Surrealist aesthetic

I really enjoyed creating these masterpieces! Well, perhaps they're not masterpieces, but putting them together really made me appreciate all the work that goes into an artist's painting. With so many possibilities to choose from it was challenging. I liked creating a plan and tailoring and tweeking the individual components to fit the image in my mind. My two favorite works are the following:

I like this one whic I entitled Educate because to me it represents the continuous drive to learn and aquire knowledge. With knowledge anything is possible.

I entitled this one Finality and while I found some of my other ones more aesthetically pleasing, I liked what I was able to create in this one. It represented to me how all things come to an end (through the clock and the faiding images) but that there is so much to be gained within each experience. This can be seen by the images of the birds that I was able to create in the negative space between the fading vertical rusty cloudshapes.

Digital portrait

I used my son as the subject of my portrait, and as game as he was in the begining he really didn't like staying still for so long! He is a very expressive child so when I asked him to be calm and expressionless he was a bit confused. He was also confused at my use of a reflector...but he was very interested in how it worked! But I think that he finally got it and I was able to get some great pictures for the photo album!

My two favorites are of him with the brick background of the fireplace. I really liked how the light from the window bounces off his face. I chose to make the photos black and white because I think it helps to bring out the open and honest expression and feel that I was going for. I feel that the pictures below definately captured that in his expressions.

Macro Project

It was so hard to pick from my macro selection. I shot some beautiful and delacate flowers. My favorites are below.

When my son cupped his hands around the delecate flowers I just fell in love with it. He did it so tenderly that it really created an image and a moment instead of just a picture. I thought the flowers were lovely in their simplicity and vivacity of color. The hot pink contrasted with the white and green is just striking. I loved playing with the focal black and white on this one, as well as several other macro pictures. I really think it helps to highlight the color of the flowers.

This was of a rosebud in my father's garden. I just enjoyed the classical simplicity of this picture. The red rose fading out into a black and white background touched me as romantic and I love how you can really see all the delecate folds of the petals.

Shadow and light

When I visited the Met in June I was walking on the upper level over the dining area when I was suddenly blinded by the warmest and most brilliant ray of light coming in through the window. I love this picture because it really showcases exactly how bright and tangeable the rays actually were.

This was taken at the New England Aquarium in Boston in June as well. I really love how the figures frame the window of the tank. It was a quiet moment between my son and his father as they were talking about the sea creatures. The large fish in the corner really fills the left side and makes the picture interesting.

The Power of Editing

Michelle, I found this lovely portrait on your fotothing space and found that with a little editing, I could reveal so much more than just a straight shot. I pumped up the blacks and added more contrast to the face.

Here is the "before" on the bottom and "after" on the top.

Portrait

I have the worst luck ever when I try to complete the assignments. I finnally get my daughter dressed early enough to take her portrait before she goes to camp, and there is no sun shining in because it is cloudy. I will certainly try again. Sorry about her hair! I said I got her dressed for the picture, I did her hair onthe way to camp. Again, the class has been a blast and I am glad I had the chance to meet all of you inthe class. I believe if you put your mind to it you can create something, and we all have a little creativity in us somewhere!!!!!

Second Portrait

This is the second portrait. I did some work with Picasa to change things around slightly. I think I'm going to master that utility yet...

Surrealism

This assignment was tough for me. I don't real understand what drives an artist to create surrealism, so it was difficult for me to create pictures that others would look at. So here they are.

Thanks for all your kind comments on Fotothing and this blog, good luck to you all.

Matt

Surrealism

These were fun but I admit I had to get my mind into it as it is VERY different than what we have been doing up to this point. It's interesting what we can come up and how different the results are considering we are all using the same tools.

Portrait

Here are two shots from the digital portrait assignment. (More on fotothing as always!) These were a great deal of fun to take and tricky too. I still have much to learn but this assignment definitely helped me gain some perspective on capturing a good portrait.

I had so much fun in this class. I learned so much about myself in addition to my new camera and digital photography. This was my first online only course and I think that I handled it good for my first time. I enjoyed viewing, commenting, and learning from everyones pictures. They were all very creative and well done. I would like to thank Jerry Nevins for putting up with me emailing all of my questions and for answering them. I hope we all comtinue to use our cameras as artist. It was a blast!!!!

The Surrealist Aesthetic

Remaining images will be posted on Tuesday

One for the Road

Hi everyone, I just want to wish everyone luck. I learned a lot from this course and have seen tremendous improvement with my picture taking and my cropping and editing. it is a real good start to what i wanted to take away from this class. I am one course away from my Bachelor degree. Yes. I hope to find another interesting on line class that is fun since I met all my requirements. It was great viewing your photos and thanks for all the comments. Julie

Surrealistic Pillow

The assignment turned out to be a great deal of fun! The Wadsworth Atheneum site had a pretty cool group of images to play with and manipulate. I tried to make this picture suggest an emotion...we'll see if that works as well as I'd have liked.
Dali Salvador:
Diary Of A Genius is a great read. Looks like we are down to the wire on this class & I hope you all have a great (remainder of the) summer.

