Old Man with Disabilities But is Not Disabled

On the weekend, I decided to take a photograph in South Luogu Lane. I walked for the entire day, but I didn’t find any good-looking photographs because there were too many people. It was way too cold, and both of my hands were freezing; I could not persist anymore, so I decided to go home. Before I went to the subway station, I found this old blind man playing with his erhu. He seems very immersed but people go past by didn’t really care that he is there. So, I found this was going to be a good moment to show how people were passing by, but the old man was still immersed in his music. I found a corner where there weren’t too many people walking. In my camera, I placed the old men on the first line of the 3×3 box. And then, I am waiting for people to pass by the old men so I can show how people neglect the music. To show the people moving, inspired by the Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama, I found out that motion is a good way to represent people walking fast. I decided to keep the people blurry to show how they are moving and to keep the old man clear to show he is concentrating on his music. I decided to use time-lapse mode to show the contrast between the people who were moving and the old men who were still. I quickly opened M mode and set the time-lapse time to 1/5. Even though this underbridge place is dark enough, the time-lapse of 1/5 still made my frame overexposed, I minimized the iso and the aperture, but it was still overexposed. Most of the photos weren’t exactly clear because I didn’t keep my hand exceptionally still because it was too cold. I took a lot of photos of this old man because it is very difficult to get exactly one person on the left and one person on the right. Also, sometimes my camera will give its focus on the walking person, but I want it to focus on the old men playing music. On this old man, I took about 200 photos, and there are only two photos that I think were successful. The first successful photo is the first one on top. I placed the old men on the left, which creates a unique angle inspired by the Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama. There were exactly two people, one going right, and one going left; I was very lucky in this photo. In Lightroom, I adjust the position so it is not tilted. Then, I made the walking people darker, and I used the mask in Lightroom to make the old men in the middle lighter and more appealing. I also added a storytelling filter because it made this photograph seem like it is complicated. Inspired by Sophie Calle, this photo shows not everything in this world is as perfect as we thought; there are always people who are struggling, but even they are working hard to find a way out. These two photographs also perfectly reflect what I wanted.

Jerry’s Photography Class

These are the photos inspired by Sophie Calle and her techniques of stalking a stranger and showing her/his day in a collection of photographs. These are the photos of stalking Jerry in his photography class. I arranged all of the photos in order and clearly showed what Jerry did in his photography class. As we can see, before the class, he watched his phone with both of his arms on his knees. In the second photograph, at the beginning of the class, Jerry had both of his arms on his knees and was watching his phone. After that, he went to the storage room to get his camera. And then he walked to the cafeteria while watching his phone. Then he was chasing me in the cafeteria because he saw me taking photos of him. And then he went to the couch and watched his phone with both of his arms on his knees. Eventually, he went to the studio and did something productive. All of this collection of photography shows Jerry’s personal journal throughout his photography class. This collection reflects Jerry’s unique personality and how different people spend their time. I also used the technique of not looking at the viewfinder inspired by Daido Moriyama. As you can see, without opening the viewfinder, these photographs can highly reflect the very literal visual of Jerry because I can’t use any techniques or framing without opening the viewfinder. What I should improve on is getting more different and interesting perspectives because, in this collection, the perspective is too common and not too appealing. If I want more people to see Jerry’s day and identity, I need to get it more interesting.

Mood Board

Artist Research

Daido Moryiama

Daido Mriyama was born in 1938 in Ikeda, Osaka, Moriyama. He was known for his distinctive capture of street photography and urban life, which profoundly impacted photography in the late 1960s. He often walks on the street and shoots photos without looking through the viewfinder. This method allows him to capture quick moments in a short period of time. Without opening the viewfinder, he can also get photographed, which highly reflects the very literal visual or what he sees since you can not do any techniques or framing without opening the viewfinder. Mriyama’s photography often reflects his interest in urban environments. He takes photos of the dynamic and chaotic city life. He also takes photos of people moving on the street quickly which creates a motion effect photo. This allows him to capture some fleeting moments while engaging with the surroundings. Mriyama symbolizes himself as a stray dog wandering randomly in the street. This unplanned and instinctual method of photography is Mriyama’s personal style.

This is a photo that shows how Mriyama took the photos without opening the viewfinder. This photo reflects the very literal visual of a crazy person dancing, which contains no techniques or framing. This photo also shows Mriyama’s interest in the chaotic city life; showing the authentic life people have. When you look carefully at this photo, you will notice that the crazy man’s face is blurry a bit; this is a great example of how Mriyama took some fleeting moments, which eventually became motion-style photos.

Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle is a famous French artist known for her incredible innovative work that blends with photos and art. Calle was born on October 9, 1953, people recognized her because of her unique exploration of human identity. She often takes various approaches to take photos. For example, she often stalks strangers and follows them secretly for days. In her collection of identity, she likes to depict human’s vulnerable moments. Calle is also addicted to the idea that nothing is perfect; she often captures a picture of buildings that are undone or shoots people that are unpolished. This style of photos can have a deep interpretation of how the real world is like.

This photo is a great example of how Calle shows human identity. In this photo, she secretly breaks into someone’s house and takes a photo of it. This shows her extreme desire and exploration of a human’s true identity. These chaotic clothes on the chair proved that not all humans nicely put their clothes in order. The owner of this house may be a very ordered and clean man, but indeed, the man’s house proved his internal personality. Using this photo, Calle reveals what the real world is to contradict this false good.

Mind Map

Statement of Intent

The WORKING title of my project is Follow.

I want my audience to feel that nothing in the world is perfect; I want them to interpret different people’s identities.

I will get inspiration and develop my ideas by looking for photographs that show how different people spend their day in the huge city.

School Leaf Photograph

In these photographs, I used m mode and settled the focus to the closest so I could get a closer view of these leaves or things on the ground. I took a lot of photos of a whole leaf; there are all many different kinds of them, and for each leaf, I took it from several different angles. After I finished, I checked all the photos on my computer but didn’t find any interesting photographs of the leaves. Finally, I decided to crop them; otherwise, these photos are too common. During the cropping, I only left a small portion of each leaf that contained the shape of its edge because I thought these different shapes of the leaf’s edges could be appealing.

Closed-up Leaf Photograph

These photos were taken in the photography fab lab (idk if that is correct). After we collected the leaves, we cleaned them with fresh water dried them between water, and folded them into the Bible. After 48 hours, these leaves are fully dry; this pattern can be clearly seen. So we put the leaf in a machine in the photography fab lab where there is light; this strong light made the pattern on the leaves even more obverse. I combined leaves with another leaves into different styles, and Jarrry used his 150000rmb camera to take some great quality photos. I cropped all of the photos because they are boring; I cropped some into symmetrical shapes, and some show the shape of their edges. I also turned the brightness a little bit down because, in that case, you can see the pattern better.

Photos of People Making Art

These are collections of photographs of people making art. I first took a really close-up of their art; I stood a little bit further and maximized the zoom-in so that I would get a flatter frame. In the close-up, you can clearly see the detail of each sand piece. In this close-up photo, I also used the sand container to frame the artwork, but the container isn’t obvious because the aperture is too big and the container is too blurry. Secondly, I zoom in on the tool the person is using with a vertical frame so the viewer can see both the tool and the artwork. This photo shows the crack of their hand, which also shows that we practiced this skill with lots of effort. Lastly, I put every photo in the filter, which makes a better sense of culture and skill.

Square of Earth

I went to some exciting buildings at afternoon Beijing at about 6pm. I knew that there wouldn’t be any shadows during the day because of the haze in Beijing. During the haze, everything is blurry, and the sunlight can not directly get onto the object, so I chose to take these photos in the late afternoon. This time, the theme was harder than my previous ‘motion’ theme because the weather was not good, and the artist I got inspired by required a higher and more difficult aesthetic and skill. In these two photographs, I was highly inspired by Ellsworth Kelly. He once said, “Photography, for me, is a way of seeing things from another angle.” He said his photographs are simply records of his vision, how he sees things. His photographs often contain symmetry, geometric composition, and light and shadow. According to his idea of how he views the world, I took these photos without any special techniques but just simply recorded some scenes that I felt were beautiful.

The title of my work is “Square of the Earth”. A square is a very basic and common geometric shape that we often see. When observing a square, we can obviously see the two sides of one parallel line. Since we commonly see the two sides of a square, when switching the concept of a square into the world, the two sides of the square refer to nature and buildings because these two are the most common components we see on Earth. Since the 20th-century world often relies on artificial articles, the square symbolizes the balance of nature of humans and nature. These photos were just simply my vision or what I see, but specifically this photo contains the hope that humans could get more focus on the literal things around them.

In these photos, I didn’t use any special tech but the framing and the 3 *3 rubric cube. In pic one, I used the framing of the artificial buildings around. The framing of these buildings creates a leading line toward the subject, which is the blue house in the middle. My use of framing also creates a contrast between the subject and the surroundings in color because the surroundings are dark, and the subject is brighter than the surroundings. This framing made both of the subjects more appealing. In taking these photographs, I opened the m mode since it was at night. I settled the iso into 5000 and shuttle speed 1/50 because I didn’t want there to be any noise dots; I wanted the photography to be really clear since my topic is all about taking the literal things. I don’t have a tripod, so I didn’t get the shuttle speed into 1/10 because the picture is going blurry out since I am using my human hand to stabilize the camera, and it can’t be absolutely motionless.

