Final project decal images

Composition: These are all images of trees, branches, texture on trunks, and natural things.

Concept: I wanted to contrast natural things with the cold surface of porcelain clay.

Method: I took images of textures and branches outside and made them into ceramic decals and fired them onto the porcelain.

Motivation: I really wanted to experiment with ceramic decals and photography.

Context: I thought that the nature images gave off a nice quality and definitely seemed both cohesive and a little bit melancholy about the coldness of winter but the persistence of growth in nature. I also really liked the texture in some of them, and the way the branches were put on the ceramic tumbler with them reaching upwards and outwards along with the form worked nicely.

Place recreate

Place recreate.

I chose to take a picture that represented a memory to me. It is a photo of my mother's fall decorations by an old lamp of ours. The picture definitely carries over sentimental feelings to me because of the memories it invokes of the way my mom did things during that time of year. It reminds me of that season and the things associated with it. I think the way that the light brightens up the objects from the dark background also makes it more nostalgic.

Portrait recreate

Obviously my version is not very good quality, but I think that it definitely references the first one. I liked the first one a lot because of the intensity of the eyes, which I definitely do not convey in my own version.  The original image also references culture and my trying to recreate that culture also doesn't work.

Constructed Realities Final Images

Composition: Eggs in egg carton with drawn faces on two of them.
Concept: Eggs dreading their future as part of a meal.
Method: I drew on the eggs and focused on those and got really close and zoomed in.
Motivation: I thought it would be funny and a bit morbid to give the eggs a personality that dreads when we will eat them. By subtly changing the scene by drawing on the eggs, I wanted to convey that meaning.
Context: People don't give their food personalities- that would just make people reluctant to eat food.


Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation:  They thought they were funny.
Evaluation: I could have done something to the scene to make them more interesting- cropping or camera placement.
Extension: I could do a whole narrative series following the expressions of the eggs during each stage of their 'lives' in my kitchen.

Since all of my favorite images that I picked had the same concept, motivation, method, and context, I thought I would just write it once. These were my favorite images from all the landscapes I took.

Composition: I took pictures at my Aunt's house over thanksgiving. I centered the camera mostly on the baby, and wanted to show what was going on around him.
Concept: A Narrative series about how people interact around babies.
Method: I sat on one end of the room and used a slower shutter speed with no flash to capture movement and what was going on.
Motivation: I wanted to show the progression of people's interactions with a baby. How my younger girl cousins loved him and wanted to take lots of pictures, and them eventually they left and the mom came to watch the baby and eventually pick him up. I thought it formed a bit of a narrative that showed not only how people interacted with babies but also a progression in time.
Context: People love taking pictures of babies, but usually close up and smiling. I wanted to show more of how other people act around babies.


Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation: They could definitely see a story forming, but wished it would have been more developed.
Evaluation: I should have framed them all the same or added more from different angles. Two the same and one different doesn't mesh well.
Extension: I could have had more scenes as well.

Composition: Staples standing up and slightly leaning on each other with a blank background.
Concept: I wanted to reference architecture and a city landscape on a miniature scale using staples.
Method: I set the staples up on a white board, used the natural light in the room and shot the image.
Motivation: I wanted to make it look like skyscrapers.
Context: Architectural images are popular in photography, and I wanted to see if I could fool people into thinking of buildings when I took a photo of staples.


Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation: Looks cool with the lighting, definitely reminded people of buildings.
Evaluation: It would have looked better if the one staples wasn't leaning on the other.
Extension: More staples, bigger city landscape. Not just one patch of buildings.

Composition: I took an up-close picture of staples.
Concept: I wanted to create an abstract image that didn't immediately reference a form.
Method: I zoomed in and focused on the details of a pile of staples.
Motivation: I wanted to construct something that people didn't understand, or immediately know what it was. I wanted to play with illusions and perspective to confuse the viewer about what they were looking at.
Context: In most photography people know what they are looking at, I wanted to distort that and create something that was a little bit of a visual illusion that people didn't know what it was.


Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation: Because I already did a shot with staples in it, most people knew immediately that these were staples.
Evaluation:Could have been sharper in areas.
Extension: I could zoom in even further to really avoid people seeing the shape of staples.

Composition: I put lego faces in a bowl of milk. I took one image straight down of the entire bowl, and one image of a detail of the bowl and it's contents.
Concept: I wanted to play with the idea of cereal and to surprise the viewers with images of legos instead of cheerios or other cereal.
Method: I took the lego heads and put them in a bowl of milk. Using natural lighting I shot the images from different angles and with different focuses and zooms.
Motivation: I thought it would be shocking and humorous, but could also imply a deeper statement about society.
Context: Who eats heads for breakfast? The construction was meant to play on the idea of the absurd, and reference the idea that some people do do crazy things. If we gave each lego head an identity and value, then this piece could reference inhumanity and mistreatment of people as a political statement.


Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation: They didn't really get into deeper meanings, but they thought they were funny.
Evaluation: A bit too grey, maybe set up a little better with the heads not upside down, and spaced better.
Extension: I could do one with a lego head in milk in a spoon on it's way to someone's mouth.

Blogs 24 and 25

Blog 24:

A- The first recreate I would do would be to take the Lewis Carrol one and have it become a stop-motion film. I think it would be exciting to still have kids acting in it, but to make the story more clearly represented.
The second recreate I would do it the one where the photographer recreated a scene from a poem by Tennyson, the Lady of Shallot. I love Tennyson, so I would want to stick with that, but the image could be modernized and could even become playful if the characters weren't human. Image an animal or a doll acting out the roles.

B. For my final project I want to do ceramic decals of photos. I'm not sure exactly what of yet, or what on, but I think it will be interesting to have them together.


Blog 25:

For my final project I still want to do photo decals on ceramics. I have a lot of different things I want to try, so it may end up being a little experimental. I was thinking about the history of ceramic decals, and how you usually see pretty flowers on a vase or something. I thought I could change that up a little bit by placing them on surfaces they don't usually go. Then I thought about making tiles to frame the images as a lean more towards photography than ceramics, with the ceramics just being the support or background to the photos. I thought about how much I like texture and nature scenes as well.

Final Portrait Images

Composition: Shot of my neighbors dog in out breakfast room looking outside for deer.
Concept: I wanted to show her personality, and how eager she is to be on the lookout for deer in our backyard.
Method: I told her there were deer and she got really excited and went to look while I took the picture.
Motivation: To make an image with the 'background' prompt showing my neighbors dog in a situation that shows her identity.
Context: Portraits of dogs are not so common, but I wanted to do one that really displayed her personality.


Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation: People didn't really get the excitement from it, but I thought the wagging tail would show it.
Evaluation: People thought the chair was a bit distracting, and that it would be better if I could have taken a photo that had her excited face in it.
Extension: I could take closer images that really showed her face not just her back.

Composition: My family in our backyard.
Concept: To capture the true personalities of my family.
Method: I used a tripod and snapped the shot when they were not expecting it.
Motivation: To make a 'group' picture of my family and their relationships.
Context: My mom wanted a group picture before my sister moved back to Seattle. This was a test shot before I joined the picture and it caught them all off guard.


Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation: People could definitely see the different personalities and interactions of my family.
Evaluation: They wondered why I didn't crop it next to my brother too even it out- but I left that space for me.
Extension: To take more candid shots of my family unawares to display more of their quirks.

Composition: Zoomed in shot of my friend Liz laughing.
Concept: To display a person's character accurately in an image.
Method: I zoomed in on her and she got a little uncomfortable with it so she started laughing.
Motivation: To make an 'Intimate' image of someone I know- Liz was my Suite-mate for my first two years of college and we hung out all of the time. I know her very well.
Context: This photo really represents her character. She looks like this all the time, and I think it was successful in depicting her personality.


Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation: They thought it looked like a candid portrait or snapshot.
Evaluation: It has maybe too much grey in it, and the background could be less distracting.
Extension: Take more with different expressions to show different aspects of her character.

Composition: Focus on face, with a hint of her posture.
Concept: I wanted to take an image of all my students, and I really liked how this one turned out. It really reminds me of her character and what she's like.
Method: I just told her to smile and snapped the shot.
Motivation: Indoor lighting image of one of my students in Saturday Morning Art.
Context: I think children are really fun to photograph because they don't think about how they look as much as adults do. They just smile and wait. This girl's smile to me looks a bit 'I'm sweet and innocent but secretly super mischievous' which totally represents her personality.


Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation: They didn't see any deeper meaning behind it.
Evaluation: They would have liked the background gone.
Extension: They wondered why I cropped it the way I did and what it would be like if I framed more of her in the image.

Final Landscape images

Composition: I balanced the big tree and the little tree together with the sun sort of coming through the fog.

Composition: I stood in the middle of the road that I live on and shot the picture down the road.

Composition: The tree on it's own, framed in the center of the image, with more sky than ground around it. I thought it looked nice this way.

Composition: I shot towards our back fence through the trees with the trees scattered throughout the image and even framing it a little.




Since all of my favorite images that I picked had the same concept, motivation, method, and context, I thought I would just write it once. These were my favorite images from all the landscapes I took.

