Final Critique

I ended up showing twelve of my strongest pieces for my final critique. Over the course of this semester, I have learned what my strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to photography, and I will continue shooting and growing in this media.

My weaknesses were mainly in my portraits. Not only do the photos look a bit awkward, but the actual sessions with the person were awkward because I am still unsure of how to direct people. I showed four different people in portraits for my final, because I wanted to show a bit of variety, but I feel that in order to have shown my strongest pieces I could have left them out altogether. My most successful portrait was of myself, and this was pointed out during my critique. This version is not enhance in any way, because my hard drive has been configured for a Mac, but it still shows the strong composition I ended up with.

Of my pieces, the ones that were pointed out as the strongest were the panoramas, the laundry reflection, and the fence. I enjoyed the panoramas a lot, and even though I went in other directions - rather than showing a large area like a landscape - I feel like they are strong images and I like the way they came out. Two of my other pieces were pointed out as "photographs" because of their compositions, colors, contrast, interest, etc.

One is of a reflection of a sign. The colors turned out well, and what people liked about this was that it keeps interest. Usually text is what a viewer sees and reads first, but in this case, the text is skewed and so it kept attention a lot longer than I anticipated.

A second photograph that brought about conversation was of looking down a fence at trash. I consciously used the rule of thirds while shooting it, and I love the composition because of the balance of the fence vs. the ground and the cast shadows were appealing.

Overall, I feel like this semester has successfully helped me grow as a photographer,  and I'm definitely going to continue learning.

Favorite Photographers

Technically, I've only been in the photography business for a semester, and before now I had never even thought to research photographers. I may not have "favorites" yet, but I have definitely come across people throughout the past few months who have proved to be exceedingly interesting. The two I would like to talk about are Andre du Plessis and Danny Santos.

I stumbled upon Andre du Plessis towards the beginning of this school year and I was blown away by the photograph below:

This photograph captured my attention. The wrinkles, the hair, the expressions shown by the man and the dog, the textures. It seems so simple. I looked into his gallery and found that his work revolves around black and white images of everyday life. He depicts interesting people in interesting settings, yet they all have that candid quality; they all seem effortless and natural. I admire his eye for composition and "seeing the moment," I guess I should say. His gallery can be found from 1x.com, and I encourage you to see his work!

The second photographer I happen to come across is Danny Santos. His work is also of a candid nature, as he purposely wanders the streets for hours in search of interesting faces. He has different projects, one is to collect many different photographs of strangers on a particular main street he lives nearby, and others include actual model shoots and spur-of-the-moment shots in the rain.

I was fascinated by his portraits of strangers most of all. Not only are the photographs beautiful, the concept of seeing beautiful faces in crowds and capturing them is inspiring. Especially after learning of Cartier months ago and realizing that photography can take place without poses or plans. The more I see his work, the more of a favorite he becomes because the photographs are so down-to-earth and personal.

Fortunately, his work on Flickr is copyrighted, so the crazies can't abuse it. So, here's the link to his site [http://www.flickr.com/photos/dannysantos/4723946673/] and I hope you enjoy.

Slideshow Review

Beginning this slideshow presentation was fairly difficult. Coming up with a main idea was the most crucial aspect of this assignment, and overall I think I did an okay job, but once I saw my final product I was disappointed in how mundane it seemed. One thing that I would definitely change would be the music, I feel like having just the piano music without the lyrics would be a better alternative. It was also recommended in the class critique that I sequence the photos of doors in a more organized fashion. I was unsure of how I wanted to order them, and I went with small categories, like grouping fairly plain doors together then getting progressively more interesting and cluttered. The audience, however, would probably be more in tune if the doors went by composition, from doors to the left of the picture plain, to those in the middle, to those on the right. Placing the doors on the same horizon line would also be beneficial.

I do like this typology of the front doors, and how they reflect the personality of the house and its owners, but I feel that it would work better if it were presented differently. Slideshows are cool and all, but seeing door after door after door could make them lose their charm...as they ended up doing. I would prefer presenting them all at once, like the groups of photos below by Jeff Brouws and Julia Baum. A grid would still present the idea of unity and uniqueness, without the three minutes of doors, doors, doors. This may show up in a future website, who knows.

Slideshow

I had some difficulty deciding on how to approach this project, only because of the idea of unity. Having all of the pictures stand on their own - yet work together - seemed kind of a backwards approach to me. Typologies really interested me when my professor showed examples of a few photographers who were inspired by similar ideas, objects, places, and so on. 

Objective:

Driving down the road to my apartment, it hit me. I've always had a fascination with the houses down this road because they have various colors, knick knacks, and furniture that really add to the character of the house and even the people who live there. My objective for this slideshow is to shoot front doors. I want to capture the personalities of my neighbors through the entrance to their homes.

