Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange is known for her American documentary photography. Before the 1920's  she focused on photographing unemployed and homeless people. She traveled in the 1920's and took portraits of Native Americans. By the 1930's she focused on documenting the Great Depression and its effects on the public.  The portraits she takes captures the raw emotion of her subjects. 

Photo #5

During the still life photography project I took this picture. I used a single studio light to illuminate the objects on a plain tan background. This is one of my favorites because of the contrast colors between the roses, the lemon and the lime. While taking this picture I learned how to use studio lights to create shadows and create depth to still life objects. Working with still objects was more difficult than working with humans because you could not depend on the model to make the picture more interesting, you had to it achieve that by using placement and lighting.

Photo #4

This picture was created in the self digital portraits section of the class. I personally like this one because it involved a lot of use of various tools on Photoshop including the eraser too, move tool, lasso tool and others. This assignment helped me become more comfortable with using the tools on Photoshop and editing photos. The background of this photo is my chalkboard at home and I simply duplicated it multiple times. Then I put both of the photos of myself on the background separately and used the eraser tool to blend the hard lines. The self digital portraits was one of my favorite projects in photo one because it put all the tools we learned through the year to use.

Photo #3

I took this picture during the line composition project. The purpose of this project was to help us learn composition elements and learn how to make a line the subject of a photo. This is a photo of the pattern on an ottoman. By focusing just on the pattern and nothing else to distract the viewers eye, it makes the lines the center focus. The texture on the ottoman is also visible and it creates diagonal lines. Also the contrast between the white and black makes the lines even more prominent.

Photo #2

This was taken during the wide open and up close project. During this project, not being able to change the aperture was difficult and created many obstacles. I gained an understanding of the aperture and what it does, because in some places outside it was to bright for the light meter to control the light without the aperture. These challenges tested my knowledge and skills with the camera.  Although in this picture the texture of the school's brick wall was captured very well.

Photo #1

I took this image during the formal composition project. This photo of Natalie is one of my favorites because of the shadows and the emotion in her eyes. I like the shadows because it gives her face dimension. Formal composition requires more of a set up than casual photos, including back drops and lights. In this project I learned how to use studio lights and different techniques to create quality photos.Other than technical skills, I also learned to have a casual conversations with the subject to capture genuine emotions.