Late Week 7: Someone Else

As many close to me well know, I am quite the internet junkie. One of my favorite sites http://www.break.com has galleries posted all the time featuring images of all sorts (photographs/comics/imagery)--sometimes genuine, sometimes altered for a certain effect. The best part of these photographs is often the captions given to them.

This image in particular was captioned "Ahh...Old Time Misogyny" for quite obvious reasons once the background is brought into closer view. I honestly don't know that I would've noticed the implied gender roles of this board game's cover without it being drawn to my attention. Additionally, it's one of those images that makes me laugh so hard mainly because I can't believe it was PURPOSEFULLY DESIGNED this way! Was it really necessary to add in the mother and daughter washing dishes? Couldn't this image be just as complete without it? It's almost like the person really thought that women would love nothing more than to do housework and watch men have fun playing a game! I wouldn't even come CLOSE to saying that images surrounding my generation are devoid of bias, but it's very interesting to me how direct of a message this image sends out. I'm definitely keeping this image in reserve for the next time I hear something about "The Good Old Days"! =)

Late Week 6: My Work

For this week's post, I decided to have a bit of a challenge for myself. I was looking through tutorials about Photoshop, and I happened to stumble across a comment from someone mentioning how hard it is to change black clothing to appear as white clothing. I made it my mission to try this out!

For starters, I didn't have a very high resolution camera to take a picture of myself with, so the above image didn't give me a whole bunch to work with as far as clothing texture. I definitely was trying to retain as much of the proper shadowing as possible, but in the midst of levels, curves, color balance adjustments, dodge tool, burn tool, ect.......I ended up with what looked like glowing gray clothing. ADDITIONALLY, I was so focused and zoomed in on the clothing, that I didn't notice some accidental texture and color changes I had made to my skin. By then it was too late.

I probably should have scrapped this image while I had the chance, and started anew. However, after literally 3 hours of focus on altering just one image, I WAS NOT GOING TO BE A QUITTER! After I got the clothing to look reasonable, I switched gears to my face, applying filter after filter to different parts of my face; film grain helped me look like I had SOME facial texture, and a good scattering of other textures made it look slightly less like I was wearing lipstick.

Maybe this image is just a big fail, but in all I've seen people proudly present much worse on their blogs, facebook, and myspace pages. If anything, I've learned a lot lessons on controlling what I'm working on, so that if certain types of changes need to be made later it isn't impossible.

Late Week 6: Someone Else

Advertisements, to me, are societies way of dumbing us down and making us insecure. That said, it's a career I've often considered! People's ability to not question what they see just AMAZES me sometimes. Whether its the photo of a celebrity, altered to make them look 20 years older for the tabloids, or even the occasional ad that makes a model look so perfect even angels are getting eating disorders. That said, I think that taking control of what people percieve is a very powerful job. Creating images that make people LONG for your product is a money making and often dangerous business.

If I were in advertising, however, I would aim for the effect of the above image. It's so OUTRAGEOUSLY clever of a way to sell lotion! I have to wonder if the man on the bus really knew why someone was laughing and taking pictures of him.

Me, A Friend, and the Other

For the picture of myself, I actually spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I wanted the shot set up. I've never seen myself as photogenic, and I REALLY don't like the look of my goofy smile. At first I wanted to do something that represented me and my interests. I thought about doing something with me in front of my computer, or with my game systems. Everything turned out really posed, and I couldn't accept them.

Later one particular evening it happened to be raining really hard, and having just been through some very personal challenges, I was feeling very blue and lonely. I laid on my bed just thinking about my life really. Before I knew it I realized I had been sitting there for two hours just looking out at the rain, actually feeling very peaceful. My camera happened to be nearby, and without disturbing my expression or pose I snapped off a couple pictures. I really thought it might be took dark of a pic, and maybe it is. But to me it feels like a captured moment when my life kinda made sense for two hours.

My friend Chris is very similar to me in a lot of ways; many of our interests are similar, and we both HATE getting our picture taken. Hence, maybe it was just my perverse sense of humor that drove me to taking HIS picture amongst the lot of my friends. When I came to his house, we kept arguing back and forth about where the picture would be taken. I had ideas, but since he was begrudgingly letting me take the picture I couldn't push him out the door.

One of his favorite things he owns is his fish tank, and I can always count on him calling me and telling me all about whatever new additions he has made to it. Additionally, one of my favorite memories of our friendship is when he helped me set up my own tank, and we both sat in front of it for about an hour, in the dark, eating Taco Bell, and watching the brightly colored fish. To mimic that moment, as well as a way to get him to let me take his picture, I tried my best to capture a moment between him and his prized fish.

For starters, I am NOT a person who approaches strangers easily. This assignment burst my hermit bubble--very unhappily I might add. In order to find someone doing something interesting, I actually ended up walking through a couple of parks. I came across a couple who were playing in the leaves. The guys, oblivious to the strange looks he was getting from his girlfriend, was going CRAZY playing with leaves. I shyly introduced myself, and suprisingly they were very open to me picturing them. All my pictures of the girlfriend ended up looking very posed! If she wasn't sticking out her chest, she had a sort of crazy/fake grin on her face. The boyfriend, however, seemed to get a genuine enjoyment from those leaves. Although I never asked what, I really got the impression from this guy that the fall leaves were attached to some sort of happy memory. I chose this picture because in contrast to my own picture for this project, which I decided on days before, this guy seemed so full up life. Either that, or I missed some sort of drug deal moments prior.

