This group of photos is a little bit harder to analyze because as you become more sophisticated shooters, the content become stronger and more varied. This makes it more difficult to organize things in a cohesive manner. But here's what I've come up with. I did have to make a decision whether to organize things by the technique, Panorama and Slow Shutter Speed, or by content. Since I so often find myself saying that "form supports content" this collection is indeed organized by content.
Let's start this selection with nature. The first photo by Brooke has a unique vantage point looking through small leaves looming large in the frame forcing us to look past. Next question is, what is the pay off back there? The next photo also by Brooke plays around with her theme of water surface reflecting light against the surface of the leaves floating. Alison’s panoramic landscape works well because the horizon line is pushed up to the top of the frame. Mariah’s landscape his beautiful color slightly warmed up with some filtration to great and almost idyllic setting. Chelsea’s pumpkin photo is a little bit of a jump in scale here but this works because see has moved in tight and the colors are nicely desaturated.
Now we start a series of vertical panoramas. The first bye Breanna is more of a texture piece. We are not sure exactly what those little yellow dots are, but there probably seeds from the trees above this bit of sidewalk. The comparison of the soft organic shapes against the hard ground is what makes this interesting. The tree photo by Chelsea present some really interesting colors due to the intense yet soft light. The tree at the top is particularly interesting because the branches almost become lightning bolts, an illusion created by the subtle distortion from this technique. Lauralea’s photo adds feet to put her into the shot. Her shadow extends into the space and the whole thing is beautifully toned. Brooke also uses the shadow technique, this time pushing it all the way to the far edge of the frame.
The next trio of photos by Jordan, Emily, and Chelsea put portraiture into this extended space. Each one seems to defies gravity but all in very different ways. The next photo by Debora is the long hallway again with some extreme lighting and some motion blur. I am not sure how she managed to combine slow shutter speed and panorama because the panorama usually makes things crisp! We’ll have to read her recipe on this. Rachel takes us into a long stairway well Chelsea shows us a different view, here with some stripy feet at the bottom. Ryan’s photo bends a subway staircase in a graceful manner. Debra takes us further into the subway at the amazing Pine Street station. The space splits beautifully as the ground changes texture and that one pillar is just off center in the middle. The last train picture here by Jordan uses the slow-motion effect as the train zips by. This is one of the best train shots because of the extreme transparency. And the way to benches cut in the bottom left corner is also really nice.
The next set of five photos all deal with people using a slow shutter speed. The first photo by Ross shot from high above has just that right amount of motion blur so that we see the people and we also see their trails. The framing of the horizontal line ⅔ of the way up the frame and the curving white walkway also set up the space beautifully. Lauralea’s translucent skateboarder also works well. She does another good job in the next photo with the sneaker feet, with the space enhanced by the diagonal on the left edge. The next photo by Rachael also has moving feet but the spatial cues become obscure enough that we cannot tell what direction the top of the photograph is going or what the heck that orange thing is! Maria’s beautiful bathroom floor is again enhanced by the feet at the bottom. The warm color in this photo pushes this tour is the Memory/Vintage topic.
This next photo by Rachel also presents a peculiar sense of space where the pieces of the puzzle don’t seem to quite fit together. This is another example of mystery put to good use. Both Allison and Brooke came up with two interior panoramas. Allison pushes a hallway down the right-hand side and places the short side on the left. This creates an interesting space in which we can spend some time. Brooke’s is an interior split between two rooms, each with its own lighting. The difference in feeling between these two rooms is what is outstanding. There is an idea of a ‘Split-Frame’ photograph that came up years ago where people would shoot a scene using some vertical element that would split the photograph into two distinctly different worlds. Now we have this panorama technique creating a similar vision.
Probably the most enigmatic photo of the set is by Emily it seems to be a conglomeration of images displayed as if we’re looking through a keyhole. Emily seems to have designed her own technique for shooting panoramas along a nontraditional movement path. I am not sure why it is displayed in the blog upside down but this looks like the way we see things when using a view camera.
