Books Checked out from Library

Emulation Project: Anna Atkins

I decided to emulate Anna Atkins for my final project because going through the list of suggested people when first given the assignment her photographs stood out to me, they were so different than the other classic photographers. I found out that Anna Atkins is a british photographer who started out as a botanist which later came into her photography, developing images of botanical specimens. She had learned directly from Talbot about two of his inventions related to photography: the "photogenic drawing" technique (where an object is placed on light-sensitized paper when exposed the sun produces an image) and cyanotypes. I attempted to recreate the cyanotypes in my project through photoshop, so they weren't exactly the same method but the results were pretty similar. Overall I really enjoyed emulating her. 

Fianls:

From Dada to Digital

In the article Data to Digital by Timothy Druckrey, Druckrey brings up the history of the photograph. There has been a large change in the photograph, originally in a Darkroom with film, which I find to be a more elegant process, to now where you can take as many photographs as possible and edit them to perfection instead of really making sure your work is done correctly before taking the photograph. Now a days, as Drukrey brings up, photography is part of our everyday lives now, we have come to an age where everyone is able to take a photograph, to believe that they are a professional photographer. At this moment there are people taking "selfies" and instagraming photos of food, there is always a picture to be taken and adding different filters and editing is such a given these days, people don't really think of the art of the photograph anymore, there is hardly any meaning to what people post, and I believe the real photographers are the ones that can take your breath away, do something different and challenge their line of work. I do enjoy editing photographs but I feel that you should still do everything you can to get the perfect image, lighting, exposure, etc. on the first few shots instead of taking the picture with intentions just to change everything about the settings in Photoshop or Lightroom.

Chapters 7-10

Ch.7: Organizing and Sorting
This chapter I thought was all sort of common sense. It was about backing up your photographs because images can be lost so easily. As well as making sure that you keep all of your photographs organized for easy recovery, it is always smart to stay organized instead of keeping things a mess. I know that I need to keep my hard drive extremely neat or else I would never be able to find anything I want, and it is a quick and effective way to find the exact photograph you are looking for. I go crazy when it comes to organizing, I have subfolder inside of subfolder, without order I go insane. I did learn from this chapter though that there are many ways that metadata always stays with the photograph no matter if you copy and paste it. Having the metadata stay with the photograph also comes in handy because your copyright and contact information stays with the image.

Ch.8: Using Light
This chapter talked about lighting and I personally think that this is one of the most important things in photography. Shadows, tone and so much more is established by the lighting, whether it is in natural, with a flash, or artificial light. I was able to experiment with all of these lighting conditions during the portraiture assignment, there is a benefit to all of them but I personally prefer the artificial light, it give more of an editorial feel, which I am interested in exploring in my photography. I also do not prefer putting on the flash on my camera because it flushes out the subjects when doing portraits and even still lives, natural lighting is preferred to me for still lives. The chapter taught me that there are four different types of lighting, top, bottom, side and back, all bringing a different feel to the end product of the photograph. I always like to explore with the lighting to see what looks best.

Ch.9: Seeing Like a Camera

This chapter starts off by comparing photography as a kind of literature- in two ways. One of the ways is that any "time you spend absorbing the work of recognized masters will reward your own work with insight and inspiration" and second of all "photographs can be assembled like sentences placed consecutively to carry a larger and more complex meaning." I personally really liked reading that because I see that as 100% true. I am inspired by the photographs I see by others, they challenge me to do better and when I am attempting to create a set of photographs they are strategically put in an order to allow the viewers a better flow and allow people to create a story. The chapter also talks about obvious things to look for when taking a photograph such as the background, which parts are in focus, and the motion. One thing that I do struggle with that was mentioned in this chapter is photographing for meaning, I normally just photograph things because they excite me and I find them to be captivating but I always have trouble finding meaning behind a photograph or explaining why I took a picture. 

Ch.10 History of Photography 

This chapter, as you could probably gather from the title was about the history of photography, talking about how it transitioned as a form of document to a social change in the 19th century. There are obvious changes to photography such as going from film to digital, giving the opportunity to edit images and morph images into meaning something so much more. In todays world we are challenges the ideas of photographs and making it our own, thinking more out of the box and allowing images to say more. Photography is an art and it should be seen that way, over time I believe that a photograph was cherished more because it wasn't so common but it is still hard in todays society to be a professional photographer, it takes a tremendous amount of skill, then and now, technology will always be changing.