Method: 

An important positive to my subject is the fact that these houses are quite permanent for the time being. I can go back to each location in different lighting and conditions without worrying that something has changed drastically. I will be focusing on the houses down my street - because they are the ones I find so fascinating - but I plan on branching out to other streets parallel to mine. So far, I have shot photos of the front doors down my street, and I plan on going back to these same houses to take more detailed shots. For example, a doorknob, a wind chime, a child's toy car, all the while keeping the front door in sight.

Inspirational Photographers:

Jeff Brouws - This is one of the photographers we talked about in class. Brouws has many typologies in his portfolio, including abandoned gas stations, painted houses, and empty signs. His work inspired me to create a typology that emphasizes one idea, but portrays that idea in a way that holds interest and does not become too mundane. A typology of his that most resembles my idea is of freshly painted houses. They are very colorful, and even though the houses all have extremely similar characteristics, each holds its own identity. This is what I'm hoping to accomplish with my doors.

Julia Baum - As I was researching different artists' typologies, I came across Julia Baum's portfolio. She documented houses that were built in the 1950's from the same foundation, but over the past fifty years, these houses have undergone huge changes according to the owners. They went from being from the same stencil to having their own identities. I thought this fit well with my project on front doors, not only from the architectural point-of-view but because of the way personality snuck its way into homes.

William Klein and Elliott Erwitt

Researching these photographers' work before writing this blog was very interesting to say the least. Both of them work primarily in black and white, and the situations they depict are definitely narratives in that when a viewer looks at one of their photos, they want to know more. There is an air of mystery to both Klein and Erwitt's work. Who are these people, and what is their story? Klein takes a very funky and fashionable approach to these stories whereas Erwitt takes a very personable approach with more average subjects.

I really appreciate William Klein's work in that it may not show the best technical qualities - a lot of his photos are overexposed and blurred - but it is exceedingly interesting. Almost every photo is a portrait and many of these portraits seem to be candid. Klein's work is strongly based on design, with huge contrast and great composition, using either the rule of thirds or having the focal point in the very middle of the photo and it working anyway. He has a very good sense of foreground, middle ground, and background.

Take the picture below for example, the use of line, contrast, and staccato rhythm not only makes viewers stare in wonder, but it also holds interest as they ask themselves who these women are...and why they are dressed this way.

Elliott Erwitt's work is different from Klein's because his photos have a more comical approach, with somewhat satirical references to everyday life. His photos are easy to relate to for viewers, while still retaining the narrative aspect. Below lies one of his illusions:

Assignment #2 Critique

As I printed my photos for the critique I was kind of shocked at how red they all looked! I've learned to change my camera's settings from Vivid to Natural. That was my only huge concern as we started talking about our results.

When asked, I wasn't sure which picture was the "strongest" one. I'm not too sure on how to critique in photography yet, because it's a whole other beast compared to my drawing studio classes. So I went with this picture of my sister, Victoria.

I chose it because of the movement within the branches of the tree and her gesture of laughing. Even though the class wouldn't be able to view it personally, I felt it captured her essence and that made it strong.

I was dawdling between this picture and the one below - probably for personal reasons - but also because this photo of Richelle came out very dark and red when it was printed.

I love this picture and it really is the strongest of Richelle, and was viewed as the strongest in my assortment during the critique. Here on my blog it looks a lot better than it did when it was printed. Mostly because you can tell the difference between her hair and the backgroud! Technical difficulties aside, I didn't have to change this picture in any way for lighting or cropping, and I'm really proud of it : )

Self - Portraits

This coming assignment is definitely going to be an interesting one.

It's always a strange thing to look at myself and categorize how I act and who exactly I am. What makes me...me? Explaining in words is probably infinitely easier than explaining through a photograph, which is why I'm nervous to begin thinking of how to go about shooting myself. I'm even more anxious to shoot the alter-ego, not because I'm some depressed emo or anything, but because I have to convey something that no one knows about me...but what?

I think the easiest way to go about explaining myself would be through a list of words and phrases, because I'm not going to tell you my life story, I'm going to tell you my personality.

happy                      witty                      confusing                   
optimistic                 creative                  looked over
strong                      unyielding               appreciative
blunt                        random                  proud
sarcastic                  responsible             respectful
unsympathetic         considerate             daring
mellow                    exciting                   fun
oddball                   doubtful                  safe

People usually see the easy-going and excited happy me, but I'm fairly sure that what they don't realize is my safe side and the fact that I can be quite serious. I'm still generating ideas on how to put myself in a photograph...but I'm getting there. And I think it'll be fun.