LHS Digital Photography Blog - Amanda Taylor

I wanted to chose the subject of color and how minor changes can completely change the given connotation. I used one photo to make two completely different kinds out of them. For the others I tweaked the original photos to portray an opposite emotion to the kind it originally portrayed to me. All were shot horizontally, but the third was a bird's eye view-type shot.

Title of Film or Video: Ways it showed a UTOPIA Ways it showed DYSTOPIA Brazil Whimsical visuals British comedy Rich colors Bright music The dreams Sam has "Aquarela do Brasil" Bureaucratic, totalitarian government Use of shadows Gruesome torture scenes/ that twist at the end Use of dark colors in certain places "Aquarela do Brasil" The Matrix Use of red Simulation life (blissful denial) Warping of reality done by the characters Use of green, black, and purple The real world (gritty reality) Assimilation theme A Clockwork Orange Bright colors Use of Beethoven Use of "Singing in the Rain" Over sexualization motif Use of white Alex's happy ending Alex's freedom as a juvenile delinquent and gang member Government corruption No good character Use of "Singing in the Rain" Gray, muted colors + shadows Use of trash The treatment of criminals The constant struggle of power

If the video does not work, this  link may work. You'd just have to sign in as me Concept: An attempt to fully meet society's standard for beauty leaves the victim internally and externally scarred. Process: I used claymation for the character "Hands" with items like wires and tinfoil to properly support the figure. The set is made out of a cardboard box painted to simulate a room with a brown desk. The paper crumples that "create" the monster on the wall were done with stop edits. A lot of stop edits. Many of the transitions were done with double exposure and fading tricks used by my video editing platform. The song used is "I Ain't got Nobody" by Marion Harris (1916) and radio sound effects are from a public domain sound effect website.

The Deep by PES Eskos (2009) by barnabydixon Hope by Jack Stauber

I was very much inspired by the minimalist, yet surreal style shown by the strange backgrounds like the covers and the absurdist advertisements. I will most likely be implementing a similar style. Covers: Spreads: Advertisements:

Fine Art Portraits: In creating this piece, I first did a simple profile shot against a tiled wall in soft light. Then in Photoshop, I introduced an inverted pattern beneath the original layer and cut out some of the tiles. to give the illusion that the two layers have dimension, I stretched the edges of the tiles surrounding the openings to increase depth. I finished the photo by enhancing some colors and removing all the shadows. I would classify this piece as fine art because it does not glorify any particular attribute that may make the audience want to buy anything associated with the photo. It also portrays a very specific intention from the artist, something commercial photography does not do. This next photo was accomplished by first projecting vertical, black and white lines onto the subject's face and taking a close-up picture. In Photoshop, put the image in grayscale and increased the contrast and exposure over and over again until the dark stripes appeared t...

Fine Portrait Photography: a picture of a specific character that expresses a specific mood or story coming from the person or the photographer. The photos often use composition, lighting, color, and contrast to enhance the meaning or mood. Eric Lafforgue Lee Jeffries I love how both of these photos portray the life in the subjects despite their cold environment. The first one showing a North Korean soldier puts all the focus on the woman. High contrast is implemented to emphasize the paleness of her face, the dark green of her uniform, and the pale-golden glow of the shoulder-pads and the cap. High contrast and a high focus on the subject is also used on the second photo, but the contrast rather emphasizes the age in the woman's face, beautifully showing the harsh mood of the picture. I believe that both of these photos portray the subjects living in a dark world: the soldier as an invisible pawn in an oppressive dictatorship, and the homeless woman as a weathered ...

My intent for the two photos was to show the emotions that may hide to the people around you. The first expresses stress over trying to avoid remembering a certain painful memory. The world is hot and overwhelming, the ground beneath you feels almost like liquid, and the memory(represented by the maroon and white castle like building) keeps appearing in your mind no matter how hard you try to focus on your surroundings instead. The second reflects an Alice in Wonderland-type journey, but this one into the subject's nightmare. Often dreams when looked at from a waking perspective seem illogical and highly emotional (just like surrealist work), but because the dreamer is feeling this dream herself, it is presented as completely real and terrifying.

