Rule of Thirds

This week we focused on taking pictures using a new photography style: the rule of thirds. This style focuses on the way you take the photo, and thinking about the viewers perspective. Using the rule of thirds you divide the photo in thirds vertically, one third should be the focus and the other two thirds should be negative space. I tried to do that with my pictures this week, focusing in on one subject and leaving the other two thirds blank.

High School

High school is mainly social. You are supposed to be preparing for college and the rest of life, but instead you are focusing on friends and extra curriculars. I tried to think of all the social activities I like to do, I rock climb and play soccer after school. I also ride horses and wander around the city. I love going to the beach and seeing friends, as well as watching movies and reading. To me independence, and the freedom to do all these things is what high school is all about.

Middle School

In middle school I remember trying my hardest not to do anything. In elementary school I remember fun outdoor activities and hanging out with friends. In middle school I remember listening to horrible pop music and spending most of my time trying to get out of doing different things. I watched TV and listened to music and annoyed my parents. I tried to represent the split between childhood, and the beginning of the teenage mindset. 

For my late childhood I decided to focus more on outdoor games and things I used to do. The past post I focused on looking at media and things I watched. This time I wanted to focus more on the outside time. I remember playing twister with friends at birthday parties, singing horrible pop music on the swings, building sandcastles and playing games. In this post I tried to focus on these.

Early Childhood(1-6)

In this assignment we tried to take pictures that represented our childhood. We took pictures of pictures we found on the internet. We tried to focus on finding things that really represented us. I took pictures of all the movies and TV shows that I used to watch as a kid. I like the way they look very vintage.

Team Celebration

Vlad has really stopped relying so much on the camera and started trying different techniques using perspective and angles, rather than different settings on the camera. He also has started to focus more on individual subjects, as well as to take photos that include more than one subject. His pictures look very professional and he does a great job using color to change the mood of his photos.

Kenna has started to use a lot more contrast in her photos. You can really see the difference the editing has made, but the pictures don't look overly edited. I especially liked her grid series and I think she did a great job tying unrelated images together. I think she's started to really move on from the "say cheese" style of photography, and as a result she has a lot of amazing pictures from interesting and unexpected angles.

I loved Kendall's photos showing plants, she did a really great job making the project her own, and you could see her own personal style carried through all of the pictures. I also really liked her grids, they were very clean and well put together and you could tell she took a lot of time with the project. She also used a lot more contrast in the later settings, so that her pictures were very different and had a lot of tone and depth instead of being flat grey. She started to take more risks during the last posts, and she really showcased her own personal style.

Eric did a great job doing multiple drafts, just by looking back at his drafts you could see the improvement. He really looked at his old photos and made an effort to make the new pictures better. I really think his hard work payed off, especially in the Op Art series. He also started to use color a lot more to make his pictures stand out and to convey a different mood.

Lucas's style really changed through the duration of the class and it is very obvious in his pictures. He really started to take risks with angles and subject matter, and came up with interesting and unusual pictures even when using the same scene as someone else. He also did a great job of using shadows in his work, giving his pictures a lot of depth and emotion.

Fatima also started to use different techniques, she finished a lot of her drafts very quickly because she worked hard and fast, but she understood that drafts were necessary to really have the best possible photo. I loved her portraits and pictures of people, she did a great job of capturing people candidly, or making people look candid even when they were posing. 

Iris took a lot of great street photography as well as pictures of people. I think she did a great job of separating the two and looking for different things with each post, she really made an effort to keep the different posts separate and to really take the style of the week and run with it. I loved the pictures of her brothers, they were taken from great angles and the editing made the pictures really stand out. She did a great job using unusual angles.

Deanna did an amazing job of finding new things in the old.  She took a lot of portraits, but each time she was able to focus in on a really different element. She also really made an effort with her drafts, you could tell that she spent time editing and reworking her pictures so that she could get the best possible shot. Her work really used a great range of facial expression as well as interesting uses of color.

Final Series Project Post

To create this final series I looked at all the comments about my last three posts. I chose photos that I thought were some of my best work and I posted those. The comments I took and used them to help guide my final draft.