RGB Love.

Last week for Color and Light, we had to make a photo that showed off three primary colors, either the painter's primaries (RBY) or the photographer's primaries (RGB). I wasn't sure that I would be able to find all three colors together so I told Brent to put on a red shirt and bring his blue jacket and we would look for either yellow or green. I ended up finding both, but I really liked how the image with green turned out. We went exploring in "Old Salem" which is the oldest part of town, with buildings from the 1700's, and came across this old brick wall with really bright green moss on it. Voila:

 My teacher said he really liked it, and he thought it looked like Brent was about to "get all hot and sweaty" going for a big run or something! haha. Brent, running. What a joke.

Ok, actually, when it's not too hot or too cold (which accounts for like 2 weeks out of the year here) he will actually run with me, but the day we took this?? Definitely not.

Anyway, for some reason I really love this picture. The ones I took with the RBY theme just felt too much like a circus, and the circus is creepy (Ok, I've never actually been to one...but I'm guessing they're creepy).

Also, I have a new website! It's not quite fully functional yet, but it's getting there. Check it out:

Courtney McNaught Photography

Subject Intent

This week for my Concept class, we had to pick one subject and photograph is 5 different ways, for 5 different "meanings". The point was that subject matter, can be totally different than the actual subject of an image. For instance, someone might take a picture of a grave, but the subject of the image isn't the tombstone itself, it's death.
In case it's not obvious by now, Brent is totally my new favorite model. Why did I never use him before?? He follows directions (mostly) he's easy to bribe (treats, backrubs, etc), he's readily available, he's fun to be around, he's cute...seriously, I should have started using him a long time ago! I took a couple pictures when we were in bed reading (a new daily occurrence for us before we turn the lights out each night, Brent is reading "Return of the King" in these pics - good choice!) and decided that to keep the series unified I would take them all "in bed"...sexy I know!! Ok, so here are my fab 5:

1) Depictive Subject - show it like it is, the subject matter is the subject. Easy.

 2) Expressive Subject - use the subject matter to express a feeling/mood/emotion. See if you can guess what I was going for here ;)  This is funny because it wasn't staged, he was just getting tired.




















3) Illustrative Subject - use the subject matter to tell a story or create a narrative. Since I finished my books (Abhorsen Series - Garth Nix - highly recommended if you're a fantasy lover like me) Brent has been reading aloud to me, he's got a great "Gollum" voice ;)

4) Statement Based Subject - make a statement about something with subject matter. Can you guess?





















 5) Form Based Subject - the lines/shapes/contours of the subject matter become the subject. This is my favorite!! Haha. Sorry to those of you who hate feet...I know you're out there.

What do you think? Did I nail it?? No grade yet on this one, I'll keep you posted.

The other assignment...

I was going to put these in the last post, but I forgot! So another class I have is called "Photography Concepts" and it's all about having intention in your work and being conscious of all of the decisions that you're making when you snap the shutter (lighting, angle, settings, subject, timing...). This week we were supposed to make two portraits of someone, the first was to be as "objective" as possible, trying to take our "artistic selves" out of the equation. That's really not possible since every choice you make effects the outcome of the picture...but here was my best shot:

I know that the way I cropped and lit the portrait are subjective choices, but I had to make it interesting somehow!!

And the subjective shot - this is Maizey, Teri's baby. She is the funniest dog I have ever met, and we went over to play with her last week when Teri had to neglect her aaaaalll day. Can't you just see the love oooozing out of this photo?? Totally subjective.

Color Temperature...gone horribly wrong...

This week I had two assignments, the first was for my color class and we had to take photos in different types of light (natural and tungsten) using different white balances. To put it simply, your eyes compensate for the different temperatures of lights we see every day from varying sources and we never even have to think about it, and if you put your camera on "auto" it will also compensate for you. BUT, if you're in manual mode on your camera and you use the wrong white balance, such as a tungsten setting in natural daylight, this will happen:



Our challenge was to use the different colorcasts in meaningful ways, not just make it a "technical exercise" and take three shots of the same thing in different types of light (which most people in my class did...can people not read???). So I told Brent to just relax his face and think about nothing so that the color temperature would drive the mood, which I think it does...doesn't he look depressed?? Good shot for Valentines Day ;)

This was the "natural shot" under daylight conditions, with a daylight white balance (though you can see that there is some tungsten coming from behind her). Fitting I think, for such a sweet little girl...





The last shot is tungsten light shot with a daylight white balance and I was going for "creepy" - looking out the dark window across to the neighbors dimly lit house with my blurry reflection hard to make out...I explained this, but my teacher said he didn't really "get it". Whatever! I think it's creepy (though I'll admit it's not my favorite).
Oh yeah, and my theme for this assignment was "Windows"...in case that wasn't clear ;)

Happy V-day by the way! The McNaughties are HUGE fans of cheese fondue (or any fondue really) but we haven't had the best experiences making it ourselves...but this time we got it perfect. Mmmm...Gruyere and Camembert melted to perfection...highly recommended.

ph613: Color and Light...

Color and Light is one of my new classes this semester (and yes, my semester just started last week!). My first assignment was to show how I typically use color in my work...uhhh, typically? I don't feel like I have any kind of "style" yet, so this assignment was tough for me. I decided to just take some pictures that were a little different than what I normally do and see what happened.
My trusty model/reflector holder/kid entertainer Brent came with me and we walked about a block down the street from our house to this little creek that runs under an overpass. As you can see there is tons of "interesting" graffiti down there and it was almost sunset so there was just a little bit of light passing under the bridge. I dared Brent to jump across the creek which I didn't think he would/could actually do, it was probably 7 or 8 feet across, but he cleared it...barely, and I took pictures. Here's the one I turned in:
























And here's one that really shows off the amazing work of the Winston-Salem graffiti artists:























And here is Brent's cool new shirt (thanks Mom):
























Also, it was like 25 degrees outside when we took these and Brent was a good sport to take his jacket off for me (ok, he did whine a lot, but he still did it).

Now onto this week's assignment. Maybe I'll post about it if they turn out!