roland coniglio-week 7

this image is by Jay Maisel. i really like the relationship between the red and the blue. i know that red pulls you in and blue kind of pulls away, so having the blue in front of the red background is very unique and interesting to me. it keeps my eye focused on the man in blue. i also love the way this picture has a type of mystery too. you know its a worker, maybe, but you don't know what type, or where the work is being performed. its a picture that leaves the viewer with questions, and no answers. i really enjoy Maisel's work, his perspective is quite unique to me. its a type of abstract. it allows each viewer to make an assumption about the shot. but without know what is going on, each person is both correct, and incorrect. which is truly fascinating to me when it comes to photography!

Tricia VanGessel - Week 7

This photo is by Alex Prager. After Natalie showed us some of her work in W, I checked out her website and had a hard time deciding which photo to choose! This specific image is from her series, The Big Valley. All of her photos have an extremely cinematic and glamorous feeling. I was drawn to this one over the others because of the completely solid black background and the balanced composition. The black only enhances the vibrancy of the colors. We can easily focus on the center of the photograph and not anywhere else. The headlights of the car form a triangle with the subjects body leading us through each point of highlight.

Vanessa Vasquez-week6

This photo is by Bruce Percy. This photo caught my attention because I really enjoy looking at night photography and photos that look surreal. I like how vibrant the hues are even though he used natural light. The only other light source was a street light which gives off a red/orange glow to the photo. The dark cloudy sky really makes the photo because of its contrast and texture from the clouds. You can also clearly see the texture of the tall grass and brick wall behind the grass. I appreciate the composition, and I like how the light pole splits the landscape, and gives it a sense of it being balanced and symmetrical. I love how night photography really gives a direct emotion and expression. To me I sometimes feel that when I look at pictures that were taken at night it gives off a deeper, and more personal expression than a picture that was taken during the day. Pictures that are taken during the day have brighter lightning which gives off a more happy vibe.

 This photo is also by Bruce Percy. I'm starting to really like his work! When I looked at this picture I realized it is mono-chromatic, which in this picture I really love! The tones in this photo are reddish-brown. The lighting looks natural and the colors seem to make the light look warmer. The composition is strong. It feels personal and I feel as if I'm there with her. I noticed that the young girl has a strong stance. She looks very mature and confident for her age. I really enjoy this picture I think its a wonderful portrait.

Andrew Hachmeister - week 6

This is a photo of Annie Leibovitz. It also includes the famous, Steve Martin. It was taken in Beverly Hills in 1981.I really think this photo is so interesting to look at. The first time I saw this from afar I didn't even realize there was a person in the picture, let alone it being Steve Martin. I first came into contact with this picture in my Photo 1 class.

Annie Leibovitz use of color to me in this photo is so eye catching to me, because it looks like a standard black and white photo but it has the skin tone of Steve, as well as the slight brown tone of the framework around the painting itself. Which is a brilliant move because the picture is intended for the attention of Steve Martin and his face is the main focus due to the lack of color surrounding him.

As well as the composition of this photo is amazing to me, because it could have just been cropped with him standing in front of the painting. Annie wasn't going to have just any standard picture, So including the white ruffled sheet on the ground as well as the light fixtures above, adds so much texture to the picture as well as it keeps your eyes continuously moving.

Melena Nicholson - Week 6

In this photograph by Florian Ritter there is a path curving into the middle of the scene from the center bottom. It curves slightly downward between old brick and stone buildings. The architecture appears to be oriental. The path looks eroded and the buildings look faded and a little worn. A man walks down it with a hat on and his hands in his pockets facing away from the camera. His dark figure mimics dark architecture of the building on the left. There are green mountains in the foreground and many crossing telephone wires above that mimic the shape of the mountains.
The dark sky gives the picture a very serious and moody tone. The lines from the telephone wires play off the sky like lighting giving a lot of tension. The buildings and the path make lines to draw your eye near the center of the photo. The buildings and ground are very monochromatic reds and browns and they contrast with the green mountains behind them. The image is low in saturation with varying values of black and light grays that really make it look dark and mysterious.

Heather Peterson week six

In Richard Avedon's fable "In Memory of the Late Mr. and Mrs. Comfort" created for the New Yorker in 1995, he primarily used model Nadja Auermann and a life size skeleton as subjects for his photographs. Color was brought into the photographs enhancing the feel, mood, and gestures of the collection. In this photograph, Avedon used muted, analogous colors to bring to life the tension created in the composition. With the vertical pull of the photograph, the light cast on the 2 primary figures puts an elegant veil over them in juxtaposition to the textured, rotted out background which they are placed upon.

