Hello, my name is Alondra Villalobos but a lot of people call me Al. I was born in Encinitas, CA and this is my third year at CSUSM. I’m very passionate about art and would like to make a career out of this passion. I’m a painter and I am always looking for new medias to explore because art is very important to me. I hope to do interior design or graphic design as a career but will be satisfied if I do anything relating to art. I enrolled in the AMD103 course because I wanted to learn about photography and wanted more experience with camera work. I hope to learn about the different factors that go into creating an image and then use what I learn to incorporate it into the work that I already do.
Pictorialism
In order for my image to have the Pictorialism characteristics, I edited my photograph with a sepia filter and added a dark vignette to the corners. Considering that the Pictorialism aesthetic is based on photography from the early 19th century, I decided to add some feathering and texture to make it appear older.
JR Big Mac Challenge
This assignment was meant to act as a creative way to utilize materials that are easily accessible like a big mac box as a light reflector. For this photograph, I used a small white box that slightly resembled a big mac box and a phone flash light to shine into it. I focused the light on the side of my subjects face rather than the front because I liked the look of half her face being bright while the other half has shadows.
Final Book Project
For my final book project, I wanted to capture a realistic representation of everyday life. I focused on doing candid photographs of people and animals because I wanted to capture them in their true nature. I did this so that they wouldn’t be provoked to pose and have a more natural image with natural movement.
https://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/8953985/5cc707d8271b8024a85d93a92d331ac330f9a290
Night Photography
I wasn’t able to go out into the city or near traffic at night. Instead I took photographs of my sibling near my house, utilizing the little bit of light that there was outside during the night time. I attempted to capture a “trick shot” in one of the photographs which I found to be the most interesting and difficult to achieve.
Photo Story
For this project, I focused on the theme of being alone/ lonely. The subject is seen walking around by themself in the establishing shot, in the medium shot you can see that he is sitting alone while looking off to the side, and in the close up you are able to see the emotion on his face which sets up the feeling for the shots altogether. While the photographs are supposed to give a sense of sadness, I focused on a lot of bright complementary colors to symbolize that even in a bright and colorful world there is still sadness and loneliness.
Environmental Portraits
For the environmental portraits, I focused on my family members and the things that they do in their daily lives that makes them happy. In the first picture is my sister doing her makeup, the setting is in the bathroom in front of a mirror and I thought it would be more visually interesting to include both her and her reflection in the mirror. The second picture is my brother reading a book in front of his collection of books. In the third picture is my dad watering his plants with a happy expression on his face.
Natural Light Portraits
The natural light portraits were very fun and interesting to shoot because it was interesting to play around with the lighting from the sun and utilize the shadows created to make the photographs more visually interesting. The first image was taken indoors using the sunlight that came through the window and the second image was taken outside. Both of the images are very different because one is much warmer with orange hues and the other is more cool toned with blue hues.
Everybody Street Thoughts
While watching the movie I got a good sense of what the category of street photography is. I think that street photography is so important because it captures the essence of communities as well as capturing raw feelings and emotions through the candid photographs of the faces of strangers. I thought it was interesting to see that a lot of photographers like Bruce Gildan, go up to strangers and surprise them by taking their picture, it sure takes a lot of confidence to be able to do that but it works and truly shows the atmosphere that their in.
Triptychs
For this set of pictures I documented the process of baking, I chose to focus on the hands because they had a lot of movement so I thought it would be interesting to show them in different ways. I also decided to make these images black and white because I thought it brought them together well and made the lighter subjects stand out more, like the cookies and the flour.
Diptychs
I like the idea of connecting nature to the human body so for this set of pictures I compared tree branches to a hand. In order to bring these pictures together I put a soft filter of black and white with blue hues.
Al's Blog 