Final Post

One of the greatest things I got out of this physical project is the motivation to better myself as a photographer.  I had always thought I was descent,  but I never had many images (and for those that I had that I liked,  I had no way of sharing) that I thought were worthy of sharing.  One of the biggest struggles for me as a photographer was portraits.  Just the idea of having to pose someone in a natural manner while trying to capture a flattering image of them scared me.  It was just too far out of my comfort zone; I felt that I'd be too awkward and that the images wouldn't look nice enough for me to share with my subject/model. I was only really comfortable with still life photography.  That way I didn't have to deal with poses or with worrying about my images not being pleasing enough. But with this project,  I was finally able to sort of force myself into portraits,  through my mentor.  Once I broke through that zone. I found them not to be that difficult.  All it really took was planning and communication. Thankfully my mentor was able to book an amazingly helpful and experienced model, so that was I was able to worry less about posing,  and focus more on lighting,  and telling the model where certain angles would look nice,  and the kind of shot I desired.  Another thing I worried about was photography in public.  Sometimes to get the desired shot,  you have to maybe get on the ground for a certain angle,  or stand in an awkward position.  With my portfolio in mind,  I worried less about how I looked,  and more of the composition of my shots.  While I already knew a good deal about photography, with the help of my mentor,  I was able to see more creatively to capture something how I saw it,  so I could share that moment and image with others. 

Self portrait April 23 (33 hours)

Since I started this project,  I've had the idea of getting a high key shot,  with completely blown out whites,  but without blowing out the subject's face.  Unfortunately,  I could never work out the time to get a friend to model for me,  so I thought "why not shoot myself?"
Turned out to be a bit harder than I thought.  Also pretty awkward,  setting the self timer on my camera and running over to my marked space and making an awkward face by myself,  but after about an hour of trying,  I finally got some shots I think turned out well

MODEL SHOOTING *__* April 18 (total time after this = 31 hours)

My mentor randomly called me yesterday and asked if ill be free anytime this week.  i said i was free tomorrow (today) and he told me that his model friend agreed to let me practice with a shoot.  i was so excited xD  the model asked me what outfit she should wear, but since i had never done this before, i got scared and told my mentor that she can wear whatever he suggests.  so i met my mentor there, and headed into their house, to find out that her younger sister volunteered to model as well.  we ended up going to coyote point in san mateo, along the beach. i was nervous out of my mind.  i had never had to photograph portraits of someone, let alone pose them and position them for an ideal shot.  i felt like my mentor pretty much just threw me out there and had me try.  it was terrifying at first, but both models were great and made things so much easier on me.  after the first 50 or so shots, i was getting the hang of things, and got comfortable enough to tell them some of the shots that i wanted, and we worked from there. after a few hours, we called it a night, and i headed home to edit the shots. my favorite ones can be found here
so when i first started shooting, i was deathly afraid, but thankfully towards the end i got a lot of good experience, and i think i learned in ideal conditions.

Concert Shooting! April 6 (total time = 26.5 hours)

My girlfriend and i had planned to attend this jonny craig concert for a few months, but it didnt occur to me that i could possibly shoot the event.  i called the venue a few days before, and got the clear to bring my camera.  i met with my mentor and discussed different photo options and what i could get, although you cant fully plan for something like this until you're in the venue.  i ended up bringing my telephoto lens, expecting a large venue. to my surprise when we got there, the venue was maybe about the size of a normal south city classroom or two.  i felt really awkward with all my gear there, as there was only one other person shooting the show.  once i got the setting for the best results with the openers, i got a lot more comfortable with the setting and angles.  i think the only downside about the shots is that i wasnt able to use the full natural lightiing of the venue; it was just too dark.  so i had to use my newly purchased flash to bounce light off the ceiling to give me a bit of extra light.  if i just left it at that, i would get really harsh, cold lighting, so i turned the power down a bit, and went with a slower shutter speed, allowing hints of the concert lights in the pictures.  the concert pics can be found here
*about a month later* i contacted one of the bands at the event that night and showed them the photos got, and they messaged me back and thanked me! not a big deal, but i found it very exciting xD

Trying out my new flashes! march 28 (total time = 22.5)

This past week ive been experimenting with what i can do with my flashes.  ive done some high speed photography in the past, but with this project, i really want to focus on portraits.  not many people in my house want to be my subjects, so i shot my dogs instead! click here for the pic.  my family thought i was kind of weird for photographing them, but oh well. i think the result shot wasnt too bad! i also built some softboxes made out of everyday material i got from dollar tree. it was challenging, and they're too small for my liking.  but i found that they work well with product photography! i had a softbox on each side, and just set them on the floor.  the bottle was set on a piece of posterboard i got from dollar tree as well.  overall very pleased with my flashes and cant wait to get more shots!

Flash Research, March 18 (total time = 19.5 hours)

So today i spent about four hours watching videos, reading reviews, and doing tons of research on not only speedlight flashes, but also on wireless triggers, as well as actual light studio equipment.  I for many resons dont have close to 1000 bucks laying around, so there's no way i'd be able to afford nikon gear in this situation.  so i knew i had to go with a third party brand.  the first strobe (flash) brand that came to mind was yongnuo.  ive had a single yongnuo flash before, but it was the cheapest of the cheap, and didnt last very long.  thankfully after a few years, ive read nothing but good about their products, and decided to purchase three of their higher-grade flashes.  it was a tough choice, but based on what i researched, they were the most affordable and met pretty much everything i needed.

