Final Quiz

Final Quiz

1. Describe

A. Exposure: The total amount of light striking the image sensor.

B. Shutter Speed: The amount of time a camera’s shutter remains open, letting light hit the image sensor. Faster shutter speed = shorter exposure time.

C. Contrast: The difference between the lighter colors/greyscale and the darker colors/greyscale in an image. Using software, you can both increase and decrease contrast.

D. Aperture: The varibale opening in a lens through which light passes to strike the image sensor. Expressed in F-number/stop.

2. While in the studio, where light is both plentiful and adjustable, a DSLR’s ISO range should fall between 200 and 400 (at most). ISO adds light to your image digitally, so you want to use it as little as possible in order to keep your images high quality. This is why ISO is used for particularly dark photographs, since it helps create more light for the image sensor.

3. First you would place your camera’s SD card in the computer, next you would copy the contents of the SD card on to your hard drive. From there, you would drag those copies to the Lightroom logo in the MacOS toolbar. From there, Lightroom will add it to your catalog after importing. You can then rename the photos for easier management. We were told to label them like so: Stanford_042814 (Lastname and date in numerical form). You can then rate the photos by hitting the corresponding number (1-5) on the keyboard to give you even further organization. These ratings can then help you filter out the good from the bad.

4. You might use Aperture Priority if you wanted a fixed aperture such as when we shot in the controlled environment of the Kellogg Library studio. This way you could focus solely on the shutter speed and have fewer variables to work with. I personally prefer working in manual even in these situations because I prefer to control all of my variables.
5. 1st Photographer: Richard Avedon, 2nd Photographer: Richard Renaldi
6. A diptych involves two photographs in the same image. A triptych involves three photographs in the same image (popular in religious paintings). A polyptych involves four or more photographs in the same image. Each image is separate, but on the same plane as the others, usually thematically similar.
7. The three main things stressed in the Alphabet Assignment were that we could not “set up” any of the photograph (they had to occur naturally), that we should create out grids in Photoshop (not Lightroom), and that…
8. I really enjoyed both the Alphabet assignment (because it was almost like a scavenger hunt) and the PhotoBooth project (because it allowed me to engage our subjects and because I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of people on campus who helped us). If I had to pick something I did not like, it would be the projects we did in cooperation with the other classes; no one really understood the assignment in the other classes and ultimately I think they will be disappointed in the images since we were sort of winging it.

Burb Book: Music in Macro

For my Blurb book, I focused on taking close-up and macro photos of music equipment. I defined the term “music equipment” as loosely as possible. Though not much of a musician myself, I have always had a deep respect and passion for music of all kinds. Recently, my good friend and a great musician, James Page (no relation to the famous musician Jimmy Page), decided to build a recording studio in his garage. In addition to building an isolation booth in the middle of the room, we began collecting and purchasing as much audio equipment and instruments as humanly possible, including guitars, basses, banjos, mandolins, ukuleles, keyboards, pianos, microphones, drum pads, stereo systems, MIDI controllers, FX pedals, soundboards, studio monitors, amplifiers, cables, inputs and outputs, audio and video interfaces, and anything else we could get our hands on. Though the project is not yet finished, we hope to have the whole studio done by this Summer. Overall, this is one of my favorite non-video projects I’ve completed in my time here at CSUSM. Though they are closely related, I never had much of an interest in photography, focusing instead on video. However, this class and the Blurb project have greatly increased my interest in photography, though it still takes a backseat to video.

Blurb Book_Drew Stanford Cover

Blurb Book_Drew Stanford

Museum of Photographic Arts & San Diego Natural History Museum

MOPA and theNAT Tickets

Due to working as a stagehand and set builder on the CalState San Marcos production of Seussical the Musical, I did not have a free weekend to go to Balboa Park until very recently. Because of this I found myself going on a very busy weekend with several bands playing and some sort of festival going on. Having said that, both MOPA and the San Diego Natural History Museum were relatively empty since most of the festivities were taking place outdoors. Of the two museums, I found MOPA far more interesting (not including the other exhibits at theNAT). MOPA had more variation in its photos in my opinion, where as the “Ecosystems of San Diego” exhibit limited itself by forcing all the photos to be taken within a relatively small area compared to the worldwide focus of MOPA’s “Power” exhibit. Having said all that, there was at least one photographer that caught my interest at each exhibit.