Concept: I wanted to have the fog in the pictures give off a bit of mystery and curiosity to the place.
Method: I got up super early and walked around outside my house and took pictures on a foggy morning.
Motivation: I wanted to take images in the morning with fog and the sun creeping out.
Context: Foggy morning images relate to spooky-ness and an air of mystery. I wanted to convey that with an added aspect of nostalgia by taking them in my own yard.


Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation: They really liked the images a lot and said that they were even a little creepy.
Evaluation: They thought some of them might be a little generic.
Extension: I could put something unusual in them to spice it up a little, create even more mystery and some surprise.

Popular Images pictures

Composition: Just focusing on the apple at the center, which didn't really end up making it interesting
Concept: Not really much of a concept beyond an advertising image recreated.
Method: I sprayed water on the apple and had a light shining on it.
Motivation: I just really wanted to see if I could capture an advertising-like image with water droplets and everything.
Context: This is just about how advertising pictures are taken. I also thought a little about how much some ad images are manipulated to look way better than anything looks in real life, like by adding water droplets and smearing Vaseline on things to make them look juicy.

Post-crit analysis: I did not present this image at the critique

 Composition: The image is of myself in the mirror with water droplets on the mirror and my hand in front of the mirror.
Concept: I wanted to convey an emotional narrative with this image. I wanted people to wonder what it was about.
Method: I sprayed the mirror with water and took the picture aiming at my reflection and hand.
Motivation: I liked the idea of reflection, and I liked the texture of water droplets, so I combined them.
Context: I wanted to create some sort of story behind the image that people would take away from it, but I didn't want to make it obvious, so it was sort of left to the viewer's own mind. The image could be categorized as a TV or Film popular image, because of the element of storyline and question suspense.

Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation: People really liked this one- they thought the mirror reminded them of a medicine cabinet and the blurry-ness could be relating to depression or multiple identities.
Evaluation: They wondered what it would be like if the hand was blurry and the face in focus, sort of reversed.
Extension: They thought it could work as a movie poster or a book cover, or that on each droplet of water I could have a different image showing different aspects of character and identity.

 Composition: This is an image of one of my scarfs.
Concept: I liked the texture of the fabric, and the way it rolled up and folded reminded me of a landscape. Landscapes reference travel for me, so I wanted to make it about travel.
Method: I placed the scarf on my desk and arranged it, then had a light shining on it.
Motivation: A reference to travel.
Context: Close up images are not as common in travel photography, but I think that the detail of fabric, on an item of clothing like a scarf that travels with you all around, can give a sense of travel and adventure as well.

Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation: They really liked the detail on it, and it was successful in reminding them of travel. I told them the fabric was actually really soft and they were surprised because it looks so tough and outdoorsy.
Evaluation: They liked the way I focused it, and the lighting.
Extension: They suggested adding an element of movement to it like little people moving through the folds on a journey.

 Composition: Decorative beads in a vase.
Concept: I thought the beads were pretty, so I took a picture of them. I knew that most people wouldn't know what they were looking at when they saw them, but I wanted to portray the texture and details of them.
Method: I shot the picture with the camera looking down the vase to the beads that were tangled up in there.
Motivation: I really liked how the beads looked and thought that they might look nice as a stock image.
Context: I thought it would be interesting to have the image be sort of abstract as in that people couldn't tell what it actually was, but still enjoy the image. Most photography I've seen has been of things where you can tell what they were so I thought it would be confusing to people to mix that up a little.

Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation- They liked the image and thought it could be used as a computer background.
Evaluation- They liked the sharpness and detail in some of the beads- what I chose to focus on.
Extension- They agreed with me that it would be a whole lot prettier and interesting if it were in color, as the black and white color scheme made the image lose some of its dazzle.

 Composition: Flower in a vase towards the side with a black background on the other side. I thought that it would provide some sort of balance, but i'm not sure how successful it was.
Concept: It was meant to be either a stock image or a postcard/poster thing.
Method: I zoomed in on some of the flowers in a bouquet I had in my apartment. I digitally darkened the background, but it was pretty dark originally anyways.
Motivation: To create a clean image of flowers.
Context: I think that flowers are some of the more beautiful things in nature, and as such people have always photographed them, or drawn them. Since they are so popular, I thought it would be perfect for a popular media assignment.

Post-crit analysis:
Interpretation- They didn't really read anything beyond that it was an image of flowers.
Evaluation- They thought the black was distracting and that there could be more highlights on the petals.
Extension- People thought I could add text to it to make it more cohesive and mean something like an advertisement or a card- something to give it more meaning.

works in progress crit final project

inspirations for final project