Multiple Exposure Assignment

I was always amazed by multiple exposure and wanted to know how to do it. At the beginning of the photo semester we were meant to find our favourite photographer and mine happened to be Jerry Uelsmann who is the GOD of multiple exposure and when I first saw his work I wanted to the things he was doing. His images were so beautiful and he is such a talented man that I wanted to follow in his footsteps. Later on in the semester we were suppose to do a multiple exposure but in Photoshop  I knew it was my chance to see how well I was able to make multiple exposures and it turned out to look awesome. Jerry Uelsmann worked with up to 8 different enlargers when he created his masterpieces and I worked with 3 different ones when creating my multiple exposure. It doesn't really look like I used 3 different photos but at the bottom where the trees are is one photo, the top where the clouds are is a different photo, and the eye, obviously is a different photo. I really like using eyes in my photos because I feel like eyes express the most emotion no matter what. If someone is truly happy or just pretending to be happy their eyes will tell the truth. They are also all so different and unique and beautiful and the way the eye works and looks is unbelievable. I really enjoyed doing this project because it was really fun and I finally got to see how this stuff actually works. I love my multiple exposure because although it was a tough process and sometimes annoying it was worth it for the result I got.   

Acrylic Gel Assignment

side + front + back

back

front

These three photos are of the same picture just different ways to view it. For this assignment I decided to do, I used a photo that i took when I went skiing in Vermont. I really liked this picture because I took it on the last day I was spending there and it turned out to be the most beautiful day I spent there. The sun was shinning, it had just finished snowing and the scenery was just beautiful and picture perfect. My favourite thing about this photo is the sun, if the sun wasn't there then I think the photo would look dull and wouldn't be so beautiful.

I was really looking forward to doing this project because when we got it demonstrated to us, it looked really cool and fun and I really liked the outcome of the whole process. I knew that this was one of the options I was going to do and I think that I will do this type of art more often and maybe even at home considering that you need simple materials.

Breaking the Rules

This photo above breaks the rules because of what the main focus is suppose to be. It also breaks the rule of having balance because all the attention is focused on the right side of the photo where the frog and the hands are while the other side of the photo has nothing. In this photo I was meant to take a picture of the frog because everyone was getting excited over it and wanting to hold the little frog because it was so tiny and cute. Instead of taking a photo of the frog and making him/her the main focus, i decided to make the hands in focus. I felt like it was a much better photo because it captures the excitement in the children that wanted to hold the frog. You see all those hands reaching to grab the frog while the frog is just there, like a little toy that everyone can play with and throw around. By making the focal point the hands, you get a feel of how much these children wanted to hold the frog and it kind of looks like they are fighting for it. I actually really really really like this photo and i'm glad that I took it this way because I think that if i had made the frog in focus that it wouldn't be as good as it is now and it would look too ordinary.

This photo breaks the rules because it breaks the rule of thirds. This photo is completely centered in the middle of the photo and the photo also sort of clashes with the girl that is in the background of the photo. I really like this photo because the burning marshmallow is completely in focus while everything else is not. I also really like how it's dark out and you can see that it is dark outside because of the background but the marshmallow almost looks like it was taken in daylight and I think it's cool because it almost looks like the marshmallow on a stick just came out of nowhere. It kind of looks photo-shopped but really kinda cool at the same time. 

Painting with Light

Trapped

This part of the unit I thought was really hard because I could never figure out what to photograph. I tried so many different ideas and before I thought of doing photos with flash I used a flashlight and painted different animals and spaceships. Nothing worked. I was just getting so frustrated with everything and how I couldn't get a photo that I liked even one bit. Once I figured out that this is what I wanted to do it took me forever to get the right photo. The reason I choose to photograph Ellie standing against a wall upset is because especially during teenage years, life get so frustrating and you don't know what to do. This shows the life of an average girl that has had enough. She feels trapped and she can't get out because there is something that's holding her back and making her feel trapped. Which is why I named this photo "Trapped". After I finally got this photo I was really impressed with it and loved it. I had to crop it a little because i didn't like the background but I finally got a good final product that I was satisfied with. This unit was also really cool :)

