Final Project: A Story of a Traveler

This is a traveler's story.

The journey will soon begin. Packing doesn't necessarily require perfect skills. Mental preparation is more important.


With money and a credit card, she can do anything at the new place. Camera is for keeping the memories. And sunglasses, haha, some people just need them.

Always keep her schedule in mind. The plane is taking off.

She can give up a lot of things before and on the trip, but not the passport. Passport is the life of the traveler.

On board. Take a deep breath and enjoy the weird feeling of her ears.

Here we go! She's finally at the destination, but no one will pick her up. Cars go by, but none of them is for her.

Before she gets a new cell, or an international phone card, public phone is her only choice to be connected with her family, her friends, and ...


Unpacking is an art. She doesn't want to overdo it. But it's not optional.

On the road, signs help you choose which way to take. In your life, "signs" help you choose which way to take.

Endless road trips. They could be boring sometimes. But looking back, she never regrets.

Cars get dirty.

And suitcases get worn out. This is a traveler's life, adventurous, exciting, nostalgic, but unforgettable.

So this is my final project, a picture story. Having worked on techniques a lot throughout the whole term, I'm sort of confident of my techniques. So this time I decided to focus on story-telling. I would say technically, some pictures of this assignment were not perfect. A couple of them had too much exposure. And looking at individual pictures, I didn't get amazed by my own works. But looking at the whole project overall, I think it was a success. When I chose these 12 pictures from about 500 shots, I considered more about if the picture fit into the story rather than if it's cool-looking or stuff like that.

This is it. THIS IS IT.

"And the wind will set me racing, as my journey nears its end, and the path I'll be retracing, and I'm homeward bound again..." --Homeward Bound

Done with shooting... FINALLY

Yeah you read it right. I got done with shooting this final project TODAY. And I'm aware that it's due TOMORROW before class. As long as I don't sleep in tomorrow and miss the first class, I will get it done. And it won't be very crappy. I'm confident of that.

So something fun about the shooting this time. I tried some new things.

First, it's the first time I actually took a road trip to go shooting. After I had "begged" Kathleen to take me to the airport for about 3 weeks, she finally had time to take me there. I didn't spend a lot of time there, but I did get some good pictures. Surprisingly, I had a lot of fun shooting on the highway. It was hard to control because the car was moving all the time, but I enjoyed it.

Shooting at the airport was embarrassing. I could tell everybody was thinking, "What's this girl doing here without any luggage but a camera?" I tried to shoot the moving checked-in luggage on the machine, but a person in uniform came over to me and stopped me. Dude I'm not a spy, Okay? I'm just a high school student who's doing a photo assignment. Geez! And I saw some good photo moments, such as family hug, saying bye, and things like that. I was too nice to interrupt and take a photo. Hmm... interesting experience.

Also my shooting is more spontaneous than usual. Some people might think it's a bad thing because it means I didn't pose my objects deliberately, but I think it can be a good thing because they're all real things. Things look the most natural in this way. It's hard to control, but I like it.

Anyway, tomorrow at 8 a.m., I'll show up in the photo lab on time and finish printing this project. See ya!

Final Project Proposal Round 3

This new proposal is an extension of Round 2. Round 2 is the basic. And this round 3 will add some details and new ideas to it.

So I read a photo book called Aren't You Happy Today? The author organized a series of photos to tell a complete story about fighting depression. It came to my mind when Mr. Slade talked about some steps of being a traveler. It's the same idea. I think I'll go for it. It can be "A Traveler's Book". The first few pictures will be packing and other preparations. Then I'll show the traveler's life on the trip. His/Her emotions, memories, ...

It should be really fun! I can't wait to do it! But right now I'm still stuck in the AP forest...

Final Project Proposal Round 2

Hey I just came up with this idea: Travelers.
Remember that picture of suitcases under my bed? I named it "Traveler" and I was inspired by that.

I figured I'll have a strong connection with this topic because I'm basically a traveler in the US. And also I can shoot still posed things, at which I'm good. And I can relate my emotions in the photos, in which I'm interested.

So yeah the big idea is a combination of still posed things+emotions (lonely? independent? adventurous?)

Here're some details about what I wanna try:

1. suitcases

2. packing

3. Moving

4. Family photos

5. A book about culture shock

6. Learning new things

7. Find a person to pretend to be a traveler

8. Shooting at the airport

9. Flight tickets

I believe I'll come up with other cool ideas when shooting.

It's time to start shooting!

Final Project Proposal Round 1

This is gonna take me a long time until I come up with the final idea. So let's put this as round 1.
I don't know what I'm gonna shoot, not at all. But at least I know what I'm not gonna do:
1. Shooting indoors
2. Portraits (0r people-involved shooting)
3. Repetitive things like trees, roads, buildings, ... even though I love these things. It's possible to make them beautiful, but it's really hard to be creative.

And I want to make it:
1. outdoors with good light
2. story-telling
3. something that I care about (actually that means everything in the world)

Geez... No idea. This blog didn't help at all.

Assignment #8-Re-do-Numbers

I think of this assignment as a successful re-do. The happy and confident Tracy is back again. :)

I chose to re-do the numbers because as is known to all, it was a crappy assignment. I was pretty sure what I wanted to do: outdoor shots, Chinese calligraphy, and taking my time... But I didn't know what it would turn out to be. I guessed I would just try and see.

