If I Just Say Hello

Uttar Pradesh, India: In India I visited a village where whole families were enslaved in the silk industry. This is a family portrait. The father (hands in black) and his sons (hands in red and blue) are held captive in a “silk dyeing house.” The dye they work with is toxic. It’s common for entire families to be enslaved for generations. My translator told me their story. “We have no freedom,” they said. “But we hope, some day, we will be able to leave this house and make dyes in a place where we actually get paid for it.”

So this year for spring break I went to Disneyland twice! And of course I brought my camera along! My family got pretty irritated because I kept stopping randomly…but it was worth it! I was actually really looking forward to this trip because I hadn’t had my camera last year when I went to Disneyland and although I love the iPhone camera, it does not do Disneyland justice. I needed a more serious camera for my trip and this time I had it! I can’t wait to edit all of my photos because last year I got to play around with them a lot and did some pretty cool stuff so we’ll see what I come up with this year!

*None of these photos are edited…yet! ;)

This post is about my final four photos that I got from the large format camera. I had a lot of fun with the camera because I could choose where to focus the image and it was a lot of fun to play around with. I also really enjoyed my first attempt at portraiture! I had always been wary of it but it’s actually a lot of fun.

Claudia with her angel wings.

Ilana and her fish. Color was a good option for this picture because without it, the fish would have completely faded from the image.

First sheet of film! I decided I’d try out the camera at first on objects so that I wasn’t overwhelming myself with two new projects at once.

Taylor with her umbrella. What a model!

Some polaroids from last week. I also took film of these pictures, a little modified. As you can tell I was doing portraiture, using props. It was fun to compose an image with a random person and a random object. I was hoping my models would choose their props and body positioning but for the most part I was the one doing this. I don’t mind, it’s fun to compose a shot. However, I really want to get them more involved in the photo. I don’t want to photograph faces, I want to photograph personalities.

So here’s mah first two pictures from this rotation:

this camera’s so much fun! I’m going to tilt and shift the living daylight out of it!!!!!!! (and not forget to focus it…)

For the past two weeks, I’ve been working on making an origami firework out of my photos. It was very labor-intensive because I made the 24-page model. It was one of the more complicated origami projects that I’ve done, but it came out really cool and is fun to play with. You can change its shape and it folds different ways, so it’s very entertaining!

I discovered that using brightly colored pictures is really where it’s at with these because you don’t get to see the image that much. This coming week I’m going to do one all out of a red/pink color for more focus on color than picture quality.

And it makes a great hat, too!!

Ever since I did the iPhone rotation, I’ve taken many pictures of old, classic cars. This was started because I have a 1968 red convertible Chevelle and I found that it makes a very good subject. Since then, I’ve developed the habit of photographing any classic car that I see.

I really enjoy capturing the mood of the car by focusing on the hood ornaments and other metal details on the car, including the name script. I’m going to continue this photography project forEVERRRR.

Butterfly! Highlighted folded stage! (Taken with instagram)

Photogami! 1st atempt (Taken with instagram)

I had a lot of fun with the iPhone rotation. So far it’s my favorite! I have always been an avid iPhone photographer since I got one so this rotation was really relevant to me. I’d never gotten any good apps for editing and I was glad I finally did! I definitely used instagram and photoforge2 the most. I used instagram for a quick and easy effect, whereas photoforge has many more options. If I really wanted to play around with a picture, I’d go for photoforge. However, I also had a lot of fun playing around with my other apps such as Camera+, Camera FX+, KaleidaCam, Pic Grunger and Labelbox.

When I was most into a photo, I would send it through several apps to get the desired final image. My process was normally scrolling through my iPhoto library (I didn’t have any “photoshoots”, I just shot as I was out and about, of what I thought was interesting so I had many pictures to work with from way before I had even started this rotation). I would choose one of my pre-taken images and then visualize what I wanted to do to the image. What kind of coloring I wanted, what texture, etc.

This is definitely a useful rotation to look forward to! :D