The next set of five photographs go outside. The first photo by Ryan has was looking through razor wire into a neighborhood. This is still a sense of trepidation. The wire also creates a boundary between what is accessible and what is inaccessible. This is another concept that could be used to generate body of photographs– Borders/ Boundaries/ Bridges where the border is the demarcation of space and boundaries are dividers where bridges are connectors. The next panel by Breanna shows a crooked fence while Jordan’s photo shows a wider view including the fence on the right. Both of these invite us to examine the space beyond the fence, thereby extending space. The next two photographs by Ross and Rachel are more architectural. Each photograph however shows a very different kind of space surrounding each building.
Finally we get to the Portrait Series. There are quite a few double exposures here that are an extrapolation of the slow shutter speed technique. First, Maria starts with an intriguing blank stare and an extraordinary sense of red. Jordan’s photo is a combination of two photos, one larger, one smaller, where each face shows a different expression (although still too over saturated perhaps). Both of these describe the emotional state of the subject just through facial expression. Breanna also uses a similar point of view while Brooke’s photograph takes a step back and shows a more contemplative stance. It is almost as if she is collaborating with herself.
Emily shows the faces of two different people and that forces us to consider the relationship between them. The next two square photographs, both by Brooke, overlay a person with their environment. Each one is striking. Emily and Brianna again present more translucent people melting into their environment. Again we have an invitation to discover how these people interact with the world that is being presented. There are that not many concrete clues and that forces the viewer to work even harder.
Then Allison and Rachel present faces that almost melt away, this time created just by shaking the head. Here are the light plays a major factor in the way we read these people. Then Lauralea highlights a face in the darkness with another shocking expression, and the face in David’s photo almost vaporizes into the light.
The faces in Ross's and Rachel’s next two photographs are both covered one by clothing one by hair and in both the eyes are concealed. There are additional clues to figuring out who these people are but no access to their real identity. Again more mystery! And the last one is probably the pinnacle of subtlety and mystery, just revealing a hand and a small part of a body bathed in a small pool of light. There seems to be something else going on in a shadow but I’m not quite sure what it is. But even just visually, this photograph is exquisite.
The darkness from the few shots preceding takes us into the realm of night. David’s interior photo is really dark with that sliver of light coming in from the far left edge and forces us to look closely to investigate the scene. Marie’s dark interior also gets us to move our eyes through the space. I considered including this with the pictures of stairs earlier but it makes more sense here with these dark photos. Rachael returns with a photo that pulls us from outside to inside. This makes us question where we stand as viewers and even more interestingly, whose life are we viewing?
The next series of photos are connected buy the lights they contain. Brooke has a photo the light pole they wide frame with a bit of ‘reciprocity failure’ color shift contrasted by the light on the leaves in the top left corner. Alexandra’s photo shows us an empty street at night while the next two street scenes by Rachel and Lauralea also have that similar color shift. The first photo shows the emptiness of life while the second, with a man walking his dog, has the opposite feel. Lauralea’s black-and-white photo of the bench under the stop sign is actually enhanced by its lack of color, but it’s emptiness seems to be the main theme.
The stop sign segues us into a short series of travel photos. I wish people would get out of their cars before shooting photographs or at least find some way to eliminate the evidence that shows the car, but these are still cool photos. The first photo by Chelsea it is just taillights at night but the color is softened in an unusual way removing it from the typical taillight photo. Notice the added grain in this photo, usually because of underexposure (a good effect). Ross’ photos looks like a time warp through the Lincoln tunnel reminding us of several science fiction movies. Alexandria’s photo looks like a road scene at first but then the shape of the train appears in the blur. Again totally unlike the many train pictures we see. Then another shot by Ross that seems to be about stairs actually has a train moving by at high-speed running to the middle of the frame. This is interesting house the shots can camouflage some of the subject by the way they extend time. And this last shot by David looking down into this strange K3 space with poles and shadows and even a hint of a figure is wonderfully eerie.
