Final Project Progress

While I was home for Thanksgiving I went down to the docks and shot 4 rolls of whatever I saw while walking around. I really thought about every picture I took and was a little neurotic about getting the lighting and composition just right so I really felt that I would have some good ones. I just made the contact sheets last Tuesday after critique and the results were decent. Lately I've been thinking about how I want to present them and a couple ideas that came to mind were maybe putting them up against a rustic, fishing net looking type thing and then adding some seashells or whatever. My only problem is that it could end up looking a little cheesy. I might be able to make a better decision once I see how the prints come out.

Faces, Horses, or Boats?

So I am still trying to decide what I want to do for the final. I really like David Meanix's style- meshing real people with their photographed counterparts. However, I feel like doing something along those lines would be pretty much plagiarism as well as hugely time consuming. I'm definitely going to toy with the idea though. I was thinking of doing something along the lines of cutting out various facial features from magazines and putting them on real people then snapping a photo- I'm still a little on the fence though.
The other idea I had was to document daily life at the barn where I keep my horse. There are a ton of animals, people, machinery, and old dusty buildings. The only thing is that I did something like that for my high school photo class, so while I love taking pictures of farm activities, I think I should probably branch out.
And the last thought that sprang into my head- while writing this actually- was to go down to the waterfront (I live on the Maine coast) and get pictures of the fishing trolleys and ferryboats coming and going from the harbor. Wow, I really like that idea. I am definitely going to test that one out.
Okay, well I guess I just solved my own question. I love the ocean, but luckily this prevents me from doing any sappy, postcard-esque beach scenes while I still get to capture little pieces of a working waterfront. I'm pretty excited to see how this turns out- wish me luck!

People and Places

So apparently people in Boston don't really like their picture being taken by a stranger. I realized just how awkward it is to snap a photo while I was sitting on the T- everything from the click noise of the camera to the fact that I was staring at someone I didn't know through a big black lens made me feel probably more uncomfortable than the poor kid I took a picture of. Worst of all, I didn't realize it, but the flash had come on so I lit up the whole car up. Awkward. On the plus side, I think I shot some good pictures. I've only gotten to see the little negatives so far, but they feel natural since I didn't have any say in the way someone was posed or the expression on their face. I like them a lot better than the posed ones I took which all kind of came out boring and unoriginal.
For my self portrait I knew I wanted to take a picture of my tattoo. It's tiny and really unsuspecting but I designed it myself so I feel more like its a part of me than just on me. Because it's on my ankle I got to incorporate my feet into the photo. In my opinion, feet are pretty weird looking so I had some fun putting them at odd angles and directions so they ended up a little weirder.
I also really liked looking over other peoples photos because you make up little stories and assumptions in your head. I always wonder about who they are, what they were thinking at the time, what was going on in their life. I think the next critique will be pretty interesting.