Childhood Memories pt2

Continuing with more memories, here I have photographed a toy car but with a still life approach. I've always loved cars and I had my share of toy cars but I always stared at them longer than the other kid in the sandbox. Studying the form and curves of the body, this is a tribute to the way I looked at cars and still do to this day.

Childhood Memories

Reaching into the past this week, my classmates and I came up with some images that represent our individual childhoods. This actually took some time for me to think of anything that I would consider apart of my childhood. Being from The Bahamas, there are a lot of things that I did that I cant replicate in the U.S. Whether it be resources, certain items or just the scenery and landscape. With that said I did manage to think of things that are more general with kids across the globe, that is climbing on things and playing with toy cars. Now, you might say to yourself that these things are a bit generic and even cliche and I would agree with you. This is why I've put my own twist on both ideas.   As a little one I was known to climb on things, more specifically my brothers and I would play "the floor is lava" game. If you're not familiar with this game it's where you jump and climb on things to avoid touching the floor. This was a childhood favorite of mine and I created this image to represent that feeling of fear because as kids we really thought that floor was lava!

The ground is lava!!
  

Links of Photographers that inspire me

GF Williams- http://www.gfwilliams.net/
Camden Thrasher-http://www.camden-thrasher.com/#intensity/1
Douglas Sanders -http://www.sondersphotography.com/blog/
Blair Buntinghttp://www.blairbunting.com/
Larry Chen http://www.speedhunters.com/?s=larry+chen
Martin Schoeller- http://martinschoeller.com/

Shadows & Reflections

Now the midterm is upon us and we have been shooting like crazy since the beginning of the semester. This week our assignment was reflections and shadows as you've probably already read. Our instructor urged us to take inspiration from film noir movies and I did just that, well kinda. I chose a personal favorite of mine "Schindler's List", I know it isn't a film noir movie but I've always loved the lighting style and contrast of that film and more recently "Sin City". In these photos you will see my first attempt at re-creating that very feeling. The scene was the Embarcadero of San Francisco which has all sorts of subjects to choose from but it also helped that I brought my buddies along. If you know San Francisco, you know the bay bridge and the amazing sight it is to behold at night also the beautiful reflections the water creates from the lights on the bridge. I used this exact premise to create my frist image, and to top it all of there was a little boat hilariously called "The Black Pearl" to make this scene even more great.

   As for the second set of images shadows were the main concern. We explored and found a strong light source from some overhead street lamps near the famous rocket statue on the Embarcadero. This is where I directed my friends in various poses for dramatic and visually interesting shadow placement. This turned out to be a lot fun and is something I would want to re-visit in my professional career.

Expect the Unexpected...

This week in Visualizing, the story was expected and unexpected. The ideas are brief and quite simple but it still has that striking quality I intend to provide in all my work. The thought of this came from thinking too hard about my current workload and I thought to myself what if my head just caught on fire? Truly this would be unexpected. My ever willing fellow photographer/model Elena expressed the same emotion and feeling of frustration that I myself felt. Both these images were taken in studio and went through a few hours of post. One strobe was used along with two foamcore reflectors and a softbox diffused the flash. The end result of the flames, exemplifies what college students go through when midterms and finals are near.
-Cheers, Philip

Conceptual Shoe and Chair

Sticking with the theme of conceptual thinking this week was no different. We were tasked to think of new and thought provoking ways to create images featuring shoes and chairs as our subjects. This first image is what would happen if the wood returned back to the cut down forest but in the form in which it was manipulated.

This second image is Nike inspired and is my interpretation of a magazine shoe advertisement. 

TwinPeaks

In this weeks edition of P.E, a good friend and I drove up to San Francisco's famous viewpoint "Twin Peaks". It was the end of an Indian Summer day in the city and the heat did a great job of burning away the fog that would normally cover this fabulous view. However, the heat did nothing to the mosquitos that were on full attack that night, but we soldiered on all in the name of photography. This particular shot came after a number of tries of different exposure settings and focal lengths. I chose this view because of the composition of the street lines that seemed to have their own unique dynamic. It was suggested that I try this again with the HDR technique and maybe some neutral density filters. I agree to a certain point, I'm not the worlds biggest HDR fan but I will re-visit this shot with that technique. As the crowds began to grow larger we decided to leave before it got too crazy, especially as it was after midnight. Overall I am pleased with the end result, the only post processing was adjusting some levels in the foreground and background.