Photo1Q3.26: End Q3 Best Photo

Throughout this quarter, my creativity fluctuated like a sine wave graph; going up and down, reaching low lows and high highs. Working within a group can either widen your creativity or narrow it down. For some of these projects, I was working with minds that had very similar intentions (thus making the process of that project easier), while for others, it didn't necessarily "click" on the spot.

Best Photo; Extremely minimal, I wish I was able to photograph more like this without things being there at an opportune time and more of myself setting up a shot. Still, I think this is a great photo.

Free Choice; Got the most likes on my Instagram. Shoutout J CHEE

Free Choice; I really enjoy the gold shine spilling across the whole image. Definitely my top photo this month

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Photo1Q3.25: Portraits, Soft and Back Lighting

Among all the group assignments, I felt that it did help to prepare me for executing the actual project on my own. My group was experimenting with having multiple colored flashes go off at the same time and I thought that it could help broaden my range of photographs. Though, when looking for a good light source, it's good to look at how it appears and shows the subject instead of what the source actually is. In addition, you have to watch how you yourself is positioned, so there's a lot of different factors that go into getting the right artificial light source.

We had a gold reflector here to give Kris that golden aura to it. The weirdness of him using a shoe as a cell phone was a purposeful decision. If you've seen the Rising To The Top Adidas commercial, Playboi Carti was one of the actors in it that used a shoe as a phone (or acted as if it were a phone). I wanted to sort of recreate that. Aperture was near its largest to help isolate the subject. Some editing done.

Unfortunately, I could not find the time to shoot a back-lit silhouette portrait. Thus, I selected this photo which I took during the time frame of the project. I liked how the light was being sprayed across the back side of the courts, and it was at just enough of an angle to create a silhouette. If I timed this better, I feel that I could have achieved a better photo.

Compared to the beginning, I feel like I improved from a 7/10 photographer to an 8/10 photographer. I know that I have good fundamentals, and I have improved on generally everything, though I know that I still need work on controlling the visual clues and strengthening my time management skills. These skills are more on the outside of photography though, and I should be able to improve at that.

As stated above, I feel that in order to strengthen my creative work, I have to find time to do it. I know that I'm busy with tennis and school, but so does everyone else. In addition, it's part of being a student-athlete; being able to excel both in academics and in education is a must.

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Photo1Q3.24: Photograms

I wanted to achieve an extremely minimal look that had at least some bit of personality in it, thus, the objects I chose were very small. Some a little too small. If you look at the Black Panther album cover art, that's the type of minimalist approach I wanted to go for. Like before, I used various sewing materials, ties, and objects overall that didn't have too much rotundity or transparency (though, in retrospect, they would've greatly improved my final product). I was looking for simpleness, so the objects that I could use were limitless, but I somehow could not stray away from the same sewing materials I used for the sunprint assignment.

Unfortunately the materials I used were vastly undersized in comparison to the large 8x10 canvas I used. Still, I used them as best I can. My final design is a piece resembling hierarchy and power. As one climbs up the "ladder" in society, one begins to realize at a certain point that they are liable to disconnection from the rest of society. One can interpret the exact middle however they like, though I simply wanted to use patterns and repetition to create this message (in all honesty all art is up to your interpretation, I'm simply attempting to drive it toward a general perspective).

Going throughout this entire photographic process, it's easy to critique it as someone might ask why students are doing this type of work instead of legitimate photography with a camera and building skills on there. I like to think of it as the way that Karate Kid was trained. Wax on, wax off. Not training, but rather, building fundamentals through a task somewhat unrelated but has clear translations into actual photography. It all builds up, and I think that both sunprints and photograms did that well.

I would definitely would want to use larger objects if I were to redo this project. I was satisfied partially with my composition, but if I used a much more diverse range of objects, I feel that I would've been able to communicate my message much more effectively.

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