Reaction Paper #2

Rosanne Milano

Professor Cyr

Art 144

December 21^st , 2015

            The other day my class and I had the privilege to have Natan Dvir come and speak to our class about his work.  Dvir is an Israeli photographer based in New York. His work is based on cultural issues and personal conflicts from his own experiences.  His work tells a big story about the people in the images and what’s going on in the image. A lot of his work is about the lives of the people he is photographing, creating a lot of drama and also a connection with the people in the images. He’s actually spending some time and getting to know the people. In his “Shirat Hayam” project he spent about three months with the family and were total strangers, and by the end of his trip he was the last person to see that family eat their last meal in their home. He became so know and popular by the people living there many of them wanted to wait for Natan to photograph them for the last time in their homes. You could sense the connection he made with these people and the effect he had on them in his time there. While in another project of his called “eighteen” you do get some sort of connection to the person by their room and surroundings but they also had these very uninviting expressions on their face which makes it seems like they almost did not want him to take their photo. I also like how Natan explained what it takes and the benefits of pursuing three different types of styles of photography. He said never intended to be a photographer and had no idea what art was. But he somehow made it and is very happy he did. This is very inspirational to anyone who may doubt themselves not just with art but with anything they think they can’t achieve. You never know you’re good at something until you try it at least once.

Some Fun With Lights

These unfortunately didn't make it to the final cut but they were still fun to do. :)

Light Painting Portraits

This is part of my final project for the semester. I'm doing a series of portraits and incorporating different color lights. So far I have only shot one model but I am working on more ideas and techniques to use. I find this to be a lot of trial and error with what works and where the light is the brightest. I can't wait to see how this project turns out.

Paint in Water Part 3

I attempted this once again. I did use a different vase shape which I think helped a lot. Still haven't got this perfect yet but I'm still trying, still getting new ideas. There definitely is progress from my first attempt a few weeks back.I'm still amazed by all the different images that are created doing this project. No two images look exactly the same and that's part of what I love about it, each picture is unique to itself, but are also very similar.

Kings Park

This past weekend I took a trip to Kings Park to go to walk around the psychiatric center that use to run from 1885 to 1996. It's so fascinating that in almost 20 years these buildings are basically destroyed on the inside. Although the outside,beside from all the broken windows, are very much in tact. Nothing more of some graffiti and minor cracks from being old. I wish I had actually gone in to some of the buildings, there are many people who go on top of the roofs as well. I do enjoy how these two images came out. I like the lighting on the walls of the two rooms its very bright but also soft, then that last dark room which add an eerie feel to the image along with the debris everywhere and the ceiling that has fallen apart over the years. The bottom image was shot through what was a window that had metal bars over it. These building with the bars on the windows was where the criminally insane were kept I like the framing in this picture I almost line up the frame of the doorway with the metal bars on the window. I like that only the door frame and the little graffiti characters to the right edge are the only parts clearly in focus and that the metal bars are burred and aren't distracting to the rest of the image. I wish to come back here another day and shoot some more, maybe even bring some lights with me nest time.

Light Painting

I love how these light painting came out. I created this by taping a flashlight to some string then attaching the string to the ceiling, then had my camera directly under the light and has the exposure open as I swung the light to create these beautiful light trails. The first image is of a long exposure of a screen monitor. I like the effect it gives almost as if its on a space ship to s distant planet.

Paint in Water Part 2

I revisited this project again and I am happy with how these came out. There are still things I can improve on and I will try and make some changes with how I set this up next time. I do like how the blue and yellow mixed in the water to create that beautiful green coming off to the side. The pink and blue image almost reminds me of a mushroom cloud from a volcano erupting. I wish to continue this project and see what other results I can achieve.

Painted Portrait

Although I'm not the biggest fan of portraits I would like to get into photographing people more. Its just hard to find people willing to get in front of the camera. I do however like the way this image came together even  though this assignment was kinda rushed to the last minute I still think it came out good. I love the dark edge on the left side and I think the pink light compliments well with white skin tone. I wish to do a series of portraits with lights in a similar way to this but maybe more with actually drawing into the exposure or painting someone in. Hopefully I'll be able to find people willing to help me out.

Alberto Seveso "Trivial Expose"

here  In searching for more ink photography ideas I came across this photographer, Albert Seveso. he did this project titles "Trivial Expose". this involved him first taking the images of the ink and then taking images of the models and combining the two together. I love this type of abstract photography and is something I personally enjoy doing. I would really enjoy recreating something like this in the near future. The rest of the images from this project along with his other work can be found here

Paint In Water

I had went back and retried this project with different lighting outside and I am happy with the results. I want to experiment with different mediums of either paint or ink whatever I can find. I love how the purple and white image almost looks like the top of a mushroom cloud from an erupting volcano. I love how the blue and pink fold into each other but you can still see the separation of colors. The pink and orange are almost like mirrors of each other I was able to time it right so that both colors hit the surface of the water at the same time. Resulting in similar patters in how they expanded once in the water which compliment well with each other and against the grey background. I wish to continue with this project and further it more with different ideas.