Renaissance

The Birth of Venus

 Sandro Botticelli,  or Alessandro diMariano di Vanni Filipepi, was a very talented and distinct artist that actually become popular in the renaissance period. Born in Italy, Botticelli worked as a goldsmith. Most renaissance painters started their apprenticeships at the age of twelve or  fourteen. Sandro's career as a painter started at the relatively late age of about eighteen when Botticelli was sent to the great painter, Fra Filippo where he learned how to mix colours and clean brushes. Botticelli was greatly influenced by his teacher which encouraged him to go into art. At the age of 25, Botticelli completed one of the first paintings that he was actually paid for, a panel that would reside in a meeting room frequented by the most important men in Florence, Italy; the painting was called Fortitude. He became Florence's favourite artist and everyone loved his paintings. He had no one equal to his talent for mixing colours. He was in fact, one of the greatest colourists of all time. He was also a master of the rhythmic line, using paintbrush to outline the figures in his paintings. In doing so, he used his paintbrush in the way we would use a pencil or a pen and he believed that these lines added a feeling of fluidity and movement. Botticelli made a lot of money, up to 100 florins per picture and in our modern money, one florin is about a few hundred dollars. Botticelli did not only paint for himself, he enjoyed painting religious pictures for churches where he also helped paint the Sistine Chapel by painting three frescos (a painting done rapidly in colour on wet plaster on a wall or ceiling so that the colours penetrate the plaster and become fixed). Botticelli was famous for many paintings including his most famous one "The Birth of Venus" which is the photo above. He painted The Adoration of the Magi, The Judith, Primavera, Madonna the Magnificent and the masterly group of the Virgin Enthroned. He also painted the beautiful Mars and Venus too. Botticelli's paintings ignored realism and loved to allegorize, which means to interpret or represent symbolically. Botticelli also enjoyed his artwork to be nude. Unlike most painters, Botticelli had no use for perspective. He placed his own focus on that special kind of beauty seen through imagination; it was the beauty of fantasy and his work at times seemed sort of flat. His portayals were sometimes not seemed quite as realistic but he was a master, and his paintings were outstandingly beautiful.

  

Botticelli actually did a lot for the renaissance art. His work was so amazing that people actually started to copy it. Now, it is extremely hard to tell which ones are his masterpieces. Because Botticelli loved painting fantasy things and loved using his imagination to create beauty, some of the things that people started to copy were mythical beings and classical beauty. People especially copy his technique of outlining pictures but back when Botticelli was still alive, his linear style was out of date by the time he died but was revived in the second half of the 19th century, when his female figures were a major influence on the Pre- Raphaelites and his flowing line was an inspiration for Art Nouveau. For the men of the renaissance era, the mythology of the Greek's and Roamns represented a superior form of truth and wisdom and while Botticelli carried out the artwork, the story behind the painting would have been seen as a symbol of mystery and Botticelli depicted this in the best way possible in his painting The Birth of Venus; it reflects Humanism. Humanism was a huge part of renaissance and had a huge impact on it. Focusing on his "Birth of Venus" painting, Venus was the Roman Goddess of love. Way back when, even before the renaissance period, people had no concept of individuality, and there was no focus on mankind, only on God. Everything was considered to be a mystery that only God could understand. People had no  science or any understanding of the world back then. During the renaissance, this all changed. Humanism placed a value on humanity. Some of the best examples of humanism can be found in Shakespeares and Leonardo da Vinci's work. Some characteristics of humanism include an interest in Greek and Roman myth/art/culture focus on the worldly life, and a focus on human potential and achievement while staying away from the spiritual and eternal life. The Birth of Venus represents these ideas in several ways. The subject is a Roman myth and completely secular. Botticelli chose to portray Venus in a highly realistic way, focusing on a realistic human form. He concentrated on a way to perfect the worldly life rather than on the preparation for an eternal life. If you compare this to Medieval art, which had no concept of realism, it is a big difference. Even today, humanism is still around in artwork, not just paintings but also in novels, drawings, songs and even our daily lives.

Venus

The Birth of Venus, which is the painting I used for my assignment, was considered to be so beautiful that you would not even notice the unnatural length of her neck, the steep fall of her shoulders and the strange way her left arm is hinged to the body. This goes to show how Botticelli took something that would not be considered "beautiful" and turned it into something that seems natural and truly beautiful without the intent to be beautiful. When I typed in Botticelli's name into the Google search this painting was one of the first to come up and it caught my eye instantly and dragged my attention towards it. I loved it so much but I didn't even know why. After looking at different paintings and renaissance artists I just couldn't find another work of art that I liked more that Botticelli's Venus and I didn't know why. I guess i love the naturalness of her, the beauty of her naturalness. It's like she feels comfortable being nude and is proud to be the way she is. The length of her hair and the hairstyle Botticelli gave her really attracts me to the photo because it is an excessive length of hair to have (better seen in the first photo) which is unnatural but still beautiful. I really love everything about this photo and love how Botticelli painted her. His artwork is truly amazing.

