Stop Motion

 

My stop motion video is titled “Rock, Paper, and Scissors.”

The concept that I started with was a play on the game rock, paper, scissors.  The idea was always that rock would be attacked and defeated by paper, who would then be defeated by scissors.  I initially wanted to kill rock off and portray scissors as a righteous avenger, but then I decided that felt a little too Afro Samurai-ish and moved in a different direction.  Ultimately, I decided that scissors would free rock from the clutches of paper, and rock and scissors would become friends.

There were a couple of challenges to making this concept work.  Among them was the fact that paper didn’t stand out well against light-colored backgrounds and rock didn’t stand out well against dark-colored backgrounds.  In order to solve this problem, I introduced a bright and harsh light to the set of the video, then crumpled up the piece of paper to make it cast shadows that would enable it to stand out against the white background better.

I used an animated title page at the beginning of the video in order to ensure that viewers immediately grasped the allusion to the game of rock, paper, scissors.

Portraits

I believe that a portrait is a window into a person’s feelings. In my series of portraits, I tried to capture my girlfriend’s love for the outdoors and her enthusiasm for nature. This last weekend, she dragged me out all the way to the Akron area to go hiking. While we were there, I took advantage of the different types of lighting that existed there as a result of the varying amounts of shade that the trees provided. The differences shown in the two pictures that feature water are highlighted by how I focused my camera to show the moving water that was coming from the spigot in clear resolution while the motionless water of the lake was relegated to the blurry background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Composition and Blog Post

The setting for my series of photographs is my bedroom, in which I spend a vast majority of my time. I chose to take the pictures in my bedroom because there is no other place that really feels like it has a piece of my identity in it. The objects that I photographed in my series of pictures are my computer and some of my computer science textbooks. I chose to use these objects as the subjects of my pictures because they are what I spend much of my time with both inside and outside of class. The textbooks represent the theoretical knowledge and understanding of computer programming that I spend so much of my time acquiring currently whereas the computer code that is displayed on the screen of my computer represents the practical application of my knowledge and understanding that I practice extensively now and hope to spend even more of my time practicing in the future.