Late Week 5: My Work

Ta-DAH!! My new blog header has been created! For the longest time I found the idea of blogging to be an irritating hobby honestly, but I'm starting to develop an appreciation. Now that I've learned more about Photoshop, as well as creating/editing webpages in HTML, I really find the idea of a blog kinda fun! I've started to notice the huge variety of blogs people have, and it's not just kittens and celebrity stalkers.

For this image I decided to go with both a technology/expression theme. The abbreviation DMF is made of three images. For the "D" I decided to use a computer screen, being the obvious mode of expression in digital media. I found a cool looking graffiti "M" picture, invoking the idea of art and photography as well as typeface. I wanted to do something original for "F", and I kept googling for something that represented a sort of silent expression of the letter. At first I was planning on just using an image of an "F" in sign language, but decided I'd make the reference a little more obvious by adding the letter into the image. All in all, I'm pretty happy with my new header; although, for the life of my I can't change the green background of my blog.....right now the overall presentation kinda screams "GREEEEEEEEN"! =)

Late Week 5: Someone Else

Our lecture on how some pictures are special because they were taken at just the right angle, or at just the right time, prompted me to post this image of an insanely creepy looking Easter Bunny. I'm sure that with the bunny's head tilted slightly upward, the costume doesn't look like a rabbit with evil intent. Or maybe the person who designed the head for this costume just really didn't take into consideration how creepy their creation truly is. In either case, I couldn't help laughing while looking at this image.

In my own experience taking pictures, it has often been the most unintentionally funny pictures that bring me the most laughs. Whether it's a person who was talking, and their mouths just happen to be at a weird angle when captured on film, or a blink that makes them look like they are stoned, it is often hard to pose a truly funny image. I imagine this is how the paparazzi get their AWFUL pictures of celebrities; if you keep following someone and continuously take pictures, you are sure to get an image that appears to have a meaning or theme that is way out of context.

Letter Forms in the Outside World

This image is a MAJOR stretch to find a letter, but I couldn't help myself. I stumbled across some petunias in a garden bed near my apartment, and with my eyes I see the blooms arranged in a sort of stretched out "X" shape (it helps if you cover the bloom at the very bottom left with your finger).

It's not perfect, but when I was looking at the maple leaves, I couldn't help but see a "W" in the shape of the leaves, the negative space above the leaves, and the main "veins" of the top three points in the leaf. I really wanted to find a "w" made completely of negative space between leaves, but there weren't any arranged just right. I also didn't want to cheat and prearrange the leaves myself, although it was tempting! =)

While out at Lithia Park I really wanted to capture a letter from the beautiful little pond inside of the Japanese Garden area. With the way the leaves are set, and the reflection on the water a little above, I found that there was a darker area of the water that formed sort of a "V". Although imperfect, I think this is definitely my favorite shot.

I know the rule was no trees, but technically this is just a berry! These bright pink, rubbery looking berries made a perfect "O". My initial intention was to get a "Q", but unfortunately the little extensions coming from the hole inside of the berries didn't quite show up right on some of the other images I took.

Before I left my apartment, to go out into the world looking for letters in the world, I couldn't help but see one staring right at me. An "H" made from my shelves would've been a little TOO easy, so instead I decided to see the "F" created by the wood.

Late Week 4: My Work

First off....IT'S NOT PORN! I was accused of being obscene when I first created this image, manipulated from another, in Photoshop for the purpose of using it as my MySpace background. For the life of me I can't find the original image, but initially this picture was of a guy--from behind--wearing briefs and angel wings for his Halloween costume. Somewhere along the line of me manipulating it, he ended up looking kinda nude.

It was actually a pretty easy image to make. I started with a filter that broke the image down to only three or four colors, and then applied a second filter--"Glowing Edges" I believe--which gave it a very unique look as well as blacked out the background. After reapplying the first filter, the image got it's current chunky lined form and only showed the basic outline of the body. Additionally, although the "curves" feature has never made much sense to me, I was able to change the contrast of light and dark quite nicely I think. I never would have been able to sketch something like this by myself, hence I'm very thankful for the resources of Photoshop CS4.

Late Week 4: Someone Else

I've been really bad about posting on this blog lately; unfortunately I got sick and all my classes suffered. I'm finally catching up on everything though, and here's my first installment. When I was laying in bed feeling like I could hurl at any second, a good friend of mine sent me the above picture. Still feeling the urge to puke, this image managed to put a smile on my face for the rest of the day!

My friend and I got into a long discussion over whether or not this is a genuine photo. We both seem to agree that the writing on the shirt is undoctored, however the face doesn't seem right. All of us have a picture somewhere in which our faces seem distorted, which makes me think this might have been this gentleman's actual expression. Our general consensus is that it looks like someone put a funnier face over the original man's face. Either way, I'm very grateful for the "pick-me-up".