Independent Project 3

For this project I took photos of popular attractions in Portland and things that are symbolic to the city. Some of the subjects were Voodoo Donuts, Powell's Books, the Freemont Bridge, Stumptown Coffee, street performers and bicycles.  I wanted someone to be able to look at the photos and think "oh, that's definitely Portland".  I used phone photography, which I'd never used for an assignment before so that was fun. After taking the photos, I edited them with an app called Waterlogue, which makes them look like watercolor paintings. I thought this was a way to make the photos more interesting, and I also thought that watercolors fit well with the fact that it always rains in Portland. I put all the photos into a grid, but I also like the way they look individually.

Semester Final

The word I drew inspiration from was whimsical.  When I think of the word whimsical, I think of light, airy, happy images that possess fantasy and dream-like qualities.  When I was little, I made these things called petal people.  They’re little people made out of floral wire and synthetic flower petals.  I would build them houses out of moss, leaves and twigs that I’d collect around my backyard, and play with them in my own little created world for hours.  The petal people are very whimsical to me, because they’re light and airy and make me happy to look at.  They seem like little fairies to me, and I think my images create that feeling.  I used backlighting and shallow depth of field in my images to give them that dream-like quality, and I think they turned out nicely.  I transferred the first one onto canvas and printed the other two on photo paper.

Independent Project 2

For my second independent project I took portraits of people, and paired their portrait with a photo of things that are essential to them.  I displayed these two photos as a diptych. Originally I was going to ask to photograph the contents of their bag that they carry around with them everyday and call the series “What’s In Your Bag?”  But I quickly found that most people had pretty similar things (keys, wallet, phone), which didn’t make for a very interesting picture.  So I decided to change it to things that are important to them and that give us a little glimpse of their personality.  I really love how they turned out and it’s interesting to see how different everyone’s are.  I plan to continue this series and shoot 10-15 more people (or animals) throughout the year, and then possibly put all the photos into a book. 

Alex Merrill

Olivia Fouser

Kathrina Slater

Heidi Klonoff

Claire Dimmick

Larsen Hodges

Landon Hodges 

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