Surrealism: Starting in the early 1920's, the surrealism incorporates unexpected juxtapositions, illogical scenes, and strange twists to reality to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality into an absolute reality, a super-reality"(André Breton). It has evolved greatly to be implemented in an abundance of forms in an abundance of ways. From the twisting abstract figures of Yves Tanguy to the magical realism of Leonora Carrington, surrealism has been a massive contribution to the history of art. "The Elephants" by Salvador Dali "War Paintings" by Yves Tanguy "Untitled" by Suzanne Moxhay This piece is among several others showing a tour of a decaying home with nature scenes incorporated in the rooms. I felt this photo stood out to me as it portrayed a common theme of life being founded in unexpected places and the vibrance of nature while also portraying a surrealist setting. "C...

This original image was modified into a cyanotype and daguerreotype, whereas I chose different images to recreate infared photography. Cyanotype: Daguerreotype: Infared: The original photo was very tonal with rich browns, reds, and greens. Therefore, the infared version of it is very cold and pale. I recognized that the color of the sky and trees along with the high amount of white in the photo reminded me of wealth (well, my first instinct was that it looked like a Tiffany box, but I then thought about it more in the sense of themes). Therefore, I edited the picture to have some of the leaves look like gold flakes.

Daguerreotypes Daguerrotype of Edger Allan Poe Daguerrotypes were the first publicly available process. It was introduced in 1839 by inventor  Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, and it quickly became the most commonly used practice at the time. To create the photo, one would first treat a sheet of silver-plated copper with fumes to give it a light sensitive surface. They would expose it in a camera for as long as was judged by the lighting, make  fume it with mercury vapor, remove its light sensitivity with further chemical treatment, rinse and dry it, and finally seal the final photo in a protective case of some kind to prevent it from getting destroyed. Needless to say this process requires a lot of sensitive work, the handling of extremely dangerous chemicals, and time. Should any step go wrong and the entire image may be irreversibly damaged. Resources: What is a Daguerreotype? How to Spot a Daguerrotype Cyanotypes "Algae" by Anna Atkins Cyanotype...

In this project, our class was tasked with manipulating the normal way we see a photo with multiple exposure, panoramas, and HDR. I decided to step my own path from that by having each kind of photo have a specific theme. The multiple exposure photos were a "glitch" in reality, the panoramas were the different ways the mind can see overwhelming situations, and the HDR photos were of finding beauty in small things.  For this photo, I really wanted to play around with different textures. I started with a simple photo of a balcony and added a rough, geometric picture and a sharply contrasted picture of tree branches. Finally the clouds were included to add some smoothness to the ensemble. Using a view of the city and Mount Hood as a background, I altered several photos to make a kind of floating modernistic city. The building comes from a photo I took from earlier in the school year and the birds were originally a statue picture, but were heavily edited. Out of all t...

In our community project, we decided to take pictures in the workshop of in the auditorium. The graffiti in there has dated back decades with the oldest known one being from 1976, giving the room a magical feel to it. Forgotten set pieces, dusty tools, and spilled paint make an array of colors that add so much life to the hidden gem, so I knew we had to take pictures of it. To emphasize the life that came from the workshop, we emphasized the lighting and colors along with adding a little warmth to make the scene feel more comfortable. Overall I believe we did a great job in representing the inner love and brightness in this community.

Over the course of this first semester, I have learned not only the different kinds of factors going into a picture, but also my what my own photography style and how that affects what I may do to different kinds of pictures I take. Obviously, my "style" is not definitive yet, but it has certainly become more clear than in the beginning of the year. I hope that semester two will get me even more acquainted with the ways I can work on my art.