Narratives Part 2

Last week I talked about how I view narratives. It's easy to find them from portraits or landscapes, but can you create them from scratch?

Part of my thesis for Rutgers, was about just that. I created scenes that, in my head, reflected the style and feel of "B" horror or science fiction movies, with a small twist.

I'm lucky enough to have such great friends who help me out on crazy ideas like these.


They are all using the available light from the location, which I think adds to the tone of the photos. (Above) This one was interesting because, I chose to not expose the film for too long in order to create the shadowy figures. It adds a little more mystery.


(Above) This is my favorite of the series. It embodies, to me at least, the style I was going for when I thought up this project. Since I did not shoot digitally, I had no way of knowing what would actually show up once they were developed.


(Above) This one feels very much like a movie still. I think it's fun to try and come up with movie plots based around some of these photographs. They can all be one movie or they can be completely separate.

Can you come up with any plot lines?

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Narratives Part 1

What are narratives?

When we're little kids, our parents read them to us. In school, we learn about fiction narratives in English and non-fiction ones in History. Sometimes we'll even pay $10 to sit in a dark room with a couple hundred people to watch a 3 hour narrative. They follow us throughout our life.

For those of you that know me, much of my photography is based around narratives. Even for photos that are not obviously a narrative, there's always something hidden that you can find. I've always tried to use that in looking for the right photograph to take.

Half the point of art is for the viewer to interpret and to find or make up their own narrative for the work. It only needs to make sense for the one person interpreting the piece at that particular time.

For instance, look at the clashing of old architecture and modern technology. What kind of story could be construed for this photo? Yes, this could easily be a car commercial, but maybe it's a time machine, traveling to the ruins of medieval cities.

This man could be doing the only thing he knows how to do to help him survive. He goes fishing everyday in search of the evenings dinner. Or maybe he's just relaxing after a long day at the office.





If you can come up with any narratives of your own for these photos, leave them in the comments section!

Check back next week for the second part of this series.

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Past and Present Collide

This past summer my Aunt's niece came from France to stay with us for a month. She's about the same age as my sister, Jessa. Since she had never been to the U.S for an extended period of time, we decided to take her to as many of the "standard" American sights as possible. One of the obvious sights is the Statue of Liberty.

I, of course, being the travel junkie that I am, couldn't pass up this photographic opportunity, especially since the last time I was there was probably elementary school.

When you're that close to something of such importance to this country and the world, you can almost feel what our grandparents and great grandparents felt when immigrated here.

Recently, I uncovered and started to catalog some of the photos my grandfather took when he was younger. The majority of them are from the 1930's-1940's. I will post more as I go through them, but specifically he had a few that were taken of the Statue of Liberty. It's pretty cool seeing photographs that I took, next to his, taken over 70 years ago.

1930s-ish

Present Day

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Welcome & Blog Thoughts

This is my official welcome to all of you out there in the interweb! I plan on trying to keep up with this blog as much as possible as well as constantly add new photos that I've taken.

I'm actually kind of intrigued about this whole blog phenomenon that has taken our society as of late. It's kind of a wonder how we use technology as an emotional or some other kind of outlet. Private thoughts used to be your own private thoughts, though now, everyone seems to want to share them with the world. (Myself included, although more photos than thoughts) It's especially interesting how it has transformed the way people get their news about the world. Celebrities and other personalities are using it as outlets to talk to their fans and spread their work or ideas. I think it makes people feel more connected and attempts to take away that whole idea of "celebrity" that has swallowed our society, which could in turn get rid of all those tabloid magazines.

I had a blog, once in the past and used it to express my thoughts about, well...whatever. I think this blog will be used also to express thoughts, but hopefully on a more intellectual scale, but mostly used to update the world with new photos and projects I'm working on, personally and professionally.

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