Cassandra

Loving edgy photos

2009-02-26T18:15:00.001-08:00

Being one of those people/photographers that is not a huge fan of heavy post processing, mainly because I still don't really know what I'm doing in lightroom, I found our HDR and Edgy assignment super fun this shoot week. That probably sounds a little strange, what I mean is that I love learning new things and I really enjoy when the opportunity comes along in an assignment to do so, seeing as the further we get into the school year the less time I am finding to explore things on my own.. I have absolutely fallen in love with Edgy photos now, both extreme and very subtle ones.. So here are some of the ones I ended up with..

Aliens are invading...

2009-02-26T18:04:00.000-08:00

Ok so most people that know me know that I'm not into star trek or "space" type things and especially not aliens or anything. So when we got an assignment not to long ago on the theme outer-space I was not the most excited person in the room. But having said that I try to enjoy everything that is thrown my way even if it isn't my favorite thing to do. So I decided to make these images a lot more abstract than most of my photos... if I'm trying something new why not try 2 new things =)

Movie Week Extravaganza!

2009-02-19T20:30:00.000-08:00

Ok so here at PV we’ve had our shoot week this week.. So while lots of my friends are enjoying fun in the sun I’m enjoying a week filled with assignments, papers and tests to study for =) I said enjoying! As part of this week, one of the assignments was to watch 3 movies and blog about them so here it goes.. (Oh and I also want to mention that I recently posted a little note on facebook saying how I’ve been noticing lately how people seem to be saying “extravaganza” after everything to make it sound more fun and how much I love it so I just wanna throw a little thanks to PV for keeping that alive!!)

For my first movie I chose to go to the DT room (with pop and chocolate in hand at 10am) and watch O Brother, Where Art Thou. It has to be said, you don’t have to twist my arm to get me to go see a movie with George Clooney in it. I really enjoyed the movie as a whole; the storyline is a little odd but in a very funny way. Having seen one of the special features (painting with pixels) before hand, I really enjoyed watching the colors and mood of each scene change. I thought it was cool that they shot the whole movie in color knowing they were going to scan “clean” film to a digital file. Once they scanned it to a digital file, they were able to desaturate however much of a scene they wanted to. This gave them full control and also allowed them to film certain scenes over a longer period of time as well as at different times of day.

The second movie I chose was I am Cuba. Now I don’t know if it was all that sugar I had in the morning or if I was getting a little sleepy but this movie was a little harder for me to follow. I think it was a great idea to have 4 short stories compiled to make one movie. I loved that they were showing 4 different (actually even more I would say) perspectives of what Cuba was like at the time. It felt like the camera was moving so much sometimes that you didn’t have time to see the scene, it felt chaotic(obviously the point). I love that the whole movie is in black and white, which definitely adds to the mood. There is also a lot of items that block or are banging into the camera throughout the movie. This is definitely one I will be watching again.

Last but definitely not least, I watched One Hour Photo. I have watched this one before and I love it. Robin Williams is so good at being creepy in this movie; it always takes me a few weeks to forgive him. I was excited to see this movie again because I knew we would get to watch a special feature on white balance, color and mood and I wanted to see how differently I would view it this time around. Watching the movie again, made me realize what an amazing effort and thought they put into every little detail from the color balance of each place (which remains the same throughout) to pauses and facial expressions or the tilt of a head. They had 3 different “main” sets in the movie: Savmart, Sy’s house and the family’s house. Savmart, where Sy (the photo guy) worked, was a very crisp white, Sy’s home had a greenish tint to it and the family’s house had a orange/yellow tint to it. I believe it was the director that referred to the differences in tone/color was a representation of Sy’s Heaven (the store), Hell (his home) and Purgatory (the family’s home). I thought that was really interesting and actually made me love this movie even more!!

More headshots

2009-02-03T20:10:00.000-08:00

We were messing around today, having a good time working on another headshot assignment and I got a great one of Jess... She's lookin a little gangsta =)

"What it do?"

HeadShots

2009-01-25T13:18:00.000-08:00

So for the past couple of weeks we've been working on head shots with Craig (our self proclaimed ADFH) and let me tell you, it's not as easy as it sounds. He's been trying to hammer some rules into our heads but for some reason I go back to doing it the wrong way=) So here is my board assignment for tomorrow!

Hat assignment

2009-01-16T10:51:00.001-08:00

So for those of you who don't know, we had an assignment where we could pretty much do a series on whatever we wanted to but we had to send him our plan before we started working on it.. I already had a plan to do this hats assignment so I figured why not just use this idea...

Candice

Myself

Hamilton

Jill

Andrew

Tracy

Kathleen

John

Jewelry series...

2009-01-08T22:04:00.000-08:00

First of all, I love my friends jewelry line.. She does this with her sister and they are 2 creative geniuses. Second of all, she's easy to take pics of, and we get each others minds going... it's awesome..

Some hat photos..

2009-01-02T12:54:00.000-08:00

I have been meaning to put up some of my hat photos on here but as you can see I have been neglecting my blog for awhile... again. Sorry but christmas was so great i didn't want to spend it on the comp, other than editing photos. So here are a few of Hamilton...

I'll hopefully get around to putting up more, but got to go take some photos now...

Man's best friend

2009-01-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

I went over to my friend's place a while ago, to take pics of her for my hats assignment... I brought my 2 gorgeous dogs because well why not...Little did I know that my one dog, actually my little bro's dog, has now officially taken after him....

