Wednesday: June 18, 2008

Big, big world
Sometimes I think that New York City is one of the loneliest places in the world. So many people surround us here, but at times I feel more alone than I ever have. None of these people knows me, thinks about me, cares about me. New Yorkers have to try desperately to stand out, to not get lost in the crowd as at times I have here. You pass hundreds of people on the street everyday who have been taught not to acknowledge you, but to look right through you. Living this every day is exhausting; it’s enough to wear someone out. I wanted these pictures to encompass that. It’s strange to be surrounded by people but to sink into the background unnoticed, because every part of every person is important. Of course, there are lots of amazing things about New York City. It is full of life, places to go and see, and people to meet. It is disturbing to me that at the same time, it is all too easy to become disoriented, tired, lost, and lonely.

Friday: June 13, 2008

Yesterday we went out to Long Island City, wandered around the area taking pictures, visited a gallery, and watched a professional photographer show us her process.

I found Long Island City to be a relaxing environment to take pictures in. It was not nearly as crowded as Manhattan or Harlem was, but had the same look about it. The people were much friendlier towards us about taking their picture. Here are some shots from the neighborhood.

I love the shadows in this one. They lead you across the street, towards the truck, and all the way into the photo. The composition of the photo leads your eye in as well because of its directional lines.

As I’ve said before, I’m a fan of messing around with aperture priority. I like that the entire photo is out of focus except for a section towards the center of the wall. The different focus keeps the photo from being a plain, boring photo of a brick wall.

This picture seems almost foreboding. I didn’t feel nervous at all while in Long Island City, but this photo makes it seem almost scary. You can see the street clearly but the sidewalk remains under darkness, pulling your eye all the way back in and making you wonder if you really want to walk down that street!

This guy was really goofy and asked me to take his picture. So I did!

I like this one a lot. I have a version of it where the American flag is in focus and the telephone poles are out of focus, but the one above is much stronger. It seems like the American flag SHOULD be the focus of the picture, but it isn’t. Sort of like how American should be the most important thing to the government, but it’s not….?

I like the reflection of the building in the water. Pretttttty cool! The photo is more interesting than a photo of a puddle and also more interesting than a photo of a building, because it’s both. Ha.

I thought about theming this photoshoot around focus/out of focus, taking the same image twice only once keeping the subject in focus and once purposely keeping the subject out of focus. Had I ended up doing this, I planned on doing just what I did here.. putting the two images side by side.

This was light bouncing off of a building that I kept out of focused and darkened a little bit in photoshop. It doesn’t even look like this was taken during the day, or in Long Island City!

I didn’t take any photos in the gallery, but I did take a few when we went to the artist’s studio. The building itself was amazing, covered in colorful graffiti that apparently changes more often than can be counted. We learned about the artist’s photography printing process and a few people even had their picture taken!

This one was taken inside, but you can get a very general idea of what the graffiti was like.

Rosy getting her picture taken !

Wednesday: June 11, 2008

This is a very rough draft of my artist’s statement for our final project.

When I think about what my favorite thing to photograph is, I immediately land on portraiture. I love people, so it is only natural that this would be so. I love taking pictures of my friends, of my family, and of strangers (when they let me). So, for the final project I know for sure that I want the subject matter to focus on portraits. I find myself interested in a number of different types of portraiture. I like taking portraits of people tiny in comparison to their surroundings (like a landscape shot, only with a person in it). The subject of the photo seems disoriented, lost, and lonely at times, but can also seem entirely free, all depending on how the photo is shot. I also like taking very staged portraits with lots of bright lights, dream-like and surreal. The photos can be taken anywhere, but made to look not quite right or somehow fantastical. Another type of portrait I like to take are ones that are close, personal. Maybe the subject is being photographed up close, or doing something only he or she would do based off of their personalities. Another idea I had for this type of personal photo is different body parts, not attached to the rest of the body, all doing different things but all shot of the same person at the same location. These types of portraits would have to be of a close friend of mine, which I’m fine with for an exhibit like the one we’re having. I also like taking portraits of myself, which are extremely personal.
It’s hard for me to decide what type of portrait I want to take for the final exhibit. Part of me wants to do all four types and only include a few photos from each type, but I think a bigger part of me wants to focus in on one. I think I’ve narrowed it down to three of the four choices, excluding self-portraits. That still leaves a lot of options, so I’m going to think some more about it tonight as well as do a lot of shooting over the weekend of all three types of portraits and see how it goes and then decide for sure.

