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.
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