The contact sheet:

 

I have taken this/these photos in the style of Vivian as the photographs all focus on the reflections of the subjects I wish to capture instead of the actual subject. The pictures also emphasize the reflections of people’s inner side, as every one of them uses a mirror’s reflection to reflect another entirely different view of a certain object/people/surroundings.

Yellow/Blue selections:

I’ve set a very low standard for my yellow selections. My yellow selections are basically every single image under the same condition, but I choose the best ones out of all these repeating photographs.

Green selections:

 

My green selections, also my “present” photograph selection, use 9 images, with 8 of the photos using a mirror to reflect something only visible in the mirror to represent the duality of humanity, while the center image represents people’s inner self, touching with their “outer” self. The photographs were chosen to best represent the duality of humanity.

Red selections:

 

These red photographs match my vision because they strongly contrast with the reflection and surroundings. This contrast presents the difference between people’s inner selves and their surroundings. When seen, people pretend to be another person and hide who they are. In these images, a skeleton behind a room, a plant that cannot be fully seen unless in the mirror, and an empty vessel in the crowed legos. Together, the strength of these photographs is that they reveal a common fact in society now – people hide their true selves, only presenting parts of themself. To capture these photographs, I’ve used the past skills that I’ve learned – and that was basically everything. If you look back at my first blog, I realize I really did come into this class blindly, now knowing anything, anything, about photography – the rules, the skills, and what it is. However, as I progressed, I began to consider more and more elements of photography when capturing photographs. I have used shapes and repetitions of the legos and the mirror; I have used texture and focus on the skeleton; and I have used lighting (street photography) and framing + working around the scene in every single one of these photographs. Something that works well about/these images is that their reflection and framing all matched my vision and intent, my idea of revealing the duality of humanity. However, I could improve in the next set by setting the mirror’s position better and working around the scene more to get more quality photographs. Furthermore, I could use better lighting, as I manually set no lights in this photograph – they all came from nature or electricity light sources.

 

 

 

Critique:

Although this is my favorite image, my eyes were still drawn to a distracting element – the tower at the back. The tower consistently distracts me from focusing on the actual subject and the strong contrast it provides. In fact, to decrease the distraction level, I’ve cut 1/4 of the photograph just to get rid of the majority of the tower. The reason why I love this photograph is because of the strong contrast between the background and the subject. The background is a color of soft, light white, and blue, while the ground in the mirror reflects a sharp, hard, deep green and brown. This contrast generates a very attractive hierarchy and represents my vision perfectly as the ground represents people’s inner self while the outside, their outer self, is an entirely different surrounding, “character.” This photograph enables the audience to feel the deep contrast between the ground and the sky, acknowledging them of this social phenomenon.

This photograph is awful. It has poor resolution, poor exposure, and poor focus. The subject was not in the middle, the background was too distracting from all the blackness and shapes it possesses, and the skull appeared inside the photograph, covering almost 1/2 of the actual subject. The blocking skull couldn’t even be cut out due to the mass area it covers. The photograph lacked balance, as one element covered another, making it very hard to focus, thus unable to create contrast and chaos. This photograph would be more appropriate in the “Wrong!” unit as it violates many rules and contains no story or theme close to my vision.