Montage...

My friend Matt helped me out with this montage assignment I had. After a few trails he was able to perfect it and thus the end result.

Matt is a photographer too. We share alot of the same photography influences and ideas as well as being different in alot of ways too. Its always fun to share ideas for shoots and different photographers with him. Matt can be checked out on www.mattgp.com

Over exposure...

I love over exposing to my own advantage. I mainly use it with my black and white photography. Editing elements such as the brightness, contrast and highlights is something I like to tamper with. I like to give the highlights within the photo a glow and darken the shadows. It really defines the photos black and white qualities within the image. With my subject matter I feel it makes it look gritty along with the added grain.

Reflection...

1. What have you done?
2. Why have you done it?
3. How did you get there?

These are the questions we are ponder as we close in on our photography unit.
I have continued on with a folio I have been working on for the past few years. I chose to portray images of that explore the isolation, decay, destruction and abandonment that can be seen in various locations and objects. I wanted my images to resonate a sort of chaos and show the human side of destruction and intervention. I focused on working with wreckage's, mass messes, rust and textures. My photos appear to have a grain, granule particles that appear once edited. Digital photography does not exhibit a film grain so I edited my photos to have that appearance. I decided to do this for two reasons. The first is I love film photography and the grains that you can get from it. I wanted to resonate that look as it adds an older dimension to my photos. Secondly I wanted my images to have the appearance that they are on the verge of being a image of a painting. Through the grain and use of colours some images can be seen borderline artwork.
I have enjoyed this unit. I have enjoyed being able to pick a subject matter that I wanted to explore, especially because I have such great interest in it. I enjoyed that this pushed me to make sure I went out and explored. I have always explored, ventured for my photography but having course work and other life importance's finding time came be an issue. This unit gave me the time.
This unit has also opened me up to styles of photography that I want to explore and styles that I would like to stay away from.

Matt Weber

www.mattweberphotos.wordpress.com

Matt Weber is one of my favourite street photographers. Weber explores the depth and diversity within the streets of New York City. His photos are of different natures some on portraiture, signage, 9/11 , fights and politics just to name a few. Majority of his work is captured in black and white with Weber using colour where necessary.
I have been thinking that I want to venture out into street photography and create a body of work depicting the lives of strangers. I have worked on the same folio for about 5 years now and am looking to continue with it to some degree, but would like to focus on new a subject.
The candid, yet composed world of the city and people around us seems like the avenue for me. Monochrome photography has always been a passion of ,mine and find it will be the perfect element in giving my new body of work the sophistication and edge it needs.

Feeling Rusty...

Rust. I love rust. It is an element that ties alot of my folio together. It puts forward the ideas I want to present within my folio such as abandonment, destruction. As I like to edit my photos rust is a great thing to work on when using burning, saturation and changing the colour depth settings. Rust has this amazing burning quality that makes alot of my stylised photos the "pop" it needs.
The first picture displayed was a random snap. A friend on me were having a photo happy day. Heading towards another abandoned location we drove past this wall. As I saw the burning orange rust from the window I knew we had to stop to capture this simple yet effective side wall which no one would ever view. Its those little in between snaps that get me excited!