Paul Strand Pre-Assignment

Paul Strand is a photographer that was born in 1890 in New York. He began to take photography courses at the age of 17. In 1915, he completely turned his photography career around when he discovered "straight photography". Straight photography is taking pictures without modifying them, representing the scene as purely as possible.
If we're going to be taking pictures in the style of Paul Strand, we'd probably be taking pictures of scenes rather than subjects. His pictures seem to be focusing on things like landscapes or street views. He doesn't seem to have close up portraits or pictures of single subjects. It also seems that his pictures focus a lot on either light or shadow -- sometimes both. His images can show a balance of both or a strong light or dark shadows.
When I take photographs in his style, I think I may focus on things of nature or the field that I have cheerleading practice at! I look forward to doing this assignment because his images seem very interesting and beautiful. Here are a few of my favorites:

This picture was called "Wild Iris". I really like how Strand captured the light on the leaves and how they stand out from everything behind them. I also like it because wild irises are some of my favorite flowers! :)

I think this picture is my favorite. I really like how Strand balanced the light and shadows. This is something we see everyday in life and we don't appreciate how beautiful it really is.

I like how, in this picture, Strand showed the shadow of the bridge (or tower. I'm not really sure!) on the ground. I like how it's kind of an arial view as well. Again, such a normal thing to see everyday that we never really pay attention to!

I can't wait to do this assignment!

Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz was born on January 1st, 1864 in Hoboken, New Jersey. He died at the age of 82 on July 19th, 1946 in New York City, New York. He was a photographer and a modern art promoter. He married a painter called Georgia O'Keefe. In around 1891, Alfred's father helped him buy out a small photography business called the Photochrome Engraving Company. The company wasn't doing very well, but Alfred made friends with The American Amateur Photographer magazine and began writing regularly for it. By the time he died, Alfred Stieglitz accomplished many great things.

Here are three of his photos:

I like this photo for many reasons. I like the fact that basically all you can see is a black background and then her (Georgia O'Keefe) hands. I also like that it's a very beautiful pain but what she's doing with her hands looks like it could hurt, so it's like a "pain behind beauty" kind of picture.

I like how Alfred Stieglitz used the light in this picture. It's a lot brighter than most of pictures and I think that is makes this specific photo very unique. 

I don't really like this picture because it's kind of blurry and dark. I don't like how smokey/smoggy the scene is.

James Nachtwey

After I finished my bad photo assignment, I decided to do some research on photographers and look at their different styles of work. Upon doing this, I discovered an article about the "55 best photographers of all time". This list contained many great names but one I'd never heard of was James Nachtwey; so I decided to look him up. As I was looking at his photos, I discovered how disturbingly real they were. Instead of taking glamorous shots in big cities, he was snapping pictures of disastrous things. Looking at his photography really opened up my eyes to the things going on around me.

Bad Photo Assignment 2

I have formatted my bad photos with Photoshop. Here they are.

Hello, welcome to  my blog.

Bad Photo Assignment

This weekend, I completed my bad photo assignment. I took at least ten photos for each category and selected the best (or worst) from each. These are the photos I selected.

Photo 1: All over blur

Photo 2: Bad composition 

Photo 3: Wrong exposure

Photo 4: Subject blur

Photo 5: Wrong white balance

Light Walk

This Sunday, I did a light walk. I coach a pee-wee cheerleading team and we have games every Sunday. During a break we had during the game, I took a chance to go on the light walk. It was really beautiful seeing how the light would hit in some places and how the shadow highlighted others.