After I took these photos, I decided to make a filter on the photos because these photos aren’t very special; they are just common photographs reflecting my vision. The Apple filter is really good, but I wanted to try something more interesting, so I decided to download Lightroom and try it with that. That night, I bought a Mac Lightroom downloader. I did the whole downloading process, and eventually, the app didn’t work. When I felt I should give up, I noticed that I could download the Lightroom directly from the App Store when using my iPad. So I did that and I paid 60rmb for VIP.

In the iPad version of Lightroom, I did the photo underneath. I first modified the brightness to 40% higher; I wanted to enhance the brightness while keeping a sense of peace. But now, I have this photo on the ISB blog and found out that the photo is still a little bit too dark, so I think I should make it brighter. The second thing I did was to further highlight the subject; otherwise, the photo wouldn’t have a subject because I took the photo at night and all of the elements were in the same intensity of light. When you look at this photo carefully, you will notice that I highlighted the stone bridge and the road in front of it. I consider these two elements to be the subject of this photograph, and this is also the reason why I highlighted them. Last, I chose a movie-like filter so that the frame creates a higher sense of storytelling.

This photograph has a good frame but is not of good quality. The person was totally by accident, and I didn’t set my camera out in the correct mode, so the photograph was blurry. However, the theme is perfect, as well as how the light shoots onto the person and these framing techniques. When you zoom out his photography, this photo is ideal, but don’t zoom in.

I took my ‘Shadow’ experimental photography in the Forbidden City. I think my experimental photos didn’t meet my goal and weren’t very good. Most of my photos were focused on the sky. Next time, if I want more photos of the theme ‘Shadow,’ I should alter my perspective more toward the ground. The sunlight was tilted, and the shadow was strong when we had just arrived at the Forbidden City. However, we had to do the security check, and we spent 1 hour on that. After one hour of security check, the sunlight isn’t strong. Overall, during the trip to the Forbidden City, the shadows weren’t obvious and abundant. It is hard to take shadow photos during that time. But I got some new experience with when the shadow appears currently, I notice the shadow currently appears frequently around 9am. When I am doing the final groups of photos, I should arrive at 9 am, but in the afternoon time, I still need to find out. During this trip, I practiced the techniques of framing. I used auto mode all the time because it can quickly accommodate different lighting. I tried utilizing trees or buildings as a framing object. This time, I also tried the technique of Silhouettes, for example, the stone sculpture of the bird, the back of the person looking towards the temple, and the back of a living crowd. I tried a lot of interesting techniques I had never done before. Next time, I should try to take photos directly in the shadows and find the exact timing for this. 

Red and Yellow Section Experimental Photos

This is an example of Silhouettes, I saw the sculpture of a reader, so I put my camera on the back of the reader and took this photo. This photo is like the reader is looking at the spectacular palace and is very cool. During this weekend, since the aqi aren’t good, maybe I can take this kind of shadow photo. This still counts as a shadow theme because, in the fame, the object is fully dark. This is a fantastic example of both Silhouettes and framing. I used the trees on the right side and the trees on the left to frame the bird in the middle. The building of the Forbidden City also gives a perfect contrast to the Sihouettes of the bird which create shadows. However, one of the bad parts about this photograph is that the bird is too small, and the reader won’t directly find the subject. Because my camera can’t zoom in very big, next time I should crop this photo so that the bird can become bigger. I like this style of framing a subject while containing shadow elements; I should keep working on this technique.

These photos are inspired by

Experimental Photos Part Two (Green Section)

Ellsworth Kelly

Elllsworth Kelly was an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker. His work always emphasizes the use of line, color, and form. Kelly often employed bright colors in contrast to dark shades. Kelly was born in Newburgh, New York. His family lived near the Oradell Reservoir, where his grandmother introduced him to ornithology when he was eight years old. The early introduction of ornithology leads Kelly to develop his passion for color and form. Kelly was often alone and had a slight stutter that persisted into his teenage years. in school, his parent did not support Kelly’s art training. However, his school teacher, Dorothy Lange Opsut, encouraged him to go further. As his parents would pay only for technical training, Kelly first studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Kelly went to the Military New Year’s Dary in 1943. His exposure to military camouflage during the time he served became part of his basic art training. “Photography, for me, is a way of seeing things from another angle,” said Kelly before. He said his photographs are simply records of his vision, how he sees things. His photographs often contain symmetry, geometric composition, and light and shadow.  Kelly uses the camera to simply record nature, Photographs reveal something more complex: he handles the camera not as an intermediary eye. Kelly likes to use black and white colors so that the reader draws more attention to the form of his picture than the content. In my photo, I will try to use black and white and focus on photographing form instead of content.

