Here are the final images that I selected for assignment one. I have to say that I really enjoyed working on these photos more than I expected to. We all know how the first assignments can be and on top of that I have four other classes.

From top to bottom the names of the pieces are "nature repetition" "deadpan" and "against the black". I'm not necessarily sure if these are my strongest shots, but I kept coming back to these after about four hours of trying to narrow over 420 shots down to 3.

nature repetition

For this shot I tried to focus on getting as many of the rocks into the picture as possible without anything distracting like signs being included in the shot. I hardly cropped it at all, just took it in a little on both sides and down a little at the top. I wanted the emphasis to be on both the implied line of the rocks and the curve of the road. I also wanted to suck the viewer into the picture and kinda force it to be looked at from bottom to top. The lighting is all natural afternoon light. Actually there wasn't much light since it was just after the rain...however I think the lighting worked well to help get the overall point across. You really do feel like taking a walk when you look at it. I took the shot with a wide aperture and a slow shutter speed since it was fairly dark because of the cloud cover. I didn't use a tripod at all for this shot and I am quite pleased with the stability of the camera without it. Since I happen to enjoy taking walks, that was my motivation for this shot.

deadpan

I saw the stick....I guess that was the motivation. It had all these white speckles on it, I thought it was dazzling...it stopped me in my tracks at least. I wanted to get really close to it, I wanted to be flush with the ground or as level to it as possible...an ant's eye view. The lighting is the same as for nature repetition....it was the same afternoon.

against the black

This one was mainly done in response to the prompt dealing with the backgrounds. I just happened to use a subject i really liked...jewelry. I tried to find different pieces that stood out and then mix them with ones that are more plain. The light was daylight at around noon, I took them inside. Because I used a wide aperture and a slow shutter speed, lots of light was able to be reflected onto the lens. For this shot I didn't use a tripod although it was my first choice. I just couldn't get close enough to it for my tastes and since I'm pretty new at this camera thing, I didn't know which lens to change in order to get the closeness I wanted so I just nixed the tripod all together.

Part II

For the most part I think that these images were easy to look at and interpret. From what I heard in class, most people really enjoyed the third shot because of the texture so I think that it was the most successful. Since I had no ideas about subject matter for these shots I found it hard to explain why I did what I did in the photos. I will have to think about concept more before I begin to shoot for future projects. I would try to get more depth in both the second and third photos to bring out even more of the textures. The first two shots would have to be the start of a series something like "city nature scape" and the third would have to be "afternoon teatime" reflecting the idea that when we are younger we love to dress up and play.