Tuesday: June 10, 2008

I decided not to individually comment on any of the pictures I took at the World Trade Center site since I already presented them to the class with commentary. Instead I’m going to talk about some photos I took at the Museum of Modern Art! Here are some links to WTC photos though, if you’re interested. The vibe at the site was dark and almost foreboding. There were fences and security everywhere, as well as swarms of tourists gazing around, taking photos of the site and buying merchandise. It was an unsettling feeling to be there, and there was a definite change in what it’s like to be there (with good reason, of course). Everything felt dark, closed off/inaccessible but at the same time was swarmed with people and life all around. There was also a sense of hope, a sense that all of that darkness can and will change soon. I tried to convey this in my photos.

Yesterday (6/9) we went to the Museum of Modern Art. We went to see the photography exhibit, but once I was done I couldn’t help but explore the rest of the third floor a little. These next few pictures were taken in a circular room, the walls full of colored light that changed shades with time. I was obviously attracted to the bright colors, but loved even more that two of the four pictures the people in these photos turned out as dark silhouettes against this bright background, but in the other two you can clearly make out details of their faces/heads.

I also took pictures in a couple more of the exhibits.

This photo was taken in a room full of lights and smoke. It was pretty eerie! I wanted to get a picture of someone walking by it, silhouetted, with light popping out from behind their head. I waited for about 5 minutes and it finally happened! I really love this photo. It reminds me of a dream or something, it doesn’t even seem real to me. This is the exhibit this photo was taken in…

The last exhibit I took pictures in was one that had strobe lights going off very rapidly and water falling from the ceiling. It was really trippy! The two photos I took in there came out completely differently.

vs.

And lastly, speaking of trippy, today when I was uploading photos from the computer to my Flickr something very strange happened! TAKE A LOOK!

Those are just a few! Apparently, the pictures look like this because some of the data was lost in the transmission between uploading these to Flickr from the computer. Bryan told me to save them because apparently there is a whole photo exhibit going on right now with pictures just like this, only done on purpose!? They’re really strange looking, but they’re also really cool I think. They remind me of white noise, only… in color! It’s funny to me that these pictures were an accident, but there is actually an exhibit full of pictures just like this going on. Does that mean that these pictures I made can be considered art? And what is art anyway? I think about that a lot, actually. What exactly is art is definitely subjective, so it’s hard to define what is and is not art on a universal level. This question comes up in every genre of art, also. When I try to define it for myself, the best answer I can come up with is that what is art depends on the intention behind the creation. If something is created with a purpose and meaning, even if it only applies to the person making it, then it is art. I didn’t mean to have the pictures turn out they way, so I don’t see them as art, but somebody else might! And that’s fine with me.

Sunday: June 8, 2008

Okay! This post is going to be full of pictures from the past couple days, 6/3 and 6/4. I’m going to blog again tomorrow and post the pictures from the World Trade Center site, so hold out for those.

1) On the 3rd we went down to the West Village to take pictures. At first I was just taking pictures of the area and some of the people I saw around.

I like this picture because it looks like the pigeons are having a conversation while fighting for the chicken wing on the ground. So goofy! I had my camera on portrait mode and I think it worked out because the pigeons themselves are in focus but the background gets is soft.

I like how the graffiti wall leads your eye into the rest of the picture. I’m a big fan of messing around with aperture priority so I like that only a part of the wall is in focus and the rest of the picture is soft.

See! I’m really into aperture priority. This picture is very abstract; it’s hard to figure out. If I hadn’t taken it, I probably would have no idea what it was of. I put my camera on a ramp and focused on the center of it, leaving the entire background (which has people from our class in it!) out of focus.

