Week 7: Body Parts

This week's theme proved more challenging than I would have thought. What's so hard? Take pictures of random body parts and you're done. The problem is that as this project goes on, I find myself wanting all of the pictures to be great, or something I'm proud of, or something that has meaning. And that was never the intention of this project, it was purely to get me taking more pictures, and part of the point is that a lot of them will suck. This is one of those good problems to have. It means I'm starting to grow more and challenge myself more, both good things. Now lets see if the work follows suit.

One thing I noticed from this week is that my style is still all over the place. I think that will come with time, but for now I'm stuck between wanting to make really goofy photos and more artsy photos. Now I just need to figure out how to do both.

I found this first photo pretty interesting. Amy and I were out apple picking and I decided to try and block out the sun with my thumb. The way the sun is flaring on the lens created some really cool shapes.

I figured macro photography is a pretty good bet for body parts. This photo is of my fingerprint. It's really interesting to see how deep the grooves appear. Skin, in general, is really fascinating up close.

 

Alright, I kind of phoned this one in. I was trying to think of more ideas when it occurred to me that I didn't just have to take pictures of human body parts. So I think a little more outside the box and what does it get me? A fairly bland picture of the head and neck of a guitar. If I had to say something good about it, I would say I got the parts in focus that I wanted in focus, and the lighting was pretty nice. The amount of time I put into getting this picture should have yielded something better.

I've wanted to play around with flash photography on skin for a while now. To soften the light I'm shooting through a white umbrella. I really love how the soft light creates nice satiny shadows. Skin has so much texture and bumps that it creates amazing light paths when you get the light bouncing around at the right angle. After all of that is said though, my favorite part of this photo is the crispness and illumination of the beard.

I had this idea in my head from the beginning. I wanted to create a whole series of giant body parts and little me's. I decided to stop after one, but I had a lot of fun with this. It was a lot of work to try and match the lighting and backgrounds, but I think it turned out alright. It was fun being my own model and trying to be angry and an imaginary giant hand. I went through at least 10 faces before I found the one that I liked.

Amy has lots of scars on her body. Most of them from cats, bike accidents, and frisbee. Here are two of the better ones. I think the one on the elbow is from an RV mirror (of course while riding a bike).

Finally, I didn't have to be my own model. Man, it's much easier shooting someone else when you can actually compose the shot, move them around, tell them what to do. When I try and make myself do all that, I just end up talking back way too much. This was shot with the umbrella directly behind, shooting into the camera, hence the little lens flare. Again, I love the little highlights that skin gives, mixed in with shadow.

And after posting all of these photos I find out that, in the large version of the photos, the blog's displayer doesn't like anything that's pure black, so it makes it kind of pixelated. It looks fine in the original file. Oh well.