Photo Journalism
What is the point that our patience runs out? For me, this latest project nearly gave me a definition for what most have come to know as their breaking point. 3 trips, 2 rolls of film, and one week later this is the final outcome.
Trip one, roll one: After finally finding a great subject to shoot in hillcrest, a memorial put out to comemorate a biker that got hit and killed by a car, I went immediately after school while there was still light out. it was still light outside when I got there but by that time the bike had loomed into the shadows. I took out my old hand me down from some forgotten summer of love olympus OM1 and aimed to shoot. The camera's ligh meter however was oddly all the way down. I thought that this may just be because I was in a shaded area, and so I began to turn and click away at the shutter speed. When the arrow was satisfiedly set in the middle I checked to see what the the final numbers were. When I saw that it was set on 18 and 2 I knew something couldn't be right, but I had never been let down by it before and so I shot away.
Trip two, roll one: After talking to my photography teacher about my perplexing situation, she assured me that the pictures I had just taken would not turn out and that I should set it back to 122 in the shade. Across the highway and through the traffic I was back in hillcrest once again. This time a little more assured and prepared. I clicked and snapped away once more, and returned home. The next day at school I developed my film excited to see the results from trip two.To my dismay my film had been fried due to an accidental mistiming on my part. Off to hillcrest it was
Trip three, roll two: This time I was sure to get it right. I knew how I wanted my picture to look, I knew which setting I needed my camera on, and I knew how much I wanted to go home and take a nap. Success! I made sure to not even miss a second during the developing phase. finally I would be able to turn this project in. Develope on thursday, print on friday, take home for Thanksgiving break saterday to next sunday.
Things were following schedule. I made two successful prints on friday and was planning on returning after school to pick them up before my bus left. Unfortunately the homecoming football game left the students with slim time to run from pen field to their designated bus.
two rolls of film: $4
four sheets of paper: $1
gas money: unknown
knowing that your hard work paid off: priceless
Photography Critique
Bernice Abbott
After learning about the rule of three for photography, I am really beginning to notice it in many famous picture prints. For example in this particular shot by Bernice Abbott we can see this rule come into the play. The carrage comming towards us, the side buildings, and the back building in the midst.
By using this technique in this case our eyes our being drawn down the street. Another technique that allows our eyes to wander in this intended direction is the way the picture is cropped. The slenderness of the photo gives us the feel of the narrowness of this back way street.
The only thing I would like to change about this is maybe cropping it on the bottom a little more. This way the horse and carriage is our main foccus, giving our eyes less room to wander around the streets.
First Attempt
So here we are. The first stepping stone. The first print. The first memory I have of using a non digital camera, but to sum it all up, my first picture taken in my photography class. Despite it's imperfections it has a certain charm that makes it feel like mine.
When I was first brainstorming ideas for this assignment, "shoot a portrait of someone" I was clueless to what subject matter I wanted to incorperate in here. All I knew was that while everyone was testing their hand at serious model-esque shots, I wanted mine to branch out from the rest. I wanted mine to have simple "feel good" feel to it.
I then began listing things in my mind that made me feel good and after going through a great deal of time going about naming things that I simply could not incorperate I fell upon the subject matter of books. Six shots later, this particular one was able to capture my attention primarily because of my models expression.
It's a bit odd how the light was able to play about in this photo, and I am well aware that her face is out of focus, but I don' think photography is necessarily about always taking the sharpest picture. It's something greater then that.
It's about capturing an emotion before it fades. It's about being in the right place at the right time. It's about learning to appreciate light. It's about making the simplest things interesting