Lighting Composition
HARD LIGHT
Lighting is an element in photography I've always struggled with, especially when it comes to natural light. I used to believe that all pictures should be taken either in the shade or at a certain time of day in order to be appealing. However, I've come to learn that hard light is able to give a rugged and hard look, if done right. When working with hard light, the goal of the photo must be kept in mind. I wanted to catch the dirtiness and concrete feeling of being in a city so that the harsh sun of midday and bright indoor lights could work in my favor. To take these pictures, I used the daylight shadows to my advantage so I could add to the contrast of the buildings and give it a more urban look. The fluorescent lights of a parking garage fits a grungy aesthetic and can make objects look more austere. These types of lighting highlighted the dirt and edges, so it was perfect for buildings and objects. However, this ruggedness would not work well for portraits and would draw the eye to the more unflattering parts of the face. If the goal is to make something or someone look pretty and elegant, hard light would be much more difficult to work with.
The Male Gaze
In Laura Mulveys analysis of the male gaze, women are presented as sexual objects of divine perfection that satisfies men's scopophilia. In all media, the ideal woman is described to be elegant and perfect, but only in the sense that they can be dominated by a man. I feel subjected to the male gaze not just in media but in life. Now that we have to wear masks, men will ask me to take it off to see my smile (as if I would be smiling). In this photoshoot, I wanted to expose this sentiment by removing the face. What might be a perfect woman is tampered with by adding the paper bag and mask, making the image feel almost incomplete. We are not gifted with her smile and are unsure how she feels at all, translating directly into how many women feel daily. Objects with no feelings, aspirations, or thoughts; a direct critique on the portrayal of women in media.
Inspiration from Richard Mosse
Richard Mosse's project, Incoming, used imaging heat to capture a message about climate change and the tragic displacements of humans across the world. I love the way his images capture an uncomfortable feeling surrounding an uncomfortable topic, but mostly I enjoy the way his photos look. Since I don't have a heat-sensitive camera, I wasn't able to completely mimic his style. However, for this project, I wanted to experiment with inverted colors and how one can make a drab looking photo look unique. This style is foreign to me so I thought it would make a fun challenge for this week. Unlike Mosse, I didn't have a clear direction for what the message of this series would be so instead I went out and took as many photos I could to experiment with post-editing. I think after editing, the original photos ended up looking way better in the inverted style. Now that I know this technique, I'll be utilizing it in future work.
Midterm Project
For this series, I decided to do self-portraits. Initially, I thought the hardest obstacle to get past would be how I choose to express myself. However, the technical parts and actually capturing them in the first place was the real challenge. I didn't factor in how much I would need a tripod or how I would focus on myself when not behind the camera. To get around this, I set my camera on different surfaces to make up for the tripod and I put objects in front of the camera to get focussed before I took the photos. After choosing from about 70 mostly blurry photos, these are the 10 that came out ok. However, the occasional blips in the background caused me to rely on photoshop. This was a good opportunity to familiarize me with photoshop and figure out ways to fix pictures that seemed doomed at first. Though it was a challenging project for me and ended up being very time consuming, I like the way they turned out.
Final Project
