Lighting Process

  This past week experimenting with low-light photography, lighting portraits, and painting with light have been extremely fun for me. Aside from the final pictures themselves, the process of taking these pictures has been very rewarding as well. With these images, I was able to work in two very different ways; I was either working collaboratively with others or alone in a dark room experimenting with the camera pointed towards myself. Both ways of working can be greatly effective, but the collaboration and working with others this week has been my favorite part.

   For instance, the landscape photographs were taken with James and another friend after class on Thursday. Working with James was very beneficial for me because I have very little experience shooting landscapes, let alone long-exposure landscapes when it is pitch black outside. Going on this mini adventure for this vantage point gave me a newfound appreciation for landscape photography as well. Although it might not be my thing, I understand why landscapes resonate with photographers. These photographs of Twin Sisters Rock are the product and culmination of an experience that will live forever through the image. When I look at these landscapes, I remember that night and the work it took to capture them. I found it very interesting how much light I could capture with a long exposure when it is pitch black at 10 pm, and I learned a lot from the shoot.

   Because I felt my last portraits were too similar for the assignment, I also went out to take some natural light portraits as well. To contrast the intense artificial lights and colors of the last portrait, I intentionally tried to push the natural greens, browns, and yellows of the environment (the version below is an edit that I decided not to use for my final). Although the photos are of the same person, the lighting, pose, and framing of the two images give a much different overall vibe.