Everyone Screams Red!

When this project was first explained to the class, I immediately thought of having my subjects all have the color red on to unify my photos. I thought of this so quickly because I had just put the red Ohio State sweatshirt on my dog, Buttercup, seen in the first photo. That day there was a chill in the air. When it starts getting cold out, Yorkies need to have something on them so they don't get too cold or freeze. We don't usually put the hood up on Buttercup, but it gives a good laugh. However, once I started thinking about all the different photos I could take I started to realize that I was going to have more photos than I would knew what to do with. For example, on Wednesday, I sat in the hallway of Ovalwood and when classes let out the color red was screaming throughout the halls. There were people walking all over the place, that those who weren't wearing red kept getting in the way of the shot of those who were. It was also tricky trying to shoot with a fast shutter speed with the lighting in the hallway. However, I adjusted my settings and tried to work with what I had.

I tried to make the color red as exciting as possible. I tried to get different angles of my subjects and add my dad in. He always seems to get his personality across to the viewer even through a simple photo. Two examples of this is my third and last photo, the one of my dad and the other of a kid going down the stairs. My mom even got in on my project. She had my camera and began to take pictures of my sisters and I while sitting on my grandparents couch. Ironically, we all had red near us at the time. I also tried to zoom in on my subjects so that other distracting objects couldn't be seen. I also made the photos black and white to take away distracting objects and to emphasize the red. I think that by doing this it helped illustrate the unifying red in my photos.

When I first began shooting for this project, I was trying to get my subjects in red and not to realize that I was taking the picture. However, trying to take pictures of people while they don't know is pretty difficult, and it made me look like a creep. So my idea that people wouldn't know I was taking their photo didn't happen like I planned. In most cases I asked the person to stop and not look at me so I could take their photo. Most people laughed and agreed, others were unsure but still were good sports about it and let me take their photo. One girl had on an all red dress and she wasn't sure what to do when I asked to take her picture. So she walked through the door extra fast and unfortunately my shutter speed wasn't fast enough and the picture is a bit blurry. This project made me realize that trying to take candid pictures is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. However, most of my subjects worked very well with me and allowed me to take a good photo, just like my dad and his weird, yet funny faces.