Photo Trip: London!

Itinerary and feelings. I liked going on the trip when we were leaving, it was a lot of fun, although I was initially dreading the notion of a dozen giggling girls. But I soon made friends, and enjoyed not only the trip's educational aspect, but its social aspect as well, making a lot of fun friends and laughing sufficiently. DAY 1: Arrived in London, had dinner, went to the hotel. Food is good, so is sleep. The hotel was really nice. Sparkly floors! We also went shopping. I bought a book for my Dad. Everything else was too expensive. Sigh. Hung out with the guys, it was nice. I also got along well with my roommates. Only problem was the shower had no curtain. I guess life can never be perfect. DAY 2: We went to The National Portrait Gallery (like last year's Vogue exhibition) to se the Gerhard Richter exhibition. I really liked his style, I found it fascinating. I love art! Then we tried to recreate one of his paintings in charcoal, and I was pretty proud of how mine turned out. I guess my 1 art class paid off! Then we had to paint our own Version of Richter's work using a Newspaper image. I think I would have done a lot better on it, except that the teacher onyl let us trace for a few minutes and then wanted us to do solid color blotches instead of a paint-by-numbers technique I would have used. Unfortunately, my painting didn't turn out as well as my charcoal sketch. At all. It was still a cool experience though. I have so much more respect for painters now! Then we went to the Saatchi Gallery to see a Middle Eastern Art Exhibit. It was fascinating, but I was kind of frustrated we didn't get much time there. I would ahve liked if our guide have given us a more thorough tour, what she was saying was really interesting! I found the amount of sexual revolution pieces very interesting- I had never thought of the Middle East in such a way. But I guess that's what the exhibit was about. My favorite was probably the little city the Israeli (I think) artist made. It was so cute, but at the same time so deep. I really enjoyed my time at the museum. The free time afterwards was fun. I finally got to Starbucks! Yay! We also did a but of shopping, but I couldn't really buy anything substantial because everything was SO expensive! I was getting really frustrated... DAY 3: We went to a lighting workshop in a famous market. I think it was famous for its smell. I had to hold my breath when we went to the fish market, because it makes me nautious. Smells aside, the workshop was really helpful and interesting. We learned about all kinds of studio lighting and how to create different effects, etc. I wished I had had a paper and pen to write everything down! I though it was fascinating. I'm not sure if it was my hunger or my interest in food photography, but I kept flipping between photographing food and skinny models who coulds use it. When he was talking about the skills a photographer needs to have, I couldn't help but think of myself in that place. I think I would like it. When doing the workshop we learned a lot of cool effects, but I think we would have done better with some organization. We could have done some really cool stuff if we had had not only more freedom but more organization. I enjoyed modeling too, but it was hard to know what they wanted. DAY 4: This was the relaxation day- we had a chance to do some last-minute shopping and picture taking for our photoshop project when we got back. We went to the Camden market again which I loved. It was just as much fun as last year, although obviously I need to polish up my bartering skills! Hmm. I bought some more stuff that day and was pretty happy with the tuff I bought. We also had fun in the city when we went back, because I stoped worrying about looking for something to buy and just looked at stuff and enjoyed the experience. Then we went back to the hotel, got out luggage, and went on the plane to go home. I was exhausted, but it was well worth it!

Portrait/Flash- Diary Entry

This project went fairly well for me. I finished my project with time to spare, and am fairly happy with my final print. However, there were some drawbacks in the process.

First of all, my camera broke during the shooting stage of the project, so I not only had to take my camera in to be fixed, but also borrow someone else's camera to reshoot. In developing the film, I had difficulty rolling the film onto the reels, since I used the newer double tanks. However, I managed to get it on eventually. when processing the negatives, Yukun and I shared a tank, and he insisted I flip the tank over so that the chemicals would cover both reels equally, but the chemicals instead flowed into the empty space at the top of the tank, so I think hurt the processing in the end. my negatives also ended up with the top and bottom sides darker than the middle, which I think was caused by the developing process. It was frustrating doing my prints because I finished a print and then couldn't use it because it was cropped at a weird place. Then looking at my contact sheet we realized that they were all cut off in weird places, which was frustrating. I'm satisfied with my final print.

Narrative: Image Bank

"Donna," as she refers to herself on her internet blog, is a photographer with her own business (wild creative photography). She teaches at a Primary school part-time and has 2 daughters. She is from Southern Australia. Learn more here!

