ART 163: Photo Essay Revisited

Well, here we are again, it's always such a pleasure.

Apparently our professor wasn't happy with our attempt at "photo essay" last time, so here is our retry. Here are the two series', of course without any text, since if you need to explain it with words, it isn't a "photo essay."

I think I'll call this series "parallel."

                        Kevin                                                                                          Justine

Go make some new disaster.

Kevin

ART 163: Portraiture.

Well, I haven't updated this blog since before Spring break. I guess I was just doing too much over break to have enough time to update anything, though I have content to update it with (and plenty).

Now, for this assignment, we were supposed to do portraiture, but I decided to go in a bit different direction than the normal "studio" portraiture (as big of a fan as I am of that style).

 We started off inside, because it was snowing pretty fiercely outside. But the pictures weren't quite coming out the way that I wanted, so out of around 45 pictures, only these two (left and below) turned out to be worth saving.

I was trying to get some sort of condensed light from the light umbrella, yet I really need a new, more powerful flash to really get what I want.

These two are very similar, yet I couldn't decide between the two of them, because they are so ... intense. In the zoomed in image you can see a lot of snow caking on her face and eyebrows. I am very thankful to her for dealing with the below freezing, very fast wind conditions.








And now what I think to be the best of the photoshoot.
 

 

This one gives a great sense of how intense the wind really was. Because of the front-curtained  flash (look it up if you don't know what that is, it is a really interesting property of flash units). You can really see the vortices in the snow, how it was flowing around the model. All in all I would say an extremely successful photoshoot, though I only got 5 pictures out of it.

Excellent. 

Kevin 

The New Year

So, happy new year everyone. The only thing different, in my mind, is that now I have to start labeling my pictures starting with "2013" instead of "2012."
Picture!

Yesterday I bought myself a GoPro Hero3 Black edition with my Christmas money (plus some of my own money.) Thus far it is pretty cool, and I plan on using it to take some timelapses while in the car/plane in the next week or so. It is amazing what this little camera can pack into such a small body. 4K cinema video at 15fps, 2.7K at 24fps, 1080p at 60fps. The possibilities for this little system are near endless. I plan on using it when I make the TED skit this year for ASME. Hopefully I can stick it on the side of a car or something during the video, since I got the suction cup mount for it.

Here are a few test shots I took today while out and about:

 My neighborhood isn't super exciting, we just have this little bridge area with some irrigation hardware in it, so that's where I went for these shots.

The detail in this one, especially in the ice, is very good for such a modest little camera. I should have gotten it a bit closer, as I'm sure it would be able to see it. The sensor is so small that everything is basically in focus, and for something like this that is perfect.

This one above is probably one of my favorites, since it means that this tiny camera can fit easily inside of a mailbox, yet still pull great detail out of the highlights. The sky and trees at the end of this were completely blown out, but I was able to pull a ton of detail out of them, which seriously impressed me. Well done GoPro. Yes, it isn't as much detail as I would have gotten out of my D600, but that wouldn't have fit inside of a mailbox, now would it?

All in all, I am very excited about the possibilities of this tiny, rugged camera, and am very glad that I bough it, even if the battery life is fairly sad at this point. I might go get a new battery at some point here before too long.

I'll have some more pictures up later,

Preow

Kevin

TV: Rose Bowl and such
Movie: Home Videos from 1994
Game: Minecraft
Music: Macklemore
Food: Chicken Strips and Kool-Ade