I did not print this picture because of the lack of story and the crappy execution. Obviously this is way to dark, and blurry. I did enjoy the blurryness because it seemed to give the portrait a certain feel. I really kinda feel connected to Bono (the bird) even though he bites me 24/7! He hates me, yet...I feel connected to him. He can sing cool songs and dances like a Lil' Wayne! That's what he was doing in this picture. How does one dance like Lil' Wayne, you ask? By bobbing your head and shaking your booty!


I wish I printed this one. It spent me a long time to get and it looks pretty cool. What I did is turn off all the lights in my room and attach my reading light to my book. Set my shutter to 60 seconds and let it fly! I turned the pages and texted a bit. I honestly think this is a cool image. It also tells a story of the Waterford life. I'm always staying up late to do homework, by myself in the darkness of the night.




Printed: This is our good friend Thatcher. At first when I took this photo, I thought to myself "This is a junkie shot." But sagely I did not delete it. This image tells such a great story! I love how can't Thatcher's face isn't present. It leads to mystery and wonder. Also, his sitting position is kinda awkward, or different. This even makes me wonder why he is sitting like that. It may be because of the checkers board on the table in front of him. Maybe he has lost to me (yet again) in a solid, fierce game of checkers. Or maybe he's out of lemonade. The sigh of his face shows disappointment. Only Thatcher and I will know why he was frowning.




Printed: This facial expression is super cool. Although Mr. Slade might say this is not a portrait, I think it totally is though. His cheeks and face and eyes tell something about him. Even his hair. They all say, this is something interesting about my brother, Elliott. This image was a bit gray so I had to increase exposure and bring up blacks.



Printed: Once again you could argue this is not a portrait. I honestly don't think this one really is. But it looks pretty darn cool. And it kinda does tell another story about my brother. We love just doing stupid tricks on the trap with a basketball.


Same with the above picture. Not really a portrait, but pretty sweet if you ask me. Now, here's my questions, can an action-sports photo ever be a portrait?



Printed: This is my favorite portrait I took for this assignment because of a few reasons. One, it took my FOREVER. My family doesn't believe in being nice and didn't help me shoot this. What I did was take a waste basket, turn it upside down, sit where I wanted to be in the picture, focus it on the waste basket, place camera on waste basket facing me, put a 10 second timer on, press shoot and then get into position.

Two, this picture has a pretty cool meaning. The song I'll These Things That I've Done by The Killers was an inspiration to this photo. If you've heard the song, you know they main lyrics to the song are as follows "I got soul, but I'm not a soldier" (You might also know there is a Nike commercial featuring this song and its friggin sweet). These lyrics explain this picture. I wanted to somewhat show this idea of having the work, effort, passion, soul for something, but maybe not being the most talented at it. The word 'Warrior' on the hat illustrates soldier and the idea I look sad or depressed is that idea of wanting to be a solider, while being unable to, although I have the soul to do it.

Now, this is suppose to be something I'm not. So am I illustrating myself as someone who has soul? No. I'm saying I'm not a warrior, I'm not that soldier. Thank you, The Killers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Printed: I printed this one also, I do not know if I'm going to turn it in. This tells a pretty good story. First off, I would like to say--LEGO's ARE RACIST AND SEXEST. They are all the same race and sex, and that is completely and unconventionally not fair. Anyways, let's actually get to the picture. The story behind this is a guy and girl are holding hands, in love and then there's a guy on the left side who is sittin' there quite awkwardly. He has his hand in the air, cause I was showing how awkward it is in this situation. Its just plain out awksauce.

The composition of this picture is two white posters used to make a make-shift background. I didn't have any girl lego's cause lego's are racist, so I drew one. I boosted up the background exposure and made the charectors a little blacker.

Printed: Similar story as to the one above. I like this technically more though. The exposure is better, the focus is more direct. This tells another story of a guy and girl in love, holding hands. Can I just say I hate holding hands. I find it annoying. I love this lego's face. Its just hilarious. Just stare at his face....stare....his beard is funny.

Printed: This is a stuffed dog of the Dog Collection. I wanted to take a picture of him because his eyes and huge nose. They just tell such a story of innocence and cuteness and childish. I kinda had problems shooting people because my family doesn't like to get their picture taken, and I had technical difficulty because of bad exposures and blurryness. So I resorted to a story I wanted to tell, via a stuffed animal. The focus and detail on this is pretty intense.

Printed: I thought this would be a cooler picture than it was. I thought it would tell such a sweet story of this crazy person that represents who I am. A lost, crazy, one eyed, chocolate weirdo. This image kinda reminds me of the Madhatter in Alice in Wonderland. The lighting is cool, because I used florescent lamp. It might be a little dark, but I wanted it to be a low-key shot because I thought it fit the picture nicely.

Once again the shirt off, adds to the image. It makes it seem more gloomy, which was my goal. This is suppose to be something I'm not, in this image I wanted to show an idea of depression, giving up and failure. Which is something, I do not want to be. At all. I try really hard to never give up and complain, I try to go threw somethings and just get past the nasty falls. I really like the exposure and focus (once again I did the same focusing technique as the other self-portrait) although I think it could be a little darker because it matches the story and idea.

More Work From School--Belly Shots

This assignment was a lot more fun than the last one. I think it was because there was less restraint..I didn't have to shoot with a complete white background or a complete black background. During this assignment I had to shoot everything from the ground and portray how their meaning might be interpreted differently because they were shot on the ground. On your belly is also known as the "Heroic Position" which means shooting from this position can change the meaning of a picture, making it more important.

These are the four I printed and turned in.


