For my final project I had the idea to do imaging of imaging in healthcare. I thought of this project because I aspire to become a physician and go into the healthcare career. Imaging has become an extremely useful tool for diagnosis and screenings; it has shaped healthcare tremendously. I want to capture the impact it has on providing care to patients, as well as, the procedure and resulting product. The difficulty with this project is access to medical equipment; the hospital has high-security when it comes to such devices and I need to figure out a way to gain access for a period of time to shoot.

This idea is novel, as far as my knowledge. Not many, if any, have dipped their toes in the artistic representation of imaging. In this aspect, I have no examples to learn from; however, it gives me the liberty to take initiative and set the mold for such a type of images.

Some types of medical imaging are:

1. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): uses powerful magnets to polarize and excite hydrogen nuclei in water molecules in human tissue. This excitation causes the positively charges to spin in the opposite direction and this can be produced as an image. MRIs create 2D image representations.
2. Ultrasound: uses high frequency sound waves in the MeHz range that are reflected by tissue to varying degrees to produce (3D) images.
3. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans: uses gamma rays emitted by a positron-emitting radionuclide (F-14) which is administered to the patient and is taken up in the body like glucose. The 3D image produced by computer analysis is used to determine brain function, cancer metastasis (spreading to other site), etc.

For my deliberate color project, I want to experiment with a lack of light, aka the “color” black. A true black is a lack of light, a vacuum. In a vacuum there is nothingness. A vacuum brings a sense of suffocation and there being a lack of something. For me, that something is a lack of emotion. This lack of emotion is suffocating, ironically. This piece will explore the irony of the color black and the emotion that it brings along with it (blankness, nothingness).

It will be near impossible to convey this image to the audience without presenting other colors in the light spectrum. These colors will add value, definition, contour, and form to the photo. Each color will bring a range of emotions to the viewer (these emotions will be especially heightened if the picture’s background is black, or lacking). I need to carefully pick my colors to portray the right emotion and choose my subjects’ stance appropriately. My main aim is to shoot portraitures.

Isak mentioned today in class to explore the idea of dark current. This is a physics phenomenon that I will explain further in a later post. 

I looked into the rain room at the MOMA and that gave me the idea of using silhouettes as the area of the image where I will emphasize the black color and its background will be another color that will compliment the emotion of the silhouette.

http://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/simple-steps-for-shooting-amazing-silhouettes–photo-2447

Here is another aesthetic involving vignetteing:

Photos of Shadowy Vignettes of a Woman’s Life Silhouetted Behind a Backlit Screen

Here is another example of silhouettes in dance form:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvQBUccxBr4

A few more examples of how to capture the darkness/vacuum of black that swallows someone.

I like the smoke idea here and can use different “filters” on the lamp to capture the smoke in different colors. The “filters” can be created using transparent fabric of different colors.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?193649-DSLR-vs-HVX-Still-Battle-Silhouette

Plain light

Light on Chin Light on eye

 With mirrorWithout mirror With mirrorWithout mirror