Wednesday, March 30, 2022

Intro to Digital Photography

 


I'm taking a hybrid photography class. Let's just say I'm the oldest student; most are "traditionally" young. Our first project, to take photos of objects in different places yielded (to me) a surprising number of photographs that included bodies, some of them topless. The bodies were all woman's bodies, so I wrote the instructor, who said this is always what happens. The men take photos of their partners, and the women take pictures of other women. I suggested he show the class Mapplethorpe. He did, and mentioned our conversation to the class. 
 
So our next project has been portraits. One young man took photos of a friend in a huge, dark hooded jacket. The photos were spookiest when you couldn't see his face at all. And then there were the photos of women's bodies. This time a lot of nudity, full frontal kind, by one female student, and some other suggestive photos of women. The photos of men were discreet, to put it mildly. The woman who took photos of her nude friend also made portraits of a male friend. His skin was dark, his t-shirt a very bright white. So students recommended that he change into a darker t-shirt. The instructor said, "why not take the shirt off? Have him pose nude?" 
 
Meantime, my project is to take zoom portraits, so I've now resorted to taking photos of Bryant, shirtless, looking at himself on a zoom screen. Such is my grand feminist intervention in Digital Photography 101.

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