In this photo, Ellsworth Kelly is inspired by the composition of nature that is encountered in this world. In this photo, he claimed the idea that everything he saw was worthy of taking it. When taking photos, the frame should be exactly as it was. With nothing added and nothing to compose, the form of the object is the best way to describe photography. His photographs were never part of the process of making a painting or sculpture; they were just simply a record of his vision. For example, in this photo, he didn’t purposely include any additional component, he just simply put the form of a piece of shadow there because that is what he saw.

Ernst Haas

Haas was born in Vienna in 1921. His parents were government officials and always encouraged him to pursue his creative talent. Haas saw the world in color, and refused to compromise his vision despite the industry snobbery towards color photography at the time. Haas bought his first camera at the age of 15, and from that time, he became an avid documentarian. Haas was a truly masterful practitioner who believed in the importance of “painting with a camera.” Haas believes without a descriptive caption it will speak for itself. Less descriptive, more creative, less informative, more suggestive, less prose, more poetry. Haas’s artworks often show abstract composition. The abstraction lets the reader emphasize more on the information instead of the content. In my photo, I should also include some abstract composition, and the photo should be more creative instead of descriptive.

In this photo, Haas showed his talent for experimentation with color use and abstract compositions. His look more like elaborately constructed paintings than photographs. For example, how he put the the cloud exactly onto the men’s body, the burry of the women’s moving body and the fancy street on the right combined into a perfect abstraction. Therefore, his photo often contains the idea of  painting with your camera instead of just framing with your camera. From his idea, I should pay more attention to stuff we don’t often see, and frequently alternate my position or perspective in framing objects and combine them so I can also paint a picture with my camera.

Mind Map

My Vision

I want my audience to feel that I take photos of the real world, not deliberately take photos that provide a sense of storytelling; it should be photos of some small angles that people don’t often see or observe. Personally, I think purposely taking photos that tell a story does not illustrate the meaning of photography. So this time I decide to take the theme of shadow. I think taking photos of shadows can really let people look into the part of the world, to let them obtain parts that they had never seen before. In the current society, people work at a fast rate and don’t often calm down and carefully observe the world around them. So taking this kind of photo could help them or even teach them to maybe slow down their life and observe the world; I think this is the true meaning of photography. Later on, if I have enough experience with these photos, I will try to include abstractions.

These are many techniques that I can experience in taking photos that have a theme of shadow and focus on the form. Personally, one of the most important techniques is to experiment with perspective with different light directions. The light causes a shadow to form; different angles of light could have different shapes of shadow forms. When you are trying to include shadow in your photo, you should really move around to modify the shape of the shadow into the best form you want. Different shapes of shadow could largely affect the mood of your photo.

The second important technique or method in taking shadow photography is to look for a time of the day that creates the best shadow. Since shadows require a strong and certain angle of sunlight, not every time in a day has shadows. For example, in the middle of the day, the sun is up high in the sky, and the sunlight hits every part of the ground, and it’s really difficult to find any shadows. The noon might not be a good time for you to take shadow photography. In my experiment, I personally noticed that currently, during the time of 8am or 6pm, when the sun is close to the horizon, the sunlight is horizontally shining onto the object. During that time, most shadows are created. If you don’t find a certain time to take shadow photography, you might be really inefficient.

The choice of the filter is also important. I would like to use black and white colors so that the reader draws more attention to the form of the picture than the content. In this unit all I want to focus on is form.

Since I have my focus on form, Patterns, and Shapes are one of the styles I will take. patterns and shapes truly reflect the form of the thing. When taking patterns, I will need to move around to find the best position to take these. Also I will have to observe everything around me carefully since I would to take stuff that others don’t often see.

Mood Board:

I will get inspiration and develop my ideas by looking for photographs that show the literal form and abstraction, which provide the feeling of storytelling.

Statement of intent

The title of my project is the form of our world.

I want my audience to feel I’m not taking just the content of a photo but the form of the world they don’t often see. I will try to take photos of shadows reflected from of a literal object. As I take these photos, I will try to be creative and develop of abstraction skill.

I will get inspiration and develop my ideas by looking for photographs that show the literal form and abstraction, which provide the feeling of storytelling but in another way.