I was drawn to this photo because it's so light and happy. The child seems so free, and I think that emotion really gets to the viewer. I like this sifferent take on narrative photography also- instead of a real "story," it's more of a series of events that conveys a feeling more than anything.

Kristina Drobny is a 29 year old photographer currently living in Burlington, Vermont, USA. She has an MFA in photography. She takes narrative photographs, trying to tell a story with a single shot. She enjoys the control she gets from sealing her models' fate.

I was drawn to this picture because it's weird. It's funny. But it also tells a very curious story st the same time, perhaps making it funny in the first place. What is he covered with? SHaving cream? Is he shaving his whole body? Is it soap? Potato salad? I don't know, and the picture definitely makes me want to find out.

Narrative: Theory Notes (My Story)

Narrative (storyboard) photography is a series of photos that tells a story. Here is my story. Sally leaned over to Lisa. She had found her newest victim. "Oh, my God! WHAT is she wearing? A belt on top of a shirt? What a weirdo! She thinks she's like some fashionable diva or whatever? Uhmm, no. Sorry honey." Lisa looked where she had Sally pointed. Frida was walking by. Of everyone Lisa hated, she talked about Frida the most. "Ugh!! Look at her! Looking at us like she's all that? Really? Whatever. Keep walking honey. Just keep walking." Sally was taking careful note of the art of bullying. And Lisa was the master.

But Frida had had enough. She was tired of being bullied every day of every month just because Lisa was bored. And today was the day it was going to end. She was scared, and she knew it showed. But she had to be strong or this would never end. So she said it. Lisa was just jealous. But that was when Sally piped up. "Jealous?!" she said. "Jealous of what, toothpick?" She had been learning, and had finally mastered the art of the unnecessary diss. Unfortunately, this was the wrong day to have surpassed the master.

Frida lunged at Sally with fury. She just couldn't take it anymore. And she wouldn't. She pulled Sally out of the chair and attacked her like an animal, pulling her hair, scratching her face, and screaming at the top of her lungs. Lisa found the whole thing entertaining, because there was 1 thing Sally didn't know yet: always have someone by you to take the blame for what you've done.

Narrative: Printing Composition: 3 + 4

For the next print, I tried the same setting I had used for the last print.

Aperture: 2.8

Time: 40

Filter: 4This looked good, so I tried a full print at these settings. Aperture: 2.8 Time: 40 Filter: 4

I then tried the last print's test strips at the same settings, since they looked about the same on the contact sheet. Aperture: 2.8 Time: 40 Filter: 4

This also looked fine, so I did a full print straight away, making this my fastest photography project ever!

Aperture: 2.8 Time: 40 Filter: 4

Narrative: Printing Composition: 1 + 2

This is my contact sheet. The negatives turned out fairly well, excpet for the black bars on the sides of a lot of the images and amoebas on some of them. Aperture: 4 Time: 42 Filter: 0 Then I tried my first print at the same settings as the contact sheet but doubled the time, since it was a full print. Aperture: 4 Time: 84 Filter: 0 That was too dark and gray, so I tried a test strip at aperture 8 and several times. Aperture: 8 Time: 84+10... Filter: 0 This looked good, so I did a full print at 94 seconds. Aperture: 8 Time: 94 Filter: 0

For the next print, I tried the first test strip using the previous print's settings: Aperture: 8 Time: 94 Filter: 0

This was too dark, so I tried a test strip at a lower time. Aperture: 8 Time: 80 + 2... Filter: 0 This was too gray, so I opened my aperture and added a high filter, since the story "happens" in the background, which is darker. Aperture: 2.8 Time: 40 Filter: 4 This looked better, so I tried a full print at those settings. Aperture: 2.8 Time: 40 Filter: 4

Narrative: Diary Entry

This project was a lot of fun. It felt really good to be done before the deadline, because that has never happened to me before. I enjoyed working with the smaller sizes, because it was cuter and I like hoe the smaller sizes look. It was really frustrating that my negatives were developed badly, however, because there was a big black line on the side of almost all of my prints. Also, Becca's forehead in the first print and the ceiling in the last print had weird amoebas on them. I really liked using the flash, though, because my negatives turned out better and I felt powerful walking around with sucha huge flash on my camera. Although it did take a couple tries to get the flash working- I had to re-shoot and still ended up with a bit of problems on my negatives.