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!!

Ahh! Numbers!

I wonder how many people will do this assignment over the weekend. This weekend is crazy. For me, it means math competition and prom. What's more, I have an AP Calc BC test on Monday, AP Stats test on Monday, AP US History test on Tuesday, English mid-term test on Wednesday. Ahh! I'm so stressed. And there's also the PHOTO ASSIGNMENT. Numbers, numbers, numbers, ...

I don't dare to start shooting because we can only make one picture of each number. No bracketing, no deleting... It's gonna be tough. What if I'm not creative enough to make good pictures?

Ah! I'm so stressed!

Everybody said that they hated this assignment. I don't think I'll hate it. I think it'll be fun to do. However, it's hard.

This is absolutely a pointless whining blog article.

Assignment #6-Portraits

This assignment was challenging, but it was a great fun! I experienced funny moments, awkward moments, silent moments, self-tortured moments, ... Good times!
I shot the first round over the weekend before. I shot every kid of the Nilsen family. It turned out that the young ones are way better models than Jenny and Josh. Jack (age 9) and Wills (age 13) are naive and funny. They're spontaneous, so they don't really care about how they look like in the photo. They can always be themselves. And also they have rich emotions. I love them. Jen, as a typical teenage girl, cares a lot about if she looks pretty. It makes things harder because she actually looks natural when she doesn't smile. Josh is a way funny guy, but he's not comfortable with the camera. He kept laughing and repeated, "This is so weird." I got some good emotions from Josh and Jack when they played together. But unfortunately it was almost dinner time so I didn't have good light. I could only give them up.
A big fail in the first shooting was that I wasted a lot of photos on some wrong backgrounds. After the first round, I realized that I wanted the backgrounds to be as simple as possible. That made the second round a lot better.

So here're some good photos I got from the first round.
Wills Nilsen

This is an typical epic Wills moment. When I think about what expressions Wills can do well, it pops out in my mind. So I said to him, "Wills, remember in Vegas you shocked me with a shocking gum?" Immediately he showed his evil smile. And snap! I got it. This photo is sharp. His shirt is dark enough to form the contrast.

Self-Portrait 1

This is me stuck in the "forest of make-up". People who know me well all know that I'm a no-make-up person. Before I came to America, I had no make-up and never wore it. Even now I only had a lip gloss. So this photo is NOT me at all. I borrowed all these things from Jenny and tried to arrange them in an overwhelming way. I like the "forest" feeling. But I think I can have better facial expressions to show my emotions towards make-up. Lighting is so-so. And the door in the background is a little distracting.

Bob Nilsen

This is my host dad, Bob, who is also the owner of Cafe Rio. I got inspired by the portraits of the politicians I saw. I figured depicting him as a successful businessman is the best way to do it because it's genuine. He looks absolutely confident.

Kat Nilsen

There's a saying in China that says, "Behind a successful man, there must be a successful woman." For me, Kat is a woman like that. She's charming, nice, knowledgeable, caring, and smiley. Without her, the family could fall apart. When shooting, I told her to ba happy about the family and show her confidence because I think she should be proud of her family. Technically, I still think the background can be brighter.

Two nerds. This is a typical Wills-and-Jack moment. When they are together, you can only hear endless arguments. Wills always plays on Jack, but Jack is too nice so he got fooled all the time. Honestly, Wills is so mean to Jack, as you can tell from the angry expression on his face. But Jack is a nice little kid who always laughs happily. Pay attention to the needle on Wills' shirt because that's why he's mad. I don't like the line on the background. It's distracting. But I simply couldn't find a cleaner background.

Susyn

Susyn is a friend of the Nilsens from Australia. Right now she's in some severe trouble. Her husband gambles too much and takes away her money and credit card. So she came to America to calm down and to sort a way out. Once she stood in front of my camera, she said, "I hate pictures. I don't like my pictures to be taken." And she did show some signs of not being comfortable. So I talked to her and asked her random questions to calm her down. In this picture, she's thoughtful and we can tell that a lot of things are going on in her mind. The subtle little smile shows that she's trying hard to have a optimistic attitude towards her life. I like the nice outdoor afternoon light.

Steven Bennett

I took a lot of pictures of him but the ones in which his whole face was showed all turned out to be too cheesy. Haha. He's a nice guy, and he smiles a lot. So all the other pictures looked very facebooky. This one, on the contrary, showed a "dark" side of Steven. Some people will say it's his real side and they talk about bad things about him. I took the picture only because I think it would look cool and I wanted to try the one-spot light in a pretty dark room. And you know, the "cool" looking fits him well.

Sadie Stockham

I love Sadie to be my model! She's a girl that has a lot of personality. She can control herself well in front of the camera and fully show her emotions through some subtle things. I love this photo, and I'll love it more if it's sharper. And I burnt the left part. It was a successful experiment. It looks natural.


Sadie again. And I like her genuine smile. She's a great model. And I LOVE the white wall in her house! I wish I could take more pictures on that background.

Self-Portrait 2

Oh my gosh! I still can't look at it. Let me throw it away!! Please!
Ok, calm down, Tracy. Calm down. This photo, to be honest, is a candid shot. I didn't expect to print it at all. It was just a random try. That's why my hair is not messy enough. I tried a lot more in my bedroom in a dark corner. The composition was better there, but unfortunately they were all out of focus. When my host mom saw this, she said, "Tracy, I've never seen this side of you." I said, "Of course not! I don't even have this side." Generally I'm a calm person, never hysteric.

Ok. I really wanna finish this long blog as soon as possible.
Things I learned:
1. MOST IMPORTANT (in portraits shooting): Figure/Background relationship. Never let the background distract the attention. And it's better if the background can help.
2. Young kids(not too young) are good at controlling themselves. (Yep that's my conclusion.) High schools kids and adults often feel awkward and uncomfortable in front of the camera.
3. Having the person folding his/her arms is a cliche. But it does look better. I have to say this. Kat and Bob look way more confident when folding their arms. And Susyn folded her arms to show a sense of lack of protection and safety. I think they SHOULD fold their arms.
4. Who they are DO matter in my photos. If I don't tell people who these people are, they will just think these are too common. They're not so charming. But the expressions in my photos this time all showed the people's personality really really well. They were all their typical moments.
5. Self-portrait: I gotta be brave! Bahaha.