Post #2: My first ideas for my first photos

I'm going to be honest. This doesn't really make all that much sense to me. You-- being Mrs. Keady, assuming the only person who will really ever read this--you said that I need to come up with ten ideas for photos because that's how many prints I'm going to turn in over the entire semester. Okay, I guess that's fine. But here's my deal, here's my beef, do I just get to take pictures once? Do I just take these eight pictures and call it good for the semester? Either way I guess it doesn't mater because I'm just trying to start somewhere.



Paul Strand is the s****. (PG rating right?) It's true though. I haven't found a Paul Strand Photo and said that it was alright. Okay maybe I have a couple times but I still really enjoy his work. His use of shadows and line, symmetry and structure. Everything he does is for a reason and I love that. It's organized in it's unusual way.



Take the photo from the previous blog. Look at the way the mans face distorts the shadow from his hat, and visa versa the shadow distorting the mans face. The curves of the hat and the form they take. The hat almost becomes the subject instead of the man. Really, I'm more interested in how this man got such a hat then who this man is.



Or consider his more famous wall street photo. Sharp shadows create the buildings simple pattern. The people walking below, completely random but yet perfectly laid out. Their shadows casted on the sidewalk give them a mystique, a reason for looking at them. Where are they going? It doesn't matter, look at the way their going their. Look at their shape, their shadows. Same for the building.



So I guess I answered the prompt in my rambling so far. What about Paul Strand do I want to emulate, what do I want my "theme" to be throughout my portfolio? Shadows and the lines and shapes they create. I hope that's not cliche. To be honest, I was ever so tempted to take candid portraits the whole time. I think this way I still can, I just got to make sure that the candid portraits fit into the theme of shadows too. And besides, Taking pictures of things is much easier then people...things don't over think things. Wow, that was an accidental pun, I promise.



So I have to tell you about ten photos I'm going to take. Ten preplanned, pre-visualized photos that I must try my best to stick to. But really, I've got a better idea. I'm going to tell you about them one post at a time, including one in this post so that you, Mrs. Keady, don't get mad for possibly wasting a post. Really, I don't have a choice, I have to do it this way. One, I don't have ten ideas yet. And two, I'm not a very good condenser so if I wrote about ten different photos, this post would be god awful long. Nobody wants that, do they?



So here it is, my first photo Idea. Have you ever seen the inside of a Koo-koo clock? Well I have. The gears and chains, and what-not, create a hectic feel, and yes, when portrayed in the right light, there can be a whole lot of interesting shadows. So I'm going to rip open a clock, set it in some angled light, lay the chains out in a random, yet purposeful way across the table next to it, and start snapping. Here's the best part, if the photo doesn't have enough shadow or light, I'm going to hang something in the way of the light so that it casts its shadow over the clock and boom, I've got my shadow.