My Culture (a series)

 I am made up of several different nationalities such as Mexican, Hungarian, Polish, and a few others.  I have been to Hungary twice in my life and that is where most of my relatives are born and raised.  When I first heard about this assignment I wished I could've used the photos I took of my family while in Hungary.  They have such a strong sense of culture there, it is amazing.  As I thought more and more about what I should photograph that represents my family's culture I realized that we don't have nearly any cultural traditions.  There's always the occasional Hungarian meal or a dinner at our favorite German restaurant, but there's no particular god we pray to and there's definitely no strict dress code we have that reflects our culture.  All of these factors put me at a loss as to what to shoot.  I knew that food is a huge part of any kind of family traditions we have so I decided to focus on that aspect.  In the long run I decided to shoot my three brothers from my dad's side of the family and their eating habits.  You could say that the way my dad is raising my brothers and I is the "typical American" way.  Sometimes he'll cook dinner but in most cases we dine out.  Fast food is key to so many mouths to feed, it's cheap, easy, and tasty!  Because of this way of bringing us up, we all have quite the sweet tooth.  The kitchen is filled with name brand sweets.  I feel really strongly about this aspect of my American culture.  I believe it is as valid as anyone else's more "traditional" culture.
  I decided to put everything but my brothers and any food item in grayscale.  I did this so that the focus wouldn't be on the rather colorful background that my dad's house seems to have.  The focus is strictly on the children and their junk food of choice.  All of these photographs are not posed.  I informed my brothers that I would be taking their pictures but I needed them to just ignore the camera.  This was successful in each picture except for the one of Cody in the kitchen next to several boxes of cereal.  Despite the obviousness of his camera shyness in this photograph, I still liked the message it sent because it is the most colorful box of cereal in that kitchen and he chose it.  Advertisement towards younger kids at it's finest.  Each food item my brothers snacked on were ones of their choice, I had no influence among them.
  My brothers are J.J. (8 years old), Cody (5 years old), and Dylan (1 year old).  I feel like their ages are significant with what they are eating.  They have no desire to pick a healthy choice like an apple because who can reject a cherry slurpee?

Timeline: Firsts in Photography

We had to pick significant times in photography history that were all apart of the same theme.  For example, Kayleigh and I chose the firsts in photography, meaning we focused on all of the very first significant times in photography.  On our timeline we have the first camera phone, the first photograph with a person in it, et cetera.  This was a fun assignment because we were able to express our creativity through the arts and crafts side of making the timeline.  We made a fold-able that is in the shape of a number one and stuck to a black and white color scheme.  This assignment was different from our others because we did not have to take any pictures and we had to research what our project was featuring.

Portrait

The assignment was to take a portrait in natural lighting with a model that was not posing.  This assignment was rather easy for me because taking portraits often require being well-acquainted with the model so that they feel comfortable being photographed without posing.  This was an easy task because I am best friends with my model and have known her for several years now.  I chose the location in front of the front office where the little garden is because I wanted a somewhat neutral yet interesting background.  I feel like the tree behind her achieved this.  Also, it was sort of difficult to find nice looking natural lighting where the sun or the shade wasn't overbearing around campus.  I enjoyed this assignment because it was easygoing, a bonding experience, and the result came out beautifully if I do say so myself.

Strobe

This photo assignment was fun but also rather difficult.  There was so much freedom given to us to decide who we wanted to photograph, where we wanted to take the photographs, and how we wanted to capture part of the essence of SCPA.  All of these freedoms were greatly appreciated because it offered a great outlook for each of our artistic expressions.  These freedoms were also hard to manage because we had to just leap into the project head first without any concrete rules.
Working with the strobe was very interesting.  It was neat to see how many different looks we could get with that source of lighting.
My group and I chose to shoot in the scene shop in the Grand Theatre.  We all agreed on this location because we wanted to represent the technical theatre aspect of SCPA because we felt that this art rarely gets any credit.  This location worked well for our photographs because there is so much to look at which keeps the onlooker interested without feeling overwhelmed.  This location was perfect for representing the building aspect of the technical theatre art.  It represents the chaos, dirty, and artistic sides of stagecraft.