The Ol' College Try: The Dandelin's Mission and Studio Photography

Artistic Concepts and Processes

We all know what an essay is, right? We've all had experience in school writing one or, at least, reading one--a short, opinionated writing about a specific subject. However, there is an alternative definition, one we often don't consider --an initial attempt or endeavor. It is vital for us to create without being afraid to fail, essayer as the French put it, to attempt. In doing so we become more familiar with a process or technique and eventually, with enough attempts, we can become experts.

Here is a sample of my attempts...

Monday, September 5, 2011

The Dandelin's Mission and Studio Photography

The dandelion setup was pretty easy: We picked a bunch of dandelions and used a clothespin to hold them in place against a shirt that served as black background. A couple work lights were were put on it. The first attempts we tried blowing the seed directly off the dandelion, but was unsuccessful—the force of air pushed the dandelion out of the scene and the seeds flew too fast to be caught sharp with our shutter speed. We realized, because of that process, we had accumulated a pile of seeds below our subject. We dropped those seeds in front of the camera and fired away. They fell slower and we got more seeds in the shot this way. After checking out our catch during post, we found that we did not have a perfect photo. Instead, we composited a couple images in Photoshop to get the desired effect.