Conflict: Social/Political Response

The subject of these images is a bird statue sitting in a nest made of single-use plastic bags on a stump. I took this picture in the morning an hour after sunrise, golden hour. This image was made using my digital camera, photoshop on my laptop, preview to adjust size, I used a printer to print on transparency paper and I used photo paper, an enlarger and the chemicals in the dark room. I chose to make a collection instead of one picture because I wanted to show different angles of my subject. In the images there is a wide range of value in the grey, you can the texture of the bird, plastic and stump. There is high contrast from using filter 5. There is a pattern because it's the same bird in all the pictures. There is unity because the bird is nestled in the plastic.

In these images there are many rule and techniques shown. In the first one there is sharp focus, the whole picture is in focus. In the second one there is informal balance with the tree and the bird on the stump. There is also selective focus because the background is blurred. In the third one there is leading line from the line in the tree stump that leads to the nest. In three and four there is rule of thirds. This one also has selective focus. The fourth one shows formal balance because the stump and bird are centered in the frame. These pictures started out digital and much bigger. I used photoshop to make them black and white and invert them. I printed the four pictures on transparency paper and set out to make my prints. On the test strips the picture looked fine so I cut my paper to 5 x 4 and print my first picture. The picture looked very pixelated so I had to resize the picture and reprint. I used preview to make the pictures as small as the frame, 4.5 x 3. In the dark room I made my test strips and I used a 5 filter. My enlarger ended up having a light problem again so I had to switch enlargers and redo my test strips. In the end I used a #5 filter at F11 and I exposed for 3 seconds. After the prints dried I trimmed the edges in the light.

Plastic is used by everyone all the time. Plastic bags are the number one plastic used and then not disposed of properly. They are designed to be used only once. They end up all over the place. This collection of pictures is to show how the plastic affects the bird's life. It is using plastics instead natural materials to make a nest. This project relates to my life because I want to put an end to single use plastic. It is pointless. I think the second image could be stronger if i had lined up the negative with the frame right. Also if all the borders were equal on all the pictures I think they would look better. To change any of this I would have to redo my printing process.