Final Project

Artist Statement

PROMPT I

For my images I mostly changed the exposure meter, especially in the photo of the sun over the river and the street lights photo. In both I allowed for a slower shutter speed to increase the sun’s glare and the brightness of the night time street respectively. I wanted to create a feeling of loneliness and isolation across my images. I achieved this by avoiding human subjects and leaving the foregrounds mostly empty, adding a dreamy sense of being removed from the locations. I also added distance by leaving the far background less detailed, especially in the street lights and dunes with the blank night sky and mist covering the top of the photo.

To further depict the loneliness I edited with lightroom. I lowered the saturation slightly across the board and the contrast in the dunes photo. In the forest gorge photo I actually increased the contrast slightly to highlight the trees. By highlighting trees with contrast it gives the feeling of looking through the bars of a cage or the slates of a fence. With the dunes looking down into the water it is almost like a pit but the reduction in contrast leaves it somewhat obscured and shrouded in the unknown. In the sun over the river, the river acts as a compositional element to separate the viewer from the city and create distance and loneliness.

In the process of creating these images I wanted to follow the theme of loneliness which is something I have experienced but also challenge myself into getting out of my own isolation in my home. I wanted the images to feel lonely but not boring, which some of my earlier attempts did. Photographing scenery I had to make a trip to get to solved this problem. For me the most enjoyable part of the process was the adventure to take the photos. The night street lights and the sun over the river are both taken on bike rides and I went for a hike in the gorge looking to take a picture for this class. I discovered that adding the goal of taking a picture made it easier to get out in the first place. I think one thing I could have done to improve the images would be to mess more with the technical camera settings in the pro camera app I used to take the photos. I would have liked to use focus to further highlight parts of the images.

PROMPT II

I think this class has definitely changed the way I see photos. The first way that comes to mind is in a graphic design sense. I am also taking graphic design classes which have also asked me to explicitly look for design in the world and this class has taken it further with photography. When I see advertisements and images on social media my eye goes to the parts of the whole that are photography. Even if it's not a whole photo, just a section or clipped part, it is easier to identify the design, compositional choices and purpose behind what the photographer decided to capture. I think it has made me realize how many uses for photographs there are, not only as full art pieces in their own right but as advertisement, entertainment and messaging. This class also changed my perspective on how photographs can represent and communicate so much with the subtle ways they are taken. Photography gives great power to artists and more importantly the people who view their work to make change in the world.

I think photography is the essence of being able to show rather than tell. An image can be seen and processed as a whole in seconds when words require more time to decipher. For me a time when this was very clear was seeing images of the war in Ukraine over this year. I had listened to NPR and read articles but it wasn't till I saw photos of the absolute devastation of people's lives depicted so honestly through photography that it really hit home. 

PROMPT III

I chose American photographer Sally Mann to study. I was drawn to her work because it has a personal feeling to it, almost like I can relate without having been to the south where all of her photos are set. I think I learned the most from her landscape photos as this is what I focused on for my final project. She placed emphasis on photographing her current environment, the American deep south. I followed this by trying to fully represent my environment, the pacific northwest. I learned from her that the most real and authentic photos are those that depict what you know well. 

Sally Mann conveys feelings of nostalgia, familiarity and eeriness through her use of monotone, vignette and heavy shadows. She frames her subjects in the center of the composition. I think for me I wanted to evoke the same over all mode she does, creating a feeling of loneliness frozen in time. I definitely had Mann’s photos in mind when deciding what photos to use for my final. Although all my photos are in color, I reduced the saturation to get more of the washed out feel Mann creates. I think one thing I would try differently next time is to use the manual film camera I have to shoot black and white and get closer to the tools Sally Mann uses.