EXAMPLE: Wide Angle Pinhole Holga

I am currently experimenting with a wide angle pinhole Holga, and so I decided to look on flickr to see some interesting photos in this style.

Here are a few of my favorites:

This was a five minute exposure.

.

I love the vignetting on the edges and the high contrast of the photograph.

The water and blurred reflections make this photograph look surreal.

Here is the search results, for more photographs:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=wide+angle+pinhole+holga&m=text

EXAMPLE: Pakistan, Iran and China

This is a post of several photos from the NYT Lens Photography blog. It won't let me pull any of the photos from the website, but it is a series of ten. I think the one with the Pakistani girl in a Halloween costume is very poignant. I think these photographs do a really good job of communicating so much more about what's happening in the photo than just one frame of action.

This is the link:

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/pictures-of-the-day-pakistan-and-elsewhere-11/

READING: Circus Series

http://www.fotolog.com/mister_t/75675647

During photography class I found a book on an urban photographer who specialized on taking pictures of street life. Finding this book, inspired me to further look for other photographers who specialized in this same type of photography. My favorite work came from this link. Many of the works play with contrast in such a poetic manner that this photographer's work easily spoke to me. The one image that most struck me as fascinating is called "Circus Serie". The picture overall is very haunted and it has many shadows that add to this dark effect. In addition, the smile of the person being photographed is very sinister.

EXAMPLE: Halloween Light Painting

Just thought to be in the spirit of one of the best holidays ever (FREE CANDY!!!).


Also, something super spiffy...
"This beautiful photo captured 50 photographers who'd set off their cameras' flashes over 3,000 times across a 100,000sq/m trail of the Spanish city Toledo, making one of the prettiest examples of lightpainting I've seen. "

EXAMPLE: endz7 car photos

And now time for a little something different.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/endz/

Car photos!
In my opinion, a lot of photographic fundamentals are required to come together in car photography, because it's really, really, really easy to make boring, unflattering, or otherwise uninspiring shots of even the most beautiful vehicle. Background selection, lighting, and composition are a few key elements of a good car photo and can make or break a photo.

The Flickr user whose link I've posted above is, in my opinion, has a pretty good collection of work- most of which is of what I'm assuming is his own car (that I wish were my own, but that's another story), a white Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X (whew. What a mouthful. Also, that's a 10, not the letter "x")

Below are a few samples. Do note the use of the hipster-vintage-faded effect.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/endz/3430207309/in/set-72157619631264161/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/endz/4524968263/in/set-72157624278978484/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/endz/5102030788/

EXAMPLE: "Cuba Gallery"- Portraiture

This year, I've been telling myself to try and work more on people-photos whenever the opportunity presents itself, because last year a very large majority of my work consisted of closeup, often abstract photos of objects that often involved small depth-of-field and vivid colors and textures. That is all fine and good, but it gets old after a while, and so I decided that people would be an interesting topic to branch out to, because they show emotion- unlike rulers and grass- and are very grounded and physical.

I recently found a great group of photos on Flickr by a user identified as "Cuba Gallery."
They tend to portray subjects who fill a good amount of the frame, and who are usually looking very pensive. They also all have a very interesting vintage faded look that is oh-so-popular among hipsters. Quite cool stuff.

The gallery: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=portrait&w=36587311%40N08

Sample photos below:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubagallery/4800429125/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubagallery/3391067011/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubagallery/4242142819/

White Balloon Photo Exhibit, Oct 25-29, 2010

Menlo School photo students are preparing for their first exhibit of the year. The theme of the show is White Balloon. Students were encouraged to photograph anything they wanted for this project, but were asked to incorporate a white balloon into their photos.




More than 100 black & white prints will be on display in Menlo's new Athletic Center lobby October 25th to the 29th during business hours. In addition, the school is hosting Creative Arts Night on Thursday, Oct 28 at 7pm in the same venue. Please be sure to see the exhibit as you come in to enjoy this special evening program celebrating all the arts at Menlo School.

READING: TED Prize Goes to Anonymous Photographer and Street Artist

JR, an anonymous photographer and street artist has won a $100K TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) Prize in recognition for his large scale works in poor communities around the world.

So what do think of JR's work? How does his work help the poor? If you won, what would you do with the prize money?

EXAMPLE: Killing (Ballons) In the Name of Art

NPR's Fresh Air recently featured a photographer named Edward Horsford for his high-speed photography work with water balloons, in which he would pop the balloons and then photograph them right after the gory event - all by himself.

He uses background colors that contrast the color of water in motion, and a flash to light up the water.

Samples from his Flickr page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwardhorsford/page2/)
He's disabled downloading and directly linking to his photos, so the best I can do is provide links.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwardhorsford/5091496980/sizes/l/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwardhorsford/5091497952/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwardhorsford/4972135214/

Creative Light provides a good technical article on the methods he uses.

PROJECT 2: Nighttime Photography

For the past couple of weeks I have been experimenting with nighttime photography, external flashes, long exposures, and flashlights, all while having cars move through the frame. I would simply put my camera on a tripod, change the exposure time between 13 and 30 seconds. and just wait for cars to go by, and or walking through the frame with a flashlight.

I've really enjoyed experimenting with nighttime photography because there's just something nice and peaceful about taking photos at night, especially in places where there are no people around. Other than getting weird looks from drivers when my flashes go off as they are driving by, I'm pretty much left alone and undisturbed.

