Obeservation Assignment----part 2

Scene:
1)The room was dark. Although it was sunny outside, the dark color curtains blocked the light and made it look like cloudy. There are many paintings and decorations in the house. Yet, the orders of putting them added no more beauty but mess in the house. The cover of the piano was lifted up, and from the dirt and the dust on the keys I could tell that it had always been. There were a lot of photos in the frames of different sizes lied on the piano. Most of them were famous pianist. There was a lamp at each corner of the living room. The dim light came from the lamps didn't make the room any warmer, at least they didn't make people feel warmer. All the couches were full of animal furs on them. It was because there were four pets in the house and the smell of the house wasn't pleasant at all.

2)As a backyard of a house, it was huge. From the balcony, I could see a mini waterfall coming down just besides me. And there was a stream running around the house. Everything in the backyard was perfectly made. As I walked along the sidewalk, the grass and the tree created a pleasant smell and gave me a happy mood. There was a putting green on the each side of the stream. I didn't know how they could take care of those but the grass seemed short and lively just as the ones in a real golf court.

Kelly Fitzgerald

True to her roots as a native Californian, Kelly Fitzgerald captures the images, faces and landscapes of our ever changing culture. She has an established, excellent reputation for producing uniquely creative and quality images within the field of black and white photography.

With over seventeen years of experience with commercial photography and portraiture, Fitzgerald has developed a style of precision that has won her a following of local clientele eager to use the talent she exudes to mix people with the world around her. Fitzgerald's work has been featured every year in The Best of Photography Annual since 1998, Photographer's Forum Magazine (Nov. 1998), San Diego Magazine, San Diego Bride & Groom, covers for Revolt in Style Magazine (including actor Ray Liotta), G&L Times and Coiffure Q Magazine based out of London.

Fitzgerald has received top honors including 4th place in the Photographer's Forum Magazine & Canon Photography Contest (1998), several awards at the Southern California Fair and has had her work accepted by the New York State Fair. Her photographs have appeared in numerous exhibits in various art galleries including Europe, Mexico and throughout Southern California including the San Diego Art Institute. Recently, her work was exhibited in a show with legends Cecil Beaton and Linda McCartney. She also won an award at The Hubbard Museum in Association with The Smithsonian Institution in 2003. Fitzgerald was the first photographer to receive the Gene Harrison Memorial Award in November of 2003.


This one is called "Mono Lake Basin". When I first saw this image, I can only tell that it was a neat landscape photograph. But when I looked closer, I found out if I look at it as a whole, this image appears to be symmetrical and I think that's what this image is all about.


This on is called "Bodie House". It is interesting because it was taken from the right spot at a perfect angle when all the clouds were just around the house but not touching the house as if they were drew on the photo afterward. This again reminds the 2D feature of photography.


This one is called "Old Door and Windows". It is a photo with a lot of black and white contrast and we can easily tell that the photographer really spent some time dodging the the ground and the grass. In my opinion, the reason for this is to emphasize the darkness window and therefore create a mysterious feeling about what are inside the house.


This one is called "A natural arch has formed over the gate to an open field in a picturesque Kauai, Hawaii." It really caught my eye because the trees and the ground formed a shape of a arch. And with the little open door and the several objects on the background, it gave me a feeling of gate to another world.


This one is called "A wooden swing hangs alone over the ocean in Kauai, Hawaii creating a feeling of solitude.". I like this one because of 2 reasons: 1. things shown on the photo being limited has always been a disadvantage for photo, but the photographer just used this feature and made the swing seem to come from the sky. 2. It used colors to trick us. The color of the same swing, with different darkness of the background, seems to be different.

Observation Assignment

People
1) She is an experienced pianist. She is very talkive and always tells everybody about her past in a strong russian accent. She is in her 70s. Yet, the energy I can feel from her was even more than most of the adults. Although her hairs are already white and there are lots of wrinkles on her face. Every movement she does has certain power and strength in it. She never covers her emotions on purpose. Whenever she laughs or crys, everybody could tell that it is her true emotion. When she touches piano, she suddenly becomes another person. Throughout the concert, to her, it was as if no one else expect her and the piano were there. For every notes she played, it was not only right, but also with feelings in it. Finally, it was the extremely loud sound of plauses that woke up. She stood up, bowed really gentlely, and then started to play the next song.
2) He had been standing there for almost 2 hours and was still standing there. What's more, all he did was standing there without any other movement. His skin is dark but healthy. It was in the middle of a hot summer, yet he was all covered in a suit. Most of the upper suit was wet. Although he didn't move at all, you can tell that he spent a lot of energy doing that. He was looking straight the whole time. Yet when I walked to his front, I found out he was not looking at me, but somewhere beyong me. His eyes told me he was very determined and tough. Then I walked away. When I came back to the same place 2 hours later, he was standing there, with the same posture and same determination.

