My portfolio taking shape
We all looked at the beginnings of our portfolios last night. It was interesting to see what ideas everybody has. A few people have a good solid idea, but others are struggling a bit. It’s pretty early yet so I’m sure ideas will start flowing soon. The week before in class, the general consensus of the class was that I should pursue my architectural abstract group of photos. So for this week we needed to bring in two new photos that we would like to add to our portfolio. I saw one photo that I have been wanting to take for my portfolio at the gym that we belong to. So the other day I took my camera over there and took a few photos. I also found another photo that I was happy with. So here are the two photos that I shared with the class last night. I’m also going add the one photo from my group of architectural abstracts that went along with the two photos that I showed the class last night. So now for next week I will be on the hunt for two more photographs like these 3.
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Subject Intent Assignment
Our assignment for this week is Subject Intent. We need to photograph one subject and use a different intent to make each image.
Assignment: 4 photographs of one subject.
Showing: 1. Depictive Subject Intent. Records the visual nature of something (person, object, place or event)
2. Expressive Subject Intent. A visual metaphor or description of mood, an emotion, etc.
3. Statement – Oriented Intent. The actual subject of an image is a statement, usually through depictive means.
4. Form – Based Subject Intent. Formalism involves elements such as shape, color, texture, line, contrast, etc. Thing abstraction!
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Beginning my portfolio
Like I mentioned earlier I need some help zeroing in on the type of portfolio that I want to do. I’ve posted some of the photos/ideas that I have floating around in my head. I still don’t know what form of abstract that I want to do yet , but it was helpful to get them all together in one place so I can see my thoughts on the page. I need to do some more shooting and getting more of my thoughts into photos.
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Beginning my portfolio
There is one more sample portfolio that I would like to show you. I like architectural abstracts, I have not photographed very many of them before, so I thought I would give it a try. We were in downtown Titusville the other day and I saw a few good architectural photos that I wanted to shoot. I have found that to get the shadows falling the way I want them to, I need to shoot between 11am and 2pm, anything that I have ever learned about photography says that you need to put the camera away during that time of day. For the most part that’s true, I don’t normally shoot during that time of day. This is one time where you really need to take the camera off of automatic and shoot manually. Your cameras meter is going to be fooled into over exposing your photos. I have been under exposing these as much as a full stop to get the look that I want.
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Beginning my portfolio
I really like to photograph old and rusty things. I went out the other day looking for some old and rusty things. I was thinking that maybe I could do a portfolio of old and rusty things.
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Beginning my portfolio
Another form of abstract that I like to shoot is botanical abstracts. I like when leaves and plants are back lit by the sun. I like the way the sun shines through the leaves. I like the patterns that the shadows make. I like to play around with dramatic lighting. So here are some of the botanical abstracts that I have been shooting.
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Beginning my portfolio
I also like to do photos of reflections. When ever I’m out taking my camera for a walk, I can never pass up a good reflection. There are several marinas in the area and I find lots of good photos when I go to the marinas. Reflection abstracts are some of the photos that I like to take at marinas.
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Beginning my portfolio
Staying with the car theme another portfolio that I was considering doing was an old rusty car rather than the nice shinny ones that I would normally do. I would love to get into a junk yard someplace and photograph the old rusty cars. This car wasn’t in a junk yard, it is a car that someone is driving. I call it the heap.
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Beginning my portfolio
I need to zero in on the type of portfolio that I want to do. I’m pretty sure that I want to do some form of abstract photography for my portfolio, but what type of abstracts do I want to use? This is where I’m going to need some help. Over the past few weeks I have taken a few photos that I want to show you. I have done a sampling of several types of abstracts that I would like to use for my portfolio. So if you could take a look at them and let me know if you like one type over another, or any thoughts you have would be helpful.
The first type of abstract that I want to show you is one that I have been doing since back in the days of film. Remember film? I sort of do. Anyway, I grew up in York Pa. There is an annual hot rod show that I would attend every year. I would burn up several rolls of film on headlights, mirrors, doors and any part of the cars that I would find interesting. So I thought that I would maybe make a portfolio of car abstracts.
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Photos on the web assignment part 2
Part Two
Photography Portfolio
Visit one photography portfolio link that has been added to our class Wiki and answer the following. Add this as an entry to your Blog:
- Web Site Address: http://www.ericryananderson.com/#/BOOK%20I/BOOK%20ONE/1/thumbs
- Type of photographic portfolio (Fine Art, Commercial, Portraiture, Sports, Wedding, Etc.): This is a Fine Art Portrait site.
- 5 characteristics of the portfolio you find appealing – Why?
1. Mostly I like the lighting Eric uses most of the time. He uses a very soft natural lighting. I think he does use a lot of natural light.
2. I like that Eric’s subjects look like they are just doing what they would do naturally. They don’t look posed. I’m sure that they are, but then instructed to act natural. He catches
the look and moment that he wants.
