Project 5: Muse

The Calm Before The Storm - My Critique on Pipo Nguyen-Duy

This is Lazyboy by Pipo Nguyen-Duy from his East of Eden Series and it is a C-print mounted on Sintra framed with a simple, less than one inch black frame. It was exhibited in the Light Factory as part of the show entitled The Calm Before The Storm which displays the humanistic imprint on environmental landscapes. 

The image fills the frame with no mat. I feel that this method of filling the frame with the image adds to the visual affect of the photograph. It enhances the impact the image has on the viewers eye and I find that very appealing. To me, the classic white mat, black frame is overplayed and Nguyen-Duy  made a good choice by deleting the mat and allowing the image to fill the frame. The subject of the image is the lazyboy chair which is placed in the lower center portion of the frame. It is also oddly placed in a forest of some sort subdued partially in the middle of a body of water. The medium is a a C-print mounted on Sintra, in various sizes. 

Nguyen-Duy's main concept in his work is "man vs. nature" and I feel that this image defines that concept very well. It is a natural scene of a forest landscape which is interrupted by a man-made object; oddly placed in the scene, it seems almost abandoned and out of place yet the color palette matches it's wooded surroundings. Also, the repetition of forms and reflections is a strong feature of the photograph. To me, it symbolizes the history of man and his influence on nature throughout time. It seems that as generations come and go, the same scars reappear in the natural landscapes of our time. 

Nguyen-Duy captures this idea not only with this image but with his entire series. However, specifically with Lazyboy, I see the relationship of man vs. nature is more evident for the fact that the chair is a man-made object that was made of things that could be found in the forest similar to the one of which the chair sits. The trees, and even the non-apparent inhabitants of that forest, are essentially the materials that were used to build the chair. That idea is a hidden message behind the piece that I feel makes the whole photograph successful to it's overall intention and concept. 

In conclusion, Lazyboy is my favorite image from the Calm Before the Storm exhibition at the Light Factory for it's conceptual and physical beauty and intelligence. It has a strong concept that displays itself to the viewer as long as they allow their eyes to view it. The full-frame image is blunt to the viewer and forces them to question the image. Through this questioning, they find the hidden concept of man's affect on nature through time. 

Muse

Alastair Magnaldo

Im doing this. 

Formal Qualities

• Surrealist
• Square cropping
• Saturated color palette
• Relationship between human, nature, and light
• Emphasis on landscapes and the horizon
• Play on depth of field
• Juxtaposition of size relationships. 

Alastair Magnaldo is a french artist with a passion for photography. He studied science and consideres himself a "qualified physics and chemistry scientist with a Ph.D." He uses science in  photographic approach. He creates these surreal and almost dreamlike landscapes. 

Photoshop will help me fuse several images together to create a surreal and dreamlike landscape.

"A landscape goes well beyond it's strict representation. It is an invitation"

                                              -Alastair Magnaldo 

Updated Pano Jpeg

I made the house/portal more visible. 

Pano Jpeg

Aurora:HDR Final Print

My final HDR print. I took 7 bracketing exposures (-3, -2, -1, normal, +1, +2, +3). I took these shots on a full moon night with lots of wind and cloud movement and I used a 30 second shutter speed for each shot. As a result, I was able to get the subtle movement and ripple in the clouds. That is my favorite part about the image. I feel like the concept is lost with the suburban scenery and the main focus should be the clouds.

HDR - Work In Progress

This is a portion of what I am working on for the HDR project. I like the stark contrast and the glow behind the trees. Also, the shape of the bare trees and their shadow on the vinyl are visually appealing to me. 

Bansky Wall Art

I combined these two famous wall stencils by Banksy. They are on the wall in the Palestinian West Bank that separates Israel from Palestine for the sake of "protection" when in reality it is a wall 8 meters high that costs over 2 million dollars to build that disconnects innocent Palestinians from their own land. Israel does this to them and no one is aware of it. The wall is twice as high as the berlin wall and MUST come down.

Long Exposure at Night

This was a 30 second exposure at night of the night sky without a tripod (the camera was resting on a car pointed up toward the sky). In those 30 seconds, I was about to capture the movement of the clouds, stars and the shift of the moon. It was a windy night so the clouds moved quite fast. I really admire this image, it was the first time I attempted a night shot with a long exposure without a tripod and I think it was very successful.

Project Two: Idiom "A Chip On Your Shoulder"

This is the re-worked image after crit on thursday. I made the chip bigger and more rounded on the shoulder. It resembles more of the tattoo suggestion that Erin mentioned and I incorporated my original idea of the chip being a part of the shoulder but on a smaller scale than what I had in mind. I am not completely satisfied with this piece, I feel like it needs more work before I can say it is complete but I can't quite figure out what it needs just yet. For my piece of mind and satisfaction, it is a work in progress.

Best of the Week

This is a snapshot I took of my little brother at the boardwalk. I wanted to just get a portrait of him but he had to throw in his own little twist to it. I like how you can only see one of his eyes and he is directly confronting the viewer with a glare. I worked the image through camera raw to make it less blown out in the highlights and I adjusted the curves and levels in photoshop. I also burned the highlight areas in the wall behind him to keep the focus on his face rather than the background.

Best of the Week

I took this at Nakatos Japanese Restaurant. The chef guy was putting on a show for us and light an tower of onions on fire. I took the shot with my Nikon D80 on the auto setting with the flash on. I was surprised with the turn out of the image and how black the background was in relation to the orange flame. I really love this image, its all natural with no photoshop retouching at all which really makes me love it more.

Final Piece

Final Piece - I'm not very satisfied with all of the color but I did achieve the romanticized blue horse that was my original plan. I like the print better on screen rather than actually printed. I feel like the colors are projected better on the screen and printing makes the whole image flat.

Work In Progress

It is progressively getting better.

Best Image of the Week

This is an image I took while walking to my one night. It was a quick snapshot that I thought turned out beautifully. The way the light from the street lamps cast a repetitive shadow on the side walk really captured my eye. And the gradient of the night sky fading into the horizon is just plain awesome. Therefore, this is one of my best photos this week.