Gemma, the G10, and Ghouls...

I went up to Maine last weekend to visit my friend Gemma. She is a senior this year and needed a "senior picture" but felt more comfortable with me taking the pictures than going to a studio. We were lucky to have a clear and sunny morning and went to a small beach near her school. The photo below is the one we chose. She looks natural but still has a great grin. As to what I was thinking while shooting these photos: I was thinking about capturing her in the most flattering way possible. She is naturally very beautiful and I really wanted to do her justice in my photos. I was paying attention to the frame as well as what was going on with Gemma.

After taking "serious" pictures for a while I started just snapping pictures. She had gotten more comfortable with the camera and I think I was able to capture her very naturally in the two below. It's so fun to watch a person get more comfortable as I am taking pictures. They really do forget that the camera is there and I have been able to get my best photos by just talking and snapping away until they become natural, non-posing, radient person :)

I borrowed the Canon G10 from the photo department last week... I've been carrying it with me everywhere I go... I LOVE THIS CAMERA!!!! It is so amazing! Compact but can do everything that my Nikon D80 can do. I LOVE the macro setting (something I don't really have on my Nikon). The stabilizer is fabulous. Shooting at low light still produces clear pictures (if the subject isn't moving too fast). In case it isn't clear, I am in awe of this camera and wish that I could keep this one FOREVER! I can't wait to print the portraits I have been shooting!

Happy Halloween!

Oct. 23:

A friend of mine from home recently came to visit. We went in search of a gas station at one point and got a bit lost... but found some amazing places to take pictures! I really like the yellow truck with the vines growing on it but i wish the white trucks were not parked right behind it. I will stop by again in the next week or so to see if the trucks have been moved.

I loved this door in the side of what looked like an abandoned building. The sun had not quite set but the light was already on and i liked the green of the wood in contrast to the bricks.

We almost triped over this super creepy/dirty stuffed dog. He looked so pathetic just lying there... at first we thought it was a real animal and it took a second to realize it was only a stuffed animal! I feel kinda bad for the little guy... and I couldn't resist taking a picture. It was getting dark at this point so I took one with flash and one photo without. This is the photo without and i brought it up in photoshop a bit. It gives it more of an eerie feel in my opinion!

Have a good weekend!

For Oct. 16th

This is a picture of me taken when I was very little in Rangeley, ME. During fall break my family and I were in Rangeley again and my sister thought it would be fun to do a reshoot of this photo. I set my f-stop at a pretty high number, focused on the place I would be standing, set the shutter speed also at a high number (it was really sunny out) and this is what we came up with:

The same branches only a much bigger me!

Being in ME during fall break was amazing: so much to photograph! I got to shoot on a cloudy/drizzily day as well as on a really nice, clean, sunshiny day! I took some nature shots that I am really proud of, including:

I love how there are so many little plants growing out of the stump. The greens were so vibrant that day and I am glad I was able to translate that to the photo.

Sorry I missed last weeks blog!

Libby's Sunglasses

I hung the cropped version of this photo on the wall for critique this week. To be honest it was a last minute print that I wasn't crazy about but the class really liked it so I thought I would put some more work into it. I up-ed the contrast a bit (one comment had been that it need some more contrast especially in the sunglasses area). I also put up the full image so it's obvious what i did. It's still translating as a little pit too pale and not contrast-y enough which i will change if i decide to print again.

The full version is also a bit red/pink... i had trouble making the glasses feel how i wanted them to and getting her skin tone right. If I decide to print the full picture, I'll adjust her skin tone/hair because she is blond... not a red head!
I do like that i can see my reflection in her glasses as well as the clouds behind me. I had a lot of fun working with reflections this week and getting myself into my own pictures. I'm working on my "Fall" picture this weekend and also hope to work on some portraits of my family while we are together.
Have a great break! See you next week.

Inspiration: Arnold Newman

During my leave of absence this past year, I got into the habit of going to the local library and taking out as many books on different photographers as they would let me. I stumbled upon Arnold Newman during one afternoon and loved his portraits. I loved how he often photographed his subjects in areas they were comfortable in or surrounded by objects for which they were well known, such as the image of Berenice Abbott, also a photographer, who is reading a newspaper and has camera equipment.

The portrait of Pablo Picasso, taken 1954, is absolutely stunning. I love how the light and shadows play across his face. Newman did lots of environmental portraits, how ever it is clear that he was not worried about dong things ''correct," and I am interested in trying to take some environmental portraits at some point

New York Times Obituary

portraits

My goal for this semester is to get more comfortable with taking portraits of people. While in NYC visiting my sister, who is totally uninhibited in front of a camera, I got the chance to direct a little bit more and got some shots that i really like. This week I am trying to focus more on faces/close up portraits of people (also i've been challenged by Frank to take pictures of 5 different people). I have found that talking to people and taking pictures until they forget that i have a camera is an easy way to get natural shots of them. Otherwise they tense up and smile in unnatural ways.

