Final Project: Sense of Place

Reading notes 1: Quality of Light

Today we focused on light and using it to create different feelings within our photographs. We talked about back-lighting, front-lighting, and side lighting. Back lighting is when the light source is behind the subject, when the sun is behind the person your shooting, for example. Front lighting is when the light is shining on the front of your subject.  In this picture of my awesome roomie Levi, I choose to use side lighting from a lamp in our room. Side lighting is a great choice for portraiture because it adds great shadows and leaves a level of mystique in the photograph along with them. It also adds a 3D aspect to the photograph using the shadows and highlights. Even though back-lighting is my favorite, side lighting is a fun challenge because getting the exposure correct adds a level of drama not achievable with other types of lighting. 

Greek Mythology and Quality of Light Major Assignment #3

Colleen was portraying Athena today in our third major assignment. I chose to use the Athena and the Flute Myth for a theme for this photo shoot. In this Myth, Athena crafts a flute because she is the Goddess of Craftsmanship. She is so proud of her work and wants to show it off to her friends. She plays the flute and gets mocked by Hera and Aphrodite, and doesn't know why. Athena plays in the mirror and sees why they were laughing, her cheeks get puffy when she plays. Athena is so embarrassed she tosses the flute away and curses it. The flute now brings misfortune to anyone who is in its possession. 

Lighting Types

F32
1/40
Iso-100

f5.6
1/50
Iso-800

f5.6
1/5
iso-800

f5.6
1/3200
iso-100 

f25
1/4000
iso-400

Dog Walking

F25
1/50
Iso-400

F25
1/100
Iso-400

F25
1/100
Iso-400

F25
1/160
Iso-400

F5.6
1/320
Iso-100

Mandi's Modeling Sesh

1/500
5.6
Iso-400

1/500
5.6
Iso-400

1/640
5.6
Iso-400

1/800
5.6
Iso-400

1/800
5.6
Iso-400

We were given 2 hours to do this portraiture shoot today with randomly assigned partners. Boy did I get lucky! Mandi is super photogenic and taking lovely pics of her was easy. This assignment was really fun, and quite hilarious, but also challenging with the amount of time given and the time of day to shoot. Mandi did an awesome job staring into the sun for me without squinting and she was really fun to work with. Maybe well have to take some more!

Major Assignment 2:The Decisive Moment

Preparation

Reflection

Recess Bro-time

A Guiding Hand

What Boys Want

Tunnel Music

A Shady Conversation

You're Holding Me Back

This week our assignment was to take photos of the decisive moment, but what is the decisive moment? Everything has a Decisive moment but not all are as meaningful. The decisive moment is when a story within a photograph is captured in an instant and won't be there the next second. It is the moment within a situation that makes the situation interesting and capturing these moments is much harder than it seems. You, the photographer, must decide if you captured what was happening before you, and if you didn't then you missed a golden opportunity to tell a story. For instance, in my photo Tunnel Music, I waited and waited for the two gentlemen playing guitar to show me something that I felt captured the feeling of what they were doing in the tunnel. If I would've taken the photo earlier, it wouldn't have been as meaningful. The same can be said if I would've taken it later. The moment when the two musicians were lined up across from each other, almost dancing to their music, was the decisive moment for me. I spent almost an hour chatting with and listening to these guys and I got to know their personality and musical vibe. This helped me understand how I wanted to capture their music playing and tell their story through their own unique Decisive Moment.