PROJECT 1: Black Baloons

For this project I took balloons, and photographed them in floating in the sky. I tried to make my project different from others which all had white balloons in them. I made the balloons block out the sun casting an intense shadow, making the white balloon appear black. Overall it was pretty fun.

EXAMPLE: Long Exposure + Strobe

I saw this image a while ago, but I just remembered it when I was doing some work with Mr. Z on Monday. What Mr. Z and I were trying to do was combine motion with a still image, if that's how you say it. Essentially one part of the photo would be still, say a person sitting down reading a book, while people would be walking through the frame causing motion and blur. In this image, the photographer had the shutter open for 1/2 second for the waterfall to be smooth, but in order to capture the model in motion, he used a really bright flash on her. This might be a better alternative to a very long exposure where the people are required to be still. It eliminates some potential motion in the still subject.

READING: Senegal

This blog post is about another blog post from the Times' photography blog, Lens. The article is Senegal's Changing Urban Landscape. The photographer, a Sicilian man named Mimi Mollica, used medium format color film. There is a brief accompanying article discussing his goals for the project. He wanted to portray a different Africa than the usual depictions of war-torn Africa. The images are beautiful. The blog wouldn't let me pull images from the slideshow, but here are some from the article:

Some of the other images are beautiful and I would recommend looking at them at the link above.

PROJECT 2

Here's our second project rotation Oct 4 - Nov 4

• Alternative Photography - Anna
• Large Format Camera - LeeAnne
• Medium Format Cameras - Laura
• Digital SLR & RAW Format - Phil
• Biography Comparing Two Photographers - Kevin
• Event Photography - Craig

PROJECT 1: Medium Format

This rotation I used a medium format Hasselblad. I really liked the viewfinder which was on the top side of the camera, so I could look down at the photo rather than holding the camera up to my eye. It was a little difficult to focus, but the high quality image I got when I did manage to focus it was worth it. I had some trouble with loading my film, sotwo rolls I shot weren't recorded. Another roll was somehow exposed to light and messed up. I liked some of my ideas so I might come back to them later in the year.

These are two of my contact sheets. In one I focused mostly on portraits and in the other on natural shots of Menlo. I also have two others not pictured, both of shadows on balloons.

This first shot is part of a series I took of shadows on balloons. The second one is a portrait. I photoshopped both of them to correct the color and contrast.

This photo is also part of the series of balloon shadows. The colors look pretty different because of the way I photoshopped them.

EXAMPLE: Creative Portrait Ideas

I noticed a couple of interesting ideas for portraits that you could try to use or adapt.

TV show advertisement featuring 2 faces, though the same face shown in this way might be even more interesting.

Separate closeups arranged in the shape of the body.

Here's the concept in the form of a diagram.

Use of a Lens Baby to shift/tilt focus as shown in this example from Craig Tanner's Light Diary.

Chuck Close style close up and symmetric lighting with very shallow depth of field.

Nice example by Ela Hawes using multiple exposure and moody, dramatic lighting on the face. Most likely this was assembled from multiple images in Photoshop. 

ROTATION 1: Large Format - Finishing Up

This week, we finished up our first rotation (mine being the large format view camera).

In this rotation, I primarily worked with balloons, but also experimented with what I call partial exposures and adjusting the plane of focus of the camera.

Overall, working with the view camera is very rewarding, because it is a very mechanical and visceral process. The camera is not as automated as the SLRs we worked with in Beginning Photography, which slows the photo-taking process down - which is beneficial in that it makes the photographer pause to further contemplate their photo, but makes the photography process somewhat more difficult as well, in that the photographer gets fewer chances in a given period of time to get a successful photo.

Below are a few samples of the various work I did. (I have not included the partial exposures because I posted them in Polaroid format a few blog posts back)




-Kevin

READING: Cell Phone Photography

Do you think of your cell phone as a viable camera for making artful pictures?

Perhaps we should... Take a look at what these professional photographers are saying and doing with their cell phone cameras.

PROJECT 1: Biogaphy - Similar Yet Different

This week, we looked at two famous up and coming photographers, Platon and Rankin. Both are photographer from the UK, who specialize in advertisement, and especially portraiture. Although similarities can be drawn between the two photographers in their purpose, and some of their work, the techniques they use are vastly different.

Platon's style is more subtle, focusing more on the whole face of the person, usually with a single colored, or at least very basic background. Platon is also famous for his use of wide angle lenses up close. Simple as his photographs may be, the emotions evoked are powerful and makes the viewer examine every aspect of the photo.

Rankin's loud and "in your face" style catches the eyes of many, and his photographs prove to be excellent advertisement material. As apposed to Platon, Rankin uses many colors and props to make the viewer not only focus on the person, or main subject, but other aspects of the photo that he deliberately uses to attract attention.

Check out both

of these photographers work at their websites:

http://rankin.co.uk/

http://www.platonphoto.com/

PROJECT 1: Speech Balloons!

I'm super happy with the way these turned out! My only qualm is the one with Meredie where it's a bit fuzzy, but I think I might just add a blur overlay and the same to Stephanie's picture so it looks a bit more intentional. :D I think I might end up using these in the exihibit later this month.

PROJECT 1: Alternative Process

Finally my liquid emulsion experiment has worked. Now all I need to do is complete my project with the toilet seat. Almost done. It is so close. It took lots of trial and error to realize how to work with liquid emulsion, but now that hard part is over. What Mr. Zivkov and I realized is that the red safety light in the darkroom was too bright for the liquid emulsion -- causing to turn black when we would develop our test prints. So now all the prep work with the emulsion is done in complete darkness.