Catalyst – Photography Assignment

The following are my 5 photos for submission for Media Objects photography assignment, and the 500-word reflection. I will also be sending the 5 photos to you (my tutors) in a separate email, in case WordPress compresses the photos.

Water

Earth

Sun

Love

Heat

I approached the given theme ‘catalyst’ by reflecting my interpretation of it. For me, catalyst is first and foremost changes in chemistry. This led to me to think about growth and decay – the life cycle of a plant. However, as the project called for still images, and I had a limit of five, I could not do time-lapse – not did I have the time to do so.

I thought about the aspects that affect plants – namely the four elements. I altered ‘air’ to ‘sun’, because sunlight is key in a plant’s growth. For the 5^th photo, I borrowed Captain Planet logic, and went with ‘heart’, or rather ‘love’. That is, the loving enjoyment of the fruits of labor – eating. Digestion is also a chemical catalyst.

Water and Earth are simple too approach but hard to execute. At different ends of the spectrum, water and earth respectively are ever moving, and completely stationary.

To capture the fluidity of water, I had to use high shutter speeds to capture the droplets to prevent blur. My main focus as a new photographer was composition and lighting, and I am very proud of this photo as the best of my series, because of the lighting of the water droplets.

I chose to capture a sprout in the soil in order to create a dynamic narrative to a still subject. This was done with a shallow depth of field in order to focus on the sprout. The same idea was behind ‘love’, by focusing on the details of the food items. Weber influenced the composition of these two photos when he said that “the most important part of any picture is a clearly recognized center of (picture) interest” (38), which is why I placed both focal items about one-third away from the edge of frame (86).

Sunlight is difficult for me to capture on camera, due to the fickle nature of light. I opted to show light through shadows instead. I am not happy with the clutter that I left in the photo, and should have removed some items to create a less noisy photo, but composition wise, I chose Weber’s suggestion to use lines as strong compositional guides (68), and used the shadows heavily to lead the eye to the focal point.

Perhaps the worst photo of the lot is ‘fire’, or ‘heat’. The lighting conditions were poor, I did not choose good camera settings for the photo, and the planning wasn’t done, meaning the photo looks amateur. I am quite pleased with how the steam wraps around the handle of the spatula.

Overall, I am happy with 3/5 photos, which I deem to be satisfactory as this was my first time taking photos while putting creative and technical considerations into practise. On my friends’ behest, I shot entirely in a 50mm prime lens in order to force myself to think of composition and positioning more, and I very much appreciate the difference in mindset this makes. On my next project including photography, I will be focusing more on lighting as well as staging a good photo.

References

Weber, Ernst A. Vision, composition and photography. Berlin; New York: de Gruyter, 1980. Pg 36-39; 44-45; 58-59; 68-69; 86-87)

A Footnote In Someone Else’s Happiness

[Does Your Husband Know – Fall Out Boy]

Happy Chinese New Year, and happy Valentines for 2010!

This is YEEEEEEEEEEAR…of the TIIIIGER! (Sing that to Eye Of The Tiger).

I didn’t write about Thursday, so this will be fast, since it’s quite late.

On Thursday I went to Monash Uni to play badminton with Jenny, Lois and He-. It was a very hot day, and so I sweated a LOT. But it was a good feeling to finally do something active again – even though I knew at the time, and surely enough it did happen, my body would pay for it afterwards.

After badminton (in which He- soundly beat me) we went to Maccas (yes the irony isn’t lost on me) for lunch. Just managed to catch the 12 – 2 lunch specials, so got a six-dollar Quarter Pounder meal.

Said bye to Lois and He- after lunch, and went with Jenny to Cold Rock. It started raining by then (just started. Little did we know how bad it would get) so we went into the Glen and hid out in the food court. I left with Mom came to pick me up, and when we were about 2 minutes away from the front door it really broke loose. The 10 second dash from car to door actually soaked me.

And my area had it easy. South Melbourne and Flinders, as reported on the news, were at times knee deep in water.

Jenny told me afterwards that after I left the power went out at the Glen and she was left stranded there in the dark.

I laughed.

Friday was uneventful; took Mom to the doctors for her routine checkup, and bought pizza home because Dad wasn’t going to be home for dinner and obviously she doesn’t trust my cooking.

Today I woke up after having slept 10 hours without realizing it again – seriously, I thought I’d broken the habit! – and went out to finally buy the coleslaw I’ve been craving the entire day prior. I ate coleslaw while watching the Vancouver opening ceremony, but went downstairs to watch Conan movies halfway through.

Got my computer back – as you can see – and now I’m running on Windows 7. The interface is still something I should get used to.

