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For this project, I focused on the different textures surrounding my life. I tried to document a wide variety of things, from my house to the beach and to the salt water tank my girlfriend has in our room. It was fun to focus on the details of the different things I documented, showing a different side of the everyday objects we see in our lives.

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For this project, I went around the house I am staying in and found this interesting dress in a closet in the back room, apparently it belonged to my girlfriend’s grandmother and she used to wear it to dance parties back in the 70s. So, for my Cindy Sherman project I decided to document my girlfriend wearing it just like her grandmother did back in the day. It was a fun photo shoot to do and really lighthearted!

Today I visited MOMA virtually, although I wish it could’ve been in person it was still nice to do it online. During the visit, there were a couple different exhibitions, the one that caught my eye was the “Celebrating Five Women Artists” exhibit. I am currently taking a contemporary women artist class, and we talk a lot about how in art there aren’t many well known women artists compared to men, thus, I thought it was nice to see that MOMA was trying to highlight some women artists. In the exhibit I loved two photographs the most, the first one is by Carrie Mae Weems – Not Manet’s Type, in the photo you see a woman in a circular mirror but we can only see the back of her, the photograph is black and white which is what drawed me to it. There wasn’t much description so I had to look it up, the photo is a part of a series that talks about the bias and expectations of what it means to be a woman, especially a black woman. Knowing more about the image made me love it a whole lot more, and appreciate the amazing artists that were showcased in this exhibition. The second photo that intrigued me was a photo that is untitled by a japanese artist named Rinko Kawauchithe, the image shows a woman’s hand, the photo is really soft and out of focus giving it a really delicate feeling. Overall, the exhibit was beautiful to look at online but it made me wishI could’ve seen it in person.

For this week, we were ask to experiment with Cyanotypes. I used a couple of photographs I took and made them black and white then inverted them to use, unfortunately it took a couple tries because it didn’t come out dark enough… so I used an image that had really high contrast and printed it. Finally, my last try worked! It was really fun to see the do the process of cyanotypes. would defiantly try and experiment more in. there future.

In the film LA originals, they focused a lot of the story on Cartoon the tattoo artist, and Estevan Oriol the photographer. Estevan is a well know photographer in the hip-hop culture and he gained his success through the people he hangout with including Cartoon. I loved the way he captures people’s essence, being able to use a film camera and photograph such beautiful portraits of people is hard. Estevan was able to do what he loved and practice his skills through the culture he grew up in and was around of most his life. A lot of his photographs are of people in the hip-hop culture, gang life or Chicano culture. Since he was a part of all that, he was able to capture the realness of his subjects, just like the famous “LA” photograph he took. Estevan took his connections with the world and used it to his advantage, collaborating with known artists and. Getting his name out there is a really smart move. I love the film photography he produced, he kept it old school and developed his own images just like when he started. I love film photography, I own a Canon AE 1 myself, and it is hard to photograph because you don’t know how good the images are going to turn out till you developed them, but it defiantly brings out a different style and esthetic in the images.

For my final project, instead of doing the community project I would like to do. something else, and change it to the focus on macro photography, I would like to document the nature up close and find patterns through plants, flowers and insects. I love repetitions and the nature so I think this would be a fun project for me to learn and see the world. Since I do graphic design, I think photography correlates with that, because I love finding abstractions and repetitions through my work. I am also very inspired by the artist Art Wolfe and would love to practice at the use of his style!

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This project we focused on photographing the body, I really liked how abtract the photographs turned out. For the black and white photos, it took me a while to manipulate the light source, and to figure out what was the best position for my model. I ended up covering all the windows in the room, only allowing a slimmer of the natural light into the room onto her figure. For the other two images, I played around with the projector and neon lights we had in the room, and used a tripod to photograph the image. Overall, it was a really fun project and I would love to experiment more using different light source and textures.

This week we watched a documentary about the photographer Robert Mapplethrope, I found it interesting that photography wasn’t his first medium and that he didn’t like taking pictures that much in his early years. Later on, he became really passionate about it and was determined to become famous and known, I found it interesting that he would acknowledged using people to get what he wanted, and the people he was with were totally fine with it, this allowed him the success and career he had later on. I love that he was bold enough to do what he wanted and wasn’t afraid of what the public would think, he was also extremely good with people and that showed through his photographs, he was able to make his subjects feel comfortable and open to photograph them nude, and portray what he had wanted. This documentary definitely makes me want to see the other movies based on him!

For this project, we were asked to make a double exposure photograph. I found some images I had took of my dogs and decided to use that as the main subject, the second photo I overlaid is a picture of a flower bush I took near my house. I screened the image and lowered the opacity on top of the subject, then I used the paintbrush and gradient tool to smooth out some of the spots and edges in the photo. Lastly, I found a wall photo and laid it in the back of the subject to give the photo some texture.

Family Project Reflection

For this project, we were asked to create a family portrait project. The image I chose to start with is an old family photo that had most of my family members in the image back in Taiwan, it was an old image that was on display in our house back home, I chose this image because it has my grandparents in it, and they have passed away, I always liked the image because everyone in the picture looked so happy, it also represents the most important people in my life that are back home in Taiwan. Doing this project made me miss them a lot but it also made me really happy because they are my favorite people in the world.

When I think about family, I think about the family I have back in Taiwan and I also think about the family I have built here in America, so I knew I had to incorporate a photograph of my family here in California. Thus, I decided to combine both of the photographs and make it into a collage somehow, I tried making a photo collage but nothing looked right, then I thought of the idea professor Dibendetto brought up, the accordion photo collage, and I thought it would be a cool idea if I did something similar but through Photoshop, so I asked my sister who is back home to scan the family photo for me and send it over, then I brought it to Photoshop and turned the image into black and white then cut out stripes of the photo and deleted it, I then found a picture with my friends, girlfriend and sister in it and overlaid it in the back with color. I played around in photoshop and edited it a little so that both the images would stand out equally. Overall, this project was super fun to create and I hope you all like it!