Assignment 3

Original:

Black and white:

Here, I tried boosting the shadows and slightly increase the highlights to add to the glossy effect of the painting reflecting with the sun of the top left part of the picture.

















Famous photographer (Ralph Gibson):

I like this picture because of the emphasize put on the sunlight and the high-contrast, minimalist black and white.






















Original:



Sepia effect: 

I also significantly increased the shadows and put the highlighting slightly higher because I wanted to give a warmer effect to the picture without overdoing it.
























Famous Photographer: (John Crocker)

I like how this picture still kept its modern feeling despite the sepia tone which usually makes pictures look older.














Original: 
 




Soft focus:




Similarly to my black and white picture, I wanted make the top left part of the picture where the sun is reflecting more obvious and eye-catching. I also enlarged the soft focus point and increased the amount of focus to really bring out that part of the photo. Still, out of all the effects, I felt like this one did not work quite as well as the others because of the focusing effect itself.















Famous Photographer (David Morel):

Original:


Same Colors, different shadow and highlight:

This one has to be my favorite. I think the picture already looks great originally because of the way the colors turned out be.  Adding more shadows makes it look cleaner and the very bright blue produce by more highlighting gives it a happy and colorful feeling.

Assignment 2

Link to Everyday Pictures

Walker Evans   

Website 1: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walker_Evans

Website 2:
http://masters-of-photography.com/E/evans/evans_articles3.html

  

Lee Friedlander

Website 1: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Friedlander

Website 2: 
http://masters-of-photography.com/F/friedlander/friedlander_articles2.html

1. What kind of photographs do they make? 
 Both of them aim at representing the concept of self-consciousness but in two different ways. While Walker Evans takes pictures of his surroundings to point out a society where young men just act how they are expected to, Lee Friedlander includes  himself to demonstrate his concern for the topic and that he, as compared to the majority, was conscious of his existence. Photography for them is just like music is to a musician. They express themselves through photography and try to send messages to everyone who looks at their art.

2. What technical considerations do you think they made in creating their work?
Walkers Evans preferred to take pictures of backgrounds or of the front of a store and, while it may have been his own style of photography, using an 8x10 camera certainly restrained him. Lee Friedlander, was lucky enough to have a 35 mm camera which, not only allowed more mobility but was also more technologically advanced. As a result, taking pictures "on the spot" and with many different angles was possible thus, more creative pictures could be taken.

3.What do their pictures look like?
When I looked up their photographs, it seemed that, while the majority of their photographs are in black and white, I could only find colored pictures coming from Walker Evans which, I found odd because, after all, he is the one who had to deal with an older camera. Both photographers have a mix of both horizontal and vertical pictures but I did notice a liking for horizontal pictures coming from Lee Friedlander. Walker Evans preferes wider spaces, likes to include people in his pictures and has darker and sadder pictures while Lee Friedlander, considered more like a "loner", prefers to include himself, smaller spaces and neutral pictures with no particular feeling.

4. What were some of their ideas in making the pictures?
Walker Evans hated the way people just listened to what others were telling them to do. That is why his idea was to freeze those moments so that people could look at his pictures and realize how they acted and hopefully change it. Lee Friedlander's pictures had the same motive as Evans'. But, he tried to make people realize what was around them by taking pictures of what he called the "social landscape" because he believed a lot could be taught from simply looking at our environment.

Some of their work:

Walker Evans:

Lee Friedlander: