Midterm Work Review - Noelani

1) Identify Trends

I seem to be pretty conscious of light, but I don’t always handle it well. Looking at the contact sheet of my portraits of Hayley I most often see what I meant to do, but didn’t actually accomplish. Also, I think my approach to portraits is pretty constant. I seem to like ¾ shots. Some photos look like snapshots and I’m not really sure how I feel about those. Part of me thinks they’re cute, but they’re also pretty mediocre photographs.

The photos I regard as “snapshot-ish” sort of make me think I should be more documentary. If I want something to be a posed portrait that’s what it should be and if I want to document something that’s what I should do. These snapshot things seem like I couldn’t decide between the two.

I know that generally I photograph people. Sometimes the photograph is about them, sometimes I ask them to play a role, and other times I’m just looking for a general mood. It also seems like when I get tired of shooting people I approach the inanimate and usually do close-ups.

2) Ideas

I noticed my still life of glasses and oranges remind me of renaissance paintings. I don’t say this to flatter myself, but as I looked at the composition I kept thinking, “These would make good paintings.” I think that’s because I was very conscious of how arranged the shapes in the frame, and I tried to include different textures. I sort of get a half-formed idea from these; maybe they show emotion through lighting since the subject matter is inanimate (I don’t think I’m explaining this very well).

Comparing my abstractions and graffiti, I’m very much interested in approaching graffiti in an abstract way. The first five minutes of shooting my graffiti roll I was really frustrated and thought, “This is exactly why I didn’t want to mess with graffiti; I have no idea what to do with it.” Then I saw one graffiti piece that was very abstract in and of itself and I thought that’s how I should approach it and sure enough I’m pretty happy with some of my shots and want to shoot graffiti again. Then I wonder if I could incorporate graffiti into my portraits in an interesting way.

3) One Idea for Final Body of Work

My instant thought was I want to shoot Shenora’s hair. It’s a subject I’m hesitant to explore because I’m very aware that the reason I’m interested in her hair is because she’s African American. Having been raised with one very racist parent figure it’s quite nice to learn about something I’ve always been told BS about. I’d like my photographs to reflect my learning process; I don’t presume to teach viewers about a subject matter I’m not intimate with. As suitemates, socially speaking, we’re only so close, so I wonder how intimate a look into her relationship with her hair I could get. I also wonder if her hair I just a piece of a larger cultural puzzle I’m interested in. Would this be a good subject matter at all or am I being self-indulgent about a simple interest I have? In short, it’s an idea that interests me, but I’m very unsure about it.

4) 3 Images I turn to for Inspiration