And we close the series with several abstract photographs by Allison, Alexandra and Kandi. Diesel said on the edge of abstraction while retaining enough reference to real subject matter to keep both the eye and the mind engaged. I am not even going to begin a conjecture of content or meaning with these. I’m going to leave that to you. The final photograph by Sarah is hey simple but elegant floating heart. A lot of people attend light painting photographs but never really seem to have anything worth drawing. They just stand there and wave lights around. This one has a simple but effective meaning. The one thing that could be added, that you should all keep in mind, is to pop off the flash so the background gets a little bit of light, and that would add a some context to the photo.
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Probably the most important aspect of this topic is that it makes you think about what you’re going to shoot before you shoot it. This is when you have to move from being a photo gatherer, where you are finding things in your world, to being a photo hunter and working, thinking, designing to create the photographs before you ever go out to shoot. This is ‘conscious shooting’. Thank you for your work and thank you for sharing with your classmates to push this class forward.
Following are some notes that I made while reading through all of your Self Evaluations:
> Physical/ Technique
For Self Evaluations, you cannot use the actual topic as either the physical or the conceptual component of your explanation. There has to be a concept/ content within the topic that is specific to your personal vision. This is often confused.
When shooting at nighttime, you can add some of your own lighting with a flashlight. You can illuminate some areas that might otherwise be too dark, or highlight specific parts of the subject by adding extra light.
When shooting at night or at sunset, please avoid silhouettes. You need to have detail in the highlights of the photograph and you also need to have detail in the darkest shadows. With the silhouette all shadow detail is gone. If there’s no detail there’s no photograph. This is not an absolute, but you would have to transcend the silhouette with some other meaning to make it work.
It is okay to shoot during your daily routine and not go out to make special trips just for shooting. Sometime you daily life is the most relevant subject. But within that you can still be a photo hunter and shoot for specific self-assigned topics. It can’t just be whatever things you happen to see on your journey. The goal is to build a comprehensive and cohesive collection of photographs that address a singular subject. [A Final Portfolio can be comprised of a set of themes.]
The camera usually has to be held still when shooting slow shutter speed shots, at least most of the time. I don’t expect everyone to be walking around with tripod, but you can rest a phone on any stationary object, such as on top of a parking meter or railing, or pressed against the side of the wall or post. Then you can get the clean shot where only the movement of the subject is shown. The other option is moving the camera, but that is a whole other way of approaching this aesthetic problem.
Sometimes just touching the button on the screen of a smart phone moves the camera too much. You can use the + button on a set of earphones with a volume control as a remote shutter release.
You may have to do a series of tests to figure out what shutter speed renders what kind of look. It is all related to the amount of movement in the subject so there are no fixed rules.
If you’re going to illuminate a subject with a flash in front of a camera with an open shutter (sometimes known as Light Painting), you have to have some choreography behind the movement (i.e. thought, even if it is just about the shape). The movement cannot just be arbitrary. [ref: Irving Penn, Dancer]
If you are working with lights painting, consider popping off a handheld flash unit after you are done the movement but before you are finished with the shot to add some ambient light to the background. This will give the gesture-drawing some context.
>Emotion/ Impact
When shooting photos with emotion, these have to be able to evoke an emotional response in others. If they only have emotion because they are something that you like or feel close to, then it may be a snapshot, That is when the photograph elicits an emotional response in you because it acts as a trigger to remind you of something you did. The information in this case is not really in the photo- it is in the minds of the people in the shot or involved with it. This may not be something that anyone else connects to. It has to be a more universal or generally accessible emotion, but still be specific at the same time.
You cannot make a photo of a memory just by shooting old stuff. It has to be done with the ambience, color, lighting, framing, mystery, passion, etc. of the shot. This is partially where the use of Vintage Photo Apps comes into play. Some of these emulate the look of particular types of film and people inherently know what old film looks like. This has become part of the lexicon of public images, part of the Collective Unconscious.
>Concept/ Content
The concept/content does not have to be some major philosophical point. But there has to be some kind of consistent theme to the work.
New Clichés
General cliché – shooting from inside a car
No Tiny Planets – total gimmickry
Slow shutter speed cliché – shaking your head for the self-portrait
Slow shutter speed cliché – streaks of headlights
Slow shutter speed cliché – waterfalls looking all fuzzy (see nature calendars)
Panorama cliché – avoid the fisheye effect