Nature Shots (March 2nd)

My mentor suggested i add a few more nature-ish shots to my portfolio. what better way to do that than go to Muir Woods?! We just had a kinda made a last-minute trip and brought our gear. my camera isn't the greatest, so it was a bit difficult for me to capture nice quality images because my camera sensor cant record too great of a dynamic range, but thankfully i was able to post-process a good amount of images so that they were a bit more accurate as to what my eye was seeing. it was a quick run, but we managed to squeeze in about four hours of total shooting time, plus another two hours of my personal time editing my photos. the photos are uploaded to my portfolio under the nature section here
*NOTE, total hours at this point is 15.5 hours*

February 23rd

I've been shooting in my garden and around the neighborhood,  hoping to get nice images to create a nature-type section for my photo portfolio. I've done about three hours worth of shooting in my neighborhood alone,  and got the idea of not only including  still images in my portfolio,  but maybe being able to incorporate time lapse videos as well.  So I set up a little studio in my kitchen and chose a daffodil bud that was almost ready to bloom.  I set up an interval timer to take a picture about  every minute or so, and framed up the shot in my camera.  I used a single desk lamp to light the flower,  as well a makeshift softbox to evenly distribute the light on the flower, reducing the harsh shadows. I did this using an unfolded plain white napkin. Here's, rough edit of an overnight shoot consisting of over 500 still images played back at 25 frames per second.  Hopefully I will be able to shoot other nature-type time lapses to create a longer video with an overall theme.
*edit* in case the link didn't work,  here's the url
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUwE6H0gzfQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player

February 3, 2013

So I didn't meet with my mentor this day, but he told me that for future projects, I should familiarize myself with adobe lightroom. So i downloaded the program, and spent a few hours learning the interface.  I'm not a very organized person with my photographs, so I pretty much have folders of pictures all over the place.  And from what i've found, lightroom requires you to be fairly organized.  I thought there would be an easy way to just kinda drag and drop photos to edit, but from what i found over my time using the program, you have to assign folders to import from specific locations, and you also have to create output folders (in an organized way).  So after a few hours of organizing, i was ready to start editing.  Thankfully, the actual adjustment settings were very similar to adobe photoshop, so i didnt have to learn a whole lot of how things worked (adjustment-wise).  So overall, things went well and this new program is really teaching me to organize myself digitally with my photography.

January 29th, 2013

The first meeting with my mentor went a little better than expected.  I met him at his house when he got back from shooting a project, and we basically just went over the guidelines of my senior project.  We talked about what i could possibly do for my physical presentation, and what i wanted to get out of this whole project.  When I first got there, i didn't really expect the meeting to be as productive as it was.  We went through different ideas of what i could do, and what would be the most suitable for a final presentation.  And towards the end, we even got to show off both of our previous works, and what we're proud of.  I even got to share my technique for different things he wasn't sure of how i shot.  So overall, i think the first meeting went a lot better than expected.  What i thought would be about 15 minutes turned out to be about an hour and a half of just throwing around ideas and different shots.

Searching for a Portfolio Website

So obviously with one of my main goals from this project being the creation of a portfolio, I have to find a suitable website that's affordable and fits all my needs. I spent a total of about three and a half hours going through different websites.  To get a feel for all the options, i created TONS of sample websites/free accounts.  After all the pros and cons, i finally settled on a website called Folio HD.  once i made my payment, i finally got to put the finishing touches on everything! Im really pleased with the way things turned out, and cant wait to start posting more randomness on it. My website can be found here.

1984 Chp. 1-3

Through the first few reading chapters, Winston Smith's greatest conflict is trying to hold back his feeling of rebellion for Oceania. Oceania is a highly monitored state filled with big brother propaganda and telescreens.  These telescreens not only televise propaganda, news, and hatred for enemies, but it also contains a camera that watches civilians every move.  Winston shows his disgust for this totalitarian society by writing "DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" repeatedly in his secret journal.  Winston's hatred for the government is also shown during the two minute hate when he seems anger not at the enemy, "but, on the contrary, against Big Brother, the Party, and the Thought Police.."  Winston's feelings for Oceania are also expressed through his repetition of describing the ways Big Brother is watching.  He later goes on to claim that "nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your head."  This goes to show that he feels extremely violated and has put up with this watch for long enough.

Stranger Than Fiction

The Author of a story is the person who physically records a story by writing it, while a narrator is a person that the author chooses to almost sort of voice the story.  The narrator is the all-knowing teller of the story, who is actually in the story.  So basically an author writes, while a narrator speaks to the targeted audience.  In the film, the author was the actual person who wrote the film, but the narrator was Karen Eiffel.

In my capstone paper, i tried my best to provide a fact-based work of writing with as little bias as possible.  Although i feel strongly on some topics, that was a bit of a challenge.  I think that in this way though, the readers will most likely agree with what i wrote and hopefully feel more passionate about scientific research.