- Title: Wizened Tree Skin
- Terms/Techniques: Natural light (sunny), close perspective, editing (B/W)
- Camera: Nikon D5500, AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200 mm, 1/200 s, f/16, ISO 200, 200 mm
- Title: Induction Ceremony
- Terms/Techniques: Natural light (sunny), back lighting, framing, editing (reduced highlights)
- Camera: Nikon D5500, AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200 mm, 1/40 s, f/4.5, ISO 200, 31 mm
- Title: Lined Up in the Queue
- Terms/Techniques: Natural light (sunny), perspective (far), editing (saturation)
- Camera: Nikon D5500, AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200 mm, 1/400 s, f/13, ISO 1600, 135 mm
- Title: Telling Secrets at School
- Terms/Techniques: Natural light (cloudy), rule of thirds, foreground, narrow depth of field, editing (cropping, contrast enhance, sharpened)
- Camera: Nikon D5500, AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200 mm, 1/60 s, f/5.6, ISO 200, 135 mm
- Title: The Clique
- Terms/Techniques: Natural light (sunny), rule of thirds, editing (cropping, highlights dampened, saturation enhanced)
- Camera: Nikon D5500, AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200 mm, 1/1600 s, f/8, ISO 1600, 150 mm
- Title: Waiting for the Bus
- Terms/Techniques: Natural light (sunny), leading lines, framing, editing (cropped, saturation enhanced)
- Camera: Nikon D5500, AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200 mm, 1/640 s, f/5.6, ISO 1600, 65 mm
- Title: Mugshot
- Terms/Techniques: Natural light (sunny), high contrast, leading lines
- Camera: Nikon D5500, AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200 mm, 1/250 s, f/11, ISO 1600, 38 mm
- Title: Looking up at Dad
- Terms/Techniques: Natural light (sunny), back lighting, perspective (low), editing (cropped)
- Camera: Nikon D5500, AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200 mm, 1/160 s, f/11, ISO 1600, 34 mm
- Title: Cheering from the Stands
- Terms/Techniques: Natural light (sunny), narrow depth of field, close perspective
- Camera: Nikon D5500, AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200 mm, 1/1250 s, f/13, ISO 1600, 95 mm
- Title: Can I Join You Guys?
- Terms/Techniques: Natural light (sunny), close perspective, leading lines, editing (highlights suppressed)
- Camera: Nikon D5500, AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200 mm, 1/1250 s, f/16, ISO 1600, 200 mm
Reflection:
The concept for my final portfolio is anthropomorphization of plants. From the start of this class, I immediately went to take pictures of plants, and within a few weeks was fixated on comparisons between plant/human physical features and plant/human behaviors. I weighed whether or not I could adequately express this concept (I'm not sure that it was an overwhelming success in the end), but after seeing the first photo 'Wizened Skin', which I took with this theme in mind, I decided I had to try it. My worry here is that the titles are overly leading. I think one could be convinced of the human comparison with the titles in-hand, but a better set of photos would allow me to omit titles and show (instead of tell) the viewers what I'm thinking.
All of these photos are taken outside, natural light was a given here. But it really does affect the subjects differently, depending on the quality (cloudy vs. direct sunlight), the direction (back, side, front lighting), the usage or avoidance of shadows, etc. I maintain that light management was one of the tougher units of this class, and it still feels like a difficult thing to master. There were sometimes I really liked the lighting in these photos ('Telling Secrets at School' has great soft lighting, 'Can I Join You Guys?' has cool shadowing effects), others where I didn't ('The Clique' is just flattened by direct, near-front lighting). Some of the time, I was able to walk around the object, maintain a pleasant-enough background, and get the lighting that I wanted. Other times, it was completely impossible to change the lighting. My note to self is to consider the weather and time of day for these photo shoots! Direct lighting can be really hard. Good to look out for clouds or just to go take photos a little after sundown.
A surprise here was my relatively infrequent use of low depth-of-field. I've preferred to shoot that way throughout the class (and have maybe trained myself to resist that temptation), and thought that it would naturally come forward with a photo set that contains a lot of faux portraiture. I'd say only 2-3 of the photos above wound up with narrow depths of field. If I were to do it again, I would probably lean harder into that, and try to figure out a plant portraiture style.
Overall it was a fun one. This week was effectively a passion project that allowed me to take nature walks and try to capture some natural beauty. It's been brought up in this class by a number of students a number of times, but the environment is a critically important thing. There's a small part of me that believes that people can gain empathy for a much wider swath of nature than they usually have, including an empathy for plants, who are our constant providers and nurturers. I think if people can see human stories in the flora around us, there's a better shot that people will be willing to take action to save the environment, before it's too late.