Jessica Leep. Week 6

This photo by Greg Stimac of an older woman mowing her lawn is part of a serious of lawn pictures taken all over the country. The colors in this photo are muted and minimal. The red of the lawn mower is complimented by the green of the grass that surrounds it. The rest of the image is made up of faded neutrals which give the red and green plenty of emphasis although they are also faded. Because the color on fills most of the bottom half of this image, it gives the image a lot of visual weight. The worn feeling of the colors in this image emphasize the subject matter. The woman is older, her hair is graying, the lawn she is mowing appears neglected, the white paint on her home is dingy and pealing. Even down to her activity, which is a dull, redundant chore, the theme is strengthened by the treatment of the colors.

Sarah Lawhead- Week 6

juergen teller

This photo, titled Dropping Ball, was done by one of my favorite fashion photographers, Juergen Teller. The allied colors calm the eye, and yet they are playfully contradicted by the anticipation of the ball that is about to fall in the water. The eye is first drawn to the ball since it is dead center, (also the only complimentary relationship in the photograph) and illuminated by the flash. The composition continues to move the eye around the picture, to the hand which reaches for the ball, the highlights on the water, and back up to the ball's shadow. Lastly my eye notices the the diagonal lines in the wall paper, leading me back to the center of the frame. Interestingly enough the ball is the only thing in the picture which is entirely in the frame, and yet its obvious path of travel unites it with the other objects which (although they travel in an out of the frame) are also frozen in their movement- the water and hand. The composition of the picture magically ties together the movement of objects, color, and lines to glamorize an otherwise 'ordinary' situation.

Benjamin Leaf - Week 6

This is an image by Barbara Kasten from her series "Studio Constructs 2007-08". On her website, she states that her aim was to photograph a "transparent plane" and its shadow in order to create abstract images. I was immediately drawn to this photograph without having any concept of perspective, scale, or reality. The image is made up of strongly geometric patterns created by light and shadow, and many of the patterns meet at a focal point at the center of the image. The shadows and warped abstract patterns create a fascinating symmetry, bisected by a solid line traveling from the center of the frame to the bottom-left corner. The left half of the image may contain a mirror, as the patterns seem to resemble a slightly distorted version of the patterns on the right half of the image.

Kasten’s use of color in this image is very minimal. Colors are created by light; a warmer yellow fills most of the picture and is bordered by a cool blue. Because the picture consists of only two muted colors, tension is created through color contrast, composition, and the angular arrows of light.

I have always been drawn to symmetry and light patterns in photographs. Her other photographs in the series are equally fascinating but did not immediately pull me in the same way that this image did, possibly due to a more asymmetrical compositional and lighting style.

http://www.barbarakasten.net/

jonathan pivovar week 6

Peter Halupka is a (or was a) student of Columbia College.
The photo is of Neapolitan Ice Cream melting on a ledge in the natural light of the sun, the color is minimal, referencing only to very calm cool colors: The monochromatic gray-spotted ledge, the soft pink and creamy off-white, the over bearing brown that ties the shadow in with the main focus of the photograph.
The melting brick of ice cream falls into the center of the photograph, but the shadow creeping behind feels like the photo is asymmetrical.
I feel hungry when i look at it too long.

This photo is by Steve McCurry of monks in Burma. The use of color is minimal and striking, using complimentary red and green to contrast the monks robes against the vibrant grass. It is centrally balanced, though not completely se metrical using the crack through the architectural structure as well as the placement of the monks to anchor the viewers eye. I really appreciate the vastness of neutral color combined with rich splashes of hugh in the bottom half of the frame.

saw the new jcrew catalog and thought of my color class...muted allied colors and textures!  no other colors to distract us...fun composition, playful with the edge of frame...

Tricia VanGessel-Week 6

This photo is from a series by Stephanie Sinclair known as 'Child Brides'. Without looking into the story behind the photograph, the colors immediately caught my attention. From blood red to scarlet to light pink, it represents an allied relationship. The emerald green dress she wears is the perfect compliment to these shades of red. The intense contrast between the young bride, dressed in such eye catching colors, and the elder man, who looks as if he could fade into the wall if the red wasn't behind him, was something I immediately noticed. Besides the color relationships, the composition is something I am drawn to. Centered in the frame, the two subjects are very symmetrical. We can feel as if we are sitting directly in front of these two, and that brought me an uneasy feeling.

