Before jumping into the first project of the semester, there was a mini exercise that allowed students to explore and experiment different ways of taking an image whether it is through a photograph or a video. The first project was about starting over with a new archive of videos and images or building up and expanding on the mini exercise in order to create a body of work that pushes beyond human vision.
Starting off with the mini exercise, I was intentionally focusing on close up shots of objects such as the snail colony and placing the camera at angles that people would not normally look through such as the tall grass near the Point. The peculiar camera angles I decided to use was influenced by Vertov’s placement of his camera. An example would be where Vertov captured what it was like when a moving train passed by. This was a scene from Pinhole/Obscura film that was shown in class. Another element I thought would be interesting to experiment with was changing the hues and saturation of a picture or even possibly overlaying transparent colors over the camera lenses. The vibrant photographs that I showed to class seemed to have captured the audience’s attention unintentionally. Out of all the pictures that I have taken and “experimented” with for the second mini exercise, I liked the idea of overlaying similar objects on top of one another where it almost started to create a dialogue between the two, the block of wood and the tree.