Forgot My Lens at Home

which is 14hr flight away from here.

Month: March 2018

Portraiture

Mar 17, 2018 @ Cancun

Camera: Nikon D750

Lens: AF-S NIKKOR 24-120mm


Self Portraits

Relief I

 

Relief II

 

Connection


Portraits of Friends

Escape I

 

Escape II

 

Escape III


Portraits of Strangers

Entertainer I

 

Entertainer II


Reflection

I enjoyed this project way more than any other previous projects. I started photography with portraits and fell in love with it. In the beginning, I did portraits in order to capture the moment that the subjects didn’t even know it existed. And I did portraits for strangers since this semester as a traveler. For me, the local people represented the place more than tourist spots. Every time I shared those photos with others, I had a story to go with the image. This gradually became how I live my gap semester in Stony Brook. And I really like it.

Color Protrait

Lina

   

Lina didn’t have a strong conviction on color. She appreciated the vibrancy brought by color. She admired the simplicity of black and white. She was like a blank page in the notebook, waiting for any color to ignite her world. Yet she wore all blue on the day we talked. I guessed she still liked a little more. So if she were a notebook, it must be the one with blue lines.


Jason

There is an interesting contradiction in Jason. He didn’t like red because that made him prominent in the crowd. He preferred grayscale or low-key color. He didn’t want to be famous, either. However, he was also a track and field athlete. He would eventually stand out from people if he won the race. I imagined the moment of he being the star on the playground, he would shine in his own way, like a piece of grey in the middle of red.

Portraiture Photographer

Robert Mapplethorpe

Self Portrait, 1972

His self-portrait caught my attention at first sight. Unlike other photographers, whose self-portraits looked obviously shot by themselves, Mr. Mapplethorpe’s self-portraits didn’t look like “selfies” to me. Whether he looked at the camera or not in the photos, the expression through his eyes was so strong, vivid, yet natural at the same time, as if there was another photographer shooting for him.

Self Portrait, 1985

When being a photographer for too long, sometimes I feel shy to stand in from of the camera and be the subject in the photo. However, it was not a problem for Mr. Mapplethorpe. He managed to capture the expression of people as well as express himself in his photography. That’s really impressive and admirable to me.

Image source: The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation


Francesca Woodman

Polka Dots, 1976

Francesca Woodman’s self-portraits were extreme to me. I felt she was afraid of the camera or the thing behind it through her eyes. However, she tried so hard to convey her anger, fear, and desperate through the photos. She looked like a captured prisoner who already lost her mind. To amuse herself in the prison, she started to act outrageously.

Untitled, 1977–1978

The atmosphere around her self-portraits was heavy. I almost felt suffocated when browsing through her pieces.  Again, what caught my attention was still that her pieces didn’t look like “selfies”. But this time, I think it was because she felt so depressed that she ignore the camera and everything around her.

Image source: Artnet

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