Assignment 2: Street Photography

Assignment 2 was street photography, mainly of people and animals. It was less about posing, and more of just capturing all kinds of people in real life. I enjoy photographing people, but usually it is my family so this was fun. It is especially great in florence where there are just so many people visiting and enjoying the sites outdoors and around the city. Some people even requested for me to take pictures of them. These are a few of the ones I will print; for the assignment they will be black and white but these are the originals:

Monday we visited the Alinari Photo Gallery near the Santa Maria Train Station. It was interesting to see some examples of the techniques we learned about in the BBC Documentary. There were a few artists that we talked about that I was not familiar with before and some great images. Also it was fun to see all of the old equipment up until the first cellular phone with a camera. It had a slideshow with images that people had taken from it and it was cool to watch because it was more of everyday life.

Graffiti in the Underpass of Piazza Delle Cure

As an assignment, we were told to find the 'art show' involving graffiti in the Piazza Delle Cure. We started walking in the general area and on the way we came to an underpass that looked similar to those of the subways back home. Nancy and I had seen this tunnel before and decided to come back with our cameras, and it ended up being the show we were supposed to find. It is amazing down there, graffiti covers every inch of the walls and it is interesting to look at all the different words and images. We ended up taking a lot of pictures, below are my favorites. We are sending an image as a postcard to someone back home, but i decided to send three. I'm going to send one to my dad and stepmother, one to my mother, sister & practically stepbrother, and one addressed to my niece Ariana.

Finding the Alphabet in Florence

Once you start looking they're everywhere.......

Collage of my alphabet:

MAMbo: Trip to Bologna

This trip was the first time I had left Florence since we arrived, so I thought it was great to see a new place, and one that didn't have quite so many tourists. The museum had a lot of interesting work and the guide was very knowledgeable. As a personal preference, however, I enjoy wandering the museum freely and being able to choose which pieces I would like to spend more time on. I think my favorite piece was the group of clouds set on top of mirrors; the way that it was lit was amazing and because of the high ceilings in the room it was convincing when looking down in the mirror. Another piece I thought was interesting was the car that was made up of some type of glass, I can't remember what specific material she said it was. I also thought that the arrangement of flowers was beautiful as well as the way it looked from the reflection in the plaque on the wall. The John Cage exhibit was fun to see, especially the piano that had more than 200 sounds varying from key to key. The main part I can say was not at all interesting to me were the videos. With pieces like that I just can't see the artistic standpoint, it was basically like staring at the same picture for 5 minutes.

BBC Four: Genius of Photography

I thought that this show was very informative, and there were a lot of interesting techniques that were shown. For example, in the opening of the show they did a demonstration where they put a black tarp or some material covering all of the windows in the room so that it was complete darkness, and then cut a small hole in the shape of a circle. I don't understand how it works, but they were able to view the scene outside reflected on their wall, only upside down. It was amazing, and I even pressed rewind to see if I missed the explanation of how this was possible, but I couldn't figure it out. I also liked how it showed the different ways of producing negatives, such as the traditional and also the use of mirrors. Even though I have taken a couple photography classes and learned a lot about manual cameras, I still have a lot to learn and I think that this documentary was good in that aspect. I just wish it explained the process a little bit more than it did.