I chose to photograph a couple different things related to the coronavirus. The first picture I chose to take was of my sister. She had gone to the doctors and they had recommended getting tested for cova-19. She came back home with the las on. She told me they stuck a long stick in her nose, and it hurt. I went to target to get food supplies and it was like a ghost town. On the floor they had the tape x to make sure customers were standing far enough apart. On the intercom they also made announcements suggesting that we stand 6 feet apart. My mom works at the Hershey med center. She is a floating nurse so she could be anywhere from working in the ER to her office and anywhere in between. We went to the hospital and she showed me some of her stock that she’s had with supplies. There were so many different types of medical equipment that they had on hand just to be safe. The hospital is also kinda scary. On the other picture you can see everything is wrapped up to stop the spread from germs. Even driving around to all these places I was taking notice of all the signs that say take out and to practice social distancing and that no visitors were allowed. It’s good to see that all of these places have made effort to try and prevent further spread of the disease.
COVID-19 Crisis in action. So we are all on quarantine and are suggested to leave our house once a day whether that be going to the supermarkets or walking around outside to get fresh air. At the same time we should be keeping social distancing, at least 6 feet apart. Stores, restaurants, bars and more are closed for at least two weeks or until governor Wolf let’s up about this restriction. All of this came out is pretty quickly and there was panic and memes and jokes but now it’s here, it’s happening, there was a case on campus, everything is hitting a little to close to home. It is important that we all stay safe while still getting our education. While zoom is a good program it was not intended to be used by everyone in the country who goes to high school, college, and some jobs from 8-5 Monday to Friday non stop and it’s causing technical issues. Internet at our homes our also getting delayed because our whole family is home so everyone is on the WiFi
I found this photo by Dyan Marie very interesting, I loved the concept of it. So I tried to recreate it, as well as using different parts of the body and using the same procedures. When I see this picture by Marie, it makes me think of palm readings, if they’re real or not, it makes me think of the different paths life can take you. And those paths will not be perfect and smooth line and they will include all different kinds of swirls, bumps, and waves, which is why I was so intrigued by this image.
For this assignment, I chose to use the state of Downtown State College as a topic for this assignment because it pertains to the now. As a local in State College and a student at Penn State University , this has an impact on me. It is really strange to see State College empty, especially in the middle of the spring because this is usually the busiest time in State College. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Penn State University has officially moved to online classes for the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester. I chose to use several different perspectives on the photographs because I wanted to capture how the entire feeling of State College during this outbreak. That’s why I chose to do more than five of my favorite images for this project. In total, I ended the project with ten of my favorite images.
Pictured above are the photographs I took of the businesses that are closed or are open. Most businesses downtown and close to campus have also taken the initiative and decided to close down until further notice or just reduce their services. While most of these companies have shut down their in store operations, some stores such as Mchlanahans are still open to the public. However, as I have noticed, their tables are blocked off by yellow caution tape with a sign in the middle stating that due to governor’s orders, they are no longer able to allow people to sit in their store to eat their food. Jersey Mike’s downtown is a similar case, only doing deliveries and take out, you can no longer eat in-store. Mclanahan’s also no longer has their sub-station open for similar health reasons. On the other hand, Bradley’s which is a local place, is closed entirely until further notice. The Tavern and other businesses around that alleyway are also closed due to the Coronavirus outbreak.
Places such as tattoo parlors and the local blood drive (pictured above) have also been shut down until further notice, with signs posted on their windows stating that they cannot operate or in the case of the blood drive, closed down temporarily. Not surprising due to the nature of these establishments.
As I was walking downtown itself, it was fairly empty. While there were still people walking around, for the most part, students and their parents were either gone or packing up to leave the university until the fall 2020 semester. Despite the fact the surrounding areas were shut down, I saw a guy playing a piano in the shade where the gyro stand is usually set up and open. I also witnessed that the car traffic along Allen Street has increased due to the virus. CATA buses are also running, but they are also running on a limited service during this outbreak since people are no longer taking the bus as frequently. Overall, I think that this virus has affected the entirety of downtown and the community in a negative way, but I do think that we can recover from this after a while.
