Diane Arbus

I have chosen to do my project on Diane Arbus. Originally, I was not very impressed by her work and judged it as wierd and out there in left field. Only after doing research and reading about her attitude towards life, her subjects, and the world in general did I realize her purpose and meaning in photography. Her photos may be out of the ordinary, however she chose to photograph the things in life that most fascinated her...people. Diane was very open regarding sexuality in that many of her pictures contain nudity and she has collections pertaining to nudist colonies and transvestites. The picture below is a self portrait that Diane took when she was pregnant with her first child, Doon. She sent this and many other pregnancy photos to her husband while he was stationed in India during WWII.

The below picture is a very famous picture that was taken in a very casual manner(1962). The boy was playing in the park and he happened to be playing with a toy grenade. Diane asked him to pose for a picture, and then she purposely stalled in taking the picture in order to make him impatient. When his expression was right, she snapped the photo.

This photo is untitled and was taken in 1971 at a group home that Diane frequently visited. She had a very special relationship with the residents there. She once described them to her daughter as adults who are also children, and she adored them.

The above photo is one of her most famous photos, named Identical Twins (Roselle, New Jersey 1967). The likeness of this photo was used in the movie "The Shining", and prints of it have sold for around $400,000.

Indoor picture

Top photo is modified, Bottom photo is the original.

I took the original picture indoors with no flash, using the light from a nearby window. The original turned out pretty well, however I thought it may be a bit dark and drab. I used Photoshop to adjust brightness, contrast, and color levels. I think the modified picture has a vibrance that the original lacked. By the way, this is Wrigley!

My Name in Pictures!

Here is the finished product after using photoshop to layer all of the letters on a canvas to spell my name. I think that it turned out really well. I really had to find my creative side to find some of these! The J is a water lily stem, E is made up of sideways trees, S is from my bedroom lamp, the 2nd S is from a splatter picture that my daughter painted, I is a deer antler, C is my cat's tail, and A is the tripod from the telescope.

Name pictures

I took some photos of objects that resemble the letters of my name. These were actually alot harder to find than I thought they would be initially. The two Ss really gave me a hard time!

Power Point Banner

Wow! This assignment really tried my patience! I finally managed to get it finished, although not with my original version, but a slightly simplified one. I used powerpoint to edit and tweak this photo that was taken of the slide at the pumpkin farm. I hope it inspires someone!

This photo was also taken on the field trip with my daughter's class. This is my daughter Riley(middle) with two of her friends from school. I used the cropping feature to cut out all of the extraneous parts of the photo, so that the viewer concentrates on the main subjects of the photo. The bottom photo is the cropped photo(obviously).

Lightening A Photo

I took this picture last week at a pumpkin farm in northern Indiana. In the photo is my daughter's first grade class. The photo was taken inside the barn without flash, so it was very dark. I used Adobe Photoshop to lighten the photo. I used the Brightness/Contrast feature and I brightened the picture and lightened the contrast. The first picture is the photoshopped one, with the original second.