Ting Shen- Week 6

This is a photo taken by one of my favorite photographers, Vincent Laforet. It's simply an aerial photo of surfers in North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii. Taken with a tilt shit lens. With the photo mostly filled with the blue of the sea, in the middle you see the surfboards with gathering with mostly white colored surfboards plus a bit of red and yellow. The blue sea and the yellow/red surf boards form split complementary color harmony. Instead of all the surfboards all colored, the majority of the white boards gives it a clam feel instead of tension despite the high saturation of the colors, more like a medium between the complementary colors. The randomness of the surfers location instead of being in a circle gives it a more relaxed feeling than a artificial structure which has tension in it. I respond to Vincent Laforet's journalistic style of photography a lot. Instead of enforcing the human elements in the photo to work together, he seeks for the moments(mostly on a helicopter) that the human elements work with each other naturally in life.

Jenny Reece- Week 6

I've always been drawn to landscapes. I really like the high contrast in this photo and the way the shadows draw you in to the trees. Most of the composition gives off a warm feeling, except for the sky of course. I also enjoy the contrast of the green grass right next to the vibrant blue sky. I really like the way the trees look in this photo as well, it's the first thing I noticed. One thing that I don't like about the photo is that it cuts off part of the tree on the right and there is an open space on the left. I think the overall composition would have been a little better if the photographer either took the photo as a vertical shot and only of maybe the four trees in the middle or at a different angle, or if it were to stay as a horizontal shot, then to definitely take it at a different angle and to make sure there are not any awkward spaces like the one on the left. All in all, I think the entire photography is just about simple and natural beauty.

Lori Brudzisz- Week Six

I am a Flickr addict. The name of this photographer is Heather Evans Smith and her work can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/hsmithphotography/. I have an "interesting photo of the day" gadget on my homepage, so everytime I log on I am greeted with a stream of photos for the day. This one popped up today. I love that this site exposes me to "nobody's" who get really interesting shots.

Compositionally, the subject is offset to the right of the frame giving our eyes a directional pull from the bottom right corner upwords towards the little girl's tutu and then into the background which looks like a mysterious forest. I think the color has mainly a complementary feel because the red boots really pop out. I think the brightness of the boots and tutu contrasted to the dark green background is what makes this photo interesting as well as the subject vs. background. Another interesting aspect of the photo is that she has both stopped and blurred motion. The boot on the bottom at the right is clearly in focus, but when we look at her other leg, we can see that she was probably running.

I think the color is expressive and symbolic. Based on the colors we know that this is a little girl and we don't normally see cowboy boots in bright red so it adds a little spice to the girl's personality.

Roland B Coniglio-week one

I like this photo by Pete turner because of two things. One the composition is amazing to me, I love how everything in this picture seems to pull me in.The snowy street that seems to have a slight incline, the buildings that border it, the sky even seems to pull me into this picture. The second thing I really like is the color choice turner chose. The stark blue with just a few dots of red seem to really work in this picture. I really get a sense of the cold and dreary cityscape of this scene that, had he otherwise left out and kept the picture it's natural color would have left me with others thoughts on this scape other than the reality of a frigid winter in the city

your weekly color post

hello photo2!

this blog is a place for you to check in once a week and discuss one color photo of your choosing, as well as survey the images posted and discussed by your peers. 

be sure to quickly describe, interpret, evaluate the image in its use of color, composition, and lighting

title your posts "your name - week X"

so my first post would be 'jason lazarus - week 6'

 here's a sample post for you to follow:

This image is called "Ocean" by Aaron Louis Fowler (.com).  The conch shell lays on the blue bedspread, which doubles as an 'ocean.'  The cell phone inserted in the shell reads as a secret, romantic message from the cell phone owner to some distant receiver on the other end.  The lighting, which I imagine as coming from a bedroom window, emphasizes the texture of the blanket ripples, giving them depth and furthering the visual double play.  The sliver of the mattress that peeks through on top reminds us of the ordinary setting we are in, and also echoes the colors of the blue bedspread and pinkish conch shell.  The shell itself is striking because of the sharp value and color contrast between it and the bedspread.  The composition is shell 'front and center' with the bed itself asymmetrically balance.  Our vantage point is 'lingering over this ocean' and feels like a human height encounter with this playful sculpture for the camera...