Week 10 Weekly Photo: Self- Portrait

I had a friend assist me this week in setting up this image. The location was on a balcony I left the image with a yellowish tone because it was because I personally love the heat. Yellow is a warm color, therefore symbolizing it was in a hot environment. Which in the summer in Las Vegas, temperatures have been in the high nineties and low hundreds all week. I love it! Also, I wanted this image to be outdoors because I love the outdoors. I love taking photographs outside because it gives the subject a sort of natural beauty. The reason I chose to pose like I am curious about something is because I am a very curious type of person. Also, it is the first pose I could think of at the moment. What I absolutely love about this image is my shadow because the sun was facing from the upper left, as I posed to the right facing the camera in the opposite corner, the shadow looks like it is facing away from me. As I am sure most people do, when I am on a balcony, if I am not posing for a picture, typically, you will find me leaning on the fence. I love how the image I captured makes it look as though my shadow is doing that exact thing. Another detail I had noticed about this image is the leading lines. The fence around the corner and the shadow of the fence behind me, as well as the lines above me on the wall and the palm tree in the background, leads the common eye straight towards me; which is the subject of the image I wanted everyone to look at first. After the image was captured, I used Photoshop to digitally make it look nice.

Week 8 Weekly Photo: Controversy

This is me. The name of the weekly photo challenge this week was controversy. After much thought, I came up with… gamers. People who devote hours of every day into playing multiple video games. A lot of people do not understand how or why they are able to do this. It is there passion, is my response. It is a way for them to escape to other lands, be another person, learn about the world, etc. In my opinion, gamers are typically highly intelligent and have super cat like reflexes. Others would give rebuttals such as, they could get knowledge from school; or they could not possibly be healthy being stuck in their house all day, staring at a screen, or other such remarks. People are different, let them stay different! If one chooses to live their life in a game, so be it. My photograph is representing myself as a gamer. For the process, I actually chose something a little different. Instead of setting a timer or clicking a remote button, I decided it may be easier to take a video. So I did! I shot a video of myself in different positions as if I were really playing a game, which I wasn’t at the time. Later, I went through the video on my laptop and took screen shots of each position. I then chose the ones I liked best and layered them together in Photoshop. I used the opacity levels on the layers to show a little bit of each one. It may not seem like it, but I even used the opacity on the clearest photo of myself. Then I used masks to single out the different positions. When I found the right combination, I adjusted the vibrancy, and the lighting. Then, that was it.

Week 7 Weekly Photo: Adult Content

 

Warning! This photograph may contain inappropriate detail for ages under 18. This week, we had to find or shoot an “Adult Content” Photograph. I grabbed this photo from Google images. It is of a woman only wearing shoes and a little bit of jewelry, but she was draped in a white sheet. Supposedly, this photograph was taken around the 1940’s. Which what I was explain to in class, any photograph before the 1950’s was most likely not copy written. In that since, I wanted to share this photograph as an example for “Adult Content”. I understand that the woman in this photograph was covered up, but in this time era, this would have been considered a scandal, “too much skin” they may have said. Now of days, you can walk down a city street or turn on the television and see worse. Not only that, but we do not think twice about it. Nakedness does not mean sex! This is what we are taught, this is what the world believes now. Some religions may disagree, but legally, this is nothing. I believe this image was a great example to share because it shows us that our bodies can be used as art. She looks beautiful and full of grace in this image. The photographer did a wonderful job of contrast, and the background choice looks to be full of a beautiful pattern; it is not too distracting, yet it clearly proves itself worth in the image. It also shows natural elements, which metaphorically and ironically proves her body to be looked at as natural as well. This is a beautiful photograph.

