Some friends are family we choose for ourselves.
I incorporated negative space into a photograph by using the sky as a background behind a drone carrying a package. The simplicity of the background emphasizes the main focal point, the drone. The tops of the trees frame the bottom of the drone, illustrating the drone’s height and leading the viewer’s eyes to it. This image came from the in-person research I did for my documentary project where I photographed the drone delivery company, Matternet, based out of Mountain View, California.
The prompt of golden hour inspired me to capture the feeling of this time of day in my photograph. To me, the warm glow of golden hour feels nostalgic because it reminds me of my childhood, playing outside right before the sun goes down. To photograph this feeling, I wanted to find a place where the sun would make the entire place glow. At this location, I liked the way the sun bounced off the water and created a lens flare as, for some reason, it reminds me a lot more of childhood.
Given the prompt of eyes, I found inspiration in the eyes of the young. When you are young, you are seeing the world for the first time, and from a perspective different from anyone else. I think the idea of building your own perspective based on your own experiences and what you see is a beautiful concept. The photograph I landed on to capture this concept is one I took of a baby deer looking at its surrounding world with youthful wonder.
The subject in this portrait is center aligned to demonstrate the concept of loneliness. The photo is framed with a lot of negative space, making the subject look isolated. I edited the exposure to brighten the subject and darken the background in order to further the feeling of loneliness, as the contrast between the subject and the background is increased.
For this image, I was inspired by the concept of water and how it interacts and reacts to other forces. Water is very versatile, but I liked the idea of photographing it on a larger scale, as in a larger body of water such as the one depicted. When I was shooting in the Baylands Nature Preserve, I loved the way the ripples caused by the ducks interacted with and bounced off each other. In my final image, I was able to capture large ripples coming off of one duck along with less prominent ripples from other ducks and objects. The added reflection of the sunset on the water’s surface makes the ripples more visible, and the overall image illustrates the concept of the ripple effect of differing forces upon each other.
To illustrate a holiday tradition that my family has, I took a photograph of one of our wrapped Christmas presents. A simple holiday tradition in my family has always been to open wrapped Christmas presents on Christmas morning. For this prompt, I decided to photograph a present that was wrapped in a way creating balance. The bell in the top left corner and the sticker in the bottom right create balance due to their similar red color and positioning. The addition of the gold ribbons adds to the asymmetrical balanced composition. Overall, the photograph is composed in a way that draws attention through the usage of balance.
My goal with these photos was to use a different white balance setting to change the overall mood and tone of the photograph. In the photo on the left, I used auto white balance to show what the composition looked like in real life. On the right, after experimenting with different settings I changed the white balance to shade, which gave all the colors of the image a more orange cast. This makes it feel more warm and cozy, as opposed to the original which appears somewhat cold and uninviting.
In this photograph, I was challenged with capturing a sunset in a creative way. As I have always loved watching sunsets, I was set on finding a way to depict the act of watching a sunset in the photo. I landed on the concept of photographing the reflection of a sunset in an eye because it would do exactly that, and add more interest into the image. During the shoot, finding the proper angle that would allow for the sunset to be seen across a major portion of the iris posed a significant challenge, but with some trial and error the final shot turned out just how I had hoped.
With this photo my intention was to capture the intensity of people’s passion for watching sports and their loyal commitment to their teams. Using my dad as the model, I had him pose to look as though he was watching a sports game of his favorite team on the television. Taking inspiration from his own affinity for Michigan college football, I was able to tell the story of dedication to and the feeling of investment in a sports team as a fan.
In this image, I photographed subtle symmetry in a natural landscape. While exploring the Baylands Nature Preserve, I was originally looking for perfect symmetry using the reflections of the environment in the water. However, I quickly found that exact symmetry is not as interesting to look at as subtle symmetry, which is noticeable but doesn’t take away from the composition itself. This photo has implications of both translational symmetry as it depicts four repeated trees, and reflectional symmetry because the left and right sides of the photo are mirror images of each other.