7x the Fun

During my portrait assignment, I did a really fun photoshoot with Kareli, and really loved being able to give her some beautiful pictures of herself! I thought all of that was done and over with, but her close group of friends actually asked me ever so nicely if I'd be willing to do a photoshoot with all of them! I had to first explain that I only had about 3 months of experience with this camera (I literally bought it back in November), but if they were okay with that risk, then sure why not? The more the merrier! It was definitely a different experience shooting a group this large! I felt the need to take a LOT more shots in case one person was blinking or someone else's hair flew in her face. It was also more difficult to find spaces for group shots where the background was consistent or the lighting was the same on everybody's faces. Also, with Kareli's individual portraits, I was able to do a wide aperture to blur out the background, but I often had to shoot the groups with a larger depth of field to counterbalance the distance. Luckily, it was a beautiful and sunny day, so the lighting wasn't impacted too much! I honestly had the best time shooting these girls.

Without further ado, I present these seven gorgeous ladies: Arielle, Steph, Vivian, Zuzanna, Brett, Kareli, and Ali

And last, but not least, the most hilarious top model shot of the day. Too great!

Ripples in a Pool

For the first half of my final photography project, we were asked to have a running theme and purpose through all of our photographs. I really wanted to try my hand at tackling a heavier subject and using photography as a means of expressing my own thoughts and emotions. Though it really is a heavy topic, I decided to communicate the way that the death impacts more than the individual: it truly impacts friendships and the way that groups operate. These four photographs are meant to tell a narrative of a group's last day together. While they have photographs capturing their happiness and memories of the past, they are inherently aware of the knowledge of the future.

As college students, we often think we're invincible. But when we're forced to face the reality of life and death, it's unbelievably shocking and painful. In a sense, these photographs are meant to tell the story of those who are left in the aftermath - to acknowledge that the pain and emotion is real, and that we have every right to feel it.

Technically, I was able to accomplish the transparent shots by taking a photograph of the background and then a photograph of the subjects. Then in Photoshop, I created three layers: 1) the background 2) the subjects with a low opacity, thus creating the transparent effect 3) the subjects normally. I then "painted out" Kevin in the 3rd layer so only his 2nd transparent layer and the 1st background layer were visible. It was really interesting to try out

Response Piece

One of our assignments was to visit a photography gallery and respond through our own piece. I chose to go to the White Petals Surround Your Yellow Heart exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art which is practically on Penn's campus. The entire exhibit illustrated various views on fashion, self-adornment, clothing, and texture. Some pieces such as Aura Rosenberg, John Miller, and Frank Lutz’s Carmen’s Fashion Do’s and Dont’s that featured a young girl and her brother in various fashionable clothing. While highly stylized, speech bubbles, colorful backgrounds, and humorous text complemented the images. For example, four images together were titled “Almost anything can make a great earring…almost!” with images of Carmen wearing buttons and bananas on her ears. Furthermore, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven’s pieces, Youth Code and NonPlus, incorporated photography with many other materials such as paint, different textured paper, magazines, pen, and more. Finally, the three photographs that stayed with me the most, were Wardell Milan’s Naomi and Landscape #1, 2, and 3. The three images contained a striking model in haute-couteure fashion with other prints and collages covering parts of her outfit or body. The prints were reminiscent of National Geographic pieces, ranging from flowers to deserts to the open sky. Though there was not an artist’s statement included with the pieces, I felt that the work was combining the two worlds of fashion photography: the models on the pages and the girls who read the magazines. The way that the shapes were cut out and pasted alluded to the way young girls crudely cut out their favorite images, pasting them in collages or on their walls. Because the additional work was done on the computer, it was almost unusual to see how flat the print was. The landscape images created new outfits, obscuring what Naomi was originally wearing.

            Ultimately, I was fascinated by the various ways that photography was combined with different elements. From speech bubbles to paint to computerized “collaging,” it really opened up my eyes to the various ways that photograph and other mediums can be combined with one another. I took multiple shots of nature: flowers, grass, branches, etc. I then  cut some of them out similar to Wardell Milan's work, but also experimented with different layers and backgrounds.

To be totally honest, I'm not sure how much I am a fan of this type of photography. I think I need to experiment a little bit more with collaging to see what style I like. I do like the layering effect, though. I think it would be quite beautiful to overlay a lace image over a portrait. As much as I love modern art, I'm realizing that when it comes to people, I lean towards what I consider beautiful and elegant. Perhaps I could try this style with inanimate objects and see if I would enjoy that more. Images from Wardell Milan and ICA

My Biggest Fear Is...

For my next project, I chose to do it around the theme of "My Biggest Fear." I was partially inspired by Gillian Wearing who would approach strangers and ask them to write "confessional" things on pieces of paper and hold them up for a photograph. At the same time, at church we've done an exercise to write out my worries on a piece of paper and destroy it. It's cathartic in many ways and allows you to let go of your worries and give them to God. Based off of these two inspirations, I decided I wanted to take things a little closer than strangers and photograph close friends and their biggest fears. I asked a group of my friends to think about what their biggest fear was and how they wanted to destroy the piece of paper or representation of it.

The responses really ranged across the board. Tyler's tangible fear was the most tangible one: tomatoes. And of course, we felt the most appropriate way to destroy it was to smash it to oblivion! It was beyond awesome. Note: You can click on the images to make them larger.

Other fears were much more abstract such as Janet's fear of "not being able to say goodbye." Rather than to destroy her fear, she chose to be photographed walking away from it and leaving it behind.

Ankit's fear was himself. We struggled for a while to brainstorm with how exactly he would overcome that fear because destruction  (of himself) would actually be giving into his fear if anything. Finally, he settled on the idea of blacking out the rest of the paper except for the words "myself."

What was also really interesting was finding "pairings" in fears. Matt's fear was of anarchy which actually did fit him perfectly if you know him. He chose to "destroy" it by folding it up neatly and recycling it. On the other hand, Sumeet's fear was of conformity and he chose to stab it with a knife. A technical difficulty was collaging images together - still working on that!

I also decided to make full collages of all the fears and all the destructions as well. I've also been learning some more techniques in Photoshop like how to make the background black & white so only the person is in color. I chose to use this technique to symbolize the individuality of each person. At the same time, however, while all of my friends are individuals, when collaged together like below, they represent the grander scheme of things: fears that we all share as a collective society.

Note: Blacked out images are due to privacy requests. Huge apologies to my wonderful friend Krystal who also took part in the shoot. I somehow forgot to take the photo of her holding her fear straight on.