Frozen Bubble

                                                          (Disclaimer: old photo)
Even though this photo is from back in high school Its still one of my favorites. With the cold weather approaching very soon here I wish to go and try and recreate an image like this again. Its a bubble that's resting on top of a small granite table outside when it was below freezing temperature. If you blow bubbles when it is below the freezing point you can actually see the bubble freezing over ( like in the bottom and top of the bubble). It took many tries to get this one picture, who knew how hard it was to blow bubbles in the freezing cold winter. Then in photo shop I had the image of the trees as the sun was setting and I overlapped the two images together and smoothed out the edges to make the scene fit in the bubble I love the bright warm colors in the sky compared to the silhouettes of the tress and I think that scene overall fits well with the bubble, and the reflection of my white gate on the bubble gives it some perspective and texture. Overall I don't like winter but it can help create some amazing images, looking forward to what this season brings.

Ink In Water

The other day I experimented with a new idea for an assignment. Went to Michael's craft store to get some paints, got a glass vase that I filled with water, and set that on a table in front of my house. With my tripod I had set my camera on a self timer and to continuously shoot 5 images. I had to do this because I was working by myself so I had to set up my settings hit the shutter then run over to the vase to drop the paints in. It took some work but was fun to do and I enjoy the overall outcome of the images. I'm going to experiment more with more colors and try different techniques of dropping in the paints.

Reaction Paper #1

                                               

This past week I got the privilege to be invited to the studio of Jim Lennon, a Long Island based photographer known for his location photography. Along with some classmates we were shown the front office along with the small kitchen area that Jim and his wife, who works along with Jim, have provided to make their guests feel at home. Then towards the back of the studio is Jim’s office and where he sets up his shots. Jim talked about how he started out on the local newspaper taking pictures of what was needed, and then some of his images got noticed by big famous companies. These companies wanted Jim to photograph their products as an advertisement. Jim explained to us the importance of consistence and making sure you as a photographer are prepared at all times, being on time for a photo shoot, having all your equipment, making sure everything is charged and you don’t need any batteries. He also discussed how as a professional photographer you can’t let people tell you the worth of your work. You need to be firm and stand up for your work; you shouldn’t get paid for less then what you did. If you are making a living out of selling your work then you need to emphasize that to your clients and that’s how you average out the cost for your work. Another interesting point Jim made was that you can make a living from your photography if you have at least three consistent clients. If a client is willing to use you as their photographer you should work on trying to build a special relationship with these clients because they will be the people who will always give you money for your work and enable you to keep shooting photos. I would love to be a freelance photographer with my own studio one day, or made even a product photographer for a new company. Either way I will take what Jim Lennon spoke about in his studio and use it to my own advantage.

"Dark City" By Lynn Saville

This past weekend I searched through some photographers, and found a project that caught my eye. This project is titled "Dark City" by Lynn Saville. She specializes in both city and rural areas between dusk and dawn. In these three images here I love the different colors the lights are giving off of at each level of the parking garage. I also like the mood the image gives because of the lack of any movement  in the photograph, there's also no cars its completely empty. The second image titled "String of lights" has a more uplifting mood, these lights are shining through what looks like an abandoned building or structure. It looks as if they fell down and no one came back to put them back up again. What i like about the last picture is that red window that's dead center of the photograph. It compares so well against the dirty concrete wall. I really enjoyed how Lynn captures night time in this project I hope to take her project as inspiration for the future. 

Brooklyn

This was my first time aver walking across the Brooklyn bridge. I was surprised to see the amount of people who were also equally as fascinated as I was with the different views of the city, and then also those people who could care less as if its nothing but a walk way to get over a body of water. Originally only built for people, meant to be a easy and quick way to get to Manhattan without having to take a boat. Many people were skeptical with the idea of walking on a suspension bridge, so the state decided to have a circus equip with band members and about five elephants to walk across the bridge so citizens could feel safe and secure walking across.The architectural beauty of the brick archways are much different then any other bridge you see today, I believe this angel gives an interesting perspective and a beautiful view of the city skyline.

Here's my first post. I'm a student at Suffolk County Community College, majoring in photography. Mostly digital work but I still love film. This image shows my favorite kind of photography, night photography and long exposures. This is steel wool being burned and swung around on a string at the beach one night, edited in class using Adobe Lightroom. I had a tripod and was on manual, ISO 200, F./ 8, 30" shutter speed. Can't wait to share more.