 

Jacqueline Hassink

Will Gibson

At MOPA, the artist that caught my eye most was Jacqueline Hassink, though not for predictable reasons. I looked at her photos that were basically just living rooms and other rooms in houses and though that they did not belong with all the other photographers’ work. The pictures of world events, leaders, etc, all seemed like better representations of the idea of “Power” than Hassink’s images. Then I started thinking about the power people feel within their own homes, we feel safer at home than we do in buildings that are just as safe. I still don’t think that I received Hassink’s intended message, but I found a meaning for myself. I tried to emulate her images using the house I grew up in, were I feel safest. I also welcomed the chance to take wide/further away images, since I have mostly focues on close-up photography this semester. I think that these images could have turned out better, as they aren’t really that interesting. However, I do think that I properly replicated Hassink as closely as possible.

 

At the San Diego Natural History Museum, I went to the top floor to see all the “Ecosystems of San Diego” photos displayed around walls. I was slightly disappointed with how small all of the pictures at theNAT were. Most seemed no bigger than a standard binder even when including the picture frame. The artist I was most inspired by was Will Gibson and his close-up photography of flowers and other plants. Although not groundbreaking (everybody has seen images like his), I enjoyed them and assumed that they would be the best/most natural for me to emulate.

Ansel Adams Documentary

Although I never knew much about him, I’ve always liked the few photos of Ansel Adams’ that I’ve seen (oddly in various dentist and doctors offices– something about landscapes must fascinate doctors’ decorators). Its been my understanding that he is the Ernest Hemingway of photography, in that he is an American icon that deals almost exclusively with America (with Hemingway it was where he set his novels and where the characters were from, with Adams its simply all he seemingly photographs). I liked the comparison one of the narrators made, that Adams is working with the same environment as others, but making more out of it like a poet does with the same dictionary everybody else uses. Although I like them, I can’t quite explain why, no obvious meaning or purpose jumps out at me. A person in the video mentions that he simply was concerned with showing the wilderness how he saw it, as grand and significant, “everlasting”. His photos make you feel small, but not unimportant. It makes you feel like a small part of a whole. His awe-inspiring photos are both relaxing due to there tranquility and intimidating due to there gigantic landscapes. His background in music is not surprising, considering how mathematic both music and photography are in terms of composition, mood, etc. Although normally, I prefer photos with more obvious depth of field due to my focus on video, I enjoy his for different, but similar reasons. His photos remind me of elaborate establishing shots in big budget Hollywood epics, trying to get the whole scenery while making it memorable and striking; one biographer even mentioned that the higher up he climbed, the better his photographs were. You could easily imagine an image like his being used to set up a scene in a movie, TV show, or even something like a comic book.

Ansel Adams and Camera

Landscape

Photobooth Project and Mercedes Jelinek

For our photobooth project, Erick Rosales, Eric Yoon, and I set up our shoot in front of the newly constructed USU Building. Our goal was to show the diverse personalities and people that go to our school. The project went even better than expected. I assumed that a bunch of busy college students would be difficult to convince to help us. However, I would say that overall, we received more “yes’s” than “no’s” in the 1-2 hours we photographed for. We met up around 1pm last Wednesday and set up our booth. I brought a sign that would help attract and inform people of what we were up to. Erick had actually gotten there a little early to set up and had already taken a few photos of visiting high school students as a warm-up. It didn’t take long for the area to get busy, making it easy to find subjects. The most luck we had was if two or more people were walking by together. They would usually look at each other to try to read what the other might say, then reluctantly (but nicely) agree to be in our photos. Some groups even got excited for the project, such as one group that all wanted to pose; one person in the group even wanted us to create a “mugshot” of him before agreeing to a group photo. At the end of each shoot we would ask them if they’d like us to send them the photos, which most agreed to. They simply wrote down their names and Erick volunteered to email our photos to them. The only real setback we had was when a USU employee told us we had to take our sign down since it wasn’t in an area where students were allowed to post information, however, he couldn’t have been nicer about it. I found the project incredibly fun and it opened me up to portrait photography, which I never really thought I was very good at before. As far as our inspiration goes, we were inspired by the project’s originator, Mercedes Jelinek, but decided that her use of a backdrop was unnecessary and going without it added more depth to our images.  In addition, not using a backdrop allowed us to fit more people in our frame, which allowed us to take some interesting group photos.

