Final Portfolio

Worms and Birds

Carnegie Museum

Isolation and Confusion

Motion

Texture

Nature of Light

Color of Light

Portrait

Panorama

Abstract

Multiple Exposure

Final Project

This photo set is a little narrative about the coming together of my best friends, Sarah and Joshua.

The real story occurred over the span of six years, starting back in 2010.

Joshua fell for Sarah, but she did not pay attention...

...until she did. She falls for him too, but doesn't want to admit it to anybody, especially herself.

The night after her sweet sixteen party, she receives the daring question he's been wanting to ask since the day he first saw her.

She gave in, and accepted his long awaited request.

As time goes on, they acquire the things that any couple cannot wait to come across in their journey:

their own home,

their own fur children,

their own vehicle,

and last, but certainly not least...

...their own future.

Mr. and Mrs. Joshua and Sarah Stiffler

November 7, 2015

"You will forever be my always."

Multiple Exposure

For these multiple exposures, I didn't really have any specific ideas; I just picked two photos from my giant pool of photos and came up with these three. I gave these multiple exposures kind of my own twist, rather than just putting one over the other and reducing the opacity, because I felt as if that was too basic and easy to do for this kind of assignment. I've always loved blending photos together on Photoshop; it's one of my favorite skills to use. Theres always a variety of results that can come from it.

Sarah and Josh

Smithfield St. Bridge and PPG 

Carnegie Architecture Display and Fort Pitt Bridge

Panoramas

These panoramas are taken in/around Point Park's campus. Although it would have been nice to capture a nature panorama, I worked with what I had and took them in this beautiful city. When this assignment was announced, I immediately thought of Village Park and how nice that would look on a nice day in panoramic view. I decided to put two versions of the Riverwalk in this assignment because it captured two beautiful sides to the area, sunny and rainy. The difference in the photos, like how there is lots of clouds in one but none in the other, was such a nice juxtaposition that I had to include it.

Village Park 

Riverwalk on a bright, sunny day

Riverwalk on a dreary, rainy day

Abstract

With abstraction, I didn't really feel like there was a certain group of subjects that were to be photographed; it could be of anything as long as you put a certain twist on it or photograph it from a weird angle to make people question what it is. For these photos, I kept the subjects pretty simple but changed the colors to make viewers unsure of what it could be exactly. I even kept the image out of focus on purpose for some of my photos, but these are my three best ones in my opinion.

Leaves near the Riverwalk

Blurred mechanical pencils

Curtain tassels

Pittsburgh Post Gazette Grief Film Bonus

Portraits

Ethan, the subject of these portraits, is a junior computer science major at the University of Pittsburgh. I took these photos of him near the Cathedral, which is a Pitt landmark and is most likely the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of Pitt. He is wearing a namecheap shirt, which is a domain name registrar that he uses in his projects. I think that because of these elements, these photos tell a little bit about him just by looking at them.

Wide shot

Medium shot

Close up

Canon Explorers of Light 2016

I got the chance to attend the "Canon Explorers of Light" event hosted by Point Park University in the JVH auditorium last week. Even though photography is not a specific skill I want to pursue (for now, but maybe in the future), I still found the event to be valueable and I stayed the entire two and a half hours that it lasted simply because I liked listening to what all of these photographers had to say on a number of different topics of photography. I took a few notes down during the event, primarily quotes that I found to be interesting.

The first half of the event was a discussion panel with four photographers (from left: Jared Wickerham (DK Sports), Jasmine Goldband (Tribune Review), Steve Mellon (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Chris Rolinson (Point Park University)). The second half of the event was a presentation and slideshow by Sports Illustrated photographer Simon Bruty. Here are a few quotes/opinions from each panelist I took down in my notes that I found to be informative and helpful and my comments:

Jared:
"Improve on the little things." - I believe that this can be applied to anything in life, not just photographs. But for those who choose to pursue photography, this is a small but solid piece of advice to just go out and try to capture different "simple" types of photographs before jumping right into the big stuff. Just know where you stand and don't try to improve too quickly and leave things behind.

Jasmine:
"Find something you're passionate about." - This can also be applied to life in general, but in the sense of photography, she means to find your niche in photography, whether that be black and white, portraits, landscapes, multiple exposures, or even different combinations of things. Once you find that, you'll be happy and won't want to stop taking those photos.

She also talked about how she took photography "scavenger hunts" and took photos of things that are rarely seen in the world anymore, such as phonebooths. I thought this was a great thing for her to share with the audience.

"Take a walk with your camera." - If you have your camera with you while you're out, you'll never miss the chance to capture something you find worth capturing or to simply just practice taking photos of things you see every day. Practice putting your own spin on these every day things.

Steve:
"People are consuming pictures differently." - I think Steve meant that photographs have different meanings and purposes to those who make them a part of their lives in any way. Whether it be a Snapchat selfie or a professional headshot, a non-photographer and a photographer are going to have two different points-of-view on those types of photos.
"Embrace change." - Again, this can be general life advice. But in photography, its important to hone this quality simply because change is everywhere and it is unavoidable. Since it's unavoiadable, you might as well adjust to it while you adjust your camera settings and take photos of those changes around you.

