Intro

Welcome viewers to my Black and White photography blog. This is a one time off blog, where I have posted 15 Black and white photos that I have developed during my photo class with Mark Kirchner at Soka University of America.

These 15 photos are scanned and resized in windows paint. No digital touch up has been done to these photos. The burning or dodging effects were done manually in the darkroom. I have not taken any film photography class prior to this class but I have been experimenting with digital photography for about 2 and a half years now.

The purpose of this photo blog is to share with my friends and the viewers of this blog, my artwork. The reason for creating this blog is to share what I have done in Mark's class with my friends and with the hope that this would spark some of their interest in photography.

Happy viewing and I hope would be able to take something from this entire experience.

PS: On the right of the blog there is a section with the blog archive. Those are the titles of the photos. Please use it when viewing the photos because blogspot does not go in sequence in terms of the older post.

The final project would be ended before April 2011.

1. The Rays of Hope

BACKGROUND

This is my first ever black and white photo that was captured and developed by me in the darkroom. This photo was taken right in front of Soka University of America's Founders building. It was around 9.30am in the morning and I saw the sun rays at the edge of the roof of the building hitting some of the leaves from the tree.

No matter how difficult the situation may be, we must always carry a hopeful spirit just like the rays that brighten the edges of the leaves after a heavy storm.

2. The Finer Things in Life

BACKGROUND

I was given the assignment to capture narrow depth of field and I was lucky that on that day, Bon Appetite was promoting some competition regarding fresh farm food. The picture was captured wide open at f1.7. At first, when I saw this picture on the contact sheet, I was disappointed that it was all out of focus. However, Mark encouraged me to developed a copy to see how it looks. I must say, the picture is sharp.

The finer details are the ones that make a difference in seeing the bigger picture in life.

3. Smile

BACKGROUND

It was raining the entire week and rather than just capture narrow depth of field of just simple objects, I thought it would be a good idea to experiment narrow depth of field with portrait shots. I was extremely lucky and grateful to have one of my close friend Charmaine to pose for a couple of shots because she was really busy that week. I must admit that she has sort of positive playful energy in her. Even Mark pointed out the positivity that she was portraying in the photos.

Life is like a mirror, we get the best results when we smiled at it.

4. Decisions

BACKGROUND

The only light source that we had was the ceiling light and a table lamp but I was glad that it turnout as how I have felt it when pressing the shutter button. The reason I pick to develop this photo was that the photo gave me a very inviting and warm gesture. The body language shows a very relax and carefree persona. However, another reason that I choose to publish this photo is that I used the wrong burning technique but to my surprise, the burning effect was better than the imagined planned burning technique.

There is no right or wrong decisions in life. Decisions that you thought was a terrible mistake might turn out to be the correct one after all.