Week 6 Weekly Photo: Collage

For this weekly photo, each student in the class had to create a college using images. I chose to create a horse collage. If you look carefully, you can see that there were 5 different horse figurines used. These are the ones that I have displayed in my room, each one from a close family member or friend. Ever since I could remember, I have been obsessed with horses of any type. Therefore, a horse if just perfect for this assignment. I carefully used Photoshop to sort of “glue” these images together. Also, I tediously masked out around the parts of the image that I did not like or want. They stayed the original color of when the image was taken, which kind of surprised me. I have never noticed how close in color these were until I placed them next to each other. There is no doubt that they match pretty well. I used a plain black background to create a sort of contrast and allow the horse to almost pop out of the image. I spent a lot of time putting this together and I believe it has turned out well.

Week 6 EOC: How has art changed you?

I grew up in a not so great family. Life was always crazy growing up. When I was first told about and shown art, it gave me a sense of peace. It taught me to always have an open mind and never loose sight of what your plans and goals are. It was my grandma who first stepped into this world with me. Without art, I may have easily lost myself in the chaos and destruction my family who seems to be cursed. Literally art has saved me. It did not only change me, but it also has changed my life. As I grew closer to this thing called art, I was able to learn the importance of life; I was able to see things in a different way than before and grow in self confidence and everything else that is important to who I am now. I learned about art at a young age. It still sometimes seems a little strange to me; because art held me together, I was able to hold my family together. I was able to confidently stand up for us, past all of the rumors, obstacles, and threats. I would not be who I am without art, therefore I am very grateful that my grandma was able to expose this to me at the age she had. I still remember sitting with her in her small run- down apartment. We took some of the shells from her shell collection and put them together to look like a rocket shooting off of a beach (we thought was what looked like a little piece of Florida). That is as best as I can put it, art has saved me and because it did so, I was able to somewhat save my family too. I will never stray from the path of art, it is within me; it is part of me and who I am.

Week 5 Weekly Photo: You working on a computer editing a photo

This week, my weekly photo was called “You working on a computer editing a photo”. This is a photo I took of me editing a photograph I had taken of my nephew a week ago. I used Photoshop as my tool for editing that photo and the photo in this post. It is kind of funny because I also used the same laptop in the photo to edit this photo. In the reflection on the computer screen, you can see my face as I edited the photo carefully. Also, you can see that the keyboard and my hands are slightly blurry, that was to show action of my hands and computer at work rather than me just staring into a computer. I tried to use a high aperture to create short depth of field but in the end, to get the correct exposure without a tripod, I moved the ISO up as high as it could go, therefore the image is highly grainy. Oh well. I like the colors that showed up in the camera though. In fact, I even enhanced them through the Adobe Photoshop program to make them stand out even more. The light was positioned from behind the computer and faced the camera. In a result of that, the light created shadows facing the camera, which was another nice feature for the image.

Week 4 Weekly Photo: Me in a camera shop

This Weekly photo was supposed to be a photo about myself being caught in a professional photography store. To be completely honest, this photo was actually taken at midnight in Walmart. Unfortunately, the store I had gone to had put away the displayed professional cameras. After that, I did what I could with what I had, which happened to be camera cases, disposable cameras and a bunch of batteries. I positioned myself looking at one of the camera cases that were honestly on the cheaper side (hence: Walmart) but I thought looked pretty nice, sturdy and something I would maybe purchase. Then, I had a helper grab a snapshot of me looking inside, simple enough right? I thought so. Later on, I used Photoshop to help bring more attention away from the, originally bright yellow, price tags. I wanted to make sure you guys could see the emphasis was on the camera case I was holding. Also, I cropped the tons of batteries on one side of me and the disposable cameras on the other out of the photo to, again, bring more emphasis to the camera cases.

Week 3 Photo Challenge: You Incredible!