For this assignment, I decided I wanted to take on the approach of going out and showing what my experience of everything that is happening with COVID 19. I wanted to go out and drive around to really truly experience what is happening in my area. I decided to drive into Erie, PA. What I experienced was interesting. A large amount of absence. Absence in people, cars, and businesses. It felt like I was in a movie almost. Everywhere I looked it was like I was living in a picture. It seemed as if time wasn’t moving, and there was no one in town. I was the only car in the streets and I think I saw one person on a sidewalk. This made me feel hopeless in a way. I worry for our future because every time I look at the news I just get an overwhelming feeling of concern. With all of this being said, I wanted to express my general feeling of fear by showing how I did not want to get out of my car. Therefore my images are shot through my windshield.
The photographer in which I chose to imitate was a photo by Vivian Maier from 1953
The photo on the left is my inspiration, a photo from Vivian Maier’s collection called “Street Photography 1”. Maier had this style of shooting that was the perfect balance between candid and posed. There’s just enough context present in order to portray that the subject is just a businessman traveling on the street to work, but also enough posing to make him the center of attention of the photo. Composition wise, I think that I portrayed a similar feel to the photo on the left, but didn’t exactly nail the natural, uneven lighting present in her photo.
The photo on the right is my imitation of the original. I captured this image of a friend on a white background as it was raining the day I planned to shoot, but masked in a different background to get a similar feel to the original. Although I think that the actual contents of the photos are similar, they differ in areas like the lighting, facial expression, background, and overall feel.
Doing this assignment / experiment, I realized that achieving the original look that I was trying to portray takes more than one try. If I could repeat this again to try to make a better photo, I’d take measures to have more similar expression, a more street styled background (would be better to shoot outdoors), and to better balance the lighting between the background/subject.
photographer George Hurrell is a portrait photographer that photographed Hollywood Stars in a glamouros way in the 1930’s and 40’s. The harsh shadows in this photo show the dramatics of the emotion. There is hard contrast in this photo to allow depth to show in this very productive way. this photo is a portrait of Gene Kelly in a position showing his masculinity and charm as a performer back in this time period. This is a less dramatic but still a sharp photo that expresses a different emotion- happiness. Gene jelly was all about making people smile through his singing and dancing.
imitation
for the top two pictures I tried emulating the first picture. Playing around with light placement getting the shadows right was interesting and took some time playing with. Also having the contrast of range of white and black took some editing as well to deepen the darks and Brighten whites. The last photo of mine I tried making the lights brighter. I used two lights to achieve this. A key light and a fill light.
The name of my photographer that I chose is Elliot Erwitt. He’s a photographer that has been a Member of Magnum Photos since 1954. He is still alive today, he is 91 years old. He was born in France but he works in American advertising. I wanted to try and recreate this image because I thought it was interesting how he got that angle of the couple in the small mirror.
I chose the American sports photographer Charles M. Conlon. To be honest I struggled to find a sense of what i wanted to shoot for this project. I cannot stand a posed picture because 95% of the time it looks posed. I like candid and natural photos as I shy my camera work away from people. The biggest reasoning is I don’t want to have to direct the subjects of my photos. So action shots allow me to capture a moment as opposed to fabricating one.
I found it hard to balance the soft look with enough focus. But after playing with the lighting in post, as well as the colors I got the look I had in my head.
The light wasn’t ideal, but the contrast of the street signs, and lights made the evening shot worth it. I had trouble finding the right shutter speed and ISO as both me and my subjects were both moving. However after some fine tuning, I’m really happy with how they turned out. The depth was achieved with a relatively high aperture. In hindsight, I should’ve used and exposure that was higher for a brighter, clearer shot, however I wouldn’t have gotten the same effects from the lights.
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