Individual Project Proposal

In the remaining weeks of this semester, I really want to create works that mean something to me. I want to work on improving my portraiture, first of all. I want to create images of people that make the subject feel good about themselves. I know how much of an impact a well-constructed photo can have on a person’s self esteem and I want to be able to do that. Though I am a novice photographer in comparison to many and I am limited on my available props and supplies, I want to learn to work with what I have and improve on my ability to achieve that aesthetically appealing image. It makes me happy to see people feel good about how they look, and I want to be able to contribute to that if I can. It just makes me feel nice to be able to make people smile! Also I just generally love portraiture and what all you can do with it.

Secondly, I want to work on creating works that evoke a sense of nostalgia. Even if that feeling is only present in the image for myself and not other viewers as I want some of the images I create to be based off my own memories. But I hope to make my works so that they are still visually appealing to the viewer regardless. If you have spoken to me at all, it is likely at some point I have mentioned my atrocious memory. I am constantly writing things down so I don’t forget and if you tell me your name I likely won’t remember it the first time. Or the second time. Maybe even the third time. But its not intentional, I promise! That being said, there have been times that I have totally forgotten certain events or moments that made me happy until someone else reminded me of them. Those are memories I want to preserve and I hope that with this project I am able to create images that are representative of some of those moments that I can look back on whenever I want and sort of experience them all over again. Hopefully with these images I wont forget about those memories again.

I keep up with a decent number of photographers on social media and for my research I primarily want to find out how exactly they do what they do. A lot of the artists I look up to are not what you would call traditionally famous but more so just social media famous. Brandon Woelfel, Geo Leon, and your_ptashka on Instagram are artists I often look to for inspiration. Brandon Woelfel and Geo Leon for their creative and stunning portraiture and your_ptashka for the fanciful and nostalgic feel that her work evokes as that is the kind of thing I want to accomplish in my own work. Some of these artists have been known to create tutorials so my next step is to find those and figure out how I can put their techniques into place in my own work.

Brandon Woelfel

Your_Ptashka

Geo Leon

Though I do pull a lot of inspiration from other artists most of my inspiration comes primarily from my own memories and sometimes from my dreams. I do keep a sketchbook so any time I recall an influential memory or have a dream that has some sort of impact on me I write something down about it or I make a sketch of some kind. I have pages full of thumbnail sketches so that is where I plan to draw a lot of my work from.

I will be working with one of the college’s Canon Rebel T6 cameras and might potentially rent out one of the tripods depending on how I decide to approach this project. I think with this project I might also want to work with photoshop a little bit. In the past I have been kind of against using photoshop. First of all, I only had one class in it and don’t really know how to use it effectively, and secondly, in a way it kind of felt like cheating. But recently I have been keeping up with some photographers who use photoshop and they create some amazing images. So, I think I want to try it. Especially with my memory inspired images. I think I could come up with some cool effects. I will also be creating a series of prints for both my portraiture and what I will call my “memory” project and I am really excited for that. I have always thought it would be neat to be able to create and sell little packs of postcards with my photography on them but I have no idea how to do that properly so I am hoping what we learn about creating prints will help me with that.

I want to try and set aside time at least two to three days a week to work on my project. My class schedule this semester is a bit odd, as I am sure many of our schedules are this semester. My schedule is decently packed on Mondays. My first class is at 11 and my last class ends at 7:30. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays I only have one class but it is very demanding and requires excessive amounts of out of class time so I try to set aside those days for that class. So I am thinking I will try to work on Wednesday evenings, Friday evenings, and Saturdays and see how that works. Though this schedule might change slightly due to my varying work schedule.

Updates on my individual project will be posted through this blog weekly and photographs from photo challenges will be posted periodically on their assigned due dates.