Ad Buster

The ad buster I created features a skeleton in the place of a Ralph Lauren model. I think the message is pretty straight forward - models don't need to be skeletally thin. Semi-recently, a Ralph Lauren ad was published in which the model had been photoshopped to look ridiculously thin. Her head was literally bigger than her waist! And, even worse, that same model had apparently been fired for being "too fat." Because of this, Ralph Lauren himself is my intended audience. I want him to realize that people aren't looking for clothes for skeletons - they want clothes for ordinary people. And his models definitely don't need to be photoshopped to look thinner either! I suppose the audience that is being left out may be the models themselves. They probably aren't the ones deciding that everyone should look thin - I think their thinness is a result of advertising and media in general, trying to sell the idea of 'super skinny.' I think the ad's emotion is kind of humerus, since no one would really use a skeleton for a model, but also hopefully a little bit uncomfortable, enough so that someone feels like making a change.

Body Project

When we were first assigned this project, my initial idea was to simply take lots of portraits of people laughing, because I’ve always thought that laughing pictures tend to really capture a person, and especially their emotion. However, once I realized that might not be the greatest of ideas, since it would just be a series of pretty much the same picture, different subjects, I decided I still wanted to stick with the body, and the idea of capturing an emotion or moment like that. I was really interested in the idea of using a part to represent the whole, and the way just one part of your body can reveal something about the rest of it, or your general demeanor (if it’s the right body part at the right moment). So I was at home one day, just feeling really comfortable, reading a book, and I glanced at my feet for a moment and it really felt like just the image of my feet, how they were there, seemed like it was screaming, “COMFORT.” I got the idea to do a body series about comfort, and only take pictures of people’s hands or feet, but that would imply the entire body was in a state of comfort. I chose hands and feet partially because of seeing my feet that day, but also because all the weird wrinkles and veins and bumps and things on hands and feet are always really fascinating to me, and I thought they would make for a good subject. After taking a bunch of pictures of comfortable hands and feet for awhile, however, I started to feel like they were all coming out generally the same. There are only so many relaxed poses for these body parts, it would appear. At this point, unfortunately, it was getting pretty close to the due date, so I decided not to completely abandon my idea, but instead do a hands and feet study with different activities. If that makes any sense. I wanted to continue with the idea of capturing an entire body’s moment with just one body part. So I made the first image a study of Leisure time, the second an image of Sleep (like I say, I had a lot of pictures of comfortable poses), the third was Balance (I had some people playing Jenga, which forces the players to have really steady, balanced, careful hand movements), and finally, Eating (more ravenous hand movements?). I think the first two were definitely way more successful, probably only because I had way more images to choose from for those. But overall, I’m pretty satisfied with the project.

Documentary Project: Food!

For my documentary photography project, I chose to document food in the U of A students' life. Everyone develops certain eating habits in college, some healthier than others, and some much tastier than others. Personally, I love food and eating, so this topic interested me because I'd get to investigate (a.k.a. cook) and also hopefully learn how to take pictures of food that look really appetizing (channeling foodporndaily.com). When I started the project, I was mostly only taking pictures of food I cooked or ate personally. However, I realized that this would give a very limited perspective on College Life Foods, so one random Tuesday I headed to the Union and (creepily) took a bunch of pictures of everyone and everything I saw. This part was rather difficult because one, there was a lot of movement and terrible lighting so every picture was coming out blurry, and, two, it was hard to get good compositions that were candid because everyone in the Union has a purpose, and I was the only one wandering around leisurely with my camera. The food there was way less tasty and healthy looking than most of what I'd been making at home, and it brought me back to the dorm days, where I'd gained a disgusting 14 lbs (yes, almost the freshman fifteen... yikes!). Hopefully this project will open the viewers' eyes as much as it did mine, in the making, about how gross our daily diets can get if we don't take care of ourselves. Not that a great sonoran dog isn't the perfect lunch every once in a while. 

Texture + Lighting

TEXTURE

The first theme I chose to explore was texture, because I love the texture of the rope around the base of the lamp. My first instinct with texture was to zoom in real close and try to tilt the camera a bit because that adds interesting blurriness in the distance. I pretty much took the same approach to each texture I found on the lamp. I was very attracted to the rope texture, but didn’t want three photographs of the same thing. It was rather difficult to get the camera to focus on such a close subject, but it was frustrating because using the flash gave me a weird dark shadow in the bottom of my pictures. I never did get a picture of the switch that was clear enough for me to be fully happy with it.

LIGHTING

The second theme I chose was lighting, because my subject is used for light. My first idea was to take the lamp outside because I thought that would be unexpected and interesting (comparing natural light to something that emits artificial light). I like how saturated the colors came out in the sunlight. After bringing it back inside and trying some other stuff, I took the shade off and used one of the photos from that because I thought it was interesting to keep the light source so blatantly in the picture – as in, the subject. And then, maybe two days later, I found this random dragonfly on the lamp and took a picture of it, using the lighting of the lamp to make a silhouette of the dragonfly.

Perspective