Gail Albert Halaban: Italian Views

I recently had opportunity to view the Gail Albert Halaban: Italian Views exhibit currently being held at the Aperture Gallery located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.  It was an interesting exhibit which exhibited photographs by Gail Albert Halaban which were taken in Italy.  The work focuses on photographs by “observing life through windows.”  The artist has used varied Italian architecture to frame different moments in the everyday life of Italians as she views them through windows.  The works were somewhat reminiscent to me of Hitchcock’s “Rear View Window.”  As you view each photograph, it is if you are peeking into a personal moment in the lives of the people being photographed.

The photographs were large and were for the most part well framed.  The subjects were focused and well lighted so that they stand out in the windows of the buildings.  One photograph, “Necklace, Via Pietro Maestri,” that was well executed.  I noticed that all the other windows have their shutters and windows closed.  In the upper right hand corner, there is one open window showing an older couple.  The woman is trying to put on a necklace and the man appears to be helping her.  It made me wonder if they were preparing for an evening out or if perhaps, he had given her the necklace as a gift.  Another photograph which was interesting was “Boy and His Dog” which shows a boy in a dining room.  The outside of the window has large black shutters.  I had to look closely to see the dog which the boy was feeding a treat. In this photograph, the windows on the left were also closed.

I enjoyed the exhibit and peering into the windows to determine the actual subject.  It gave me a different perspective on how to frame my work. In my opinion, the works were well done and interesting.  However, in some of the photographs I had to look closely to determine the actual subject.  Perhaps, that was the intention of the artist.

Final Project / Fairy Tale

My final project will present story of “The Fellowship of the Ring.”  I will use figures which represent the different characters from the story in locations which resemble the settings in the story.  I will also use some miniatures for props.

1.       Photo of the ring in the story with closeups.

2.       Bilbo and Gollum in a cave.

3.       Frodo and Bilbo Baggins in the Shire.

4.       Frodo and Gandalf in a garden.

5.       Frodo and Samwise Gamgee starting their journey in a farm.

6.       Frodo and Samwise with Aragorn.

7.       Aragorn and Legolas in an Elf setting with a waterfall like Rivendell.

8.       Gimli and Legolas in a forest setting.

9.       All characters surround the ring.

10.   Photo of Frodo with the ring.

Some issues that I ran into when I was creating these photographs were that on the camera it looked apparently sharp. However, when importing them into Adobe Lightroom, they all of a suddenly became really out of focused. To captured these photographs through, I simply took photographs of people who were unaware that they were being photographed by me. I also had to bring up the shutter speed a lot with a low aperture and ISO 100, too. Lastly, I sometimes just waited at a certain spot for people to pass by to take a photograph of them.

I used a faster shutterspeed and higher ISO to try and capture random people on the street in the moment without having blur.

A photographer who I met when I was walking along Washington St.

Couple of pedestrians looking at a spiffy car

A boy throwing a rock

A woman and her dog taking a sip of water.

A couple enjoying the view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

For these set of photos, I set my aperture to F5.6 to make sure that my shots aren’t too soft. I changed my shutter speed whenever the lighting conditions change. All of the shots were candid except for the first one.

For the first shot I had to crouch down and get close to the ground in order to get the faces of the three girls. The image with the dog (named Blue) I had to get closer to it and change my setting a bit because it got cloudy and it got cloudy. The third one, was shot in the moment with the light highlighting the woman in the hair and the guy on his forehead. The fourth one was just a woman sitting down, taken quickly. The last one is two young girls having fun as their friend not in the shot is taking their picture.

LOG#10

Today I really enjoyed taking pictures because of the view and the old architecture and the old big stones in the street. This is my Outdoor shoots . Every picture I set up the ISO was different in each  picture it was between AUTO and 100 , the aperture was different too in each picture , it was between 5.6 and the shutter speed also was  different in each picture which was  between 1/125 to 1/200.

 These images were harder to take considering the fact that we could not modify the light source, as in the intensity or the direction of the sun, which was not present most of the time. The images had to be taken quickly because since these people were not aware I was taking the picture, I couldn’t take long to shoot them. The ISO was kept between 100-160, no higher than that. The aperture was kept at 5.6.