I was really excited about shooting at night because the whole view from Astoria Park towards Manhattan is just amazing. The only problem was that I was afraid my photograph would look noisy. When I took pictures some turned out well, but they were not as good as the daylight ones. When I was taking pictures, the constant flares of the lamps or bridge lights became a little distracting to the overall image! I like how the images turned out, but I wish they were a bit better.

In the final project, when I did morning I was having trouble because it was just so sunny and the flares of the sun didn’t allow to get a good picture of some perspective of Astoria Park. I would go towards the shade and constantly switch the ISO so it wouldn’t look to dark or too bright. When I was in the sun, it was hard to tell if the image was too dark from my camera screen. Those where probably the only situations I had to deal with in one period of the day.

for the this Project, I thought that it was interesting to see that even thought it was the same place it had different colors and smells on different days. I went when it was it was raining (Just finished raining), cloudy and at the sunset. I loved the sunset pictures, because it was nice to see the yellow/orange and red colors that the sun made while going down. Also the raining pictures. One of the pictures shows water on the floor, looking like a puddle. I liked the picture because the puddle looked clear almost like a mirror and also like another dimensional door. The cloudy day was okay. It wasn’t a lot of activity on the park and while I was walking trough the park I didn’t hear any insects or birds around, so that got me a bit scared ha-ha. But it was nice to see different phases of the park in a little amount of time.

I found this second third of this photo shoot a little harder, just because the train station was just as vacant as the first time and I felt like I was running out of things to photograph. I tried to focus on odd or strange things that I saw and I used a lot of close-ups. I also included the sky in a lot of photos because it was so bright blue. My favorite picture was one taken on the way out of the station, on the stairs. its a picture of this bright green tree against a bright blue sky:

For the last part of my shoot, I plan to photograph in late afternoon/early evening, around 5pm.

For the final project, I chose to shoot at the train station near my house. The first third of the final project, I did at morning and it also turned out to be a day with lots of overcast which I originally did not plan. I mostly looked for odd things at the train station and not so much for people because it was early and not many people were at the train station. What makes this particular station so unique is that one side of the platform has an entrance that hasn’t been in use for years. It is closed off and is mostly covered in pigeon poop with a sort of eery feel to it. As a double feature, there is a very old cemetery on that same block with graves dating back to before the early 1800’s. My favorite picture is a picture I happened to take as the train was pulling out of the station and the letter “A” is framed between two poles of the train station:

For the second shoot, I will shoot in the afternoon.

For my first part  I decided to go to a park  where everyboday can find a lot of things to do an to take a lot of cool pictures. I never image that the park was so big until I started walking to get images for the homework and I discovered  spaces that I never knew before. So I hope I accomplish the first part of the homework and I the second part is comming soon.

My own experience as a studio photographer since the beginning of the semester was challenging. Creating my studio was easy to make but when it came down to shooting i realized it has to do a lot about using the lighting very carefully. At first it was pretty difficult but after all of the homework assignments with shooting objects i saw myself progress. It was really fun working in the studio, my favorite was the capturing the water in motion. This was fascinating to me because the camera can captivate so many details which is exciting.

One of the works i saw that captured my attention was Uta Barth. 

This picture was very large in person at the museum. This image is called the Sundial on chromogenic color prints. I liked this image because it doesn’t look like any ordinary picture the effect she used looks like the inverse of the objects. I like how you can only see the silhouette of things and not the actual thing which makes it look interesting. This photograph looks like it was taken at an early morning because it looks like daylight coming out of the windows.  This photograph opens up my mind to make something like this in the studio it can be very fun and creative. We can set up objects and place them on a table set next to a window with a lot of daylight and create the inverse. This inspired me to create something different and maybe combine objects together and make it look like something its not using this type of method. Overall the exhibition a world of its own was very interesting of people using film projectors to experiment many things. I thought it was very academic how people back then found things out without taking any precautions just seeing what are the outcomes of their experiments and what effects will happen.

A World of Its Own was a very interesting exhibition which showed photographs created within the walls of the studio. It was quite unique, interesting, impressive and not so impressive to see the ways in which photographers experimented in their studios.

The exhibit changed my view on studio photography and also the overall understanding of history and what’s possible especially with light. A World of Its Own where messiness and experimentation can flourish. The experiments can be technical, aesthetic, even emotional. A place where I learned that in the studio or “art museums”, anything goes–you just have to know how to market yourself with sophisticated vocabulary which professor emphasizes and truly believe in your work. Talent doesn’t play a big role here. To make it big you need to have tight connections with art critics, dealers, gallery owners, curators etc. I think who you know really is a big key to success. Well let’s just put it like this-the world is seriously twisted when something like this gets sold for $44 million. I love art and I think the piece is OK but museum quality? or $44 million!! Come on give me a brake…

See link: http://twentytwowords.com/canvas-painted-blue-with-a-white-line-sells-for-nearly-44-million-4-pictures/

Anyway back to the subject. I thought there where some very great pieces at MoMa. Like for example the portrait of a mannequin by a French artist, Valerie Belin was quite striking in person. It was my favorite piece at the museum. Looking at the picture you realize that our perception of beauty has been distorted by the “beauty industry” because it takes awhile to realize that it is a portrait of a mannequin not a photoshopped model. When women are photographed they are touched up to look like mannequins, so why not just take portraits of them. Brilliant.

For the location project, I decided to do Astoria Park. I really love going there whenever I want to go for a walk, and I thought it would be a great place to take photographs and show others the beauty of it and how calming it is for me. I had problems with the lighting because sometimes it would be sunny and then get dark.

For my self portrait I decided to get images of a normall day to catch the attention of the face expression. So I hope that accomplish the homework with the simplicity of the images.