Here's my 10 new numbers:

64

This thermometer is beautiful. You can think of it as four if you want. But I prefer it to be 64. It's easy to tell that I did something to the mercury because it can't be so dark naturally in daylight. Yes, I used the "magic" brush in LightRoom. That was a good practice. I think it looks fine.

26

A random price on the newspaper. I actually took a lot of similar pictures. This one stood out because of the good composition, contrast, and sharpness.

23

To me, the key point of this photo is not the number or the bench. Instead, it's my shadow on the bench. Mr. Slade said this is just a bench, JUST a bench. I think it's more than that. This kind of light is the reason why I love outdoor shooting. I can be creative only with good light, and I love playing with sunlight. This photo has absolutely good contrast and composition. I like the story-telling feeling in it, although it's not really telling a story.

22

Building shot again. I just like it and I'm good at it. My passion for building shots is largely related to the photographer research I did last term in Mr. Patteson's class. I even think about doing my final project on it. But it can easily be repetitive and boring.

14

I LOVE love my creativity in this photo. I know I'm not the first person to shoot shadows, but mine is a combination of sweet light, shadow, the idea of a number, and beauty. The Nilsens' big house looks attractive to me because of these beautiful little details. I'm glad I found this scene accidentally.

9

This is #9 in Chinese. You can think of it as twelve if you want to. I don't know what else to say except "Beautiful"! I love it. The cool thing about it when I wrote it down, its length was actually almost equal to its width. But this view changed its proportion. It's extended horizontally. Cool!

8

Haha I would say this photo is a "freshman" shot. I don't know why but a definition of stereotypical "freshman" shots formed in my head after all the critiques. The moment I looked at this photo on the small screen, I was like, "Wow! That looks familiar. That's a freshman shot!" Their photos mainly just fulfilled the requirement of the assignment, but they didn't spend a lot of time composing the photo. They often look like spontaneous shots. No offence to the freshmen. I'm actually jealous of their inspiring creativity. But photo is more serious to me than to them, I think. I want every photo I did to say something about what I'm thinking. It's ok. The freshmen have 3 years to go, and they definitely have some potential.

5

This shot didn't really tell a story. But it looks nice. And that's it.

3

Beautiful! I'm convinced that "Number is everywhere." I poured some ink in the bowl and moved the bowl around. Suddenly a "3" appeared, and I excitedly but carefully set the bowl down and took a photo. Black-white-gray: good contrast. And it also has sweet light.

1

Beautiful again! I love Chinese calligraphy ink because it's pure black and it's natural. The texture on the pure white calligraphy paper is good, too. Actually I kinda learned this view from the assignment "Get on Your Belly". It's the same idea, and we can see that in the "9" photo too. See? I did learn something from different assignments.

Overall, it's a good assignment. I tried what I wanted to try and get good results. It's absolutely worthwhile to re-do this one. I'm glad. It's time to start the final project. It's gonna be challenging but fun! I'm psyched!

Assignment #7-Numbers

It's a bad bad week for me. I don't really have any bad bad week before in my entire life. But this week is just horrible. My junior buddies can feel me. Anyway, I don't blame this assignment. It's totally my bad. I can't even handle all the academic work, so I can only lower the priority of photos.
I'll talk more about the challenges after I show all the photos.

1

This is basically core of my week. Academic, AP US History, stress, ... So it means a lot to me. Also, as a "1", it's typical. As far as I know, Columbus Era can be viewed as the beginning of America history. Good contrast, I'd say. I like the subtle light on the left side. And also I like how I put objects in the middle of the frame on purpose. I used to think I should never do that. But it's a good way to express what I really want to express and reduce distractions.

2

A lame photo. It's just not creative at all. But to me, "2" means "a pair". And the most interesting pair of things I can find are these earrings, IN THE WARM SUNLIGHT.

4

It's not sharp enough. I hate shooting indoors because the Nilsen's house is super dark. This is right next to the biggest window of the house, but still, the exposure time had to be long. But I like how I focused on the bass, and made the background blurry.

5

It's a random shot of 5. But I like it because of the focus and the details in the photo.

6

Ping pong. Haha! As a Chinese, I'm always proud of it. This is that kind of photo where I love using "Manual focus".

7

Technically it's a good picture. But it's not interesting. This is the main problem I have in this photo.

10

This is the kind of thing I like shooting: outdoors, peaceful, still, good light, good position, shadow, contrast, ... I'm obsessed with shooting buildings or things on a building. (Hmm... Maybe this should be my final project.) But the only thing is: IT'S NOT INTERESTING!!! Ahhh!!

14

Building again. It's a balcony. I love this picture except that it's not interesting. Oh well...

83

This is my favorite photo of this assignment. I know a lot of people who have shooted car licenses. I know it's a cliche. But I just love it. I think this one is visually strong. The contrast, the sharpness, the compostition... It's a good photo.

93

I don't know what to say about this one. It's lame.

Ok, so challenges:
1. I had literally no time for shooting! I experienced the worst emotional crash this week because of the stress. I'm literally stressed out by all the AP tests. And I haven't slept well since last week. It's a bad bad week. I feel so sorry for this photo assignment. I really wanna do it well. But there's no way that I can do it when I'm stressed out.
2. I'm not creative! Seriously. I can take #6 in the State Math Contest, but I can't create amazing number photos. How ridiculous is this?
3. Shooting in order and "no more, no less" bugged me. I'm a perfectionist. When I don't like a frame I've made, I can't just move on and forget about it. It's not me.
4. I definitely will re-shoot this. I've been thinking about this for two weeks. But I still have no idea what to do. Ahhh!!