Monoprinting

In addition to painting, I tried a print class as well called Monoprinting.  I had never taken a print-making class before so this course was difficult in the beginning.  It is like painting except you are just making marks on a different surface--in this case Lexan (plastic), zinc, or copper plates.  Any object aside from a paintbrush can be used to make a mark.  What I found most interesting was taking found objects or netting, cheese cloth, leaves etc. and placing them on the plate then running it through the press.  The object would then leave an impression on the print as you can see above.  Towards the end of the class I started to work on a larger scale and move away from the objects and start focusing on the mark making.  Though the class was challenging to master, I feel that I found some areas that really worked for me and discovered new concepts that I can continue to pursue now that I know the basic skills of monoprinting. 

Painting

In addition to photography, I also enjoy painting.  These works are from a class called Painting and the Photograph.  We used a lot of wintergreen transfers--which is taking an image black& white or color and printing it out or making a photocopy.  Then you take the picture place it face down on the surface and paint the oil onto the back.  After that you start to burnish it using a spoon or burnisher and the image then is transferred to the canvas.  The process can be tedious and otheriwse frustrating if the picture is too dark or there is not enough ink in the picture to transfer the image entirely. However, sometimes it is interesting to see what came out of the process and continue to work with it.  Most of my works in this class incorporated some form of text, mostly illegible, aside from the second painting which is just transfers paint and pastel.  I enjoyed the contrast between organic shapes and the structured, geometric lines in the other paintings.  I like to work with shape and form, as well as dripping paint and allowing it to work the surface in its own course. 

Also taken in my Studio Lighting class these are pictures from two assignments; background lighting and silhouette shooting.  The first picture was from the background lighting shoot and also I experimented with a long exposure while having the subject move.  The background is blue and the assignment was to experiment with the different colored gels that were available to us and put the on different strobe or hot lights pointing them towards the background to create any colored backdrop we wanted.  The bottom two images are from a shoot where we had the model sit directly in front of a light so that their face or body was blocking out the light towards the camera.  In doing so there is only a minimal amount of light that reaches the lense and therefore creates this silhouette of the light from behind the model.  Depending on what position you were in or if you moved around the model, you would get a lot more light or no light at all.  The silhouette shoot was most interesting to me because beforehand, I never knew how photographers created that look and it ended up being such a simple set-up. 

Microscope Images/Independent Study

Seaweed

Bone

Moss

Mold

Mold

Mushroom

Mushroom

Bone

Bone

Bone

Mold

Moss

Mushroom

Seaweed

Bone

Styrofoam

Bone

Bone

Bone

Seaweed

All of the above pictures were taken through a microscope.  I used my digital SLR camera and got an adapter to fit in place of the lense and attached that to the eyepiece of the microscope.  This was done as an independent study as per my own interests.  This project began because I wanted to find some way to incorporate science and photography as I have had an interest in science for awhile.  However, as I started to work on it more my intentions became more about trying to reveal different views and visions on samples of things I found in nature.  I began this study by shooting with a macro lense, which I also used for the previous assignment (Close-Up Still Lifes) however I soon found out that the lense was not getting me as close to the subject as I had wanted to get.  The professor I worked with and I talked about different ways of getting closer to an image, enough so that a person looking at the picture would not know what the image is without having a label or reference photograph to look at.  So we began the search for a microscope and adapter.  Eventually we came across a good deal and I started to shoot with this new set-up.  Unfortunately there were technical difficulties that hindered me, at least in the beginning, in getting clear, focused pictures. There was this recurring, circular reflection in all of my pictures.  We at first though it was the light I was using, which was a strong LED head light.  So we tried diffusing the light with scotch tape and cellophane.  However, that did not get rid of the circle.  After a lot of trial and error we both finally asked a different professor in photography who might have a suggestion. He said that maybe the light was bouncing off the inside of the microscope tube.  He suggested taking black construction paper and placing that inside the tube and seeing if that helped. It was a success.  No more troubleshooting after that, the images came out reflection-less and in focus.  The above images were the final pictures I used.  Even though the project was initially about the integration of photography and science, it became more about the aesthetics and visually pleasing aspects of an image.  It became more about taking something ordinary and manipulating it in ways that completely transformed its original state.  The whole group of images was titled Manipulations.  Though they were small changes that I made in each slide, they were still a change and the picture still came out looking different than the first shot.  I feel that they were all very successful as a group in showing the differences in one slide.  The project became entirely about vision and how I could manipulate the viewer's interpretation and view on the subject simply by making small but significant changes in each slide.

Close- Up Still Lifes

These pictures were taken for my final project in Studio Photography.  We were able to shoot whatever subject we wanted utilizing what we had previously learned throughout the semester such as strobe lighting, hot lights, use of plexiglass, soft box to create whatever lighting situation we wanted.  The above images are close-up photographs of a still life.  Using a macro-lense I focused in on certain areas that I found most intriguing both compositionally and the combination of different colors.  The two vases are set up on top of a plexi-glass table and there is a strobe light and hot box underneath the table lighting the still life.  On top of the soft box I placed several different colors of gels that would reflect off the glasses and bring in many interesting colors.  Overall, I was really happy with how the pictures turned out, as some of them don't really look too much like a vase but just an interesting array of colors.