Photography Project

Abandoned

The long-term photography project of taking photos, making prints, making the book, and hanging up the prints in an exhibit was both super fun and also very frustrating. My favorite part was definitely the experimentation of taking the photos. I started by renting out a camera for a weekend and carrying it everywhere I went, just to see what caught my interest. I took it with me when I worked a double with a closing shift at the VR, and that was when I had the most fun, taking photos of how the bar changed as people came and went, what was left behind, what felt different from behind the bar. After that, my theme came together: thinking about how spaces themselves have a perspective and voice, and look at us as we occupy them, and thus what they look and feel like when we don't occupy them. 

3AM

My least favorite part was the book. As exciting as it was to see my work printed in a tangible form, seeing the final product of the book blew the photos up so big you could see all the problems with them, like lots of them were less in focus than they were on my Flickr page. So that was kind of frustrating and disappointing. The one cool thing about the book was how it revealed all of the natural pairings of different photos together, which I had not planned or expected but ended up creating a really cool effect. I especially felt this with the Watching/Watched pair, and the Hallway with People/Hallway at night pair, how they became stronger together than they were as individual photos. That became somewhat painful when I had to print only one photo, but it ended up being easy enough to choose the best quality, most in focus, and most visually pleasing/interesting. 

Watching

Watched

Overall, this process was a mixed bag for me. I think I just find it hard to make the end product of a photo look the way it does in my head. Anyway, at least now I have prints and a book to forever immortalize my half-way-through-the-process technique and photography skills.