Project 5a: Contrast Studies

This first image I did as just a basic difference contrast. Some angled lines all going in one direction and then one going in the opposite direction draws your attention to the odd line out.

In this set I took my original premise and elaborated on it. I inverted the colors so the white lines stand out against a black background and then made the oppositely angled line red to make it stand out even more. I like the effect. I thought about making the others blue, but I thought this worked fine.

This was just something that popped in my mind as I read the directions for the assignment. This demonstrates the multiplication rule for positive and negative numbers. I expressed the contrast of posittive and negative with red and green. And I further elaborated by expressing the positive result of two negative by using a green minus in the middle of the cross, instead of making the plus sign all red as in the other "pure" positives. In retrospect, it may be even more efffective if I made that plus sign all green, to represent the two negatives making a positive.

Project 5b: Proportion Study

I tried to find enough pictures of seasons and such to do this project, but that became too stressful and time consuming, so I looked at it again and decided to take a different tack. The point of this, from my interpretation, was to get people to look at things in a certain order or pattern, using scale, color, and so on. I decided to use pictures of my youngest daughter, since i have many good ones, and I put them into a page. I put her name in large, fancy letters to draw attention and let people know what the point of this page is, and then placced the ,larger, busier image at the top all the way across to pull the eye upward. Then I used a smaller picture with bright colors to draw the viewer to the right, and a cute, but more muted tone image below it. The introductory words beside her name are less important, but including them gives a polished feel to it, for me.

Midterm images

My first image:


And my second image:

Season collage

I took a long time on this assignment, although my results may not seem so. I looked through many, many of my pictures to find some appropriate to any season, but most of my pictures are of my kids and events, not seasonal. I couldn't find enough of any one definite "season-specific" picture set that would work. Finally, I just took a load of pictures out and about and around my house and tinkered with them. The background of this collage is actually a portion of the tall tree picture I cropped slightly to include in the pictures. I included the snow-covered car because, let's face it, that is the epitomy of winter in Alaska. The shot of my kids' treehouse with the garage behind it was also a must - reminding us that even in the frigid months children still need to play. Finally, I included a couple shots of the bare trees, slumbering under the snow, waiting for Spring to come. The background, as I said, is cropped from one of the internal pictures. The pictures float in a wintry sky, framed by bare branches to emphasize the subject matter.

Shots - color, perspective, and shadow

These are both the exact same picture of my younest daughter. There isn't alot of bright color to this, but perspective is still affected by those colors that are around her. In the uncropped shot, it seems as if we are very far away and also at a very sharp angle above her, due in part to the large amount of dull colors closing in on her. In the cropped version, we are still above her, but the angle doesn't seem so great - it feels as if we are more on a level with her. It is much more personal since she does not have the overshadowing dark and neutral colors surrounding her. Also, the side of the wall is very bright and distracting in the uncropped photo, drawing out attention from the main subject - my daughter playing in the dirt.

I really like the way the colors pop out in this picture. The bright hues stand out against the dark green of the couch. Just about every color is present and bright, yet the contrast adds festivity to the image. The scattering of the items was an accident, but the placement makes a very vivid and mobile image to draw the eye to each element. There is even a kind of symmetry to it with the majority of the bag and items in the center and opposing items to the left and right sides.

This merry-go-round horse head is cropped from a larger picture. I noticed that the sun's position caused the neck on the left to be bright and a slight shadow is present on the right and back side of the face. Both these elements encourage focus on the face of the horse, as do the bright color of the harness and darkly painted eyes. The shadows also emphasize the detail of the carved facial muscles, along with some shading in the paint.

Shots - lemonade dust, orientation

After I did the lemonade spill and poured it back into the container, I noticed the leftover dust on the paper. The lemonade was such a light yellow that even the small amount left made a very apparent design on the paper. So I took a picture, cropped it to the main design, and then flipped it around. As you can see, different orientations elicit different impressions as to what the dust pattern resembles. I see a tree in one direction, and waterfall in another, and more. What do you see?

Shots - Studies on lemonade

I took several shots of this lemonade container and spilled lemonade mix. I decided the container worked better by itself than on the silver bowl I also tried. Both images were synnetrical, but the silver distracted from the lemonade container. The two views below are of the spilled lemonade from the side and open end of the container. I cropped out the background as much as possible, trying to focus on the lemonade. I used purple construction paper to spill the light yellow lemonade on to take advantaqge of the natural contrast of these two opposing hues. It probably would have been even more effective with purple blocking off the background as well. The asymmetry of the container across from the spilled lemonade is plain.

Shots - color rainbow of cookies

I took some time thinking about the color ranges and the spectrum on this assignment. We picked up girl scout cookies this week to deliver and I was inspired to use the boxes to make my own spectrum. The Girl Scouts color code each cookie to a specific box. The only addition to the natural rainbow spectrum is the aquamarine color on the Dulce de Leche cookies this year. I stacked them, took a picture of the narrower ends, and then cropped it so that only the ends were visible. This emphasized the color of the boxes without distraction of background and box size differences. I like the way the stack on the left here looks best - the darker colors at the bottom seem to make it sink into depths even though the boxes are even to each other in the stack. It also reminds me of a sunrise. The right stack is more like a sunset, with the darker colors pressing down on the lighter ones. I'm not sure if these impressions are wholly due to brightness, or partially from temperature (warm/cool) differences in the colors.

Shots - movement

I cropped the picture below so that it would only show the hula hoop circling my daughter's waist. In both photos, the contrasting light shirt and dark hoop emphasize the presence of the hoop. The motion of the hoop is easily perceived by its central location and lack of obvious contact on her body. I think the cropped one above, showing just the hoop, really brings out the motion, since it is cut off at the side of the image and as I look at the image I am waiting for it to move back into the frame. If there weren't such a contrast between hoop and shirt, this would not be as effective. The lines in the hoop design also set it apart from the ground in the background, so it is not lost even when away from my daughter's body.