Scene
1)

Andre Kertesz

Throughout most of his career Kertész was depicted as the "unknown soldier" who worked behind the scenes of photography, yet was rarely cited for his work, even into his death in the 1980s. Kertész thought himself unrecognised throughout his life, despite spending his life in the eternal search for acceptance and fame. Though Kertész received numerous awards for photography, he never felt both his style and work was accepted by critics and art audiences alike. Although, in 1927, he was the first photographer to have a solo exhibition, Kertész said that it was not until his 1946 exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, that he first felt he received positive reviews on his work, and often cites this show as one of his finest moments in America. During his stay in America, he was cited as being an intimate artist, bringing the viewer into his work, even when the picture was that of subjects such as the intimidating New York City and even his reproduced work printed after his death received good reviews; "Kertesz was above all a consistently fine photographer". Kertész's work itself is often described as predominantly utilising light and even Kertész himself said that "I write with light". He was never considered to "comment" on his subjects, but rather capture them – this is often cited as why his work is often overlooked; he stuck to no political agenda and offered no deeper thought to his photographs other than the simplicity of life. With his art's intimate feeling and nostalgic tone, Kertész's images alluded to a sense of timelessness which was inevitably only recognised after his death. Unlike other photographers, Kertész's work gave an insight into his life, showing a chronological order of where he spent his time; for example, many of his French photographs were from cafés where he spent the majority of his time waiting for artistic inspiration. Although Kertész rarely received bad reviews, it was the lack of them which lead to the photographer feeling distant from recognition. Now however, he is often considered to be the father of photojournalism. Even other photographers cite Kertész and his photographs as being inspirational; Henri Cartier-Bresson once said of him in the early 1930s, "We all owe him a great deal".


This one is called "Lost CLoud" The composition is really interesting. While the windows on the building are pretty uniform like, the cloud next to it makes the whole thing creative. This also shows photography's 2D feature.


This on is called "Fork, Paris". The contrast and the composition in this picture are really significant. The subject is simple. Yet, it is just the simplicity, the light and the shadow make the picture different.


This one is called " Rainy Day in Tokyo". It is really interesting because the composition. A group of people holding black umbrellas are following a white arrow. We can't really see their face, which shows us the busy work in Tokyo has already taken away people's characters.


This one is called "Quais Paris". The road in the picture seems to go on forever. First, it's because as the road goes further, we can't see very clear. And second reason is that the man has covered the vanish point. Generally speaking, it is a very worth looking picture.


This picture is called "Chairs of Paris" I really like this one because it is very mysterious. I like how the chairs are just put randomly. In addition, those chairs, in the picture, are just several lines. If you pay enough attention, you will realize except for few chairs, you can't tell which way the chairs are facing.

Final Project Idea

For the final object, I'm going to shoot the pictures of old stuff. (At first, I was thinking about shooting emotions, but because that require very high skills and there are a lot of factors that could affect the result, I gave up that thought.) For example, a wrinkled hand and a rusty medal would do the work. Although the photo will not be taking during a period of time, but the objects will show how much time has past.

Journal #1 (part 2)

O.K. the result wasn't as good as expected, because the day was two dark and the shutter speed was always longer than usual. Almost all the shots were kinda blurry. So I just chose some of the better ones. They might not be really related to time, but at least, due to my better understanding on black and white, I can make them look a little nicer than before.

Michael Levin

When I searching for a photographer to write about, Michael Levin's works drew my attention the most. As I went to his website, I found out the reasons were the sharpness and the simplicity.
Michael Levin, one of the most popular photographer in these days, was named the 'photographer of the year' at the 06/07 International Photography Awards. American fine art magazine FOCUS declared "Michael Levin's captivating images are soulful and evocative". He likes to use long exposures so that what remains in the landscape feels essential and revealed. He shoots simple subjects in his different point of view, which gives them extra weight and value.



This one is called "Bamboo". The subject of this photo is very simple. Yet, it is just the simplicity create a different feeling. It is extremely focus that we can see the texture on the bamboo clearly. Michael Levin also inverted the black and white, which separate this shot from the others furthermore.



This one is called Zebrato. The simplicity is as significant as all the other ones. The clouds are kind of blurry while the other parts stay extremely sharp, which shows the long exposure Michael Levin uses. The lower part of the image is so sharp as if it was created by the computer. Yet, Michael Levin told us by his photo: Nature can have it done much better. The photo are almost symmetrical except there is a manlike figure on the left part of the board.




Those are all Michael Levin's works. Their sharpness, great details, contrast and gradual change from light to dark are almost perfect. Just enjoy.

