Assignment One: Photographic Themes
For Challenge One of this assignment, I chose architecture as my theme and utilized the buildings around the University of Michigan campus as my inspiration.
My first photo is an example of Light and Shadow. In order to create this picture, I found an outdoor walkway with arches that exposed the sun's light. It is clearly visible on the right side of the photo, and it can also be seen shining through the arches on the left side.
The next photo demonstrates Vantage Point. When I took this photo, I stood at the bottom of the stairs in front of the building and angled my camera up at the building. While it is not an extremely dramatic angle, I think the point of view from which I took it makes the building look very statuesque and important.
While I was looking for inspiration to fulfill the third requirement of Color and Tone, I was expecting to use a vibrant mural on a building or perhaps a building that was more recently designed and featured a more modern color palate. Instead, I came across the patina blue color of the lights on the Law Library. The metal of the lights, as well as the green on the stone underneath where the finish has rubbed onto, really compliments the old stone facade and I felt that it was an interesting way to demonstrate Color and Tone in a photograph.
The Law Library also plays a part in my photo representing Deep Space. While not immediately evident, the lights featured in the previous picture can be seen through the stone tunnel and across the grass lawn of the Law Quad.
Challenge Two of the assignment required photographing an object in foreign or unusual environments. I happened to be cleaning behind my couch at my house and saw some coins stuck in a heating grate (featured in the photo below) and it inspired me to continue with the theme with coins as my featured objects.
After the first picture, I was less than eager to dig through the dusty heating grate to retrieve the coins to take my other pictures, so I turned to my piggy bank instead. While I was sorting through my loose change, I noticed five different pennies, ranging from the year 1979 to 2012. I was very intrigued by the fact that while all of the coins are of the same value, they all looked significantly different due to various levels and wear and tear. These differences in color are featured in my second photo below.
Next, I took the coins outside to photograph them in an unexpected environment. In the photo below, the coin is almost incorporated into the nature around it and it seems to fit in with its surroundings despite the fact that, other than the occasional untimely drop, coins aren't usually found in outside.
The fourth photo of Challenge Two takes the outdoor theme of the third photo one step further. It creates a sort of "I Spy" kind of feel, initially only one or two coins are visible, but as you keep looking it is evident that there are actually five pennies in the photo.
