Spring 2019
ARS 402
Grayson Gallo
February 26, 2019
TITLE: Observations in Color and Light, 2019
INTRODUCTION: I’ve been taking pictures as long as I’ve had a smart-phone. More recently, in August of 2017, I got an introductory DSLR and started making images for photography classes. I went on in the beginning of 2018 to learn how to operate a film camera. All the while, I’ve felt very inspired. I enjoyed greatly what I was doing. However, I have noticed that without assignments given to me by my professors, I am much less adamant about photography. This greatly upsets me. My goal is to use my camera how I believe one is meant to be used; as an extension of oneself.
Another thing I enjoy but don’t do enough is create audio-visual projects. I spend most of my free time on Garageband creating music which oftentimes goes no further than my laptop. My ADHD-like tendencies restrict me from sitting down to complete a project. Moving forward, this is something I aspire to do. I want to utilize our class’ objective as a reinforcing motivation to have a final product.
With that being said, I have many goals for this project. My first goal is to realize how this project will take form. There will be two components of this project: images and audio-visual video. Ideally, I would like to large-scale print all of the images but due to monetary restrictions, will probably only be able to print a couple, two to four, poster-sized (24x36in) images. (That is unless I get a grant from the art department!) All unprinted images will most likely be shown on a looped slideshow. However, this makes me concerned with how the second part of the project will simultaneously be shown. I’m essentially talking about a video. For the sake of being practical, I will most likely upload this video on Youtube of Vimeo to be projected. My concern is that in our classroom we only have one projector.
Now, the guts of the project: Observations in Color and Light, 2019. I feel that this is the project that I have been building up too throughout my career in the Stony Brook arts program. From the beginning, I had been more drawn to black and white photography. There was something about the style that, probably because this is how photography started out, seemed more immortal. I could go out and take a black and white photograph today and if there were no telling tech, one would not be able to differentiate decade. My love for black and white photography only furthered in Spring 2018 while taking a black and white film photography class. Afterwards I had taken “Color and Light Photography” in Fall 2018. However, this class dealt with the space of a studio and how to manufacture color and light inside of it. In this class, we were very much in charge of these two aspects. It is here where I stray for this upcoming project. My project will deal with how I strive to further observe color and light in my day to day surroundings.
SYNOPSIS: Observations in Color and Light, 2019 will serve as a project retrospect of my short time dealing with the medium of photography, videography and six year addiction to the Garageband application. In this collection of images and video, I will seek to push myself to not be so complacent with the outcomes of professor-directed projects. In the past, I had only done what was required of me for my photography classes. Luckily, with such an open-ended project as this, I am forced to utilize the camera in a way I aspire to for the rest of my life: as an extension of me. Color and light are the two driving themes of my project. Not in the traditional (class-wise/studio) sense, but rather making images which could otherwise not be made without that exact moment. What I will be capturing is not artificial, and will never be able to be captured again. This is for a documentary course. The location of this documentary is wherever I am. There are no restrictions on time. The output of the project will be two to four poster-sized (24/36in) images as well as a slideshow of at least 25 images. Accompanied will be a video dealing with the same theme. I require no external accommodations or equipment except possibly printing images in our department rather than Staples. But that, like this whole synopsis, is subject to change.