The Calm Before The Storm Crit

I chose Eric Tomberlin's Eutrophication.
1. Because it's awesome.
2. Because he's awesome.
I was lucky enough to have him as a professor at UNCA and this was one of the photos that stood out to me when I first looked at his work.

       In Eutrophication, what first struck me was the color, composition and ambiguity. It is in a square format, with rich bright greens with an almost monochrome palette. The lines are a combination of geometric and organic, clearly separating themselves of categories of man made and nature. Together they form a dynamic yet calm composition that helps the eye travel from one end to the other, and from man made context to natural context. Because of the chosen point of view it gives the viewer a very flat view, bringing into question the reality of what they are looking at. It requires the viewer to look closely into the details of the photo to figure out exactly what they are looking at, even though it still may not be completely clear. Critiquing the image with its name in mind gives it a very positive tone, and suggesting process as well.
       The monochromatic color of greens, grays, black and white, really make this a strong cohesive piece. It alludes to nature, however with the bright, almost neon luminance to the greens, it seems slightly unnatural at the same time. Along with this unnatural feel man-made objects can be found small-scale in several areas of the piece. When seeing this, the greens in my mind went from a natural green, to a poisonous or polluted one, showing just how significant all of the details of the piece are.
       It looks like an aerial map of a natural world and a seeping polluted at the same time. Because of this is alludes to a corresponding relationship between nature and man, showing both the beauty we find in nature as well as the beauty or beastly consequences that come from man within nature. The ambiguity of this photo of course may still allude to other things, which is another reason I find it successful. There are several ways to interpret this, due to angle, color, composition, and space. Every corner has information, keeping the eye moving and gaining more and more perspectives.
       I personally think this piece is very successful. The main reason I think this is because it takes a moment and place in time that is often overlooked and ignored by others around. Most would see this as just a murky area of water that's been used as a trash can for a few things. But by placing himself and the camera where he did, he offers the audience a beautiful landscape out of a simple yet complex subject. It makes you look twice at something you normally wouldn't which I find very significant, and he does it through capturing the beauty of it.

Cinco de Mayo Moon

Got a ton of awesome photos from Cinco de Mayo, here's one with a bit of editing. I plan on combining a few images together to get both an great sky and moon exposure. I loved the clouds with this one.

Best of Last Week!

Best of the week...from last week.

Just for funsies with a friend at Latta Plantation

My New Muse

Since I ended up slihgtly chaning my direction for the portfolio, I thought I'd post a few images of my new muse. Very theatrical an dramatic, and even though they are scary they're also pretty beautiful lighting and color-wise. I really like the variety of perspectives he uses too, and how the lighting really creates the mood.

Best of the Week

Owl that lives in my boyfriends backyard.  Super friendly and doesn't seem to care if we take pictures. He also seems to be a heavy sleeper, his eyes were close the whole time I took pictures!

Best of the Week

Happy Easter, here's some pictures of my beautiful family:

Find yo muse.

Tom Chambers and Eikoh Hosoe

Eikoh Hosoe
-Originally began with Eikoh Hosoe who did a series on his dreams because I wanted to recreate vivid nightmares I had as a child.

Tom Chambers

http://www.tomchambersphoto.com/

-Keeps surreal and dreamy atmosphere with color and contents

-Lights photos in beautiful ways

-Some of his works represent dreams, with some similar content

-Great use of depth, not just a flat composition.

-Not as creepy as Hosoe.

How I'll do it:

-Use Hosoe dark and eerie tone and ambiguity.

-Use Chamber’s intentional lighting to light important areas that narrate the picture. Also use a lot of depth to create better compositions.

-Use photoshop to successfully make them realistically surreal

Best of last week

Panorama

Panorama

Best of da week.

Best of the Week at Gilcrest Natural Farm

In the summer I often work for Gilcrest Farm, and this weekend, the farm needed a babysitter to watch my boss' two sons. So we took a photo adventure to see the cows and baby chicks. The baby chicks are stay in baby pools in an old creepy house until they're big enough to keep safe and warm outside. The house has a lot of character. And a lot of mice. 

best of...?

I'll be honest, I haven 't shot much this week, but I have practiced my photoshop skills with this sweet birthday card I made. Clearly A+ work.

More will appear this weekend!

Final for Idiom Project

Best of and original files for Project 2

Here's a  cool fire pit picture I took!

And here are the 3 original files I started with for project 2. I'm close to finish, all I have left is to remove his head and make it look convincing.

Final Piece for Project One.

My idea for project one became completely different when I was staring a this guy's mouth. He had some cool cracks in his teeth and I wanted to photograph them. As I was taking it I liked how his mouth looked as a whole and thought it'd be cool to see what effect I could make using non local color. Mainly, I wanted it to look sickly, but still slight close to some kind of reality. I kept some areas in his mouth more realistic color wise, like reddish gums and yellow teeth. I added a lot of purple to the tongue to give it a bruised look. Originally I had the skin around the mouth green, but it looked too stereotypical to a typical monster-like character. The blue made it look like it lacked oxygen/ was cold, etc. Combined, I thought the bright yellow balanced out a lot of the cool colors. While experimenting I put a plastic wrap filter over the tongue. I thought it'd look cheesy but it had a sickly effect. In the end I put the filter over the entire piece because I though it gave it a mucous-y look. So it looks kinda gross.

Woodpecker hard at work.

non local color originals

The main photo I'm working on is the fly in the spider web. The fuzzy dog I'm doing on the side is just for fun. I'm finding it a little difficult to work with this photo, I think because of the spider web, I'm having trouble deciding on the right colors, so as of right now I'm messing around and getting familiar with the photoshop tools.

So far with the spider web, these hues are my favorite, and getting to this image was a pretty simple process. I think I'm going to work off of this one and see what I can do with the web, but I really like the contrast of the red and blue together.  With the dog picture, I messed around with the art history brush to make the blur look a bit more intentional. I'm not crazy about it, but thought it'd be good to mess around with a simple image first.