Ellus

After I knew this was the photo I was going to do for my assignment, I had to go take photos of Ellie and try to get the proper lighting that was on the original masterpiece. I had to move lights around, turn lights on and off, change my settings around until I got a photograph with just the right amount of light on the left and right side of her face, making the left side significantly darker. It was a really big challenge trying to Photoshop Ellie’s face onto her’s because of the big difference between that skin colours and the way it was painted. Because the texture of the photo seems rough and had lines on it, it was hard to match the texture of the photo of Ellie I took, with Venus. To match the skin colours and to combine them but the hardest challenge I had in created my renaissance photo. I had to bring up the brightness, play around with the colours a little, paint on her face here and there and add noise to Ellie's face. Once I matched up the skin tone and gave Ellie's face the same lines and texture her left eye was so dark and had so much going on that it wasn't even noticeable anymore and did not even look like an eye. I had to take her eye and make only the eye brighter and with less lines on it so you could actually see that she has a second eye. Although the process was long and frustrating,  after three days, I finally got a satisfying result without wrecking the beauty of the original photo.

Mixed Lighting

F-stop: f/5.6
Exposure time: 1/1000 sec.
ISO speed: ISO-400
Focal length: 22 mm
Max aperture: 3.9
Flash mode: no flash
35mm focal length: 33

Types of lighting:
Natural light- sun
Reflector- gold side
Day White Fluorescent: A-B B2 G-M G2

During the creation of this photo I tried different lights, different effects, different angles and positions to finally get the photo I was most satisfied with. I had a lot more photos that looked kind of the same as this one but she was blocking the sun directly which gave her a glow and made her look like Jesus but the colours looked to boosted and too bright which is why I choose this photo over all the other ones I took. The photo has a sort of yellow tint to it but blue at the same time. It took me forever to find out how to even do mixed lighting photos because everyday I tried to take photos I never got a good one or even close to a decent photo because the lighting was so bad or it was just an awful photo. Finally the bad weather had went away and it was super sunny out so I decided to take my mixed lighting photo outside where the sun was shining bright and I got really good photos. It was hard to choose which one I wanted to use because they were all pretty good photos with cool effects and lighting. I really liked this photo because it gives me a cool and warm feeling. The warm feeling comes from the sun and how her hair looks really blonde and the colour of the sky gives me a cooler feeling because of the blue and how her face and hair are kind of green. Even though this angle usually makes people look weird and different I like what it did to the photo. The way the camera was angled captured the sun in a perfect position to add colour and make the photo not so plain. Overall, I really like the photo and I think I did a very good job conveying mixed lighting.

Alpaca's Take Over the Royal Winter Fair

Llama looking creatures that draw in attention from everyone at the Royal Winter Fair are furry friends that everyone adores. At the Royal Winter Fair, hundreds of people came to do a little shopping, go to some cow shows and just to have fun. One of the main events that drew in I would say hoards of people every minute was the petting zoo. There were goats, sheep, chicken, bunnies and my favourite of all, Alpaca's. Alpaca's were the main event in the petting zoo; everyone would gather around to feel their soft coat and funny looking lips. Eric from Toronto, at the petting zoo said "I've been here with my kids for about an hour already, they can't stop feeding the alpaca's." "They're just about the cutest and funniest animals I've ever seen" says 7 year old Maddie from Mississauga. "I love feeding them food and seeing their lips go all over the place trying to grab the food out of my fingers," chuckles Ms. Zanini.

Spotted Huacaya Alpaca

Lots of people take photos of these Alpaca's and feed them till they leave. The Alpaca's will walk around in their area while people follow, "They keep running away from me" says Ella. When you come to the Fair it's hard to say bye to these adorable animals because you just want to keep petting them, their fur is incredibly soft and you won't want to stop petting them. At the Royal Winter Fair you can buy scarfs and hats made out of Alpaca fur as well as sweaters too. You can buy your little ones cute sweater with Alpaca's on them or your girlfriend mittens; you can never go wrong with Alpaca's; everyone loves Alpaca's. "I'm going to need to bring extra change next time I come here to feed the Alpaca's," exclaims Shaniqua from Scarborough. The petting zoo is a great place to come with your kids and even with your friends, it's for all ages and anyone will enjoy it with cute Alpaca's and other animals waiting to be fed.

Perfect Portrait #3

In this photo above, I had my friend sit down and try to pose for the photo. Like always I tell my models to do anything they want and this is what we tried to do for so long. After endless minutes of trying to capture a perfect photo and after fixing all the settings for every photo I was going to take, I finally captured this one. I knew that this was the one i was going to use but I tried to top this photo but I just couldn't. I got a couple more photos that I really liked as well but none of them really spoke to me like this one. Once i took this photo stared at it for a long time, it gave different feelings and emotions, which is a reason why I really like it. It looks like a normal pose but if you look really closely into her eyes they grab your attention so much. It's almost like she has a scared look in her eyes and you can see so deep into them. Although this photo is black and white it has a wide range of greys, whites and blacks which is pretty cool. I asked a couple of people what they thought about this photo and most of them said that it looks "artsy" and someone said that she looks intimate. I agreed a lot to what the person said about her looking intimate because even though it's a simple photo it looks very emotional. Overall I really enjoy this photo. 

