Week 4 with Light
I think I have a "Friday Jinx" or something, because out of the four Fridays this semester, I've missed three. This was the good week gone bad...honestly. I tried really hard to work, but it gets hard to concentrate when you have a headache, feel sleepy, and a runny nose (this school needs to keep an actual supply of tissue boxes...its flu season for goodness sakes). I'm really tired, I couldn't sleep last night, and I have a really big photograph assignment due.
This week we learned about Photoshop and how to process photos. I had a great time with it. I am actually really proud of the portrait I took (I think it was a good photo before I started messing with it), and the Black and White effect also looks really cool. I've also messed with a few other photos, they didn't turn out amazing...but its the journey that counts.
The color photo is the original (no editing/cropping at all), the second picture is the processed, nice one.
Humanities:
I finished up my Picture analysis:
The subject:
A boy this age should be running around and playing, yet he has been helping his parents pick crops for years. Most surprisingly though, he looks like the men that are commonly portrayed in depression era photography. If you were to look closely, the eyes are the same in both instances: tired, frustrated and somewhat determined (in an angry way). He realizes that no matter what he does he is stuck in his situation, yet he doesn’t quite agree with it. The quote that came along with photo was his mom saying "You'd be surprised what that boy can pick (hops).”
History:
The Great Depression started on a unfortunate Tuesday, when the Stock Market collapsed. To make things worse, the very next year the Great Plains started going through a drought, this caused the topsoil to blow away. Many of the farmers lost their lands and were forced to would move to California to pick crops for minimal wages. Many families barely made enough; if one person got sick, they fell behind on their expenses. It was during this time that the government hired photographers to go around America to take pictures of conditions that most Americans lived in. In this manner, the government was able to base their decisions on photographic facts instead of biased opinions.
Dorothea Lange:
Dorothea Lange had a good childhood, not a rich one but one that did a good job educating her, and gave her a fair chance at the world. When she first started her career, Dorothea ran a portrait studio, but after photographing Native Americans, she started to observe the problems in her neighborhood as well. During the Great Depression, as a part of the New Deal (a government project aimed to take an unbiased look at the world), she went around and took pictures of the conditions migrant workers lived and worked in. She was extremely passionate about showing the world what it couldn’t see through her photographs.
Photography/Lighting/Composition:
Dorothea Lange thought really hard about her subject and his positioning. She used high aperture, which at that time was risky, because the camera could have easily focused on the wrong part of the image. By using high aperture, the camera focused on the boy’s nose/eyes. It is also the reason why he pops out from his background. She also used loop lighting. Loop lighting provides light to most of the face. You can only see about ten percent shadow on the boy’s face.The most interesting part about this image though, is how Dorthea Lange makes use of the dirt on the boy’s face to frame his face. The dirt contributes to her use of loop lighting. The dirt also makes him look older, and more tired. The shadows above his eyes add a gloomy, tired tone to his face.
Emotion/My perspective:
Stoicism, a school of thought that believed in the indifference of emotion, describes this picture in one word. It does an accurate job of not only depicting the emotional state of this one boy, but of every migrant worker. The boy has been picking crops for three, for someone his age, that's about his whole life! His eyes look scary, they are staring back at you, blank and emotionless. He knows that he is trapped, and no matter what he does he can’t escape the situation. The mouth really gets me. He isn’t frowning, there isn’t a normal curve to it, it's just a plain, straight line.
I've also started think about my portrait picture. I am looking forward to going to Balboa park. There are usually really cool street performers and activities in general that I would like to capture. The last time I went with my friends, we had a good time together, and maybe I can catch and "friend" moment. I have a few ideas, but I would like to go with the flow this time and see what happens.