This is my favorite picture I've taken in this class. During this assignment I wanted to show how important and big soccer is in my life. It's like all I do. ALL I DO. 24/7. Even though its just a game, where a bunch of losers kick a ball in a square, it means more than that. Its the language every nation speaks, its the tie between peoples. It manipulates minds, twists thoughts, changes the world. Its so much more than a game.

For this picture, I used the re-touch tool on some of the scratches in the ball. I left some of them because I wanted to keep it in the realm of reality, but I felt they were a bit distracting. Also, I wanted to make the contrast high, especially on the ball. I used the color tool to do that. I lowered the reds to make them darker. I love the composition of this photo--its sharp, the background is solid, and the contrast and exposure makes it interesting.

These are my cleats. I love them. They are "super-duper" light and really easy to play soccer in. Once again I wanted to show the idea of the cleats being more important than they are interpreted. I wanted the underscore the sun coming off the boot. So they label of "F50" and the top left corner. The label is less light than I wanted to and I should have used the paintbrush tool to make it lighter (Stupid Avery. Think before you print it.) I really really really like how the light bounces off the shoe in the top left corner.

I didn't have to make a ton of edits for this picture. I lowered the exposure and raised the whites and yellows.


This is my second favorite. I tried to take this picture from the angel of the ball in the net. One thing Charlie said about it was "I've never seen this angle from a soccer goal before." I almost agree. I've played soccer since I could walk and I've never thought of this before. I've never thought of a soccer ball having eyes and I've never wondered what it would see inside the goal. I think I did a good job of portraying this in this image.

I took a couple different versions of this picture. I focused on the actually base of the tredmill and other spots, but I chose this one because I felt it was the most interesting and told the better story of texture. I was worried this would be too dark, but I like the tredmill being black because it is black and I love the lightest parts of this picture. I love how light popped off of the top left and in the middle.




This doesn't tell a great story like the rest of them. I was just shooting different angles of the ball. But this image kinda shows how the ball "feels". Its all beat up and scratched and torn, due to my poor accuracy on goal. I have missed so many times, I have killed two trees in my back yard because I break their branches.

This image has great focus and textures and contrast. I really like how I printed it.


This was me playing with the paintbrush tool. I kinda wanted this feel for the picture above, but this is too dramatic. I wanted to label to be this bright because, this is what makes this cleat special. Its not just a cleat, its a special boot. Its the greatest boot ever. I wanted to highlight that.

These our girl scout cookies. Enough said. Super Important to my life. Super duper uper foshuper deliciouso! This is totally my least favorite picture. The focus isn't super good...its kinda gray. It doesn't tell a super sweet story, but it fits the assignment.


These are also delicious (I really like food, can you tell.) I did want to show delicious food. I wasn't on my belly for this one, I'll admit it. I was on the counter. I do love the focus and exposure in this photo! es muy bien. Kinda a lame story however.

Famous Person Day

Feeling Good (Prior to 5 Hr Ride)

75 Mile Race

Stuff From School

Man, these are so hard as Mr. Slade said. But I think I did well at telling a story compared to last time. But I had some computer calibration problems. So the following are what my prints should look like, but they came out of the printer different.



So obviously this is a wii controller. I focused on the "A" because my name starts with A. And I just wanted to show that. Also, I had a family wii tournament and I was like "HEY! This controller is white. Let's show I like wii via a photo."

I think the image works well with this assignment, I like how it blends in with the background. But I also think there are enough darks and shadows to make the image interesting and not bland.





These are Jelly Bealies. This is a fantastic story. I was taking pictures downstairs on my desk...pondering what other things I could shoot that were plain white and black. At the time I was very happy because I had a great big bag of yellow lemon jellies. SO GOOD. Then I remembered I had a bag of white jellies upstairs. Brilliant. I gleefully and gaily (gay-ly)skipped up the stairs to retreive my jellies. So this image tells a story of the wonderfullness of jellies.

I had some focusing errors on this image....because it was in focus in color but when I switched it to greyscale it looked less in focus.

P.S. The lemon jellies are better than these white ones.



This is a speaker I used probably six-gagillion times a day. Its my best friend. I do homework with these speakers on, I sleep with these speakers on, I shower with these speakers on. So it seemed fitting to take a picture of them. They are my favorite. AND also I wanted to show they were a big part of my life so I made them large, aka I took a close up picture.

This is the one I finally realized my computer was miscallibrated. I wanted to make this as dark as possible because I wanted to highlight the Logitech symbol because Logitech is so awesome.


This is a wallet, my wallet. A very empty wallet. This tells a story of my poor poverty. I have no money and its stinks. It just so happens to be that my wallet is pure black.

I really like the composition of this photo. I just like the waves of the fabric.

More Snow Canyon

Snow Canyon Utah

Jenny's Canyon

Barging In

Shake It Up

Too Tired Today

Old School

Worn Steps (150 Year's Old) at Shattuck-St. Mary's

Bottlecap Decor at Harley Davidson Burger Shop

Into The Clouds

http://feeds.feedburner.com/GreyscalegorillaPhotos

Queens Cemetery

Extreme Advertising

View of Times Square from My Room

Piggy

I regret that I was not able to get my camera out fast enough to
record pigboy shoving an entire candybar in his mouh at one time...

Hookie Day Skiing at Alta, UT

Photo Contest

Don't forget about the photo contest!

Oh Conan

I MISS YOU CONAN!!!!!!!

Here's a tweet he tweeted on his twitter account

Today I connected all the freckles on my arm with a Sharpie. It spells out RIKSHAZ9LIRK. Clearly I am The Chosen One.

New Favorite Quote?

I think so!

“If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together.. there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we’re apart.. I’ll always be with you.”


~Winnie The Pooh

Get Your Groove on Coach!!

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/blog/the_dagger/post/Marquette-s-Buzz-Williams-shows-off-his-dance-mo?urn=ncaab,226155