SUNY Architecture and Me: (Web) Page 1
My first web page assignment is up. Just under the wire, too:
SUNY Architecture: Ben's Page1.
I took a photography class as an undergrad and thoroughly enjoyed it. So I'm really glad to get back to doing some photography for a class. It was a challenge to alter the photos with photoshop -- I must admit my own tendency, aesthetically speaking, is to be traditionalist or "purist" with my picture-taking and such. But of course, photoshop lets you make your pictures look better than they would if you used a regular camera and sent them off to the lab to be developed.....
Anyway, I took over 50 pictures for this first assignment, and so I will I think put a couple up here.
This is a close-up of a grate over what I assume is a vent of some kind on ye ol' academic podium near the fountain. I converted it to black and white (adjustments - desaturate) and adjusted the contrast and brightness to get the maximum "silhouette" effect.
So anyway, I'm realizing that I did this assignment slightly backwards. I mean, I talked about how I manipulated the images on the website and I'm talking more about my personal relation or response to the architecture here on my blog. Oops! I think it's alright though. I could have created a more unifying theme for the website photos, but I guess I just wanted to present a variety of things, and the theme of the vertical lines is universal enough. Not many images of architecture lack vertical lines....
The architecture of the main library at my undergrad school in Chicago had some very similar architecture to Stone's Uptown campus modernist style -- or whatever you'd call it. (Here's a picture of it on Wikipedia: Regenstein Library . The architect was Helmut Jahn. It cost $20 Million and was completed in 1970. Go Wikipedia!
Anyway, I hope I am able to enjoy the rest of the assignments for this class as much as I enjoyed taking the photographs. I think I'll put more of those pictures up, perhaps here. Of course here, it's a photo blog....
Well, to wrap it up, I'll put up another photo. This one I altered more than some -- It was one of the first I worked on. I took it when it was nearly dark out--in fact it was dark out. So it has a real grainy effect -- also due to my "cheap-o" Kodak Easyshare, 4.0 MB camera. I was going to borrow a fine SLR digital, but then time was short, and the work was long, so I didn't. Here's my "nightgarden" picture, of the Japanese-style rock garden below the stairwell to the lower level in front of the main library:
The "funny" thing about this picture (aside from the fact that I took it at night) was that it's altered in a way you can't see very well because it's so "grainy" -- But I had to, since the time stamp feature was on on my camera, and I had to cover up the date (in big yellow lettering) in the lower right hand corner. So I copy and pasted the little wooden bridge from the middle of the picture, and put a couple other copies of it around too for symmetry... I liked the symmetry.
SUNY Architecture: Ben's Page1.
I took a photography class as an undergrad and thoroughly enjoyed it. So I'm really glad to get back to doing some photography for a class. It was a challenge to alter the photos with photoshop -- I must admit my own tendency, aesthetically speaking, is to be traditionalist or "purist" with my picture-taking and such. But of course, photoshop lets you make your pictures look better than they would if you used a regular camera and sent them off to the lab to be developed.....
Anyway, I took over 50 pictures for this first assignment, and so I will I think put a couple up here.
This is a close-up of a grate over what I assume is a vent of some kind on ye ol' academic podium near the fountain. I converted it to black and white (adjustments - desaturate) and adjusted the contrast and brightness to get the maximum "silhouette" effect.So anyway, I'm realizing that I did this assignment slightly backwards. I mean, I talked about how I manipulated the images on the website and I'm talking more about my personal relation or response to the architecture here on my blog. Oops! I think it's alright though. I could have created a more unifying theme for the website photos, but I guess I just wanted to present a variety of things, and the theme of the vertical lines is universal enough. Not many images of architecture lack vertical lines....
The architecture of the main library at my undergrad school in Chicago had some very similar architecture to Stone's Uptown campus modernist style -- or whatever you'd call it. (Here's a picture of it on Wikipedia: Regenstein Library . The architect was Helmut Jahn. It cost $20 Million and was completed in 1970. Go Wikipedia!
Anyway, I hope I am able to enjoy the rest of the assignments for this class as much as I enjoyed taking the photographs. I think I'll put more of those pictures up, perhaps here. Of course here, it's a photo blog....
Well, to wrap it up, I'll put up another photo. This one I altered more than some -- It was one of the first I worked on. I took it when it was nearly dark out--in fact it was dark out. So it has a real grainy effect -- also due to my "cheap-o" Kodak Easyshare, 4.0 MB camera. I was going to borrow a fine SLR digital, but then time was short, and the work was long, so I didn't. Here's my "nightgarden" picture, of the Japanese-style rock garden below the stairwell to the lower level in front of the main library:
The "funny" thing about this picture (aside from the fact that I took it at night) was that it's altered in a way you can't see very well because it's so "grainy" -- But I had to, since the time stamp feature was on on my camera, and I had to cover up the date (in big yellow lettering) in the lower right hand corner. So I copy and pasted the little wooden bridge from the middle of the picture, and put a couple other copies of it around too for symmetry... I liked the symmetry.
posted by Edwin Oliver at
6:13 AM
2 Comments:
Ben,
Thanks for the comments on my blog. I haven't updated it yet with my web page 1 extras, but I'm about to do that now in the hour I have left. Doahhh!
Since you chose to comment on my blog, I thought I would return the honor for this week. You have some nice pictures on both the web page and your blog.
On your web page 1, I especially like the image of the vertical lines on the building, but with the piece you cut and pasted going slightly NE to SW overlaid on the verticals. It literally looks as if a big piece of the building fell off and landed up against it, or as if a repair worker removed a section of the building and propped it there until he could replace it.
Oh, and I'm with you all the way on the cheap digital cameras! Whenever I take pictures at night they just don't do well. I took two sets of pictures for this first assignment. One whole set at night I basically had to scrap and then go out the next day and take a bunch more. I like the camera though; it suits my needs most of the time.
Well, sir, talk to you in class, I guess. Have fun with future photos and the countless hours spent taking and modifying them, and, dangit--just getting them to appear just as you have them in your mind whenever your (I'm speaking of me) skills at designing web pages aren't that great!
Hi Ben,
Really enjoyed your blog site, especially the pictures. I like the way you altered/enhanced them. The one with the vertical lines with the pasted diagonals is especially pleasing.
It occurs to me there are so many interesting sights around us every day if we only stop and look at them. I guess that's what art does -- allows us to look at things in new ways.
Sounds like this is a good course, useful too. Keep up the good work!
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