An-My Lê

Like Richard Renaldi, An-My Lê uses an old wooden film camera, which she identifies as a Deardoff. She says it forces her to take her time and be more particular with her photographs. She mainly focuses on military and landscape photography, claiming that she wants to address the militarized world and show a less political view of the armed forces. An-My Lê says that she chooses to photograph in black and white because she is more interested in the shadows created by the drawing of the landscape and that there is a less clear landscape in color. Despite this, she says she isn’t concerned with dramatic lighting or contrast. Her photos intentionally don’t really say anything political and you its unclear what her stance is on anything. She says that this ambiguity is intentional and that her goal is not necessarily to say anything negative or positive about the military.

Richard Renaldi

Most of the photos in Richard Renaldi’s 6 year long project “Touching Strangers” still look strange to me. Even the groups of people that the narrator said seemed comfortable around each other appear to be faking it. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part, I’m finding it difficult to by in to the relationship. In addition, sometimes the attempt to get two vastly different people is forced or obvious, making many his images a little kitsch. Having said that, the photos themselves look great; the colors and framing are both very interesting. Clearly Renaldi knows what he’s doing as far as the photography itself goes, especially when you realize he’s using a big film camera instead of going the easier route of DSLR or at the very least something handheld.

Blurb Book Proposal and Artist Inspiration

For my Blurb book I would like to take macro photographs of musical instruments and related devices. Between my friends and I, I have access to a plethora of musical instruments and devices including guitars, basses, ukeleles, amps, synths, etc. One friend in particular owns dozens of instruments and is even close to finishing a isolated recording booth within his garage. I have not yet decided if I will photograph the instruments being played or if I will carefully lay them out and focus on just the instrument itself. Realistically, I will end up doing a mix of both in order to both fill the book full of photos and to retain the interest of the viewer through variation. The artists that have inspired me include macro photographers, Lester Lefkowitz and John Shaw, as well as famed sculptor Louise Nevelson. I enjoy Lefkowitz’s photography because he gets so close to common, recognizable objects that they become unrecognizable and create a whole different viewing experience and meaning. John Shaw is very similar, but is better (in my opinion) at creating more interesting shapes by cropping his image through framing. Nevelson’s sculptures look very much like the inside of a acoustic instrument, but blown up much larger. At second glance, you see objects within her pieces, but at face value they appear to be just hollow reliefs that could be mistaken for simply structuring. It would be interesting to play music into Nevelson’s sculptures and see if they carry some sort of resonance or amplification due to their shapes.

Lester Lefkowitz

Lester Lefkowitz

Louise Nevelson

Louise Nevelson

John Shaw

Group Photobooth Project

Our group, composed of Eric Yoon, Erick Rosales, Andrew Roper, and myself, has decided to complete our photobooth project on campus at CSUSM. The theme of our photobooth will be to show what a diverse group of people go to our school. Other groups in our class had sounded as if they planned to set up on campus near the University Hall and/or Markstein Hall, so we will focus on the other side of the college. Ideally, I would like to set up in one of three locations; either in front of the new USU, near the Caesar Chavez statue, or in the circular garden behind the Arts Building. Both the USU and Chavez would offer great locations to make sure we run into enough students, while the garden (though pretty) might be too far out of the way to get enough subjects.

Richard Avedon – American Masters

Richard Avedon cut his teeth shooting fashion and glamor photography in post-war France, but became far more important to photography as a whole as his life wet on. While he became “fashion photography’s biggest star” by the 1950’s, he quickly became an important figure in portrait photography as well. One person in the video even suggests that having your portrait taken by Avedon is “the final recognition.” However, another states that he has no sense of subtlety, no compassion, and yet somehow touches a nerve with people. According to the video, before Avedon came around, models posed for pictures and became statues. Whereas he would create motion, a narrative, and even direct his subjects in a way that a filmmaker might. Avedon himself says that he photographs what he’s afraid of, be it old age due to his father’s death, women’s fashion due to being intimidated by them or because they look like his younger sister. He says that he takes pictures because the world fascinates him. Its this fascination that allows him to capture photos that give a true sense of the subjects personality or an expression Avedon himself.

Western Director John Ford