This weekly photo was called "You Incredible!" What we had to do was take a photograph of ourselves in a in an incredible place or situation. This is why in the photograph you will see me standing on a rock looking out at the Nevada Red Rock Canyon. Some of my family and I took a small trip there this past week, it was awesome! I consider Red Rock Canyon an incredible place, which I have now only been to a couple times, for many reasons. The first reason is because if you know me, which you can read about in the "About me" section of my page, I am a huge outdoors person. I absolutely love nature and the beauty of the art created in time by the earth itself. The second reason that I believe a place like Red Rock Canyon is so incredible is because, it is out in the desert, and away from the city. This makes it a nice and relaxing area to visit when you just need that little bit of fresh air. One of the last reasons is because I like walking, hiking and activities. All of this can be done in Red Rock Canyon. Because I went with my family, the last reason would be because you can either get in touch with yourself or enjoy it with the family or friends. Living with busy lives, it is nice to get out and socialize, with those people who mean the most to you, every once in a while. I cannot wait to go back again sometime!

Paparazzi image

This is a shot I took representing a fake paparazzi image. I dressed up my model to look like a famous celebrity that had passed out in the hallway of a hotel due to her crazy hard party the night before and her lovely wine she is snuggling with. She is meant to look like she is passed out cold, and drunk. I got inspiration from a clip out of a foreign movie my instructor shared with the class last week. The scene was a famous male whom passed out drunk in his car; the paparazzi were swarming around him taking shots from every angle possible. How I set it up was I had my model lay on the ground in a hallway in my home. Next, I placed the props carefully on her; the props consisted of a small fleece though, a wine bottle, a messy blonde wig, and stylish sunglasses. She had the easy job of lying there as I took multiple shots from odd angles just like the paparazzi did in the film. I hope that you enjoy it!

Constructed Self- Portrait

This is a famous self- portrait of Ansel Adams, He took this photo in a Victorian Mirror in Atherton, California. For this assignment, I had to take a famous self- portrait and with using a program such as Photoshop, I had to place my self-portrait and something I like in it. Can you see the possible additions? I added in a Coca- Cola bottle that I had actually purchased and drank the night before. I love Coca- Cola, it is one of my favorite drinks. Although I love Dr. Pepper as well, I grew up with a “coca-holic” mother –Is what we call her— and despite the health factor, she always allowed us to drink right along with her (Coca- Cola of course). Also, I love Ansel Adams’ work; that is why I placed myself right next to him smiling.  Even though I am personally a digital photographer, I love working with black and white. It makes it more challenging to get the photo just right and with all of the rare values you can play with makes it unique. I have never seen one photo that Ansel had taken that I do not like and say WOW! It amazes me, even in a generic self- portrait such as this one, I am still blown away by all of the values of white and black. To get the photo to be the way it is, I brought the original photograph, a recent photo of me and my photograph of the Coca- Cola bottle and used masks in Photoshop to single out the bottle and myself. Then I used an adjustment layer to turn the bottle and I into black and white and bring up the contrast and brightness to create more values. I had fun with doing this because it was as if I were stepping into his photograph and way right there with him.

Week 1 EOC: Stallions not Unicorns

A reasonable job (stallion) for me right out of College would be a nature and/or landscape photographer. I am a quiet, outdoors person who has a passion for Mother Nature. Therefore, this job would be great for the kind of lifestyle I would want to live. I would be outside in places all around the world that I have traveled to. This goal is possible because I am working on my bachelor’s degree in Digital Photography and have great support to help me get started. I do not have a lot of experience with professional nature photography but I have plenty experience with the camera and the outside world. Therefore, I could start by freelancing for different magazines or any other businesses. From there, I would build a reputation and eventually have my own galleries.

An unreasonable job (unicorn) for me right out of college would be something such as a world famous fine arts photographer. The reason is because I have simply not had the experience that a current famous fine art photographer has had. Also, it may take me several years to gain a strong business to sell my work in a way that I could make a living off of. I have not traveled the world yet; and more importantly, I do not have a big professional portfolio that I can prove to the world my capabilities. As I mentioned in my last paragraph, I need a lot of freelancing and little jobs here and there to build my reputation. Eventually, I hope to create my own galleries around at least the United States and sell my photos to high and low end businesses, art fanatics or anyone else who simply loves photography. Right now though, I may have to stick with freelancing, but as long as I am out taking photos, I will be happy no matter what.