Photo Essay Emulation: A Girl and Her Room

For my fourth photo essay, I decided to emulate Rania Matar's well-known photo book, "A Girl and Her Room." Her book gives us insight into the lives of girls in the United States versus girls in Lebanon by taking intimate photographs of them in their respective rooms. These fine art portraits show so much more than just the girl and her room, but they also portray the girl's personality and identity. The portraits are very candid. I wanted to do something similar, because I've always thought that my room was an extension of my identity, which is why I've always spent so much time in my room. It's like my personalized world and everyone who enters my room always says: "It's so you!" This idea inspired me to see if this was the case for different girls as well. This photo essay helped me realize that each girl's room expresses her true identity through its color, what it holds, and how everything is arranged.

Photo Essay: Redefining Perfection

Examples of Light, Shadow, and Reflections

Shadows as main subject, Tyra Banks

Reflection, Matthias Vorlander

Back-lit Non-Silhouette, Sheen's Nature Photography

Silhouette, Naveed Mughal

Back-lit Non-Silhouette 

Olivia Bee

This beautiful photograph was taken by Olivia Bee (Bolles), a well-known photographer and director from Portland. This photograph is a back-lit non-silhouette because you can see the girl's features perfectly, but there is clearly light surrounding her. I think that Olivia Bee probably metered directly off of the girl, because she is the only thing in focus, and the girl is perfectly clear. If she had metered off of the light or background instead, the girl would most likely be silhouette-like. The light would be the main subject and she would be dark. The picture is kind of monotone and very light. This may be because Bee overexposed the photo for effect and did some minor editing, but I believe that if she had metered off of the natural light source, the colors would be more vibrant regarding the light and sky.

Motion Assignment: My Photograph Trials

Panning and Total Motion

Slow Motion

Freeze Motion 

Panning

Panning and Total Motion 

Panning and Total Motion 

Panning and Total Motion

My Heart Skips a Beat

Clara Debrun-Sittler, Total Motion

Clara Debrun-Sittler, Effective Use of Camera Shake with Film 

Example of Motion

Types of Motion in Tennis:

Harold Edgerton

Heather by New Balance

These two photographs are both of women doing a tennis serve. They are of the same thing, but they are expressed very differently and give off completely different ideas. The first photograph is taken with multiple exposures to show all of the stages of a tennis serve whereas the second picture shows a woman frozen in motion. The background is blurry, but she is clear. I think that the first image is much more expressive than the first one, because it's more fine art and less commercialized. In addition, the photograph shows all of the stages of a serve and I think that that tells a much bigger story than just a girl frozen in action.

Triptychs: 

Tom Spianti

This series of photographs is what we would call a triptych. Triptychs often tell a story or show some sort of progression. Triptychs can be very interesting with motion, because like I said, it shows a progression of action and movement. It almost feels like watching a movie that is stopped. 

Neal Laver

This is a great example of a triptych with motion, showing a progression of events. I think that presenting motion this way is much more powerful than just having a singular image.

Abstraction

In art, abstraction is using new techniques and methods to recreate an object or scene without having it be the way we literally see that object or scene.

Alex Matravers- Abstract

This photograph is abstract. In this photograph, Alex Matravers uses shallow depth of field to blur everything besides the focus which seems to be the center part of a ceiling light or fan. The shallow depth of field adds on to the abstraction of the photograph because it stops the viewer from being able to see and name a clear object.

Bob Doran- Experiment

This is another example of an abstract photograph with shallow depth of field in it. Here, there is also motion which makes the image abstract. I really like the way that we have to focus on the moving lights that probably represent an object or scene that we can't make out. The color really adds to the photo.

Photo Composition Hunt- Elements of Design

Lines

Michael Kenna

Lines

Henry Callahan

Texture

Frederick Sommer

Shape

Christopher Bucklow

Space

Richard Benson

Value

Lillian Bassman

Value

Jean Baptiste Mondino

Leading Lines

Chip Simone

Rule of Thirds

Bruce Davidson

Strong Diagonals

Josef Hoflehner
Bird's Eye View

Christian Chaize

Bug's Eye view

Liu Bolin

Close-up

Alfred Eisenstaedt

Close-up

Gilles Abenhaim

Frame Within a Frame

Ormond Gigli

Filling the Frame

Martin Amis

Oldest Family Photograph

This is the oldest family photograph that I found. Since my grandparents live in France, I had them find this photograph and send me a digital picture of it. It is probably not the oldest family photograph that we have, but since we didn't have a lot of time to find one, this is what I chose. This photograph is from 1944. It is of my great grandparents on my mother's side, Paule and Pierre. The two year old little girl is my grandmother, Marie Blanche Casablanca. This was taken after they moved from Algeria to Paris, but before moving to a small mountain village in Corsica. In this picture, my relatives are in a park in Paris, that weirdly enough, I recognize. I don't know who was taking the photo, but my mother told me that it was probably taken using a nice American film camera. At the time, they could only use black and white film. I think that the photograph was retouched later on by my grandfather, Hervé. It was funny to find such a nice family photograph, because it's like the ones we would take today, but from the 1940s. It was weird for me to see these "ancient" pictures, because I haven't been told very much about my family on my mother or father's side. I didn't even know my great grandparents' names or history before this assignment.

Old Process, New Artist

Process: Cyanotype The Cyanotype was first introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1842. The new process, however, produced by Mike Ware, is more effective. The Cyanotype process uses a solution of iron compounds contrarily to the black and white photography that is set in silver. The photograph can be taken with a camera and then turned into a negative to start the Cyanotype process. The Cyanotype process starts with mixing Potassium ferricyanide and Ferric ammonium citrate (green) in equal parts. Then, you must put objects or negatives on the material to make a print using UV light (the sun, for example). After the exposure, the material is put in water and a white print emerges from a blue background. The final print dries and you are done! This is a Cyanotype made by Sir John Herschel. There are many new artists that use this old yet unforgettable technique for modern photography. One of these great photographers is Edwin Meeuwsen, a photographer from the Netherlands. He has a lot of photographs of animals and focuses on subjects from his travels. This is one of Edwin Meeuwsen's many beautiful cyanotypes. It is also one of my favorite works of art, because it perfectly contrasts and compares the old process of cyanotypes with a modern subject. This is another beautiful image of his, created after travelling to Japan. I love the simplicity of this photo. It is clear that there is a story behind the photo, and it brings out the culture of the young lady. Sources

Final Portfolio

Stop Motion

        For this project, we had to use creativity and technique to create a stop motion animation. I really enjoyed this project, because I got the opportunity to use other skills such as drawing and incorporate them in my video. Overall, I am happy about how my stop motion turned out.

My Stop Motion Drawing Video

Utopia and Dystopia Pre-Work

For this project, we had to create a video that represents Portland in a utopian manner and one that represent the city in a dystopian way. We had to be observant and creative for this project. This wasn't my favorite project, because it is more raw than most of my other works and I prefer taking photographs than videos.

Utopia: A place or world where everything is perfect. In other words, this is paradise.



Dystopia: A place or world where everything is bad, corrupt, and imperfect. This is basically hell.

Magazine

For this project, the goal was to use all of the information and techniques that we used to create a full scale magazine. We got to chose the magazine theme that we wanted and we had a bunch of creative liberty. I loved the commercial side of this project and the creativity that that entailed. It was an extremely fun project!

(Clara)

(Left: Greta, Right: Clara)

(Clara)

(Left: Clara, Right: Greta)

(Greta)

(Clara)

(Greta)