• f- stop: f/5
• Exposure time: 1/60 second
• ISO speed: ISO-100
• Focal Length: 30 mm
• Flash Mode: no flash
• The lights in the room were off
• 2 regular sized lights on the left side of her, one directly beside her about 1m away and one slightly in front of her about 1.5m away
• 1 regular sized light on the right side of her face standing about 1m away from her
• 1 small box light shining from right under and slightly behind her

my puppy running towards me

Perfect Portrait #2

In this photo my model was meant to take a laughing photo and it turned out actually really natural looking, which is just what I was going for. She looks very happy and carefree. What I really enjoy about this photo is that even though the model I used is already beautiful, this photo makes her look even prettier with the range of colours that are present. Her hair is perfectly placed and everything is in focus. The lighting in this picture is different compared to the other two photos I have because as you can see there are dark spots under her eyes and around her smiling mouth. I think that those shadows really help make the photo because they add depth and more detail into it. There is some shadows on the right side of her face but I kind of like it because it gives an effect and doesn't make it look plain. Another thing that I also like about this photo is that it looks like she's looking at someone that's making her laugh, how she's looking up and into the distance and the way I positioned her to the right side of the picture.

• f-stop: f/5.6
• exposure time: 1/60
• ISO speed: ISO-400
• focal length: 55mm
• max aperture: 5
• flash mode: no flash
• small lamp light shining about 1.5 meters away from the right side of her face a bit in front of her
• regular light shining from the left side of her face about 1 meter away from her
• light source from the bottom behind her to remove all shadows from behind
• giant light source coming from the top left side of her about 1m away

Perfect Portrait #1

In this photo above, I had my model look into the light and told her to do whatever she wanted but not to smile. This photo captures emotion and depth. Before I took this photo, it was actually almost the end of class and I hadn't really gotten a good photo that didn't look so posed and fake. I didn't want to get her smiling or fake laughing because I wanted to do something different from my other photos. I particularly like the lighting because there are barely any shadows but it looks like there's shading on the side of her face. My model is placed not directly in the middle, but slightly off to the right side of the photo but still almost in the middle to make her the main focus rather than placing her in the very bottom and questioning why there is so much space around her. I think that the way the back of her head is darker than the front really makes this photograph powerful. It's almost like she's waiting for something to happen and is really interested to what is going to happen.  

• f-stop:  f/5.3
• exposure time: 1/60sec
• ISO speed: ISO-100
• focal length: 40mm
• max aperture: 4.8
• flash mode: no flash
• light on the right side of her, shining into her face about                                        30cm away from her
• little lamp shining onto her face from the same side the same distance away
• lamp with umbrella about 1m away from her on the left side a bit behind her, not directly beside her  
• ground lamp shining up from her left to remove shadows and add a bit of light                

Multiple Exposure

This picture was inspired by a photograph I saw on the internet when I was looking online for cool photos. Genuinely this photo is suppose to be of a girl looking into her hands and thinking. The picture inside of her hands is what she is feeling and how she is feeling. She is feeling lonely and trapped at the same time and i decided to put a picture in the background of waves/water to create a sort of flow in the picture. The main reason i decided to do something like this was to try to mimic my favourite photographer, Jerry Uselmann, which I think I did a pretty good job.

daiana spataru

My Favourite Photographer

Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry N. Uelsmann, born on June 11, 1934, is an American photographer.

He composes his work in black and white with a vast compliment of greys and mid tones throughout.

He contrasts the organic with the artificial in almost all of his work and in most of his photos he usually has more than one focal point.

I feel like Uelsmann doesn't take his photos to depict a place, but to show different interpretations of what is in the photograph.

He says, “I am sympathetic to the current digital revolution and excited by the visual options created by the computer. However, I feel my creative process remains intrinsically linked to the alchemy of the darkroom.”

I like how he finds the darkroom the best place to work because it is a beautiful place where pictures are created.

I really love how his photography is different, unique, not like something you'd see everyday or the pictures you would normally take. When I look at his photographs I stare at them for a long time and think about the photos. They give me a certain feeling and a different feeling in every photo. His photos are usually multiple images and out of all the multiple images photographs i've seen, I think that he is the master. His photos are abundant with mystery and they are all truly beautiful.

Most people would take a look at his photographs and say that it is all digital and edited, even I thought so, but I was wrong. Uelsmann does not use any digital processes, he does his work in the dark room using multiple enlargers. He usually uses three to eight to produce one photograph.

I believe that he truly has a talent of making photographs and creating them beautifuly.