I noticed this kid looking at me from a distance and wanted to take a picture of him so I did! I tried to keep it interesting by positioning him at the very left side of the photo and keeping the eclectic side of the building, rather than the street, in it as well.

Here are a couple more from around the West Village worth sharing!

So, after we walked around for a while and class ended, I stumbled across a park full of little kids running around in a sprinkler. While I watched them and took pictures of them, I started thinking about how children are so cool. That sounds dumb, but seriously. None of them asked me why I was taking a picture or got offended by it either, they all just ran around and had a great time in the sprinklers.

I love this picture. The girl in the blue bathing-suit looks so sassy with her hand on her hip it makes me laugh. I’m glad I decided to focus on the water droplets rather than the two girls. If I had focused on them the picture would have been difficult to look at because of all the out of focus water droplets, but with the droplets in focus but the girls in the background still visible the picture works well. It’s one of the only pictures I’ve taken recently that I really love. And the rainbow was just so great, I had to make sure to fit it into the bottom of the picture.

Here are some more pictures of kids playing in the sprinklers! I like them because they have a sense of movement and life to them, just like the children in the park did. These pictures are definitely worth looking at if you have time.

Here are some more from the park also, but no sprinklers involved!

2) On the 4th I took pictures at Reverend Billy’s protest in Union Square. There was so much energy around while I watched him and some of his “church” members scream their hearts out for their cause! The portraits I took of Billy, his wife, and one of his followers (with his daughter) are very emotive. You can see the passion in their faces, but also notice how they seem to appear exhausted and worn out from it all.

This one below is also from the protest. It definitely fits the mood of the afternoon. You can see the sign, but it’s out of focus through the crisply in focus oppressive bars of the fence. It’s almost a disturbing shot to me.

Wednesday: June 4, 2008

For some reason my blog clock is off by 4 hours so it says I’m posting this at 2 30 am on Thursday? Not that it really matters but jut to be clear I’m always posting on the day the entry title is!

Anyway, on Friday we went to Harlem. It was definitely an experience. It was hard for me to take what I see as a good picture because the people who were around were not interested in having their picture taken. I got yelled at a few times to “get permission” and “not take anymore pictures”. Even though it was intimidating, it was a good experience for me. Not everyone is comfortable having his or her picture taken, and this taught me how to walk away and keep my cool. Take a look at what I did get though!

This was a construction worker who I met just before we all left Harlem. He was really friendly, and even drove up to me in some crazy machine for lifting things and asked me to take his picture. He then proceeded to get out and come talk to me for a while and was completely fine with me taking his picture after I asked. He had a nice personality and joked with me that I had a thing for him and loved taking his picture. He even offered for me to take pictures of all of his friends a block or so away, but I decided not to. It was nice to find a friendly face in Harlem, even though it took me until the end of the trip. I like this portrait because you can really see how animated he is. It captured his personality (well, what I know of it) well!

Well at least the buildings didn’t yell at me for taking their picture! I like this one because of how angular it is. It’s divided into three obvious sections of different colors, all of which lead your eye to the point where both buildings and the sky meet.

I took this shot on impulse. I saw the subject walking down the street and initially noticed his hat. As he walked by, I decided to take a quick shot of him without thinking too much about it. I’m glad I did! The look on his face is great. As I said before, a lot of the people in Harlem had serious attitudes, and this look on the subject’s face in this picture really shows that. I don’t think he looks angry, just sortof like… “what are you doing!? who are you and why do you have a camera?”, which is the vibe I got from most people the whole afternoon. I also like that the picture is zoomed out enough to include the sidewalk in the background framed by the scaffolding, again leading your eye all the way back into the photo, past the subject.

This is the only other person in Harlem who agreed to let me take his picture when I asked. He saw that I had a camera and initially tried to get a co-worker of his to let me take a picture of her, but she was too shy or uncomfortable and didn’t want me to. So, I asked him if he would let me take a picture of him and he said okay! Even though he agreed to it, when I started to take pictures he got a little bit shy and uncomfortable, but still seemed flattered I was taking his picture. I’ve found that even when my friends take portraits of me I get a little nervous (even though I do it to people, too!), so his reaction was very human to me. It’s also funny to look at the subject of this picture versus the subject of first picture I posted (the construction worker) and see how differently the two subjects respond to the camera, the former being self-assured and confident and the latter being more reserved. In the first picture, the subject has light falling directly on him while in this picture the subject is almost a silhouette, which makes sense in terms of their personalities.