Yellow Section:

Green Section:

Red Section（My best one):

The working title of this project is called “Falsehood and Reality”. I want my audience to feel uniqueness, integration, and authenticity. I get inspiration and develop my ideas by looking for photographs with vivid subjects and clear backgrounds to show motion. The Day I took this photo, my legs hurt, so I spent 2 RMB and went onto the traditional Hong Kong Tram with my camera. I decided to take pictures on the Tram because the Tram stops frequently to wait for passengers. I went upstairs and found a good-view seat. I took several photos on the TrTramand, and they all had a unique perspective from up to down. For this photo, I was on the TrTramand, and it drove to the bottom of a bridge; it was very dark, but many people were setting up a stall there because it was away from the sunlight. The Subway station is on the right of the bright side, so all people on the left of the bridge have to cross this small under-bridge market to get there. So the scene of my view is that people at the stall were kelp stationary, but people who were walking to the subway station were all moving fast cause, you know, people in HK often walk faster than in other cities.

In this view, I decided to use time-lapse mode to show the contrast between the people who were moving and people who were still, which is interesting. The Tram was not going to stop long, so I quickly opened M mode and set the time-lapse time to 1/5. Even though this underbridge place is dark enough, the time-lapse of 1/5 still made my frame overexposed, I minimized the iso and the aperture, but it was still overexposed. Tram Tram was about to move, so I didn’t care much and took the photo. I took the first photo, but I found out that I didn’t keep my hand exceptionally still, which made the frame kind of blurry because it is in time-lapse mode(the blurry one is in the yellow section). I quickly took the second photo with my hand as still as possible, and it worked well. In this second photo I took, people who were traveling to the subway station from a brook walked perfectly in a line. The people at the stall were clearly shown in the photo and also in the surroundings. As I returned to Beijing and checked for all the photos I took in Hong Kong, I noticed that most of my photos were overexposed because of my time-lapse mode. Some of the images were too dark because when I was transferring from outside to indoors, the intensity of the light suddenly became very low. At home, I did a lot of work on modifying the brightness of the photos.

The frame was too dark for this photo, so I modified the brightness and exposure to 100%, making the image slightly bright overall. I cropped out a tiny part of the photo because I thought that otherwise, there would be too many components in the image, which would make it chaos. As I cropped this photo, I left the traffic light on the 3/4 of the photo and tried to put the stream of human line in the middle. I cropped out some area on top, but I found out that I was cropping out the head of the person walking on top, which is not good, so I cropped out more downward until it reached his chest. I turned the shallow into 18% to make all the gray darker. I chose a contrast cold color filter, which made my overall picture More story-like.

The theme of this motion and nonmotion photo is that “Slow your pace down and experience the world reflect your true self.” The pace of modern society is fast; everyone is working hard, and it will not slow down to wait for you. In the photo, the blurry line of people moving shows the fast pace of this modern society; everyone walks fast, and throughout their whole day, they race against time like robots. Consequently, people who rushed their time were all burly; their blurry bodies and non-recognized faces symbolize they have already lost themselves in the fast-paced modern society, just like a headless gray, sitting mechanical work every day. Even though the outer physical body was still theirs, their mental reality vanished. However, some other people know how to live their true selves in a chaotic society; these people have distinct bodies and clear faces that symbolize their true personalities and have self-awareness and emotions. For example, the people in the bottom left corner were in a stall of the pulpit; one characteristic of prayer is that they keep their bodies still and think about their lives and the actual and literal reflection of themself during the prayers. For another example, in the top left corner, the white shirt guy was strolling and playing with his phone. This sense of relaxation can return to the most authentic self, which is why he is not blurry. In conclusion, this photo means that people who slow their pace and intensity down are the people who get to meet their actual selves.

Last Friday, I took some photos for my burly motion-style experiment. I went to places where people moved a lot. First, I was trying to bring these experiments in the hallways, but I found out that people don’t move much in the hallway, so I decided to go to the elementary area. In the elementary area, the kids move a lot. At the beginning of my experiment, I settled the time-lapse time into 26/1, but after taking some photos with this setup, I found out that 26/1 doesn’t blur the subject enough, making a standard blurry photo, which is not good. So, later on, I settled the tie-lapse time into a longer time. I found out the best time was 12/1, giving the best motion blur. I tried this setup outside in the field and noticed that the intensity of blurriness is also relevant to the speed at which the subject moves. For example, I noticed that the kids in the field get more blurry than people in the street. This ackolege interested me because I can use the intensity of an object’s blurriness to refer to its own speed: the more blurry the subject is, the faster it moves. In the future, I should try to use more of the contrast to the light or relate this current style to reflection.