Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I’d like to say thanks to my family and friends, and I hope that all of you had a great Thanksgiving with your family and friends. My dad came back to visit last Friday, so I actually celebrated Thanksgiving with the rest of my family this year. We had a lot of food that my mom made. I helped her out, too, so that made me feel very happy. I remember trying to help out one year, and she didn’t like how I was lagging her. Haha. Well, anyway, all of the food my mom made were very delicious as always. My mom bought a smaller turkey (12 pounds) than usual (in between 15-20 pounds) this time because we don’t go to a family’s friend’s house anymore to celebrate. We still have some leftovers, though, but that just makes it an even better meal tomorrow. Yay.
ART455A Outside Model
All of my previous assignments for ART455A have been indoors, so for this assignment, I am allowed to shoot outdoors. The point of this assignment is to see how we are able to control the light outdoors, and it is much harder because of the bright sun (or lack of sun), so there are two photos we must have. One is more of a portrait, and the other is an advertisement. We have to be able to advertise our cell phone by also using the photo that I have taken earlier this semester, which I hate, but oh well. It might be cool. *shrug* Once again, thanks to Tricia for being my model. I lucked out that she wore yellow and green since the background was about the same colors, so it basically complemented each other. I definitely learned that I really should look at magazine cut outs more because I really have a hard time directing what people should pose. *sigh*
And here’s the camera technical talk. I went onto the internet to search how to take better portrait photos because I have always loved the whole blurry background, focused subject portraits. I think it really brings the person out in a photo, and I just like how it looks altogether. I learned that it was the Aperture, so I shot these in Aperture priority. I used the smallest aperture because it makes the background blurry whereas the largest aperture makes the background less blurry. I also used the Exposure Compensation setting on my camera because without it, it would’ve been too dark. At first I shot her when the sun was on her, and it really made everything “glow” too much. So I used the EC -0.7. I feel like I should’ve used -0.3 since the lighting does seem a little cold, but I still like how they looked. Constructive criticisms, please.
MEND & Survive the Night
Last Saturday, I went to MEND (Meet Each Need with Dignity), a nonprofit organization that helps with families who live in poverty around the Los Angeles area, with Bodhi to do our social issue project for JOUR450. We weren’t allowed to take photos when we visited the families, but it was definitely an experience to see them. Most of the families only earn at most $500 to $1,000 per month, and their rent for an apartment or even a bedroom is usually about that range as well. They are also often single parents (mostly moms) with two to four children under the age of 15. Bodhi and I even saw this newborn baby, and this mom has two other sons as well. So, yeah, it was nice to help out these families, but it was also pretty heartbreaking to see that there are still people, even in the United States, going through their life like this.
After going to MEND in Pacoima, we went back to school to participate in this event called “Survive the Night.” It is an event where students participate to become “homeless” for the night by engaging in certain activities such as the soup kitchen and staying overnight outside with only newspapers and boxes. This was surely an eye opener because it really got cold over the night, and all I had was a blanket with the newspapers and boxes. This is the weather that homeless people have to go through every night. Not only this event made me sympathize the homeless people even more than I have, but it also made me appreciate what I have even more as well. This event was even aired by the local news KTLA 5, and it can be viewed here if you are interested.
So as I mentioned earlier, Bodhi and I are doing this as our social issue project for JOUR450. That means we will put up together a Soundslides presentation in the end, and I will be sure to share it once it’s fully done.
UPDATE! Now you can view the Soundslides presentation of both MEND and Survive the Night here!