This picture is very Harlem to me. A man on the street was trying really hard to sell something to Colin and chased us down about a half a block before giving up.

Some more buildings in Harlem! I like the colors and angles in this one.

This woman was going up and down the street reading from the Bible and preaching about something, I’m not entirely sure what. To me, she looks really passionate in this picture. Because of the aperture settings I was using, everyone in the background is just sortof fading away but she is clearly in focus. I also like the sunlight falling directly on her head. I’m trying to decide if I prefer it in color or in black and white, so if you have any thoughts let me know?

Another one of just Harlem. What I like most about this picture is all of the direction lines. The paint on the street, the street itself, the sides of the buildings, and the cars all lead your eye ALL the way back into the picture. All of the lines work to make me notice not only the foreground of the picture, but also and perhaps even more so the background of it (if you look closely you can even see the buildings at the very very back of the picture).

Being in Harlem and dealing with the negative reactions of its inhabitants made me think further about some things I’ve been considering about New York City since living here. I’m stealing this from a comment I left for Jae on her blog earlier today, but I think it sums up how I’m feeling right now.

“Last night I was thinking about how I consider New York City to be one of the loneliest places in the world. So many people surround me when I’m here, but I feel more alone at times than I ever have. None of these people knows me, thinks about me, cares about me, etc. New Yorkers have to desperately try to stand out, be an individual, and not get lost in the crowd as I sometimes feel I do when I’m in New York. But your photos don’t let them do that. In the darkness, everything and everyone blends together and some of the individuality that the subjects of your pictures and even of New York City itself strive for is lost. I love these pictures because they tell the truth, but I hate these pictures because they tell the truth. To be clear, I don’t actually hate these pictures at all, I think they’re lovely, I just hate they way they make me feel. Regardless of any of your personal intentions behind these photos, for me, when I look at them I am forced to see New York in the way I hate to: huge, empty, and a little bit lonely.”

This is not to say I don’t love New York! I really do! Just something to think about.

Sunday: June 1, 2008

These are pictures from Canal Street (May 29th) and Coney Island (May 28th).

This portrait was taken at Coney Island. Portraits are my favorite type of picture to take, especially when I’m good friends with the subject. The model in this picture is one of my oldest friends so I immediately found myself liking the picture right off the bat. As a picture, however, I think the directional lines in the background make the photo as a whole more interesting as well as serving to draw your eye into the photograph. The shadows on her face and on the background surface add something to the photo, keeping it from being flat or boring.

This was also taken at Coney Island. The mural in the background is colorful and cheerful, but this picture is actually heartbreaking to me. The cheerfulness that comes from the colorful and happy mural in the background is contrasted by the subject of the photo: a homeless man… the darkness falls on him, while the light is just above and below him. The directional lines of the mural wall itself, the top of the mural wall, the boardwalk boards, and the shadow on the ground all lead the eye into the photograph. I may end up editing out the white building seen in the sky above the mural, but I’m not sure yet.

Taken in Chinatown! The aperture priority in this one is cool. I just focused on a tiny part of the railing and kept everything else out of focus.

This was taken on the red door that is on the left side of the background of the photo before this one. I like the red in this picture and the shadows as well. I want to see what is behind this door!

Taken in Chinatown. I like how this photo is pretty monochromatic, and yet not boring because of the various shades of brownish-grey. The lines are pointing to the right, just like the subject’s gaze.

This one is from Coney Island, of course! I originally boosted the already vibrant color a bit, but I decided to make a black and white version of it also. Everything on Coney Island is loud and vibrant and colorful, so I think it’s a nice change to take all of the color away. It makes the picture seem nostalgic somehow, which is fitting because Coney Island is being knocked down soon.

Also at Coney Island. Opposite from the picture before this, I decided to boost the color and keep that famous Coney-Island feel to it.