That’s a quick catch up for now. Originally was going to go to St Kilda fest and/or movies with Jenny tomorrow/today (technically today, by now) but she has to stay home to take care of her brother. So postponage!

Alex.

Fail-sheep

Today I went to Jen’s place just to hang out, get some stuff sorted for Sorrento (WHICH BY THE WAY IS IN 4 DAYS!!!) etc. Anyway, we went to Victoria Gardens and into K-Mart to look for cheap water guns, because I said we should have a water fight at the beach.

“But, aren’t we under water restrictions?” Jen asked.

I paused.

“Jen, we’ll be next to the ocean.”

“Oh.”

Baa~ fail-sheep.

Alex.

Squish & Ko cont’d

Sorry about the sudden cut off last night. I was getting rather tired, and beside my parents were telling me to go to sleep.

So, I do believe that I left off at the point where I left the school at the end of Period 5.

Emily needed to get home on time for a certain formal she had to attend, and since she forgot her umbrella she went with me – I’d brought another jacket and an umbrella, feeling ever so smart. It was unfortunate for her that, at the stop lights near Domain Interchange, the ground seemed to love collecting large pools of water, and through which Emily waded in her flats. She was soaked to her ankles and complaining every 3 seconds, which I would’ve found amusing but I was rather worried about my schoolbag getting wet.

We got to Flinders, and realized our train hasn’t left yet. Thundered down the escalator, and I had my finger 3 cms from the button when the light around it blinked off, and the train left the platform. Being the Connex veterans that we are, Emily and I with perhaps 3 utterances of complaints powered back up the escalator to take the Cragieburn reverse loop. Made the Glen Waverley with plenty of time to spare, except there was an old lady in a wheelchair who tried to run Emily over and swore at her when she didn’t manage.

Emily’s dad gave me a ride home, which saved me perhaps half an hour of trudging home in the wet. Dad had taken the day off and he was home – which I had no idea, so it was a surprise to see someone home – and I put my bag down, so glad that school can be out of my mind for at least 2 days.

I had a dinner plan with BRuCE at 6:30, so I went online, tried to beat my previous Tetris time, and at around 5:50 went to dress and do my hair. Yes, I did my hair. Bee said it looked good so I suppose it’s all worth it. I arrived at Coco Lounge early, and took our booth – we’d wanted that booth because we’d originally had 8 people invited. In the end 3 showed up. Eunice joined me, and we had a look at the menu, then Bianca joined us. Both of them looked smashing.

Carmaine, as I had mentioned yesterday, was sick, so she’d said she’d drop in later. At around 7:50 Carmaine came in – just as I was about to say something about her – and we had dessert; Tiramisu.

I think the point of interest was that Eunice and I had ordered Bitters, and at some point, the conversation came to this (paraphrasing may have occured):

Eunice: [imitating Kath and Kim] “It’s noice…it’s un-yooh-shle…Oy loike – IS THERE ALCOHOL IN THIS THING?”

We subsequently had a long laugh at what would happen if Eunice  was to finish the entire Bitters, and what would happen for her 18th. We had a small chat about Staff Politics and Relos, and Bianca had several mini orgasms over her prawns. And over the male waiter. Which promptly led me to mention Matt, and also for me to voice that Bianca had, by technicality, lost the bet from last July, and she owes us all a drink.

So, at 7:50 Carmaine joined us for dessert, and we had a few cheap laughs and whatnot. It felt, on the surface, that BRuCE was back to its original power again. But don’t we know otherwise, Carmaine? But, hey, it’s 11:50 in the morning and I’d had a long breakfast (mustard and salami cold, don’t do it), I don’t want to delve into that.

After taking ages to pay, we went to Strike near Village to play pool. But, and this was much to Carmaine’s distain, we needed IDs to play pool, because it is in the bar section. So we didn’t play pool, and promptly went home.

Now, Squish & Ko.

On Thursday, I’m sure I’ve mentioned about the mini cartoons that I’d done that went along the lines of “My Friends Don’t Give A Shit About Me”. My memory fails me, so I’ll repeat it in case I am wrong.

On Thursday, I had an idea to do small comics (similar to Non Sequitur) that went along the lines of…what I’d say before. They’re just small ditties that have happened to me, or that I’ve noticed. On Thursday night I put down 2, and yesterday while waiting for dinner I put down 2. Scanned them up this morning. Have a look:

I am aware that it’s not straight, and I am very aware that it’s rather small so you’d have to click on it, and it’s simply screaming at me obvious that it’s a bit of a rip-off of Pon and Zi, of which I am a big fan.

It will get better, and hopefully less emo.

Well, I’ve uploaded NCIS and am just waiting to watch it. Have a good holidays, and Happy Easter (I mean, I’m still coming back, I’m just saying this now).

Alex.