Week 5

I felt that I learned a lot in this week's lesson about different styles of photography. I was very interested in the difference between documentary and fine art photography. The difference of that in portraiture is very clear; fine art is where the photographer's vision matters more than the subject of the photo. The difference, though, is blurred a little in street versus photojournalism photography. Both street photography and journalism capture candid moments, but photojournalism has more research involved and is about exploring a news story. 

I enjoyed the video about still life photography because it connected to paintings. The video made me think of different painting techniques in still life that have been recreated in photography, and it helped me when I was doing the photography categories assignments. 

This is a still life painting I did last year based off a composition I created. 

The product photography section was very informative. I liked the lifestyle shots the most because they can be more dynamic than having just a white background. Contextual shots like that are also more favorable when I am shopping online because it gives me a better sense of how it looks on someone. Recently, my sister did a modeling gig for a coffee shop. One of the pictures I saw was of her drinking a coffee, but she was next to a car, and I thought it was an ad for the car. The coffee looked insignificant in the photo. It goes to show how keeping in mind design principles like scale hierarchy is important because my eye was drawn to the bigger car, not the small coffee cup in my sister's hand. 

Charles Csuri's exploration of morphing human faces and animals reminded me of commercials where they morph objects into their company logo. It is interesting to see how his interests have evolved. Similarly, Nancy Burson would combine people's faces; I have seen many TikToks of people combining celebrity faces for fun. Many leading edge devices that started off as very serious techniques for art or for research are now casual hobbies because of our accessibility to them.