Assignment 3: Place

For my forest photographs, I approached them all similarly as far as composition. I liked when the shadows were coming toward the camera and the sun is in the shot. I liked that the sunlight hitting the leaves would leave a nice outline, or highlight, and create this really crisp look to the photographs. For my other landscape shot, when I was there i was thinking the same thing, putting the sun in the back, but this one shot I was looking to the right of the sun, so there wasn't much compositional thought behind it besides capturing the texture of the field, but balancing it out with a third of the top dedicated to the sky. For The photo where I'm holding the old photograph of the same room, I really wanted all the doors and pieces of the old and new photographs to match up, but it never worked out because the dimensions are the same, so to match them up, I would either have to back up a lot and have a whole person in the picture, which I thought would be distracting. But the room didn't allow me to back up anymore, so it was pretty much impossible. Therefore, I just put the print in the middle of the shot and you can still tell it's the same room, but much updated.
I think my landscapes show a subtle dramatic side of nature. Nature is not always peaceful. The image with the guy, the concept was pretty much: climb on that limb. Of my friends, he was the only one who would do it. I wanted it to look somewhat like a shoot of a celebrity, where the person is the main focus. Same with the one where I have pussywillow coming out of my head and sleeves, I wanted the figure to be the main focus. Originally I wanted the background to be a forest, (which is why I have many pictures of trees), but the pussywillow completely disappeared with that background, so I changed it to this neutral flat background instead. The image where I'm holding the old photograph, the concept was just to point out the past and present and how things have changed so much.
The photograph that required the most work was the composite of me with the pussywillow coming out of my head and sleeves. It was not actually too difficult, I simply masked out the braches, shaded where I thought required shading, and played with the colors a little so there was a unified color and white balance. The one where I'm holding the photograph, I happened to be home one weekend and took that picture because I thought worded great for the assignment. The other images, I traveled to those location specifically for those photos.

My goal for creating the composite image was to create a realistic figure made of plants. I'm not sure how successful it came across. I love the legs, but not the hands and head as much. I don't think it is believable. For the in-camera collage photograph, my goal was to get that "my, how time has flown" feeling of the old photo within the new photo and the updated living room. The other photographs I simply wanted to create stunning fall-inspired landscape photos.

My in-camera collage photo reminds me of a few photographers who hold up old pictures of building and take new pictures of the streets those buildings were on and composite them together to show how time has changed. It is a very similar idea that have done with my living room. Here is an example of a photographer who does this sort of thing: http://www.sweet-station.com/blog/?p=11341.