Self portrait series

2008-11-26T17:52:00.000-08:00

One of our most recent assingments was to make a series of self portraits. Now I know this might come as a surprise to most people, but I've never really taken pictures of myself before. As it turned out, they were ok but I absolutely love the first one... But I think that might have a lot to do with the meaning behind it... It's for Amadeus! Anyone who knows me, knows how precious that is..

This photograph is supposed to represent my little brother who passed away when he was about 2 months old. We have a foundation in his name and the butterfly is part of that logo.

This image represents a time in my life when we moved around a lot, which wasn't exactly what I wanted to do as a child... But I would jump at the opportunity of moving around now... If I knew then what I know now...haha

This photo represents who I am today.. a strong, confident, independent, humorous girl.

//Cass

My shoot with Candice

2008-10-31T18:47:00.000-07:00

So, here I am telling everyone about my blog and making them check it out and I haven't even bothered to blog at all for the past month... Aweful! But I'm here now and I have so much I could write and so many pictures I could post but instead of being up all night doing that I thought I would post some pictures from a shoot where some turned out really good and some are fairly funny!

So My friend Candice and I went out one day, during shoot week, with the idea of me taking a few pics of her for my assignments.. Well I'll let you judge for yourself...

But the pics that really tell the story about our day are these next ones... Sorry Candice but they're too awesome to not put up here..

I think Candice just discovered she was wearing the coolest zebra print boots ever!!!

So this kind of shows what our day was like. First we laughed....

.....Then we cried...

...Then we laughed again...

I think I said something inappropriate maybe...

You can tell by her face that she has no idea why she is in the tree but my question to her is why did you get in the tree like THAT?? haha

A few black and white pics..

2008-10-01T21:05:00.000-07:00

Beauty/Fashion Photography

2008-09-25T14:58:00.000-07:00

I am really fascinated by fashion and beauty photography. I especially love images that are creative, unique and dramatic. I learnt that there are two main qualities a fashion photographer must have. You need to be great at taking portraits, as well as having a knowlegde of the advertisement market. This includes studying the market and keeping up with the latest fashion trends, using your imagination to create unique images, and being able to sell clothes/products with your photographs. I found a couple of great websites that have some information on this genre. Fashion.net gives you insite on how to break into the fashion industry and Goldprints is about qualities you need to have and things you need to consider as a photographer. Fashion.net also has some great links to other photography websites.

Photo 1 (click on La Creative, scroll down in the selection of the month to H&M 2008, it's the 8th seris of pictures. Picture on left).
I really love this picture on the left because she is filling the frame with the wrap/sweater, and also naturally framing her face with it. There isn't much negative space which allows you to focus the sweater as well as her face. This image was taken by swedish photographer Camilla Akrans. If you have time, there are some other great pictures to check out on this site.

Photo2 (click on fashion & beauty, scroll down and click on the heading beauty, click next to get to the second picture. Picture on left).
I really like that the photographer filled the frame with her face, it really emphasizes the makeup. The angle he took the photo at, as well as the lighting, makes the colors of the eye shadow (and the powder from the eye shadow) really stand out.

Photo 3
I love this shot, the texture of her dress and the ground against the smooth blue sky pulls me in. I also love that her dress is blowing in the wind and isn't dragging on the ground. I'm not sure who took this photo but I will definately be looking it up.

Dana Hoff

2008-09-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

www.danahoff.com

I found this really cool website today, obviously the photographer's name is Dana Hoff. The reason it was so interesting was of course because he had really nice, interesting images but he also had so many different categories. He shoots food, people/travel, residential architecture and commercial architecture photography. Some commercial architecture photography that he does is resorts, schools, malls, etc. I really like his residential photographs and his food photography, but that might just be because I'm starving right now...

Nygård Fashion Show

2008-09-22T13:51:00.001-07:00

Lines, Lemons, Lemonade

2008-09-21T17:07:00.000-07:00

I had a lot of fun with this assignment! I love lines and angles and I have to say I think my umbrella picture is my favorite for that reason. I also think I would've got some great pictures if I had made my way to the exchange, there's so many beautiful buildings down there, but I decided to bring out my smarties and my lemons instead! I really enjoyed playing on lines and colors.

2008-09-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

My first blog was a little lame so hopefully i'll be more creative from now on...

I've changed my blog title to Tina Turner, there's a story behind that but we'll get to that another time, for now i'll tell you a bit about me instead..

I have moved around a lot and lived in three different countries and obviously made my way back to Canada. I loved experiencing life in the different cultures and documenting my journey.

My love for photography started when i was young. I had a mom who NEVER put down her camera and her obsession grew to be mine! A couple of years ago my nephew was born and thats when i really learnt to enjoy taking baby/people pictures! I love capturing moments, facial expressions and the personalities of people.

I am so excited to have started a new adventure in my life, through PrairieView. I can't wait to learn more about lighting and composition. I also have an itch to get into the darkroom and start using my film camera a lot more!

A little secret of mine is that i love swedish candy. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner so i guess it's a good thing I don't live there anymore!

Thanks for reading,
Cassandra

Second Day

2008-09-09T13:19:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody!

Just letting you know what i'm interested in and preparing you for what you'll be seeing a lot of here in the future!

I am mainly interested in portraits and commercial photography (for now).

I am looking forward to a lot of different things here, especially the dark room and black and white photos!

Cassandra

Photo by: Duncan McNairnay