Environment

Recent Studio Portraits

Downtown Parking

Travelers in Detroit

Wet Still Life

Still Life Assignment for Elements of Ad.

RIT community come together to update the situation on the search for the missing student.

The Urban and Rural: Found Still Life

Artist Statement

The urban theme of this assignment was quite straightforward to me. When I thought about the downtown Rochester area, local cafés immediately entered my mind. A café was the common place to go whenever I visited the city, and I particularly enjoy its dim lights and warm mood at night.

With the café’ setting in mind, I wanted a moody lighting with several art pieces and decorations in the photograph, and my final urban image had all of those components, especially in the 4x5 Polaroid (3 seconds at f5.6). I chose to focus on the red painting since I was so drawn to it under the warm lamplight. In fact, the color combination in that small corner attracted me overall. I am very pleased with the composition because the objects are mostly rectilinear from the bricks to the tables and their placement is perfect. I feel that the lighting quality and color emit the warm mood I was trying to achieve.

On the other hand, the rural theme required more thinking. I was not sure how to make a personal statement regarding the countryside. My friend and I fortunately found a house covered in heart decorations, and everything flowed from there. The decapitated tree trunk caught my attention. It had several hearts attached and also held several bird houses. The tree trunk said everything I wanted to say. Despite its decapitated branches, it embodied so much life and it appeared alive, or rather it seemed like its “heart” was still beating. After capturing the image (1/30 second at f5.6), the owner told me that it’s funny how I chose to photograph this particular tree. Years ago, people cut most of its trunk believing that it was dead, but it managed to stay alive. She called it the “Miracle Tree.”

passport picture that turned into a photoshoot

Designer in Action

"Artist at Work" assignment for the Elements of Photojournalism class.

Objective: To document a story and develop the photographs onto a newspaper.

I decided to photograph my good friend Jae-Ho, an Industrial Design Major at RIT. He gave me a short demo on wood design.

Bitter freezing weather hits hard...at -5 degrees.