Self Portrait

This is my self-portrait. I was at a retreat and one of my friends taught me how to use the timer on his camera. I set the camera down and took this photo. What I really like about this photo is the blurred background and lighting behind me.

My Choice

This photo was the one I chose. It is a photo of St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. I took this photo because I liked the lighting behind the Cathedral. It was a cloudy day and the sun was shining through the clouds right behind the Cathedral. I saw this and liked the way it brought out the features of the Cathedral. What this photo does best is represent value. The dark grays of the clouds and the darkness of the Cathedral itself draws the eye to the top of the Cathedral, emphasizing the cross at the top.

Actress Headshot

This is a headshot photo of Mercy senior Gina Calabrese. For this project, we were supposed to practice portrait photography with and actor or actress as our subject. In this project we worked in a studio. This environment was new to us, as we had done mostly outdoor photos prior to this. In the studio, we had to account for things such as lighting, which we were not used to. The lighting in this photo comes from two lights placed at a 45 degree angle from Gina, with reflectors. Lighting from both sides produced a photo with no shadows on her face, but it was not harsh because it came in from the side.

Photo in Abbott's Style

This photo of the Golden Gate Bridge was my attempt at capturing a picture in the style of Berenice Abbott, a famous photographer in the early 1900s most famous for her photographs depicting New York City. In this photo, I tried to math her style using the long dramatic line of the bridge to emphasis the enormity of it. In fact, she had a photo that looked similar, of a bridge in New York. One thing I like about this photo is that the bridge tower falls on a third line ( for balance) which draws the eye to it.

Shutter Photo

The purpose of taking this photo was to practice using camera settings. The photo is of a tree at Mercy, and it was taken in the morning. When viewed normally, the lighting was too harsh to produce a good photo. What I did was use the metering on my camera on the sky, which was very bright. This brought the tones of the tree down, so that the lighting on the tree was not very harsh. This metering is what allowed me to capture this photo.

Photoshop Altered Image

This photo is my photoshopped photo. It is of a tree at Mercy. It was taken in the morning, so the light was hitting the tree from the side. I tried to change the coloring of the tree to make the lighting seem as if the sun was setting. I did this by using the burn and dodge tools in photoshop.

Candid Portrait

This image of a Mercy student is my candid portrait. I took this in the Mercy cafeteria. The candid portrait is supposed to be a photo that captures the person being themselves, so I like this photo because it captures the girl doing homework, which is fitting for her role as a student.

Ansel Adams Photo

This is a nature photo of the hills in Pacifica, with the fog rolling over them. The purpose of this photo was to mirror the style of famous nature photographer Ansel Adams. I tried to use space in this photo, with the branches of the tree making up the positive space and the hills making up the negative space. The other thing I tried to do was bring more attention to the fog by including dark values in the photo around where the fog was. This was the real purpose of including he trees, so that the viewers eye would naturally go from the tree branches to the fog.

Environmental Portrait

This portrait, taken at Mercy, is an environmental portrait taken of one of the maintenance workers. In this photo, I was supposed to take a portrait of someone and use the background to add meaning. I tried to include the rakes and hat in the background, to represent his work, and I had him looking away from the camera, as if talking to someone else, because he was in charge of the maintenance crew.

Principle of Design

This photo, taken at Serra, was taken to represent balance. The lighter gray is balanced on both sides of the photo, but more importantly, there is balance with the "USA" on the ground. This type of balance is the rule of thirds, where the subject (in this case the "USA") is in a spot the viewers eyes are naturally drawn to.

Element of Design

This photo of a brick wall was taken at Serra. The purpose in taking this was to depict both line and texture. I saw the brick, and knew it had a visibly rough feel to it. After I decided to photograph it to show texture, I saw the lines it made, and chose to use an angle that would utilize the lines. What the lines do in this picture is draw the viewers eyes to the left, down the row of bricks, as all the lines seem to approach each other.

Sun Print

This image was created for our sunprint project, the first project we did. Basically, we had a special sunprint paper that we laid objects down on top of. The sun changed the color, but the space under the objects did not. This created an outline of the object, which became permanent when the paper was put in water. In my sunprint, I have my chain with a cross I had on my keys. I like how the created image is symmetrical.

Scanner Art

This image was from our scanner art project. The purpose of the project was to create an image by scanning different images on top of each other. In this image, I used a desk background and photoshopped things such as a calculator and a piece of paper on top to create the image of a student's desk.