Line and shape in my environment

In this assignment we had to construct a line and a shape in our environment using unconventional materials. In class we watched an Art21 about the artist Andy Goldsworthy, who creates lines and shapes in nature using natural materials like stones and leaves. I found his work to be beautiful and inspiring. With his creations fresh in my mind I set out to create my own lines and shapes in my environment. I decided to do most of them in my house and a few outside with more of a city environment, to differ from Andy's work. I found that creating lines and shapes with unconventional materials challenging, and quickly realized photographing them was a whole seperate challege. Most of my pictures were taken when it was very bright and I had to take several shots with different settings just to get a few that were acceptable. I still have a few more photos to take which I think I will make night or evening shots.
This assignment made me look at line and shape differently than I had before. Creating lines that interupted the lines that already existed in the environment caused me to see new lines and shapes that I hadn't seen before.

Here are some photos taken off my back porch in the evening both using different aperture settings. The first uses F5.6 and the other is F8.

Light studies

Here are some pictures taken from my window of my neighbors roof at noon, evening, and night.

"See ourselves seeing": observing my relationship to my environment using the digital camera

Having not much expierience using digital cameras, this assignment was challenging to me. I had a little difficulty with setting the aperture on the camera. I never did completely figure out how to get the aperture to f16, but I do think that I understand what it does. The lower the number the larger the aperture is, which allows more light in to the lens. The larger the number the smaller the aperture, letting in less light. We were to experiment with aperture in a range of 5.6-16. I found that the photos I took in the evening with an aperture setting of 5.6 were alot clearer and brighter. After experimenting with holding the camera in my hands or setting it on something to keep it still, I found that setting it down would result in a much clearer picture. I shot most of the pictures with aperture setting of 8. the photos taken in the evening were slightly blurry, and the ones taken at night were were almost all black except for small spots of light coming from houses. The photos taken int the afternoon were actually the opposite, very bright and detailed in some spots. while even brighter was the sun coming in through windows, that it just blurred that spot into a white glow.
Overall I feel that I did learn alot from this assignment. I can now say I'm not completely clueless about digital photography. :)

"See ourselves seeing": observing and analyzing my relationship to my environment

While looking off my porch in the evening I notice that almost everything is completely covered in shadows, except for small areas of sunlight. There is a house directly in front of me that has only a small portion of the roof without darkness. The tree in front of the house is all dark with out a single spot of sunlight. It is difficult to make out the details of the houses, cars, and other objects beyond this large home because the street lights haven't been turned on yet. The weather is chilly and the shadows seem to add to that.
Doing this assignment made me realize how much of an effect light or the lack of light can have on my perception of space and even time. I feel like I have a little bit of a better understanding of the role light has on not only my environment but on me as well.

camera obscura

I thought the camera obscura was interesting. At first I didn't quite understand how it worked, and I'm still not completely sure. From what I understand it is basically a dark box of any size with a small hole punched through one side to allow light to enter. The light that enters projects the objects outside of the box on the opposite side of where the hole is punched. The object is projected upside down, like how the human eye recieves images. I learned that this the basis of how cameras were invented.
Today we were shown some of Abe's Morrel's work with the camera obscura. I thought it was fascinating how he used such a simple idea in a complex way. He used the camera obscura to project scenes of cities and sky lines on the walls of ordinary rooms like children's bedrooms and offices. I'm curious as to how he got these images to be so clear in his photographs of the rooms.
We also got to see a camera obscura in the Brant gallery. There was one set up for us to see a projection of the courtyard. Unfortunately it was pretty cloudy outside and the image was difficult to see. There was also a smaller one set up with a some still life that was better lit. I found that once your eyes adjusted to the darkness, the objects were amazingly clear. I plan on going back to on a sunnier day to check out the larger one again. :)