Contact Sheet:

“YELLOW” contact sheet:

My vision is to show and capture the hidden beauty in everyday life moments that could easily be missed or slipped away. Combined with Aaron Siskind’s unique style of black and white picture with focus on texture and shallow depth of field, I want to create images that are challenging the traditional views of visual perception meanwhile being also beautiful and unique in its own way. I chose these images because they are all under the category of my vision and are all considered abstract photography.

“GREEN” contact sheet:

The approach I was going with these set of pictures was making them mostly focused on texture and black and white. As well as the lighting and shallow depth of field in each images, I intended to imitate Siskind’s style of the use of Texture and Tone. As you can see, each images I took could be considered as an sight that normally you would just walk pass or see but just glance by. All of these images can be found easily,  but I intend to capture these moments that could be overlooked and try to explore the beauty within it. By placing the camera close to the surface, it magnifies the details of these moments: the thing that our eyes originally disregards which makes up the “boring images”, texture, suddenly stands out. For example if you look at photo 7 and 8,  when you see a balloon on the ground, because it is such a common thing to see, you would view it as another casual object that you might kick away like a football. But when it gets up close and in focus,  the subtle details of the objects and fundamentals of what makes up an interesting image appear, viewers will now take time to examine the photo more carefully and perhaps even have their own interpretations after seeing the object up close with another perspective.

“RED” contact sheet:

Following my vision of challenging the traditional views of visual perception meanwhile capturing the hidden beauty in everyday life moments that could easily be missed or slipped away, I focused more on texture and shallow depth of field to make what seems to be an everyday moment become something more. By closing in on the details of these surfaces, the thing that our eyes originally disregard as a common sight, suddenly stands out. Take Photo 2 as an example (my personal favorite): when I was first taking this photo, I thought the ballon reflecting the ceiling lights looked like Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dogs and was interesting so I tried to capture it. It was pretty challenging because I had to wait for cars to find the right angle the correct depths that would fill the whole image. But eventually, I found the “money shot” and got the image. As you can, the texture of the lights being reflected by the balloon really makes the surface stand out and looks very abstract and interesting. Especially the lines on the left parts of the balloon’s surface, which combined with the close-up of the surface and depth of field, created a sense of mystery and a dream-like ambiance as we see lights bouncing off the sides of the ballon and the dreamy “wrinkles” of its surface.

Although the lighting and the black and white aspects of the entire set was overall successful, I do have to admit that some of the photos would look even BETTER if the shading and darkness of some parts of the images was further increased. Next time, I would try to also change the lighting of the surrounding even more and change some of the settings of the camera as well.