Introduction to Photography
Art 1050
For the final project in Art 1050, Introduction to Photography, we were given a lot of freedom to choose our subjects, our approach and our vision. I decided to work out at the Utah Salt Flats to try and capture their still, desolate and completely unique beauty. My initial intent was to photograph mainly landscapes, so as to challenge myself and work outside of my comfort zone. I purposefully picked an area with little to work with so that I would have to be creative in compositions and content. Landscapes have never been my strong suit; I’ve always done better with portraits. I love black and white portraiture, but wanted to deliberately work with my weaker genre. I did shoot many landscapes and many prop studies, but on my last scheduled day of shooting I had models with me to do a few portraits. I ended up shooting almost 500 images on that day with the models, and unsurprisingly, the best images - the ones with the most “pop” - were the portraits.
As you can see, the project turned into portraits at the Utah Salt Flats, but it all worked out and I couldn't be happier with the results. In editing, I had wanted to turn all of my chosen images to black and white, but decided instead that a few carefully placed color photos would make both the color and the black and white images have more of an impact.
I loved that this project allowed me to move and work with
it; that it was allowed to breathe on its own and develop naturally. I was free to set my own expectations, establish my own look and feel. In other words, I
was free to improvise and that kind of freedom was creatively
liberating. I honestly had not had this much fun in a long time. I was able to relax and worry only about what was
in the viewfinder; worry only about what kind of story I could create by what I
could fit into the frame.
This class was a wonderful, and much needed, jump start to my creative side. I look forward to taking the next level photography class and packing my camera with me everywhere.
