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.