OKC

These photos were taken in Oklahoma City on February 29th. My friend Amy and I had our nostrils pierced while we were there so I decided it would be a great photo op for this project. In the first shot the piercer, Tober, is sanitizing Amy's nostril. The second is a shot of Tober, and the third is him clamping Amy's nostril just before he puctured it. I couldn't get any shots of him actually inserting the needle or post but I thought these kind of captured the interaction and environment.

Some pictures from the last few weeks

I took these photos with my Kodak digital, using the manual settings. I haven't been real happy with the quality of the photos that I have been getting with it. Some are just fine, but it is really sensitive to the type of light around. Because of the lighting issues I have ended up with some photos that were just really bad quality. I think I am going to switch to my Nikon 35mm for the next round of photos.

So at the top is a friend of mine named Jeff. I took the photo of his eyebrow piercing. I also got a few shots of his tattoos but wasn't happy with the quality of them so I didn't post them.

The next photo is my friend Sami Kay's back tattoo that she had done over the summer. Its her first tattoo but I doubt it will be her last.

The middle photo is of a butterfly tattoo on my co-worker Kelli's back. This is one of five tattoos that she has. I liked this photo even though you couldn't see more of her.

The last two photos are of one of my tattoos. It was my first one and was done about ten years ago. In the first photo I liked that the tattoo was really clear. The last one isn't really clear of the tattoo but I thought it was an interesting photo anyway.

My personal portfolio.

For my personal portfolio this semester, I intend to deal with body image. Specifically I want to explore body alternations such as tattoos and piercings. I love looking at tattoos and am fascinated with the way people use them to express themselves. I see it as an artistic form of self expression. I would like to capture the personality of the individual and the way that it is reflected through their body alteration. As far as subjects go, I want to shoot a wide variety of people to show that people of all walks of life express themselves in this way. I will be shooting my photographs with a traditional 35 millimeter camera, as well as digital. I would like to learn more about portraiture and lighting as I work on this project so that I have a better understanding of both topics. I think my biggest difficulty in this project will be lighting. I have had some trouble in the past with over or under exposing my images and would like to get better at finding the correct exposure. I think this additional information will allow me to take better photographs and explore this medium further.