Journal #1 (part 1)

For this assignment, I'm going to shoot a series of pictures on Sunday. There are several reasons for this:1) I usually have a piano lesson on Sundays so I would take some pictures on the way and at my piano teacher's house. 2) It will snow on Sunday and I can shoot some pictures throughout the window at different times of the day. It will show a gradual accumulation of a snow. 3) Sundays are usually boring for me, so to shoot this assignment on Sunday will give me some challenge.

Final Project Proposal

I know it's late now, but I still want to write about my thought before I shot those images. My original theme of the final project was number, which represent a different way of seeing the numbers. But later on I couldn't find enough objects that worth shooting, so I stopped and looked over my old images. Then I started realized that all the photos I like the most have a very important thing in common: they all have pretty good reflection of the light, and there comes my idea:I'm (was) going to shoot my final project in the theme of reflection.

Final Project - Reflection

This term went by so fast, it might because of the long breaks we had, but the most important reason i think was that the courses are more fun.

First, let me talk about my final project. It is called reflection, although some of them are not quite meet the theme. In this project, I wanted to pay most of my attention to the light and the reflection of light, and therefore, however good each image is, I want to make the reflection of the light the most significant. For the first two and last pictures, the contrast between black and white due to reflection were the most important things. And for the rest of the three images, the reflection showed the smooth surface. All of the images were depended on the reflection. Without reflection, the pictures would have nothing in them, but with reflection, as it turned out, the result was quite difference. So what this final project gave me are not extremely good images but it REALLY helped me understand the importance of the light and the contrast and the information light can provide.

From now on, the blog will be about the whole term:
First, I have to say I have learned so much this term. At the beginning of the term, I thought everything would be the same except we were going to use a different kind of camera, but soon after that, I realized I was so wrong. When we were learning about the level and the curve, that was when I really understood about the contrast. And because of that, the filter and the time thing in the darkroom all started to make sense. And then we learned about the histogram and the bracketing. Those told me what it means to be a good exposure. Everything from the beginning to the end, make perfect sense and it taught me the concept of photography and will certainly help me with photo in the future.
Secondly, I've learned the importance of light. Every image depends on light. Light shows texture; light tells the shape; light makes things look real; light shows and makes contrast; light draws attention; light is EVERYTHING in black and white photography! Same photos, with different light, may look totally different. When there is a good natural light, try your best to make it useful. When there is not, create your own.
This term also made my like black and white photography. When there are only black and white, as Mr. Blake said, light becomes the only thing. Without the distraction of the tones of colors, the pictures will look simple and pure. And that is why I'm now so into black and white photography.
Well, I think those are probably all I want to say. And next time I take digital will be next year, and hope I can do better than now.

Assignment #5 - Re-shoot

This is the original one:


This is the re-shoot before photoshopping:


This is the re-shoot picture:


This assignment was a little difficult for me. At the beginning, I can't think of anything pictures that are both my favorite and worth reshooting. Then, I started looking over my first too assignment and find the photo of the piano. It was one of the pictures from the bracketing assignment. Although it has the best exposure, there are still places that either too bright or too dark. I thought that was all because of the light from the door, so I waited till the night. However, when I used my own home light, the difference between light area and dark area were still huge. After my analysis, I thought of two reasons: 1.the piano was made of white and black keys 2.since the surface was too smooth, it could reflect everything in the room and all that did was distracting. So, I brought the camera really close to the piano and eliminated the reflecting part by only leting the keys in my picture. And that turned out pretty good. Then I started working on the distance to the focus and the depth of the field. After some adjustment, I was able to bring the focus to the center part of the photo. And after all those, I finally got my re-shoot picture.

Photoshopping steps:
1.level
2.curve

Assignment #4 - Portraiture

First, I have to say I enjoyed shooting this assignment really much. Last term, portraiture was one of the assignment I disliked most because the people I was going to take pictures on didn't want to cooperate. But this time, everybody was willing to help me out and I was able to set up the light for some of my pictures so that they would look better. Since I was using a digital camera, I could take as many pictures as I want and there is always one that looks pretty good. The most annoying problem I had was sharpness. Since I didn't have a tripod with me this time and people always moved, it was really hard for me to get a sharp image. I didn't have a chance to shoot a silhouette and I will do that in my next assignment.

ASSIGNMENT #3 - High-key / Low-key

This assignment was GREAT!!!From this assignment, I, once again, have learnt a lot about the importance of bracketing. And finally I could tell if the exposure was good or not by seeing the histogram. Yet, I had hard time finding the dark backgrounds and that really slowed me down. For the high key images, I've learnt to control the light myself rather than finding good lights and then use it. Generally speaking, the result turned out pretty well and I hope I will do better next time!

practice-assignment-1

more on abelardo morell-------money

burning and dodging

This one is the original one:



After burning and dodging:

with feather of without feather

This one is the one with feather



This is the one without feather