Happy Halloween!

On this day of All Hallows Eve, I celebrate all that is scary, horrifying, and dark.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

Blast from the past!

For those of my friends who remember my photos from high school.
Do you remember my Seven Deadly Sins series?
I really liked this series and I liked the photos that I produced. But now I've learned a lot more about photography, and now I have more equipment to use.
So here is my latest photo shoot. My old roommate, Matt, helped me out as my model and he did great! Luckily he was willing to get a little messy. It was a great experience that I even needed to get a shot of myself.

I think that the top photo is fitting for this Halloween time, no?

High Hopes

Today I was able to go and talk with Val Brinkerhoff, the third and final photography professor. Sadly, I haven't been able to catch him at his office during his office hours, but today lady luck struck me.
I went to his office after my new testament class and he was on his way to a faculty meeting. However, he heard my silent pleas for a moment of his time and invited me to quickly show him my photos.
There were nothing but good comments about what he saw! :D XD
He said that I have talent, that I photos that are technically well done, and he even said that I'll have no problem in the application process! Lastly he said that I have ideas that he's never seen before.
Okay, I hope I'm not too high on the horse, and I'll watch my pride. But do you know what this means!!?? I'm fairly known by, and complimented by, and encouraged by each of the photography professors here at BYU!!
So I have some high hopes! Here's to wishing and hoping and dreaming!
And to celebrate, here is a not-so-great lighting self portrait!

PS, yesterday my photography class ended cause it was only a block class. I'm pretty sad about it. :( But all is well with the other good news!

Good and Bad

There are some good and bad things happening. All of them have to do with the photography major. Today was the last day of assignments. I turned in my portraits from the previous post. I was fantastic! There were basically only good comments. No one said anything that I could improve on, and when someone said something, the professor said "Actually I think it looks good like that."

It was great! I am quite proud of the photos and I'm glad because not only did they turn out well, Paul, my teacher, said that I could use one of them for my portfolio in November! Woot!

Okay so those are only a few of the good things that are happening.

Now the bad things. This upcoming week will be the last day of my photo class. This is sort of good and bad because it means that from now on mondays and wednesdays I'll be out of school at 1. Yay. But I'm really going to miss this class. It gave me the opportunity to do photo shoots and exercise my creativity. I wonder if I'll have more incentive to do photo shoots outside of class. And now I'm going to have to put forth more effort in communicating with the photography professors.

So here's what I'm thinking. I will go to them and pretty much have them check and re check my portfolio between now and the 30th of November so that they can remember my name and my photos. So when the time comes for them to review all of the 100-something portfolios, they will remember seeing certain photos!

At least that's the plan. :D I just hope it works. So far I have 2/3 of the professors visited. They sure are hard to get a hold of though. But things seem to be looking up.

To just put the cherry on top of the sundae, the other day, while looking at my photos, Paul was teaching me some stuff on Photoshop. He asked me if I knew about a certain filter and when I told him "No", he proceeded to describe it and then said "But no worries, you'll learn about those things in your future classes."

AHH!!! :D :D :D :D :D I might be reading too much into it, but the fact that he says I'll be in future photography classes helps! Anyways, I'm just going to keep doing some shoots. I need at least 4 more stunning photos.

BTW, if I see awesome photos and redo them in my own way, does that mean it's plagiarism?

Just wondering.

Cupcakes anyone???

I had a new photoshoot with my good friend Kelsey. I had the idea of doing a portrait that was based on a food fight. My original idea involved spaghetti sauce and noodles as well as cookies and chocolate sauce. But then I bought some wonderful cupcakes from The Cocoa Bean. And let's just say that the shoot came together right in front of my eyes.
First of all, Kelsey was my model and my friend Eldon was my assistant (the first time I've ever had an assistant!). The lighting was great and we just started to take the photos. So the assignment is two portrait photos that give depth and life to the subject.
Here are the photos that I ended up getting:

Here are the two that I'll be using for the assignment:

Oh! And I got a good photo as well!

So I'm officially a weirdo....

Seriously though. Why do I have weird ideas for photos? I mean, sure we could say that I am very creative, and I'm fine with that, but to what does my creativity work?
There are times when people can see my photos and say "Wow, I really like that one!" but then they don't get why I took it! So I think that's something that I need to look out for while turning in my portfolio.
I have many ideas, but I need to be able to put my own character into them without it being extremely weird.
It's not that I'm hurt by the comments of others, I know that I need to accept criticism and not only that. I need to disconnect from my work. Because once it's finished and edited, it should stand alone. But today I turned in my lighting assignment.
Truthfully, I don't think I did my best work on this shoot. I feel like I just did the assignment and didn't really apply it to myself and apply too much of my creativity. But then one of the three photos I turned in was this one...

For all of you who know me on Facebook, which is everyone who would read this blog, I have this set as my profile picture. I think it looks pretty cool. Sure, it's not exactly the image that I wanted from the get go with this shoot but it still looks visually interesting.

However, it was sort of strange for the kids in class. No one said anything mean, no one said anything derogatory, however it was joked that I should put this into the ward directory to introduce myself.

I'm such a weirdy. But I have a lot of other weird photos from the mind where this one came from! So I guess that sometimes I have weird ideas and stuff, but if creativity is what I need to get into the photography program, you can't argue that I don't have it.

4 out of 10

Usually a 4 out of 10 is less than failing. Usually 4 out of 10 people own a Movistar phone in Peru. Usually 4 our of 10 is considered something bad...
Well my blogger friends and readers, I tell you that 4 out of 10 has now upgraded. It is no longer looked down on as something to avoid.
I am lucky enough to have 4 out of 10 photos for my portfolio for the Photography Major!
I only can have a portfolio of 10 images that will be looked at for about a minute.
Lately I've been a little worried because the application deadline is on November 30th and I have only done a few photo shoots. But I met with some of the photo professors here at BYU to get to know them a little bit more and then to show them my pieces.
The feedback that I got was fantastic! I was happy to hear that I was "doing a great job" and "controlling my images". But I was also helped with some constructive criticism and some new ideas on how to improve my images. So here are the photos that I have. You've already seen 2 of them.

 

These photos received the best comments from the professors as to technical build and creativity. So they will be entering into my portfolio for november. Woot!
I think that I'm very lucky to have at least 4 of the 10. Now I only have to get on some new photoshoots!
So here are my new thought out shoots that I am planning.

• Spontaneous Liquification
• Milk and Cookies
• Food Fight Portrait
• Gluttony

So don't steal these ideas!  I mean it.