She Being Brand: The author uses the metaphor of sensuality and a woman to describe the way he feels as he drives his car for the first time through the street of Boston. The poem has a sense of excitement, passion and although it is the first drive there is a sense of satisfaction when the ride comes to an end.

Coming Home Detroit: This poem is very different than “she being brand” here we see the author incite less excitement and passion, also the scene unfold through dirty street.

Communication Problem: To capture and show sensuality and a sense of satisfaction through the images of a toy car and different levels of lighting.

Image ideas: I want to create the right mood, to capture images that give out a romantic feel. Images that have soft lighting with a hint of shadow.

Results: The Shoot went well. I believe the mood was captured to communicate the message of both poems. Various lighting levels were used with the integration of photo filters that created the desired effect.

The poem appears to be about a driver’s excitement to drive a new car. The use of the pronoun “she” could be man’s tendency to refer to an automobile as feminine. Upon further examination, it becomes convincing that the poem is actually an extended metaphor for a man’s sexual experience with a woman, and the woman is possibly a virgin.
Images: car and bright colors

Summary: Levine does not speak for just the American underclass he writes for the working class universally that the setting of a majority of his poetry is in America is happenstance.
images:old car or a few on the dark background

Summary:

The poem “she bring Brand” by e.e. cummings describes an awkward but exciting metaphor of driving a car through Boston in the 60’s. Cummings description of “giving her the juice” and the “slipped up the clutch” line gives the way he’s feeling and his actions when driving the car.

The other poem “Coming Home, Detroit, 1968” by Philip Levine describes the narrator driving his car to work through the city of Detroit during the time of the race riots. He describes his day to work on a Tuesday during the winter, he views the burnt buildings in the city, the dingy streets filled with papers and signs left from the riots. He also receives some flashbacks of how Detroit once was before the riots and industrialization; describing the snowstorm with bears, wolves and wolverines.

Image Ideas: 

The Idea would be creating the right portraits for the two poems, the picture of the toy car in the right lighting, a 1:1 or 2:1 lighting would create a poetic approach to the toy car photos to add concepts of the poems were shooting for.

In “she being Brand” the narrator compare’s a woman’s first time to an experience driving a car. He describes intimate details with her as if he was talking about the car. The way he uses descriptive words such as “thoroughly oiled” and “slipped the clutch” give the feelings of tension and excitement building up and it continues though to the end. The metaphors lets the reader understand the feelings the narrator is feeling on a more personal level especially if the reader felt that excitement driving. The best way to portray this photo would be to use an old style car, preferably red, shiny, like new. It should have a dark background (feelings intensify in darkness) gives it a more intimate feeling..

The story “Coming Home, Detroit, 1968” has a more depressing and humble feeling. The poem is about returning to the town during the time of riots and chaos. A car slowly drives through the city while taking in all the surroundings. There is pain and disappointment in this poem. I don’t if i would have a dim grayish lighting for the pictures or something also with red (which seems to be my favorite color) to show anger, fire maybe.

Summary: The article goes over many key points like how some potatoes are bing registered as Monsanto patent, how most potatoes are being genetically engineered to make them look bigger and taste better, and how their now being registered as pesticides. WAIT WHAT PESTICIDES!!! How can any company even approve of this, when people are being sold potatoes filled with tons of harmful chemicals that can possibly hurt our own human bodies.

Communication Problem: For The Botany of Desire, the images should show how labs are altering the genetics of the potatoes we see on a day to day basis.

For the Idaho potato ad I figured it should use a warm color scheme and a natural looking color.

Image ideas: For The Botany of Desire, I image a hand using a syringe to inject the potato with harmful fluids. The scenery should resemble something like a lab. For the Idaho potato, placing the potatoes in a way where it looks like a family and a warm yellow or orange background.

Summary: The article “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World” by Michael Pollan, expresses the idea of approaching plants as software. The article stresses that the equipment given to farmers in order to grow, maintain, and protect their crops, are the same equipment that drowns farmers in dept, unhealthy soil, and soil fertility issues. Probably the quote that sticks out the most is, “Now we’re about to find out what happens when people begin approaching the genes of our food plants as software.”

Communication Problem: The image that should accompany this article is one that compares potatoes to “inputs”. The image should denaturalize potatoes by placing them next to chemicals, electronics, and man-made products.