3. Eric uses several different effects on some of his images. Some of them look like they were taken in the 60’s or 70’s. Some of them are distressed transfers. Some of them are black
and white. He uses a variety of processes.
4. I like the thumbnail view of photos. This way you can pick and choose the photos that you want to look at, rather than looking through his entire collection. Although,
you will want to look through his entire collection.
5. The overall feel of Eric’s work is FUN! People having fun.
- 2 improvements the designer could make to his/her portfolio or website.
1. For a few of his portraits he uses a diptych format. Two photos of the same person. There are a few of them that work really well, but there are a few that just don’t work.
2. Once you do click on an image to get a large view you are seemingly stuck in that format and need to look at all of the photos in that group. There is a way to get out of it, but it’s hard
to find and took a while for me to figure it out.
- How do you envision your final photography portfolio? I’m not sure I can answer this question yet. I have too many Ideas flying around in my head right now. I have started working on a few of them so I want to see how they pan out and narrow them down.
- What ideas do you have for making your portfolio stand above the rest? I hope to try to find something that is visually appealing, something maybe not so ordinary, but yet not too way out there. I also want to try to use dramatic lighting to make the images stand out.
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Photos on the web assignment part 1
Photo Sharing Site Review
1. Name of Site: SmugMug
- Appearance of Site: The site is very colorful and professional looking. Lots of professional looking photos on the home page. They have lots of good info about the website right on the home page easy to find. It’s uncluttered and easy to navigate. Everything you want to know about their site is right there on the homepage.
- Uses tags, sets or groups: I’m not sure what you mean by tags, sets or groups. When you browse photos there are several ways to search. You may search by Current Popular photos, location, keywords, categories, or popular photo communities. Clicking on one of these will take you to a page where you may pick from popular photos or galleries. From there you can go to the photographers SmugMug page. Also you ma search for photographers using a search engine.
- Type of upload methods
- Web-yes
- Email-yes
- mobile phone-yes
- Products:
- Prints
- Cards
- Photo-books
- Slideshow
- Other: I don’t think that there is anything that you can’t make from you photos. They do it all.
Pros: Very organized and easy to use. You can customize your page to look very professional. It is a very safe site to use. They have many privacy and safety options. This site is used by lots of professionals. You don’t see personal photos birthday parties etc. If you want to see or show birthday parties use Flicker. Customers can easily purchase your photos right from your page. They do all of the work, printing, shipping, billing or pretty much anything that needs done. You can upload unlimited photos. You can use it like an external hard drive. Upload full resolution photos. You don’t need to worry about your photos getting lost, they back them up. With a business account you can set your own prices. Uses right click protection. You may use your own custom host-name. They have a free trial. No ads or spam. Customer service to help you.
Cons: Cost is $40 – $300 per year. Upload unlimited JPG’s for free but larger files such as RAW files have a small fee.
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Visual Art Journaling
Our second assignment was to create one photographic image, where you have combined words with one of your photographs.Sounds easy enough, just take a photo and add some words to it right! Then Marilyn, our instructor said that she wanted us to make this photo say something about us as a photographer. Well this had me stumped for a while. I wasn’t sure how to make a photo say something about me. Most of my photos say something about what I’m seeing. Now I need to say something about me. So how am I going to do that? I think I was over thinking it, I could not come up with anything for the longest time. Then one day I was walking through the house and out of the corner of my eye I saw something that made a light go off in my head. I wasn’t thinking about the photo I needed to create for class at that point in time. I was just going about my day. We have a small table that has a magazine rack on the side of it. Sitting on this table there is an old photo of my wife and I. The magazine rack had a travel magazine, my wife and I like to travel, and a photography magazine, I of course like photography. So as I was walking by this scene I saw the photo that I wanted to create for my visual art journaling assignment.
This is the photo that I saw as I was walking by. The words I wrote were how this image was making me feel as I was creating it.
So as your struggling hard to come up with an idea, don’t worry too much, you may just relax your mind enough to let it find one for you.
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Favorite photo, our first assignment
The first assignment in our portfolio class, was to collect and show six of our favorite photos, that we had taken in the past year. Sounds pretty easy right! Well it is, I guess it’s just stressful trying to find the right photos. It’s still early and we are still not sure how this class is going to go. You want to pick photos that hopefully will be as good as the ones that the rest of the class will be picking.
I wanted to show you the photos that I picked. Oh and I was only allowed to pick six, I am going to post a few additional photos.
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Starting my first blog
I’m taking a portfolio class at Brevard Community Collage. I will be blogging about my experiences in this class and my quest to complete my photography portfolio. I have been stressing about taking this class. I have seen some of the portfolios that other students have done. The are very good! I hope that I will be able to create a portfolio that will be as good as the portfolios students have done in the past.
roy thoman photography 