So much to do and no clue where the manuel is.

I brought a new camera durring this class session,

and I finally figured out where and how to use the

macro button. Once I found that, I found other

great features on my camera. Like there is some

intensified zoom that can zoom in item far away

like a boat in the water while you aare on shore.

It was funny because once I was ready to use

macro I had to put effort in finding worthy

flowers.

Hi everyone,





I finally had the chance to take a nice walk


on long wharf. I was hoping for low tide but


what I got was all right. It was a beautiful


morning to have a reason to go out and walk


on the beach. All the pictures of water I tried


to take were a lot of fun. I was trying to time


the waves coing in so there would be some


kind of ripple effect. I had fun getting my feet


wet for the sake of photography. I hope you


all like my pics!!!!

Week Seven (7) The Surrealist Aesthetic: Composited & Constructed realities.

Hello Everyone,

WOW, week seven has arrived!!

I want to thank all of you for sharing your photos with me; I had a BLAST learning all this stuff. I wish I could say my other classes were as fun. This class provided me with a jolt of creativity which I plan to continue to implement in my life.

The Surrealist Assignment's that have been submitted so far are fantastic - I will post my results within the next day or two.

Peace, and remember it is all about the light... :)

Susan

Portraits

Hi everyone, I am working on portraits. This is harder than I thought because of focus and natural light. Sometimes you control the image and sometimes you dont. So I am going to wrap this class up with this project and continue to upload portraits. Here are some that I took and edited to BW. See my fotothing for more and more to come. Julie

Surrealism - Clarity

Finally, it's me one more time "Bridget Franklin." This is my last piece on Surrealism called Clarity. Again, don't ask me why I named it Clarity. It just felt good. With all of the stuff going on in the world today, I thought I needed a little Clarity.

All during the four years of school my cup was running over, my plate was full and my stomach could take another spoon full. So there you have. MY FINAL CLASS AND MY FINAL PIECE CALL "CLARITY"

I am no longer BLUE about all of the WORK it took to get here. There is a light at the end if this BLUE TUNNEL because it took som BLUE BALLS to get here.

Peace!!

Surrealism - Whirlwind

Hello everyone, it's me "Bridget Franklin." Well I guess I'll start by saying this class has been very interesting and definitely enlighting. I will never look through the lens of a camera the same way.

According to the syllabus, I believe this is the last blogging assignment and by far the most intriguing one yet. Surrealism is definitely about making nothing out of something or you could say the other way around which to me is what I call ART. Whenever you can take objects of any sort and put them in together based on an person imagination is definitely what I call ART.

I especially enjoyed this project because it made me put thought into my creation. I hope you enjoy the selections I chosen to share with the class. This is one of my favorite pieces I designed on the Surrealism website and I call it Surrealism - Whirlwind. Don't ask me why, I just felt the urge to name it that.

Sorry about posting two separate blogs, I still haven't quite figured out how to get two pictures on the same blog. That has only happened once during the 8 weeks we've been blogging as a class. Thanks to Mr. Nevins for all the help you've given me and for teaching us all of the neat tricks on using a digital camera.

Peace!

Macro!

I enjoyed the macro assignment especially. In the first photograph this pepper looks huge, but in reality it is only a baby pepper---still growing and barely larger than the size of the leaf next to it. I liked the lighting in the second photograph. The garden turned out to be a good location for this assignment.

Shadows and Light

Just another day walking around with my

camera waiting ti find the right image to

capture. I loved how the light was shining

through the tree limbs onto the gress. I

like taking pictures of tall buildings. This

one has the sun light behind them making

the shadow appear. My shadow taking a

picture of the light shining of the water

fountain.

It all started with me looking around for shadows. Then I saw somw flowers on the ground. I tried putting my camera on the ground to see how the picture would come out. The first few were coming out blurry, so I tilted the camera up. I liked it so here it is. I call it an ant's view of Down Town New Haven.

I always wanted to get a camera good enough to take a clean picture of moving water. This is of a multiple streaming fountain, where I zoomed in on one jet.

My Two Nieces

When I first read about this assignment in our syllabus, I knew the subject of it would be these two girls. It was the first time I actually thought about the light on a persons face. I started with just taking single portraits of each girl, but after I uploaded them to my computer, I found the pictures of the two of them came out fairly good. I was surprised how I could manipulate the light to hit their faces just by posing them. This was a fun assignment and I know I'll be practicing the techniques I learned here in the future.

Shadows & Light

These shots were taken a few weeks apart.

The fireworks are from July 3. There were tons of people with bonfires on the beach who were celebrating and blowing things up. This shot felt as if it were part of a documentary. Somehow this came out other-worldly.

The shadowy buildings are seen from the NEST artist space in Bridgeport and were taken during a bit of rain and during a musical show that was taking place. I don't know why I like this one. It suggests a picture more so than is overtly a picture.