Brooklyn (my new neighborhood)

Currently I am on internship up in the great NYC. Of course I can't afford to live in Manhattan where I work, so I live in Brooklyn. My neighborhood is called Bed-Sty by the locals. It seems to be a very community oriented place. On warm days everyone is out on the street spending time with their neighbors. There are community gardens, walls covered in graffiti, coffee shops, corner grocery stores, parks, schools, and churches in my neighborhood. It is very different from my North Carolina home, but I am enjoying my stay. The lower picture is of my house. I live in the room to the left of Elizabeth (who is sitting in the doorway). I live with about 50 internationals students, or so it seems. The rest of the pictures show typical scenes of my neighborhood.

Capture: Sony Cybershot (the point and shoot wonder)

Daisy

This is my last self promo assignment. Again I wanted to get out of the studio. I was walking through the woods and the fields during the morning and saw this daisy covered in dew drops. When I got under the flower the sun came through the petals and made the dew drops show up. I used my exposure to get the background to go black. You can see the flower in the field below (my shadow is pointing to it). I LOVE being outside!



Capture: Canon EOS 10D, 90mm macro lens, exposure 1/125s at f13 ISO 100, only levels and color balance used in Photoshop

Autumn the North Carolina Mountains

For my last two self promo assignments, I wanted to get out of the studio and back into nature. I had seen this tree from a distance (look below) and drove around the mountain to get a closer look. The composition looked nicer than I had expected allowing me to put emphases on this one red tree against the green grass and blue sky.



Capture: Canon EOS 10D, lens 24-105mm, exposure 1/60s at f13 ISO 100, shot at 11:03 AM. Photoshop used to remove extra tree.

Human Female Karyotype

Our assignment for client six was to illustrate something that has made us who we are today. After having thoughts of slide-shows of my whole life with movies included, I realized what a big project that would be and got back to the basics of what makes me me. That is when I got the idea of using a sperm and an egg. I had trouble coming upon an electron scanning micrograph overnight to photograph a sperm and an egg, so again to the drawing board. What happens when you put a sperm and an egg together... well the baby gets a chromosomes from the dad and the mom. This is ordered in a kayrotype... how to photograph this? Ah ha! Be the chromosomes! Here I am, acting as my chromosomes would act. I looked up a picture of a karyotype and posed how the chromosomes looked. More photoshop (adding to my carpal tunnel and migrane attack) and no sleep later I got this image. I think it turned out pretty well. I guess this is how I am going to use my biology degree. Hmmmm, now how do I make a living?

Photographs taken by the amazing Ashley Ross!

Capture: Nikon D200, 20mm lens
Lighting: 2 750 Fresnel hot lights against a white wall
Photoshop by me = no sleep

What to wear?

This photograph combines 14 pictures that I did fancy Photoshop work to blend together. A bit of carpal tunnel syndrome and one large migraine later, I have this silly image. I wanted to make it look like I couldn't decide what to wear in the morning, so I tried on everything in my closet. It is a pretty fun picture. I might like to use this method again for other image creations.

Lighting: One Alien Bee monolight with an umbrella put in the corner of the room.
Capture: Canon EOS 30D, lens EF24-105mm, exposure 1/125s at f/11 set on self timer.

Hot Mama

This is my beautiful Mom. We spent about 24 hours doing this photo shoot which left me ragged at the end. While we were doing it though, we had fun planning out outfits and locations for our photo shoot. I couldn't have asked for a better model. (I hope you like these Mom!)

Lighting: Used White Lightning mono lights with soft boxed, umbrellas and reflectors, also used a reflector card to work with the sun.

Capture: Canon EOS 30D

ahhhh, cheesy love

For my fourth self promo assignment, I decided to photograph myself and Simon in this lovely pose. We were at a wedding in Charlotte and had two hours to do this assignment between the brunch and the wedding. I like how our clothes matched, I call it my JCrew add. This was photographed in the shade with a self timer so I could be in the picture too. I used an on camera flash with the white part of a soft box taped over the light in order to get a soft diffused light.

Last Moth of the Season

This I believe is the last moth of the year! A few nights ago there were so many moths displaying their fabulous colors under the light of my front porch, so I decided that I was going to photograph one. The next night I set up for three hours in the nearby field with a white sheet a inviting lights and no moths were in sight. It had just gotten cold and the moths were dead I think. After a day of photographic dispair, I woke the next morning to see my cat chasing a moth inside my house. This moth had survived by coming into the warmth. I set up my lights in the house as you can see here and photographed the moth against a white background. In Photoshop I inverted the image to make a digital negative and put the two images side by side as you see here. The last moth of the year in all of its glory!

Capture: Canon 5D, Tamron macro lens, Photoshop CS2 editing

Layne and Katie

These portraits of Layne (red hair) and Katie were taken for an assingment. Our goal was to photograph individuals against a clean white background without flare. You can see how this shot was setup above. I photographed Layne first, she is in her first year at RCC and is an amazing model. Her energy made this project fun. I allowed the white background to go gray in this photograph which cannot be seen here due to my cropping. Therefore I reshot this assignment with a new model. Katie (blonde hair) was aso a wonderful model. I managed to create a clean white background this time which you can see because I put the full frame here. This assignment was the first time I tried to work with models I had just met in this sort of posed setting.

Capture: Mamiya 645, Kodak E100 film, scanned via Imacon Flextight Precicion II scanner

Us and Them

The third client assignment required taking a cover photograph of something that symbolically illustrates a book called Us and Them: A History of Intolerance in America. The book cover also had to be appropriate for high school students. After losing sleep over what to photograph, I chose to photograph a chess board. I think the positioning of the pieces on the board, as related to this symbolism, displays tension, strategy, competition, and togetherness of race and gender relations.
My goal is that the audience will read into the image as far as they wish. I captured this image at home using an alien bee mono light (with a shirt used as a diffusion screen) and a reflector card (held up by a kitchen chair).

Capture: Canon EOS 10D, 1/60s at f2.8

Appalachian Trail Flora and Fauna

On rainy days in the Southern Appalachians, these little salamanders, Notophthalmus viridescens, came out onto the trail. Luckily they were bright or else I would have stepped on them. This salamander is in its juvenile red eft form.

I photographed these plants that are displaying guttation in the above tree line alpine zone of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I love how the colors complement each other so well.

Capture: Sony Cybershot, (the camera had to be small for my long hike)

Self Promo Assignment 1: Betta Fish

This is the first self promotional assignment for my commercial program. I decided to try to mimic David Liittschwager and Susan Middleton's style of photography. To get the clean white background, I placed a soft box behind the fish. The picture below shows how I initially set up the lighting. For the final picture, I added another soft box above the fish on the left and a strobe with a reflector above the fish on the right. These light illuminated the front of the fish. I also added more black cards around the fish to reduce glare.

The final image is a composite of three images. (There actually was only one fish.) Being able to photograph a subject like this was what prompted me to come to school in the first place. I am excited that I was able to create this image. Now I have to improve upon what I have learned.

Capture: Mamiya RB67 with a Leaf Aptus 17 digital back, 1/30s at f11, ISO 400, 120 mm lens