Relationships

The subject of this image is a bee collecting pollen from a flower. I took this image by getting low and putting my camera in the bush. To create this image I used my digital camera to take the picture, photoshop to turn the image black and white and to invert it, I then used a printer to print my negative on transparency paper. In the dark room I used my negative with an enlarger, photo paper and the chemicals. I chose to show the relationship of a flower and bee because in nature there are many relationships where organisms depend on each other to thrive. In this image there are lines in the flowers, you can see the texture of the bee's body and wings, the texture of flowers, there is negative space where the light shines through the flowers and leaves. There is a wide range of grey values. There is contrast between the bright light shining through and the darker leaves and parts of the bee. There is unity where the bee is sitting on the flower.

In this image there is rule of thirds, the bee and most of plant take up at least two-thirds of the frame. This means there is informal balance with the bee and bunch of leaves versus the few leaves on the other side. This image is in selective focus because there are leaves and part of the flowers that are not in focus, but the bee and some of flower and leaves are. The middle parts of the flower serve as leading lines and are all pointing towards the bee. The flower the bee is sitting on frames it's body. This project started out digital, I downloaded it to my laptop and used photoshop to make it black and white and then inverted to print on my transparency. In the dark room I made a test strip with 2 sec segments, it was pretty grey so I added a 3 filter and made another segmented test strip. I decided on 4 secs at F8. I ran a test strip and it looked good so I decided to do a full page print. On the full print there was a really light spot in one corner, but there were no chemical marks showing uneven developing. I went to Ms. Medsker and we decided that it was probably the enlarger's light bulb. I changed enlargers and had to redo my test strips because every enlarger is different. This one had a stronger light bulb so I changed my time to 1 sec, which was actually more like 3 secs, and kept the 3 filter on. I made a print and it came out with a full range of value, evenly exposed.

The relationship between a bee and flower is very important for plant growth. I think it's important to share their relationship because over the past years bees have gone through problems of becoming endangered. This project relates to my life because I chose what relationship to capture and how to capture it, the angle and the zoom. I like the image, but I think the print could be stronger if you could see more detail of the plant. To change this I could add a filter or expose it for slightly less time. To do either of these things I would have to redo my test strips.