I didn't get a chance to go to the Clark digital darkroom which means I was using an uncalibrated screen so I realize that the colors are a bit off, but I'll fix that before going on.

This is my friend Marianna and I loved how natural her laughter was in this picture. You can tell she is not faking a thing and you can almost hear the laughter.

Libby is not this yellow, but I was editing on an uncalibrated screen so it needs more editing... also she has the bluest eyes but when I sharpened the photo they darkened up. I was only editing in bridge so I did not use the layer where I could put the bright layer under and lighten the eyes (i hope that last sentence made sense!)

Again this picture was a natural shot. Not forced which I love. I need to darken the background a little bit so that Ben is the main focus of the picture and not the bright sky.

I'm looking forward to take more pictures of people! It's been really fun so far and I have no idea what exactly I was nervous about to begin with...

Diego Goldberg

"The Arrow of Time"

naturally reflected

Ever since Steven showed Lee Friedlander's work in Intro. to Photography my freshman year, I have been in total awe of what he archives with his camera. The photos that I love most from that intro. class are the ones I took after looking at Freidlander's work. I still try to think about his photo's when I am out shooting, especially when I see interesting shadows and reflections. The building in this photo is Clark's Library. I loved the mirror image of cloud and tree reflected in the window and seen straight ahead. It was a wonderfully sunny day and the colors caught my eye. I have a feeling that this image would also look nice in black and white, I have just not had the opportunity to try that yet.

I had a much easier time editing and working with photoshop this week. I don't think I have saving my images as .jpeg's down just yet (when I look at this one big, it looks a bit washed out and not as vibrant as I would like it) but I am feeling much more confident that I have at least a tiny idea of what to do when I sit down at the computer.

I also worked on cropping some of the photos I had on my contact sheet this week after hearing a bunch of comments recommending I trim some of the photos down a little bit...

I really like how this blue light turned out as a crop. It's not that I didn't like the full photography, but I do find it more appealing when taken out of the context of "on a wall with cloud in sky behind" and made a bit more abstract. I am going to try to retake this picture at a different time of day when the sky has a different color and will hopefully get some interesting results.

I am totally stoked to use the tripod I borrowed and will hopefully get some nice shots of my little sister in her new city! I am going to try to work on portraits this week and see what I come up with... not so many buildings and shapes this time!! I need to get comfortable with people pictures too :)
Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend!

3MS

In the first week of school two close friends from home came to visit me here at Clark to see how I was doing and where I live. We took a walk on which I took some pictures I liked and then came back to my room and were hanging out. I have always wanted to try taking a picture of something drawn with a flashlight in the dark and we decided to give it a go. I worked on this photo a bit in photoshop today trying to sharpen it and bring out some detail while still keeping the letters the main focus... I am not sure if I did something wrong while saving or if I just lightened too much because it looked different when I saved it (darker in the background and not so washed out in the skin) so i'll fiddle with it some more in the next day or so and repost it in this entry. Dan (I assumed he was a TA) helped me out with the multiple questions I had which was great!
To be honest, I am feeling a little bit frustrated with photoshop at the moment because there is so much to remember how to do and steps to take and I am not sure yet what exactly I am aiming for when I edit my photos. I am sure it will come more naturally after I have worked with the program a bit more.
Have a great weekend and see you all on Monday!
A

EDIT:

I think the light in the room this time is a little bit better... The photo looks much fuller as a RAW image, which I realize is the point, but it's a bit frustraiting that the JPEG looks so much worse... ah well... you did warn us Frank!!

some cool bw photos!

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/09/beautiful-black-and-white-photography-2/

genuine

I took this photo at a friends house the day before returning to school. It was really hot out and I loved how the condensation sat on the can in perfect lines. I'm not super happy with the light (seems a bit too yellow to me) but I do like that although the focus is on the first can, you can tell that the second one is the same thing, only a bit blurry. I'd like to work this this image in photoshop to see if i can get rid of some of the yellowness and clean it up a bit. I am not really sure what genre i would use to describe this... maybe still life? Basically i was just mussing around with my camera and got something i thought looked pretty cool... made me happy :)

I have the image in RAW format as well, but until i figure out how to resize i posted the .jpeg.

Have a great weekend!
Agnes

and we're off!

very excited to be in this class and looking forward to all the lernin' i get to do!!