Image Ideas: My idea is to bring in pieces of RAM (random access memory). RAM is found inside of computers and they’re a form of computer data storage. In the article, that author uses the word input to make potatoes seem like data instead of food. So what better way to represent this article than by actually bringing in data? I’ll place the RAM besides and inside the potatoes. In terms of doing the advertisement for Idaho Potatoes, my idea is to glorify the potatoes with a red and blue background. I’ll also love to add an American flag sticking out of the potato.

Results: I loved the different kinds of setups all the teams were able to work with. The use of color gels made the photo shoot much more visually stimulating. I looked forward to rotating to a new setup to experience how different the lighting, colors, and background will turn out. I was able to successfully achieve my image idea on several setups!

Summary: The poems “she being Branded” by e.e. cummings and “Coming Home, Detroit, 1968” by Phillip Levine are both beautiful pieces of literature. Both poems contain metaphors, which add to the mystique, charisma, and tone of each poem. e.e. cummings’ poem talks about the experience he had with a car. Furthermore, he describes it in a lustful, erotic way. Interestingly enough, it made me wonder whether it was meant to sound sexual or if my mind was just perverting his words. On the other hand, Phillip Levin’s poem speaks of a place that has drastically changed. As he passes through a run-down neighborhood, he stops and reminisces on times gone.

Communication Problem: The image that should accompany these poems should match the tone of each poem. For e.e. cummings’ poem, the toy car be shot to be sexy. For Levin’s poem, the toy car should be shot to look old, run-down, and dirty.

Image Ideas: The idea I had for e.e. cummings’ poem is to have the car posed at a 45 degree angle from the camera while the lighting is pink, romantic, and inviting. To make things more suggestive, I can even focus on the “headlights” or back bumper. For Levin’s poem, I want the image to be sepia. Everything should seem rusted, old-fashioned, and vintage. I may rub dirt on the car to give it more of a dirty feel.

Results: I’m satisfied with how the images turned out. For “she being Brand”, I chose an image that shows a lone, red car on piece of cloth, which is supposed to represent a road. The road symbolizes the drivers intimacy with the car, considering there are no obstacles in his way and no other cars on the road. For “Coming Home, Detroit, 1968,” I’ve chosen the image of an old car with its headlights on. The car is sitting in “snow” which is essentially small pieces of crumbled looseleaf paper. Street props were used in the background to give the image a more busy, urban feel.

Summary: The two poems discusses each of the author’s experience of being in their car. While the first one discusses driving their car in a sexual way, his intimacy with his car. The other poem written by Phillip Levine emphasizes the experience of driving in his car and seeing the grittiness of the winter day as he is driving. It’s more of a wilderness as he mentions “the wolverine, the northern bear, the wolf”, as he heads to work all he sees is ugliness. In my opinion, this poem is showing the consequence of driving “burning this city”, as he drives in his Cadillac, Lincoln, Chevy gray.

Problem Solve: Two different emotions while driving a car. Such as, comparing it with something men love “cars and women” or something that shows the industrialization and grittiness about life.

Images: The images will have the cars be put in different environments. One would have sensual desire in the images, there would be a lot of light. While the other might include more shadows, and more mystery. In result, the shoot was really fun. We got to play around with a deep depth of field, which gave us the sensual desire I was looking for from the first poem. While the dark room and reflection shot gave it more of a mystery.

“she being Brand” by e.e cummings, was a great poem, that evoked some interesting imagery. From reading the poem I get a sense of adventure, a bit of thrill, awkwardness, and a sense of a bit of lust, as the overall feeling of the poem. So in terms of photographs, my pictures would try to capture the strong feeling emitted from that poem. I would try to get little contrast in my images, as I want the photos to be well lit and a big close up shot of the toy car. Or if possible a close up of the inside of the toy car as it was mentioned numerous times within the poem.

“Coming Home, Detroit 1968” by Phillip Levine, was a more serious poem, but still quite interesting to read. This poem gave a sense of, coldness, grungy feeling, harsh, dark, and ruggedness. In terms of photography, my photos will have a lot of contrast, really dark shadows to show the mood. I may have some close ups but, I would also like to explore having a lot of negative space to give a feeling of emptiness.