Tag: Photography

October 27, 2015 / Talia Amorosano / 1 Comment

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In public settings, dim, artificially-lit places are usually associated with illicit activity, secrecy, and the frightening unknown. Shadows become real-life homes for imagined fears; dark spaces where terrors become validated just by remaining undiscoverable. However, through photographing within dimly-lit enclosed domestic spaces, I’ve noticed that while these similar lighting conditions retain the ability to obscure and warp visual elements, they often take on unexpectedly positive visual representations, evocative of solitude, introspection, and comfort.

In this photo series, through a muted color scheme, emphasis on negative space, and attention to where elements fall within linear structures, I hope to convey the therapeutic effect of shadowy areas inside naturally-lit indoor spaces. To show that when faced willingly from within a zone of security, the dark is more transcendent than it is terrifying.

October 3, 2015 / Noah S. Thompson / 2 Comments

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Every year Dickinsonians make a journey around the globe, whether it be for a semester or year, to continue working on their liberal arts education and cultivating a better global perspective. Lead by David Strand, Professor of Political Science and East Asian Studies, a group of juniors including myself managed to navigate the thousands-year-old city of London. Departing each day from our hotel in Bloomsbury we set out on daily adventures to places like St. Paul’s Cathedral and poet John Keats’ house in Hampstead. For someone studying photography, it is difficult to resist taking photos and coming across as an obvious tourist with their lens clicking at every possible opportunity. Fortunately, my self-imposed restraint created an opportunity. Rather than taking photographs of everything I saw, I had to look with earnest, selecting only a few objects or areas.

Walking around London there is something extraordinary on almost every corner, such as an incredibly fat pigeon or a tavern from the 16^th century, but when you are trying to document the city you have to think about what images work with each other. Not much of Roman London (or “Londinium” as it was known then) remains save for the wall by the Tower of London, so I tried to find a balance between the cliché and candid originals. However, it is also perfectly fine to take photographs of the overshot landmarks, but it can also be interesting to portray them from a different perspective.

Instead of just clicking away, I suggest taking a moment to look around and find something unexpected, something no one is paying attention to. The Tube provided wonderful opportunities for candid portraits. The British tend to keep to themselves on the underground, but that silence and stillness helps isolate potential subjects, and while you might receive some weird looks for having your camera out, the results are worth the final product. Always be prepared for the unexpected, for you never know how the most mundane of moments can turn out to be extraordinary. I’ve left London behind for the eastern coast, but there is still more to see, and even more to be documented.

April 13, 2015 / Talia Amorosano / 0 Comments

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There’s something fascinating about decay. Maybe it’s the way man-made things look as they revert back to their natural states, maybe it’s the idea of the slow but inevitable aging process which is often augmented by neglect, maybe it’s just the thought that everything meets the same end but gets there in different ways. Regardless, there is something aesthetically beautiful about things that are not typically considered aesthetically beautiful. Like when a person is conventionally unattractive, but just has ‘something’ about him, there is a raw character about these objects that would not be visible under a fresh coat of paint.

I chose to use a macro lens while taking these pictures, because (besides the fact that I had just gotten the new lens and was really excited to use it) I wanted to capture these subjects the way someone would capture a conventionally beautiful thing, like a dewdrop on a piece of grass, or a flower petal. I wanted to highlight their tiniest intricacies: a piece of chipped paint, a crack in a piece of wood, a rusty nail.

Throughout the process I noticed that decay caused some subjects to take on the properties of their surroundings, and made others stand out. However, all the subjects that I photographed seemed aesthetically far from how they were originally intended to look. And while all these photographs depict nonliving things, I hope that I was able to capture the nuanced individual lives that time and neglect had given them.

March 18, 2015 / Matt Atwood / 2 Comments

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Everyone’s “everyday” consists of a different makeup, a different routine. Places, on the other hand, remain constant. I explore these everyday places in order to ground viewers in an area with which they are familiar, to give them a sense of reality. My images, however, try to capture the surreal in these places of reality. I want to show the parts that are ignored, the areas that seem to be so commonplace that one wouldn’t think anything odd could possibly exist there. When I take photos, I look to deconstruct an everyday area to show its quirks, oddities, and most importantly, the aspects that make it surreal.

Digital photography is my medium. For this project, I limited myself to a single parking garage and explored it as well as the surrounding area. Every photo is taken of, or from, this garage at night. I used a tripod to keep the images clear and crisp to capture the location’s inherent surrealism, letting darker areas become illuminated and bright ones become blown out or flared up.

I want to disorient the observer by giving these photos the constructed quality of a collage. Parts of these photos should not feel like they go together. In creating this aesthetic effect, light plays a major role. Most of the light is artificial with the only natural light coming from the moon.

My biggest influence for this photo series was David Lynch. His films and artwork focuses on aesthetics, texture, and the surreal. While I do not concern myself with texture, I am very interested in the manner in which Lynch produces a sense of the odd in the most mundane locations. Inspired by Lynch, my series attempts to force the viewer to look at the everyday in a new way, with a particular emphasis on color and composition.