking... it's pathetic, but I love it. I love the atmosphere down there. Don't get me wrong, the wilderness is great but the city is where it's at.
Since the places I hang out are such an integrel part of the activity I love, I would like to photograph those as well. I want my audience to understand just why I waste my life on this silly little machine.

Cliches

These are some common photographic cliches:


This is virtrually every ski resort ad ever.
I don't care how good your snow was in that one place at that one time;
your resort still sucks



Ummmmm, photoshop much?



I doubt he was really playing the drums.
I am not amused.



Babies sleep, I get it.
Stop showing me.



You look tough, you can pose with an unloaded gun.
Cool...



Awwwwww, cuute...
They make me sick



I know bees hang out on flowers, I learned that in ninth grade biology. I saw too many pictures on bees on flowers then, and I don't want to see any more.



Oooooooohhh, macro.
Nobody has ever even thought of that.
I mean the symbol for macro on cameras is a freaking flower!
surrounded by incompetence...



Classic.
This picture is teaching me so much!
I never knew that birds hung out on posts,
I've never even seen a picture of that before.

I do not want to walk into your travel agency or visit your vacation website, because I want to go somewhere interesting; I don't want to visit the same crap you're photographing for this ad.

Assignment 7- Redo

This is a redo of my "On 'Yer Belly" assignment. I was really happy with the images I took previously, but I felt that they were not quite taken within the spirit of the assignment. I tried to keep that in mind when I was shooting these:






The drivetrain of the bike.
In this specific bike it is not only what makes the bike move, but also what makes it stop. It is the go, it is the stop.
It is something I felt needed to be glorified.






These two are about the setup of the christmas;
something we don't always appreciate.

Assignment 6- Portraits

These are some images i took over the course of the last three weeks for my portraiture assignment.

I really like the expressions I was able to catch on camera.

I need more experience working with studio lights, however.

They became somewhat of a distraction from the basics I've learned over the last few months. The images are not as sharply focused as I would have liked.

I should have dialed up the exposure and the lights so I could more easily capture the subject without blur.

I like them, but I could do better.

This is me,

my uniform,

and I.

Katie took this one.

This is katie.

I made her uncomfortable.

I took probably fifty photos of her without giving a word of instruction.

I got what I wanted.

Then I told her to be herself.

I didn't get exactly what I wanted.

Instructions are a funny thing...

This is my brother Charlie.

Hardly and instruction was needed with him,

he likes to ham it up.

This is me presenting myself twelve years ago.

I like it very much.

Of course, the glare was on purpose.

*wink, wink*

This is my mother.

She made me.

I really like the second one of her.

I caught her right after she was posing and her guard was down.

Mini-Final

These are my favorite six images that I have taken over the course of this term.

They are only my favorite as of this very instant that I click the publish post button.

I am constantly changing my mind.

Here they are:

These two were really fun to take.

They were a part of my "on yer' belly" assignment

They were the first product of my bored fiddling.

I was shooting at night and was not getting many good images

as I was under the impression that there were none;

The LCD did not show anything at all, but I decided to shoot anyway.

This is what happened.

I am very pleased with them.

This image was taken for my high key/low key assignment

It is by far my favorite of the set and

what got me stoked on still life.

It had always seemed boring before, but I really got into it.

I must have looked quite silly while doing it;

making imperceptible adjustments every two seconds...

but this is the product, so who's crazy?

This is my brother.

He is nuts.

That is all I can say.

This was one of the first real images I took this term.

The first assignment hardly counts.

I really like it because it was a combination of luck

and my ability to frame a shot.

It is not the best quality or subject matter,

there isn't a whole lot of story and garbage cans are hardly an albino alopecia who raises bees, but I still like it.

It is mine.

Artist Study: Joe Rosenthal

he was a short man.
He was a determined man.
He had to have risked his life multiple times to get this shot.
I doubt he opened his film canisters early when he got back to the states.
well his film was probably not in canisters
but still.

One shot.

Assignment 5- On Yer' Belly

I really enjoyed this assignment.

I shot it on three different occasions, but ended up choosing all of these images, save one, from my last shoot.

I'm not exactly sure why, but the last shoot was just so cool to me.

I went outside at about eleven o'clock hoping to get some weird effect with the streetlamp and a car or two, but i started to play around.

When I opened up the aperture all the way and set a fifteen second exposure, nothing showed up on the LCD.

I said what the hell, why not and grabbed the tripod and exposed some microchips.

(well only one I suppose)

the result surprised me.

I got the foreground in great detail and the sky turned out in it's cloudy, whispy weirdness.

I was stoked.

I ended up playing around with this method for quite a while

here are the end-products:

Words About Nothing: The Fall

Autumn is an interesting time of year.
I love the colors
but they signal the coming of something that I really dislike:
Winter.
Don't get me wrong, the snow is cool and skiing is sweet,
but winter is such a depressing time of year
there's no light.
I get home from school and it's getting dark already.
Because of this, it is a very hard time or year to shoot.
right now is especially saddening
There are still some remnants or fall lingering, but the level of daylight and amount of visible life is that of nature are those of winter.
But there isn't any snow.
snow seems to glorify the bleakness;
makes it easily interesting.

Artist Study: Joe McNally

It was interesting...
As I filtered through one of the albums on his blog,
I grew to like his work more and more.
The first three or four, I really disliked.
Then I was like "okay, that's kind've cool"
and the album searching went on.
I really love some of the images,
like the naked water polo players picture,
but i really dislike others.
The water polo players one is so natural but it has that little twist:
they're in the nude.
But some of the others like the woman on the chaise or the basketball player with angel wings seem not only very forced but somewhat unoriginal as well. My little brother has a poster of Michael Jordan spreading his arms exactly like that.

I feel the same about the "corporate" section.
Some of the advertisements really have me wanting to know what's going on in that picture or what the picture is advertising
while some are just painfully obvious and obnoxious.
*rant warning*
like the ones for the army/navy/air force... whatever.
They're all yelling the same thing at me and I hate it:
"ARMY STRONG"
"JOIN ARMY: we've got guns"
"YOU LOOK LIKE A BADASS IN CAMO"
obviously I'm a bit biased because of my distaste with the armed forces, but still...
I mean I've seen enough dudes in camouflage with semi-automatic rifles to last me a lifetime.

His style seems to vary quite a bit.
I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing however.
I want to say it is his evolving as a photographer,
but I doubt that he would put such early and different pictures on the web let alone in the same album as the offending juxtaposers...
Interesting, you say you know him, Mr. Slade?

[none of his images allowed themselves to be stolen and posted on my blog]

Before and Afters

These are just some images that have been toched up in lightroom
either a little or alot...
I like them but they all highlight my lack of proficciency in the camera

Before:


After:



Before:


After:



Before:


After: