Kinsey Lee's DigiPhoto Storage

This picture is finally up. I was not there when you taught us how to edit action shots because I was at the AP Physics test. I forgot to ask you in time, so I just decided to use layers and masks.

I am from TV remotes

From Kleenex and Softsoap

I am from the stiff carpet

Dimpled and coarse

I ponder

I am from poison ivy 

The venus fly traps 

Venomous and ostensible

I am from potlucks and Thanksgiving football

from Brian and Jeremy

and Jiayi

I’m from listening to music and working in silence

From “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” and “only time will tell”

I’m from the Eastern Hemisphere, China really, and Hong Kong specifically 

From Kombucha and Aidel meatballs

From infrequent trips to Europe and even less frequent trips to Japan

From the terrible puns my cousins tell me to make me cringe

I am from a huge family, related by blood and not

Thematic Image 1: This year I participated in more extracurricular activities than ever before. Between badminton and JNHS, I was extremely busy throughout this semester. I feel that these school magazines and the bold, enthusiastic lettering reflect that idea of participation well. They represent my jump outside my comfort zone; I have never really been one to get involved in action. In fact, most of the time I prefer to sit on the outskirts of the latest events and watch everything from a bird’s eye view. This year I tried to challenge myself and expand past homework and obligation. I went on various field trips, I went to badminton competitions, and I expanded my circle of friends.

Thematic Image 2: I liked imprinting this new geometric structure on the typical square window. To me, it symbolizes branching out in new viewpoints. When I took this picture, I was walking around with other people with their cameras out. They too shot this picture, so, when I had a turn at taking the image, I challenged myself to figure out a new way to spin it. Throughout this year, I think I have tried to implement this mentality more than I have in the past. How can I make this different? How do I give this project, this paper, individuality? These thoughts always stream through the back of my head.

Thematic Image 3: When I think of “branching out,” I not only think of going past my boundaries and out of my comfort zone, I think of making new connections. Risking myself on precariously thin attachments to people and trying to strengthen that bond. This year especially, I think I have had to focus more and more on maintaining my relationships with other people, both new and old. Over the course of junior year, it has been both a mind-boggling hassle and an exciting experience trying to balance between the people I have known for years and the people I do not know very well but would like to. I think the transition between the typical, sturdy metal fork and the brittle plastic fork works perfectly into that mindset.

Thematic Image 4: As senior year approaches, and I have to branch out beyond Los Gatos High School, I realized just how lost I am. I visit colleges and try and figure out majors, and I discover that, really, I do not know what to expect. I do not have direction. I have a blank slate with a few inklings of ideas, nothing more. With that line of thought, I decided to capture the brick floor. I also wanted to capture the line across the monotonous bricks because it is a leading line. It is an indicator of general direction, but not much more. I always like taking close up photos because anything beyond what is right in front of the lens is blurry. That is how I feel most of the time.

For my final project, I would like to explore the Double Exposure technique we learned earlier this year. Our previous project on this style of photography was one of the first ones where I felt grounded. I got to implement my own conceptual ideas and fit them around the method instead of the the other way around, so I was able to take more spontaneous shots. On the other hand, I do not think that I got to explore the method to its full potential because I had not gotten a hang of the type of images I needed nor the best ways to edit the photos to make them look more natural.Thus, I want to pursue Double Exposure in further depth and really make it work in my favor this time around.

Still, the fact of the matter is, I do not have an idea where this project should lead, nor do I particularly want to know. I like to watch things fall into place naturally. Consequently, I decided I would like to leave this up to other people. I remembered doing the interviews during the Portrait Project in DigiPhoto One, and I think I would like to do something akin to that idea with one key change: no portrait needed. Many of the people I am closest to reflexively refuse to take portraits, and whenever a project comes around, I am hard-pressed to find someone willing to stand near my camera. Despite their chronic avoidance, I want to give them a representation of themselves. Maybe not representing their physical presence so much as their thoughts and ideas. I want find out what they do in their free time and why. I want to know what they wonder about, what they want to do in the future. I want to know if they are as aimless as I am. I want to learn these things and sum them up in a photo to give back to them. Since one person has more than one facet, I think that the Double Exposure would work well in this environment. The technique lends itself to mixing the darks and lights of things and people. Depending on how comfortable each person is, I might use silhouettes or a whole new shape I have not even thought of yet. I want to be able to think properly about each person after I talk to them, so I want to limit myself to five 8” x 10” matted shots. Then, I think it would be nice to wrap the matts with newspaper-like material covered with quotes from their interview. Most importantly, I want to this project to be about them.

Disclaimer: I apologize that the photos look more grainy in this set. On my computer, they look pretty clear, but Tumblr would not let me upload the photos at high resolution.

Choice #3: This is one of the photos from my first set of studio portraits. I like the way her hair falls in the photos, but, unfortunately, she did not really seem comfortable in front of the camera. I chose to do a waist-up shot instead of a bust shot originally because I thought her pose would display more of her personality. When she is nervous, she kind of flaps her wrists in discomfort, and I liked capturing that in the shot. However, I can see how that random movement may make the shot look too casual and unprofessional.

The first two shots at the top are my experimental outdoors portraiture. 

Choice #4: When I shot the picture of Matt, I tried to focus on getting the eyes clear and avoiding large sunspots on his face. However, I was not paying attention to his background. As a result, the different components of the shot did not come together very well. I even ended up with an unfortunate line coming out of the top of his head.

Choice #3: I really wish I could have done something better with the second shot at the top because I like how natural the image seems. Each one of them seems to be genuinely having fun. However, I miscalculated and the background is a mess once again. The scenery behind the three girls is extremely over-exposed and blown out. Since the girls in the front are relatively covered in shadows, the contrast between the fore- and background is even greater. Once more, I ended up with the back of someone’s head in the background of my photo. I tried to recover the photo by using Gaussian Blur in Photoshop, but I couldn’t make the lighting less glaring and the head less visible without unnaturally blurring out everything behind the girls.

After taking several other photos and falling into several other pitfalls, I thought I had finally gotten the hang of shooting satisfactory outdoor portraits when I shot this photo of Brian. His eyes are not blurry, the background does not completely clash with his skin tone or what he is wearing, and he does not looked too awkward...Then came the issue of editing; this is where the challenge actually began.

Choice #2: I do not typically feel comfortable editing people’s faces because I don’t trust myself to judge the way someone should look. So, when I tried to edit the picture, I was not sure where to start. I used the Unsharpen Mask and whitened the teeth and the eyes as advised. I then proceeded to use the Bandage Tool in Photoshop to eliminate all blemishes. However, I had absolutely no idea how to approach the skin tone. More specifically, I was not sure what to consider the ideal skin tone. I played around with the Red section in Selective Coloring so that he didn’t look sunburned, but the result was a kind of yellowish color. Since I had just removed the redder tones from the picture, I didn’t think adding them back in would be the solution. Thus, I settled on darkening the yellow to a really light brown. The result was the slightly tan skin in the first picture. Because I had manipulated the color of his skin so much, his mouth almost blended in with the rest of his face. I ended up choosing a random lip-like shade of pink to fix the problem, but, again, I had no idea whether or not the color looked natural in combination with the rest of the picture. Lastly, since I had made the skin tone darker, I thought that I should dim everything else as well; otherwise the darker skin would contrast too much with the background. The entire time I worked on the photo, I fretted over what would make the portrait look “better.”

Color - Originally, this photo was more green and white, but I decided to spice it up a bit by making it red a green. I figured the that the complementing colors would make the soft image more intense.

Emphasis - I dulled the green background of this shot in order to focus the attention on the white fluffs on the weed. I also cropped the images so that the fluffs were in key positions in the shot.

Form - I hoped that the blurred edge of the leaf of the sprout in the foreground would emphasize the depth of the image and give it more of a three-dimensional look. 

Lines - The grass-like leaves provide natural lines directed toward the eye to the upper left-hand side of the image where the drop of water in focus is located. As a result, the leading lines bring more attention to the main subject of the photograph.

Shape - I wanted to emphasize the jagged shape of the leaf by taking away the color. I hoped that the leaf’s gray outline against the surrounding green leaves and background would make it stand out.

I tried to the vary photographs between stark contrast and gradients of value. I also tried to experiment with the complexity of the subjects in the images by mixing single objects with busy settings.