Mitchell's Photo Blog

Over the past 8 months, I have learned a few new things about photography. Before this class, I took photos just to take photos and never took a look at the photos with a critical eye/lens because they were photos that I thought were cool. After taking this class I have learned about exposure, contrast, balance and other photography tricks that I can use if I ever want to be a photographer later on in life. In the past 8 months I have learned about how to use Lightroom; A program similar to Google Photos but with more options to edit photos. I have learned how to use photoshop to turn simple and mundane photos into extremely cool pieces of work and how these mundane photos can be turned into a surrealistic photo. I am not sure that I would necessarily take the skills that I have learned with Photoshop and Lightroom and use them in the real world as in the business field you don't really need skills in Photoshop or Lightroom. I think there were a few very important items that I...

Pre Work: This video was shot as practice for stop motion. We used legos and a stuffed animal to create a short video about a bridge collapsing Final Project: We decided to do a project about two planes crashing together in mid-air. We used two Wall Street Journal pages to make our planes, we also used molding clay to stick the planes to the background. Here is our Final project:

Stop motion is a process of taking multiple photos while moving an inanimate object in little bits to make it seem like the inanimate object is moving and is becoming alive. In order to understand stop motion better we watched a few videos. The ones that I have posted below were videos that I found interesting or fun to watch. For example there was a video that showed a man making guacamole but used dice, baseballs, pool balls and other objects that are unexpected in order to make something inanimate come to life.

In this project I worked with Ben Joshi and Kasra  Mirarabshahi on a magazine dedicated to cars and the different types of cars that can be found throughout the world and our need for speed. 

Portrait photos are photos that are taken to either show a mood/highlight a certain subject or are photos that are meant to advertise a product. Below are a few photos that can be considered either commercial or fine arts portraits:

The basis of this project was to understand different types of magazines and how the different types of magazines have different covers with different images and different types of advertising. Another aspect of this project was finding magazine covers that spoke to us/were items that we found interesting. Magazine Covers PC: Sports Illustrated PC: Sports Illustrated Magazine Spreads  PC: Envato Elements PC: Fort Collins Magazine Magazine Ads PC: Volkswagon PC: Firestone

When looking at portraits, there is a difference between fine art portraits and commercial portraits. As explained earlier, a commercial portrait is more likely to promote an article of clothing, an idea, or something that someone would be willing to buy. A fine arts portrait is one that you are more likely to find at an art gallery and is less selling an item but rather selling an intangible object or a person.   Fine Art Portrait Examples: PC: Dmitry Ageev PC: Kyle Thompson

There are differences between commercial portraits and fine art portraits, especially in the way that the photo is taken and the reason that the photo was taken. A commercial portrait is more likely to be taken in order to publicize or promote an item or highlight a specific aspect of a person.   The examples below illustrate examples of commercial portraits: pc: Mauricio Barreras PC: Felix Kunze PC: TaylorMade Golf

A fine portrait is a photo that tells a story without having to have any kind of supplemental writing, exemplifying the saying that "pictures are worth a thousand words". A fine portrait also exemplifies who people are and their character, how they want to be viewed by others. After looking through multiple different artists I found Annie Leibovitz who is trying to depict a portrait of a woman, which is more of a head shot or a natural photo versus someone who is being told to move one way or another in order to get the perfect type of shot, and make sure that the magazine or paper has the perfect image.

This project was done through photoshop and taking multiple different photos that I have taken to show an idea that in the real world is not possible, such as a flying human and flying cars. I created this project by opening a photo that allows me to have a somewhat blank canvas to add different layers to the single photo. This is another example of surrealism as there are parts of this that are plausible, as if someone is sitting on a swig but there are also other parts of this photo that are not plausible such as such a thing as a flying train.

For project 9 we are working on understanding surrealism and how the photos are created and what these photos are supposed to learn how these painting show a different perspective on the world.  Brian DeYoung  The reason that this painting would be surrealistic is because it can be considered as a metaphor for sleep and recharging. Salvador Dali The reason that this painting could be considering surrealistic is because time is literally melting away. This photo could be considered surrealistic because of the edits that have been made to the photo including the fact that this woman is swimming on the inside of a house and there is a shark following her. Here is another example of a surrealistic photo: PC: Lara Zankoul PC Vytautas Laisonas

Temperaprint Temperaprint is the process of using a combination of chemicals, eggs and using ultraviolet light to adjust the exposure and the looks of a photo,  which usually results in a light pink hue. The two eggs are used in order to create a seal on top of the film in order to create a hard  layer on top of the picture. In order to get the correct hue of a photo, you need to roll several layers of a solution of multiple chemicals that have been mixed with the eggs.  After rolling the mixture on the photo you set the photo under a UV light and use the light to "cure" the photo and harden it, giving the photo it's final pink hue. An example of this type of photo is below: I then created an example of a Temperaprint using a photo that I took earlier this year at Washington Park: Here are what you need in order to create a Temperaprint photo Small paint tray Half inch paint brush High density foam glossing roller Artist acrylic paint Meas...

This project we learned about how to take HDR photos (High Definition Resolution) and how we can adjust the photos to make them look different or, if you are able to take multiple photos in a similar space and are able to show motion through merging a couple of images into one single image.  HDR of Providence Park Key Bank Club HDR of MAC and Providence Park Panorama of Crater Lake

For Project 6, Michael Saccio and I worked on a project by taking photos of an important space for not only Portland but something that is relevant to Lincoln High School. As part of this project we had to take multiple photos and piece them together to create a collage of our space. Michael and I chose to work on KGW which is right next door to Lincoln High School.

From this semester there have been many things that I have learned about. I have learned about Pelle Cass, a Boston based artist that takes photos of collegiate events, using thousands of photos to combine them into one photo with moving pieces inside of them. I have learned a lot about how to take different photos, using different types of compositions to portray different elements of photography. Throughout the first semester I have learned more about how to control the aperture or shutter speed of a camera to control how the photo comes out. After this first semester I don’t feel like I have learned anything new, but instead have learned more about how to take different types of photos. My favorite project would have to be the emulation because it was somewhat difficult to do but it was interesting to learn. My relationship with photography hasn’t really changed. I love taking photos and it just so happens that I have taken more specific photos for each individual project...

This project was designed to understand and interpret photos taken by other photographers and take a photo and make it look similar to the other photographer. The photographer that I chose: Cody Bratt takes photos of landscapes throughout America.

After taking hundreds of photos for different projects we had to take three photos that we took and put them into photoshop to edit. We used Lightroom to edit these photos, adjusting the exposure, shadow, blacks, whites along with clarity and other photo editing tools. Below are three different photos with three different types of editing. Greenery: Leaves: Parking Sign: