Get Closer

So this turned out to be my first trip to the Met in recent memory and probably the first time that I felt I could truly appreciate everything. The "Get Closer" assignment asked us to photograph specific details on bodies of artwork that we found especially beautiful or interesting and these 5 photos are what I came back with.

The second assignment that had been ongoing was our editing assignment. We were asked to divide 300 photos we had taken and to separate them into two different groups, I ended up choosing newer and older photographs that I have taken to see how my style has changed over the past year or so. I can say with confidence that I have greatly matured and I've gained a much larger affinity for directed portraiture as opposed to the spontaneous landscapes that make up much of my older works. These are 5 photos that remain my favorites of those 300 photos. If you would like to check them out in higher quality take a visit to my flickr where you can see these and most of my other photos.

Portraits

So I've yet to do my self portraits but over spring break I did finish up my portraits of friends and I decided to do something a little different rather than following the normal formula. I went with a zombie theme, the idea seemed to appear after a bottle of fake blood was combined with a night of partying. The next morning when I awoke to found this blood smeared on walls and... my face, I decided that a zombie theme would be perfect. After finding some friends to model and a place to shoot (Marshall's house where the party had taken place) I went ahead with it and spent the majority of my day making my own fake blood and applying make up rather than behind the camera. I was quite proud of my work as two police cars soon showed up at the scene thinking that someone had been murdered. Here's my 4 favorites of the day after all was said and done.






The streak of blood on the wall in this shot is the very one I woke up to the morning after the party. I felt it had to be in at least one shot being that it inspired nearly the whole shoot.


The gory fleshy stuff in this is actually cheap toilet paper mixed with glue and soaked in the fake blood. The fake blood actually had cocoa powder in it to make it darker, however it didn't dissolve enough into the blood so I had to heat it up in a microwave. By doing so I inadvertently created hot chocolate flavored fake blood making it much more appetizing for Morgan to put that soaking wet gob of toilet paper in his mouth.

Once Upon A Time

After looking into a bunch of narrative style paintings and artwork I caught a familiar glimpse of Edward Hopper's work. Soon after I felt compelled to make an attempt at recreating two of his paintings, one of which is this.

"Excursion Into Philosophy" by Edward Hopper




I tried to stylize it and make it my own while retaining the same emotions and feeling seen in the original. I added some noise to it and played with the contrast and saturation to give the image a dulled down feeling as opposed to the sharpness of my original photograph.



Pablo Picasso's "Blind Man's Meal"

This one took some pretty heavy photoshopping, but I feel like it now retains the look of a photograph while sharing the feel of a painting.

And here are a few of my originals in the narrative series