Reading Response #1

I chose these six photographs I took for the first photo assignment because they contrast the dark of night with colors that came from the natural surroundings. In some photos, the light is faint, but fills the frame such as the photo with purple light and the subject as a silhouette. In other photos, the light is more direct. The photo in the center of the street has bright lights and the source of the light is seen inside the frame. In the context of Robert Adams’ landscapes, my photos are taken at night instead of during the peak of the day. The darkness of night is Earth’s shadow, so my photos were actually specifically taken under a big shadow. Secondary shadows can be detected as a result of the neon and LED lights that were on around town, casting light and shadow on certain things. Adams’ landscapes are very candid where mine come off as very staged. On another point, my photos are composed mostly of medium shots and tight angles as opposed to Adams’ wide shots.

I can only relate one of my six photos to Bryan Schutamaat’s photo collection, and that’s the wide shot of my subject standing on the boundary of purple and white light. This is the only photo that fits with Schutamaat’s collection because his close up portraits are all in great light and are perfectly staged, but my portraits were more about moods than representations of the subject. In most of my portraits, the subject is a silhouette and all the things around the silhouette are what’s captured in detail. The peripheral things draw the attention of the viewer.