Angelo Merendino

American photographer Angelo Merendino took photos of his wife, Jennifer, through every stage she fought with Cancer. It shows a struggle that people don't think about until it happens to them. This was found using Reddit/Imgur and all credit goes to him as these are his photos. The photo album listed below is the photos set in order without any extra photos he added later. His website shows all of their photos, including ones not involved in this 'set' so to speak. The website also talks about their relationship in full, telling their whole story.

The photo album:
http://imgur.com/a/Po7i1/layout/horizontal#0

The link to his website:
http://mywifesfightwithbreastcancer.com/

Shutter Speed Priority Post Assignment

     I enjoyed this assignment. I chose to take pictures at the dog park because it was a quick and easy way to get fast moving targets that flop around. I wish I could get a more diverse subject range but I only had so much light that day and I had work. When I went up there all the small dogs were being very lazy and I thought it was hopeless until one of my old friends who I used to play baseball with showed up. He brought his very energetic Pitbull, Rotweiler, and their puppy. Their older ones names were Buddy and Bella and he didn't tell me the baby's name. I believe the smaller dogs wanted attention once I started playing with the big dogs but none of them were running around so I was still focused on his dogs. There was a lot of bright light with very little shade. I decided it would be better to use a very high shutter speed with a higher ISO, this created a lot of bright "non-contrast" so to speak and I had to fix that in post by lowering the yellow setting closer to black when I turned them grayscale. I think if I redid this I'd find more subjects than just dogs.

Shutter Speed Priority Photos

Bella fetching a ball

Buddy running after a thrown bone

Buddy chasing his 11 week old pup.

Pre Assignment - Shutter Speed Priority

I'm actually more excited to do this project. It's been one of my favorite forms of photography. It's actually the reason I purchased my Rebel t3i. I could have bought any digital camera and been content, but the ability to control real (non-digital zoom), f-stop and shutter speed was what drew me to it. I've always loved action shots, especially in action sports like motocross, snowboarding, skateboarding, etc. I expect it to be easy to find subjects to take photos of, but I believe that getting the right settings might be more difficult, because most of the time with these you get one shot. You have to account for ISO, F-Stop, Shutter Speed, and white balance.

Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred was born in New Jersey in 1864. Born to a German father and Jewish mother, he had two younger siblings who were twins. His father serving as an officer for the Union army bought his way out of future fighting, sold his company and moved his family to Germany. Stieglitz, who was unchallenged in American schools took to the rigorous studying involved in German schools. He then took to mechanical engineering school. He enrolled in a chemistry class taught by a famous photographer, who helped him find an engineering outlet that also let out his creative side. He then met more German artists who taught him to pull art from nature, this is where he bought his first camera and traveled the country side. His brother died and his father called him home. His father (loving his first born son) helped him start a photo company where he paid so highly to his photographers and demanded such high quality he rarely made a profit. He then purchased his first hand-held camera. He then married a family friends daughter, which later found he was too brash and did not actually love her. It was more of a financial helper than one of love. Alfred went on to marry Georgia O'Keeffe, he slowly became one of the biggest influences for photography to become noted as an art form. He passed at the age of 82.

Ansel Adams

Ansel was born in San Fransisco, California. He was born to wealthy/middle-class parents. He found enjoyment in environment and telescopes at an early age.He then picked up piano in his youth, as well as hiking, photography, and camping. This evolved into his photography career. He helped form the group f/64 where he has very sharp, clear images. It's very prevalent in his nature photos. I enjoy his nature shots all though it's very hard to find any online that are truly his and not just his art style.

His art is here at his website: http://www.anseladams.com/

He passed away at the age of 82, with the rights to his photos going to his family.

Paul Strand Post Assignment

I enjoyed this assignment when I figured out how to do it. I'm not going to lie, when I was told to "take photos like Paul Strand" I had no clue what to do. I started to see geometry in light and shadow and noticed how cool it could look with contrast. You can't really just go out and take a photo of something meaningful with that though, so I took photos that could be interpreted many ways. The stair photo for example, one could say it represents stepping from the light to the darkness and corrupting yourself to gain an advantage in life and move up in the world. That's just one idea but art is really about what the viewer sees or hears, I'm also too lazy to think of some other explanation. Contrast can mean millions of things and that's been shown in millennia of art and music. Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. That's the major theme of humanity's story telling. Paul Strand understand this very well with his photos and I tried to incorporate that within my photos as well.

Paul Strand Assignment

I liked this photo because of the lines involved as well as the shadow of the strings on the fretboard.

I liked how there were so many straight lines and shadows but the grill cover interrupted that with many different curves and lines of light and shadow in all different directions.

I picked this one because of the light and shadow and I just really liked how the contrast looked.

Post Assignment Get Close

I liked this assignment because you can get a lot of creativity out of it. Excluding the fact that most people just did flowers, you can get a lot of interesting and thoughtful photos from this technique. I like how I got the machine heads (or the metal pegs that the strings attach to) on my bass. I wish I could have gotten a little more focus on the whole head of the bass instead of just the machine heads though. I liked my photo of the rose except it was a little dark even after attempting to fix through ISO and White Balance changes. I fixed it in post, but it almost looks like it was a yellow or white rose now. For the iPod I was really just walking around my house and was taking random close ups, when I took the photo of the iPod I aimed right at it, then realized it would probably look better at a much steeper angle with the window in the back because the light would contrast against the dark color of the dock it's sitting in. The result was pretty much the idea I was going for. The dust on the iPod was an added effect, I wasn't really going for it at the time but then during the time for taking the photo I realized it was a message. How even though we have perfectly good things, we almost always upgrade them for the next model leaving the technology behind because it's a bit outdated. If I were to retake this photo I would have two people in the background out of focus, one with an iPhone 5 with headphones in and one with a tablet showing the person with the headphones in something. It'd speak the message a bit better in my opinion.

Get Close

Close up of an Ibanez Bass head.

(Focused on the two machine head tuners, [the metal pegs] so the sides of the guitar are a bit unfocused.)

Close up of a rose.

Close up on an iPod in a dock.