Portrait

I spent a lot of time thinking about what to do for the self portrait assignment and what a self portrait really means. I wanted to make a statement about how we see ourselves and how others see us. I thought about expressionist paintings that showed objects from many different perspectives and I tried to have people at a dinner table take photos of me from all of their different vantage points and then I was planning on seaming them together in photoshop but none of the images really works and generally it was not a success. My second idea was to use a mirror from my room and using dry erase markers to draw on my reflection. These images worked better.

Light and Shadow... and Fiesta.

Its Fiesta time in San Antonio so I went to Market Square at night to take some photos for our Light and Shadow assignment. The weather has been making it difficult to take shadow pictures during the day so I took some night pictures utilizing the lights of fiesta.

Field Trip Photos

I was on a geology field trip a couple of weekends ago and borrowed a friend's camera to take some pictures. The light was really beautiful.

Still Life

For the still life assignment I chose to photograph some bottles I found on the beach last year. I took some in the studio but I was definitely less successful with the studio lighting than with natural light. Some photos were taken earlier in the day and others much later while the sun was setting.

Witte Museum

At the Witte Museum, I took photographs of the displays in the ecology exhibit. I was inspired by similar work by Hiroshi Sugimoto. This assignment required a lot of photoshop work which I was not used to but enjoyed a lot.

Spring Break

I took some photos while I was camping on North Padre of things that I found on the beach. I was focusing on the different textures especially the graininess from the sand and the reflectivity of the water.

Project #3

For Project #3, I am focusing on line and pattern as an elements of design. I took pictures at the IM softball tournament this weekend because I liked the diagonal lines of the baseball diamond and the vertical lines of the lights. The players often created their own lines. The fence formed an interesting pattern so I tried to use that in many of the photos. Although my main focus has been line and pattern, there has been a common theme of neon, very bright colors as well. The softball game was on a very sunny day so the grass and field was very colorful and the players were wearing tie dye and other bright colors. I am experimenting with turning down the vibrance so that all of the other colors are subdued. I Really like the effect on the softball photos because the faded colors remind me of old baseball gloves and sun bleached t-shirts.

Assignment #2: Motion

For this assignment, I explored use of the shutter to create images that either freeze motion or show motion. A shorter shutter speed will freeze motion while a longer shutter speed leaves the shutter open longer, to capture motion of the subject. Shots with a longer shutter speed show a blur where there is motion. I'm not the biggest fan of blurry motion pictures and in previous wet darkroom photography classes I had done

work with multiple images. For this assignment I did 3 images with a really high shutter speed to freeze the motion of a spout of water from a fountain. The effect of the shutter speed on these images is that the water looks more like glass. For the longer shutter speed shots I used a strobe light to limit the amount of blur in the photo but to also show motion. The effect of the strobe light is to b

asically make an image of multiple images. When the light of the strobe is off, it has almost the same effect as closing the shutter.

Digital Photography Spring '10

Assignment #1: Depth of Field

For this assignment, I explored control over the aperture priority setting on the camera to create images with depths of field ranging from shallow to great. The image below to the left exhibits shallow depth of field with only certain berries that are in focus. The image on the right has greater depth of field with focus from the bottom of the tree to the top branches.