Set 1:
Contact Sheet Set 1 Identity Unit George
Blue Photos:
The Blue Photos are chosen above others mainly because they symbolize my vision very well. Other small factors include: not a good color scheme; my face looks too stupid in the photo. In someway, they are the best at representing the results of substance addiction. I represent it using light mostly, but I also use context. (what I am doing or holding in the photo) Personally I think context is the best way to represent a topic, because it’s the most noticeable and straightforward type of symbolism. But in the photos I also like facial expressions, in my opinion that’s the second best indicator of topics and those are the main reason why I chose these photos.
Green Photos:
You can see in this selection that there are a lot of photos, almost as much as the blue section. This is because there are photos that are taken as motion, in these photos, there is progression in the movement of the person and guitar. These photos I virtually condense into one photo. Of course these individually are also nice photos, but for the sake of the unit, these should be together as one. I only removed two photos from the last selection. The first photo (the one with the light blue tone), I removed because it didn’t show it’s face. In all of the other photos there is an acceptable facial expression that represent my vision fairly. But that one just didn’t do any for me. And I did this photo thinking that the body language could solve the no-face issue, but upon further thought: it is really a portrait without it showing a face? The second photo (the smoking guitar picture) was removed because of the background. That photo was average looking by itself, and on top of that, the background is so dark and the face and guitar are sooo highlighted that it feels out of place, it feels unreal and I don’t like it.
Red Photos:
This “photo” is my favorite “photo”, it’s my way of trying things differently. This photo is my first time doing a sort of “motion” photo-taking, this took many tries to time it perfectly and it turned out to be pretty good. As you can see, in the photo I am doing the motion of smashing my guitar, and obviously if you saw the end then you know I didn’t smash my guitar actually. But smashing a guitar is an almost “traditional” practice of expression frustration onstage for rockstars, and I linked this with that even if it’s not actually smashed. In the photo, smashing is the character’s way of express his own frustration with wanting to get rid of the addiction but failing many times due to temptation and habit/smashing the guitar could be a result of being drunk. Anyways, I chose this photo solely because of the style of it, there is literally no other explanation, and I chose this over the other one is because of these photo’s colorful tone, the brightness of the room was also necessary to completely capture the motion and eliminate serious blurs.
This photo is the best representative of my vision, the dark mood, combined with blank facial expression, combined with motionless and “profound” posture, combined with my edits to make the light centered and focused on the person. I think it’s my best photo for this set actually, the character – unlike in the second eliminated photo – actually blends in well with the background. There’s not much more to say, it’s just a good photo.
I have a confession to make: I edited a LOT of my photos. This is one of my edits that I played around with, this was inspired by the movie schindler’s list, where there was a little girl wearing red cloths in a black-and-white movie. I loved the intentional highlight in that movie and I applied it to here. I think this photo is really cool. And the reason I focused on the lighter above everything else is because the lighter is the light source of the entire room, and I think it would be the best thing to highlight. But also, I think the light is also like the source of the evils, without the lighter, he wouldn’t be able to smoke. And I think this representation is very interesting, the character is also well placed in the photo and my edits made the photo much more smooth as well.
Favorites Critique
Least Favorite: my least favorite photo is the second photo I eliminated from the green selection. That photo is both hated by me personally, and just very bad factually. I hate it because it makes my face look stupid. But that’s not the point, the point is, the photo is not very well-edited, if you look carefully, you can see that the color of my left hand is very strange, and that’s because for some reason, the photo is posterized. Posterizing the photo was not even my intention begin with, it make the hand so bright and CG-like, it’s just like bad animation in an old star wars movie, and somehow, the other hand isn’t even effected by the posterization???? Also, the background on the very left, is so unmatched with the main subject, the main subject is red and the background is blueish??? It does not make any sense.
Most Favorite: My most favorite photo in terms of technicality is a hard choice between the first and second red photo. With the second photo coming out on top, I can’t argue with all the good qualities in the second photo just because the style of the first one is different. I already summed up every thing great about the second photo in it’s critique so there’s no more to say.
Set 2:
This is the artist that inspired my second set, as you can see, our styles will both be standard portrait shots, using expression and clothing to express everything that’s needed to be expressed.
Vision: The vision of the second set is revolved around my identity as an adamant rock fan, and guitar player. The substance abuse issue was covered in my first set, and now I will focus completely on my identity. In this set I will focus on the potential of rock and “guitar music”. I will focus on the different genres of rock, to dispel the myth that rock can only be hardcore or punky. So the vision would be “rock is freedom, it’s anything it wants to be.”
Blue Photos:
There wasn’t much choice in the closet for me, but I pretty much covered most of the rock genres (grunge, classical, punk, blues, street perform, and progressive) I also edited many photos for their respective genre effect. For example, I made blues black and white because it’s more predominantly before all of the other genres. Anyways, I chose these for blue because they have good edits and good lighting. Other factor include having a good posture, pose, or facial expression. Since my set 2 photos are limited entire to 2D portraiting, I could only use expression, posing, and clothing to distinct my photos. Elements of a good pose is: having a symbolic meaning; doesn’t interfere with lighting; spacious and proportionate.
Green:
Most of what chosen here are photos that were edited, the edited photos were made to highlight the character to the fullest, so obviously they would be predominantly chosen. But the other chosen ones are photos with poses that are very reflexive of their genre. I am well aware that some photos from one genre is better than any photos from any other genres, so I also made sure to not pick photos mainly from one genre. (except for blues ?)
Red Photos:
This photo is chosen because of the excellent editing and posing. The posing is good because it’s something that rock musicians actually do (when head banging to the beat of a song, they do this to keep the earphone from falling off their ear), and the nature of it is spacious. The editing is good because it place complete focus on the character and his guitar. The edits also made the character look more toned than he actually is, so I appreciate that very much.
I chose this photo because it’s edited very differently, usually with my other photos I like to darken the environment to make the character standout more. But in this photo, I instead made it look brighter and more contrasted. This is because the person is more close to the camera and fills more space in the frame, this makes more lighting acceptable. Also, the dark background effects are for dark and gloomy “rock vibes”. This photo’s genre however, is classical, so it’s doesn’t need the dark and gloomy effect, instead, lighter actually fit the genre well in this photo.
What I like about this photo is the extremely contrasted red colored guitar, the brightness add flavor to the dark attire. The pose is also very blues-music-like, as usually blues musicians are more polite then normal rock musicians, and blue musician have a high possibility of working in a bar or cafe also, making them more obsequious than normal too. The reflected light on the guitar could almost act as a replacement for catchlight effect in more high quality camera portraits. The attire is also appropriate for employment statuses.
Least Favorite: my least favorite red photo is the third one. Although the bright-crimson guitar is very shiny and beautiful, it distracts the viewers from the other parts of the photo. Based on my observations, due to the brightness of the guitar, I am unable to see the parts of the photo surrounding the guitar. Also, compared to the other photos, the background in this photo is very plentiful, meaning it’s kind of distracting. And as far as discrepancies go, that’s it.
Most Favorite: my most favorite photo is the first red photo. Unlike the last photo, this photo’s background is completely dark, due to my uncanny editing skills, the pose is amazing as I have already said on top. The thing about this photo is that, it might not have as noticeable a guitar color, because of the edits and all that. But at least it can be seen, and once it’s noticed, then it’s appreciated.