He also made a comment about how his daughter takes seemingly "silly" Snapchat selfies that were pointless to him at first, from a photographers point of view. He then thought about how this was unfair to put down his daughters selfie because no matter what he thinks about it, that picture was still important enough to her to take and share with her friends for a reason that is completely up to her. This was said in order to inform the audience that every photo that was shared was taken and shared for a reason and not to underestimate those reasons.

Chris:
"Look at other people's photographs." - I can tell this is important to Chris because he incorporates discussion boards into his class to make students appreciate the skills and styles of other photographers and to let them inspire their own photos. It is always important to have an awareness of those around you so you can shape yourself around that.

Simon:
"If you're prepared, and luck comes your way, then you can get a good photograph." - I think what Simon really wanted to convey by saying this was how important it really is to be prepared as a photographer. There are some moments, especially in sports photography, that will never happen again and it is essential to be prepared, but not to let the technical aspects of your camera and your position override the moment that you're about to capture.

While watching the slideshow of Simon's photos, it was really nice to look at all of those captivating photos. What was also great was how he remembered almost all of what happened before and during those shoots and was able to tell us funny and entertaining stories about how to took the photos that he did. He seemed like a very knowledgeable photographer who really appreciates every aspect of the skill and would never take it, or anything around him, for granted. I'm glad that he took the time to come speak at the university for the students that aspire to be like him one day.

Motion

I understood the concept of taking motion photos better than anything else we've done so far, but I still need to work on obtaining a sharper focus with my camera manually. I've always enjoyed iamges that have moving lights in them, so I attempted to take photos of moving lights. And if they weren't moving themselves, I zoomed the lens in or out over the exposure time to cause them to move, such as the Point Cafe sign. 

ISO 1600 | 46 mm | f/29 | 3 seconds

1600 ISO | 46 mm | f/29 | 1.6 sec

1600 ISO | 18 mm | f/22 | 1 sec

Isolation and Confusion

This assignment actually gave me a very tough time because I couldn't quite nail down every aspect of taking photos with a shallow depth of field and kept getting photos that were just completely burry or somewhat blurry. As I went on, I kind of started understanding more of what I had to do, such as getting as close to/zooming in on the subject as possible and keeping the subject at a decent distance from the background, and adjusting my focal length a little more. I'm trying to improve upon manual focusing as well, so these pictures did not come out as sharp as I had hoped, although they aren't horrible. My lens also only goes down to a f/4.5, which it kind of unfortunate.

I chose these seemingly sporadic subjects simply because they were in front of me while I was practicing these kinds of shots at various times. I also gravitate more towards photographs that aren't as posed looking, candid, and random. These are four of my strongest photos, in my opinion.

1600 ISO | 70 mm | f/4.5 | 1/15 sec

1600 ISO | 60 mm | f/4.5 | 1/25 sec

1600 ISO | 70 mm | f/4.5 | 1/10 sec

1600 ISO | 70 mm | f/4.5 | 1/30 sec

Carnegie Museum of Art Review

Design elements, such as color, depth, etc., are a part of every art form, whether it be in paintings, statues, and even photographs (yes photographs are an art form!) I had previously been to the Carnegie Museum of Art, but I never really looked at the art in an artist’s perspective until being in a digital photography class. Taking a successful, aesthetically beautiful photo includes not only an understanding of your camera and how it works, but also how to make your subject(s) look the way you want for your photos. This can include things like positioning your subject(s), positioning yourself at different angles, changing the lighting, etc. Aspects like color may be hard to change or enhance in real life, but having post-production knowledge can really be beneficial for your final photo. Viewing art like this made me think about how utilizing these things are also just as important in photography. Particularly in paintings, I started to notice how the painter would position him/herself in a certain spot to get the most beautiful angle in terms of the way the light was hitting and shadowing the subject(s). This is not the only reason an angle would be changed; it can also be for the simple fact that the artist wanted to make something more interesting, or even complex, by switching up the angle. In my photos above, I tried to position myself in order to capture shadows coming off of the artwork. I believe that the museum lighting helped me to capture the artwork in more appealing way by not only creating shadowing, but also to brighten any colors even more than they already are. For example, in the vacuum cleaner photo, the shadows and the colors really made me feel like I was back in the time period they were from, and by looking at my photo, I still feel that way since I captured all of those elements, and even took it from a side angle to give it a little “edge.” These seemingly little things are still important in creating the vibe you want to create when taking a photo. Say I had not angled the photo the way I did and did not capture the shadowing, and that I made the photo black and white instead of leaving it in color. While black and white gives off a similar “vintage” look that the vacuum cleaners have, I believe that black and white would do the photo a disservice because the colors are pastel, and a lot of appliances and furniture back in those times were pastel, so keeping the color would definitely help preserve the vintage-feel even more. The shadows coming off of the vacuum cleaners makes the photo more pleasant to view (in my opinion). If I had lacked to do any of those things, it would be a completely different photograph and might not give off the same vibe as I intended, and every photographer can use artwork/displays such as the ones at this museum as a reminder that these elements are important and should be utilized in his/her photography just as they are among these artists. 

Birds and Worms Assignment

A worm's eye view of the Smithfield Street Bridge. Shot at 1/2500 shutter speed with a f/7.1 aperture.

A bird's eye view of the Riverwalk, with some campus buildings in the background. Shot at 1/2500 shutter speed with a f/8 aperture.

A bird's eye view of a seagull flying over cracked ice along the river's surface. Shot at 1/2500 shutter speed with a f/7.1 aperture.