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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Photo1Q3.23: Silhouette Group Practice

When being first introduced to the silhouettes through the videos, I was fascinated by how much emotion you can create with shadows, because it takes away the biggest factor in portraying emotion; one's face. They communicated their message, instead, through lots of movement and formations that helped to express what exactly they wanted to express. I normally communicate thoughts and expressions in photography through candid and raw photos (which is why I enjoy street photography so much), but in a studio environment, it's probably a lot more difficult as you'd have to tell your subject the exact poses and emotions that you want.

In my group was Rylen, Eldon, Kris, Noah, and myself. Rylen and Kris helped as "stagehands", assisting the rotating photographers (me, Eldon, Noah) in directing the subjects. I took part in directing the subjects (everyone excluding me) to do what was needed. I also searched for the exact images we wanted behind the silhouettes.

The outside silhouettes were mistakes as we did not have objects and did not tell a story, so apologies for that, but here they are nonetheless.

Outdoor






Indoor

Hint: Mongolia

Hint: ______ and Robin

The last image was particularly interesting to do because Noah (who plays Batman in this scene from Jaden Smith's "Batman" music video) had to jump. Because it was so dark, I had to accommodate for the eventual noise that this image would have (which can be seen quite clearly on the projector sheet). We utilized pens, tape, my jacket, and another sheet to communicate the vintage batman message. Scene/location was decided by Noah, and I believe he wanted to also draw on inspiration from the Batman music video (which has the imagery depicted above).

As for camera control, I used a slower shutter speed (which makes slight motion blur obvious), a higher ISO (~800), and the largest aperture I could use without blurring out the sheet or subject, which I believe was f/3.5.

The most significant lesson I learned about this was that preparation is key. Sure, you can wing it like I do sometimes, but its quite unhealthy. Develop good habits, and leave maybe 25% of a creative project unprepared. You should definitely allow your creativity to change certain things about a photograph on the spot, though it helps a lot to have a scene already prepped and an idea already in your head before heading into a project like this.

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Photo1Q3.22: Pow Wow Photos

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Photo1Q3.21: Pow Wow Favorites

I was extremely surprised by this event, despite the heavy rain. We visited all the artists I wanted to visit, and got to tour Lana Lane Studios for a little bit. Kaka'ako was wonderful, UberEats was late, and Tran Nguyen, Jesse Vasequez, and Jasper Wong were all equally incredible people. The murals the prior two were painting were remarkable, and I hope to see all of their finished work. It truly was something else, to visit all of these different artists from all over the place and to see their own styles (sometimes even clash with another's in work that's co-produced). Great event.

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Photo1Q3.20: Pow Wow

As a newcomer to Pow Wow, the most I've seen from this event is when I'm driving through Kaka'ako around this time of the year. I've seen a lot of the beautiful works they've had and I've always wondered what happens to the work they have (unfortunately they're often painted over, which sucks or is a beautiful thing to do depending on your interpretation). I frequent Kaka'ako area during the Summer so I've seen some of the works before and the area overall. I plan on going with the field trip group to check out the work there.

Knowing that this is the event's 8th year, I believe it's absolutely required for local artists and international artists to come to Hawaii and be featured/spotlighted because this place is a boiling pot of background. There's so much diversity, and the only way to create more of that diversity is to get artists to work together, even though they may be unfamiliar with each other. Pow Wow is an amazing way to do that, and I feel that Jasper Wong is doing great things with this event.

ARTIST 1: JASPER WONG

I'd like to meet the founder of this entire thing because I'm interested to see where he came from and how he came up with the idea of Pow Wow. Upon viewing his work, it's actually quite interesting. I was attracted to the near-psychadelic, but not really, type of vibe he has. It can appear chaotic and with order at the same time. They're pretty "out there", but there still exists definite artistic principles.

ARTIST 2: JESSE VELASQUEZ

A local artist, Velasquez had some really interesting murals on his Instagram. I was especially attracted to the noes below largely due to their composition. There's simply something very nice about the way his work flows and the placement of the design elements in his work.

ARTIST 3: TRAN NGUYEN

A Vietnamese artist, I was incredibly surprised at the work that Nguyen produced. There's an old, classical history that she paints/draws with, but whether its through her color palette, the subject matter, or simply having work that isn't done before, Nguyen's art is very beautiful and unique.

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Photo1Q3.19: Idioms, Literally Literal

My winter assignment was pretty even in what concepts I did literal and what concepts I decided to approach more creatively. 60% creative and 40% literal. What I noticed though, was that some of the more sincere and meaningful topics to me were the ones that received a figurative approach, while the more specific and obvious topics (ex: "A celebration") were literal.

When I first saw the idioms video, I was dumbfounded by how hidden some of the idioms could be. There were some that were ridiculously obvious, but at the same time, some needed review. Some were indeed familiar and were idioms that I might find myself using every so often, while some were idioms that I've never heard of.



For the group part of this project, I worked with Noah Maldonaldo. It was pretty familiar, as I've worked with him on various projects in photography often.

Individuals below:




Idioms were, in the respective order:
Time flies when you're having fun
Under the weather
Think outside the box
Broken time

For the "under the weather" idiom, it means to be sick. The weather part was easy to capture, though ideally, we would've wanted a pretty clear contrast with the clouds and the sky. Weather was good that day, which is great for us people, but not so great for the photograph. To stretch the idea across, we used a tissue.

For the "Think outside the box" idiom, it means to be creative and think beyond the usual spectrum that the average person would think within. Thinking is often associated with school, and thus, students, so I attempted to use those visual clues to make the concept a little more obvious (pencils, eraser, tape, sharpener, etc.) Though, the actual "think outside the box" idea could've been executed better. Perhaps placement of the paper being literally outside the box, or scrapping this concept and going for a better representation of the concept would've been superior.

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