Website update?

Been working on my website for a whole month now... and honestly, I feel like there has been very little improvement in the last 3 weeks, but still proud that I'm doing this all by myself! Anyway, to the left is a screen shot of a possible gallery update. I'm having a hard time figuring out what type of gallery I like the best, and especially how I want the font to look. I like the font choice, not sure how I feel about the font size, color, and current location though. Also, spry menus are proving to be way more frustrating then I previously thought that they would be!!

This Image is an oldie, but I thought that I'd share it. This is one of the first shots that I ever took with my hasselblad.

Panoramas

I've always loved doing panoramas. The one to the left isn't the best example of one (not edited, or cropped), but I love the concept of being able to show everything, in a wider frame to show the entire view of where you are/were. This past weekend I was in nyc for photoplus (or photo expo, whichever you prefer), and I got the chance to walk around the city and do some street photography. I took it to myself to do a few panoramas, and this is one of the results. This wall graffitti is actually the front of a children's daycare center on Houston, which is right outside of Soho. To put the panorama together I used a program called PTGui Pro. Hands down this is the best program to use when putting a panorama together. You could also do it with many other programs such as using the automate in photoshop. The advantage of using PTGui in comparison to using photoshop is that with PTGui it sets control points and figures out where lines match up, etc. Although I did this panorama hand held (you can tell because it doesn't all match up perfectly) it is best to use a tripod because by using a tripod when you put the panorama files into a program, the program will have an easier time matching up all the lines, and in the end saves you time.

just for fun

This is just for the cute factor, my boyfriend and my dog :-)

personal projects

During the school year I always find it difficult to do personal projects because of lack of time, sleep, nutrition, etc (list of excuses could really go on for a century). But this past Friday I put homework aside for the afternoon and got started on a project that has been in my head for some time. Here are two of the in progress shots, conveniently taken with my phone (so excuse the quality)

For this project I am spray painting headphones different colors to create a more graphic still life, which usually isn't my style. Friday I spent a majority of the day spray painting them, which took a few a hours, and then took them into the studios to try out a few different set ups. I didn't have the back drop that I wanted to use with me, so it wasn't as successful as I would have hoped, but I got the exact lighting set up that I wanted to have which made it a good dry run, getting ready for the real deal.

On another note, this coming Thursday through Saturday is PDN's Photo Expo in NYC. If you've never heard of it, photo expo somewhat of a photography trade show, but instead of selling things it's mainly a place where you get try out the latest and greatest of any type of photo gear that you can possibly think of, talk with other photographers, go to workshops about new photo software, and quite a bit more. I decided to purchase the gold pass this year to be able to do more on the floor and go to more seminars.

promo cards

makin' promo cards

Irving Penn

So, it's a sad day in "photo world", Irving Penn, one of the mots influencial photographers of our time passed away today. He had a very simple style that I have always found beautiful and elegant.
RIP Irving Penn

last night

Yesterday in the studio I decided to work with a "light box" effect. I took items that are slightly transparent or flat. I wanted to show light can wrap around an object. I used a profoto head with a 40 degree grid on it. I found this to be really interesting because usually I'm a very frontal photographer, in the sense when I put light on the direct front of an object or person for depth, dimension, or basically so you can view the texture and what the object is. I found when working with the more flat objects, like these skeleton keys that I found at an antique shop.In this particular shot I threw out the focus. By throwing out the focus the light was allowed to wrap around the key more and the lack of focus also allowed the keys to appear thinner than they actually are.

The one flaw to being in the AD program is that it kind of scares me out of being more playful. But with doing projects like this, makes me want to do more playfull projects.

offically up and running

I am officially up and running! If you are reading my blog, you probably got it from my website www.jessdavisphoto.com, but if not feel free to check out my work and let me know what you think here.

This weekend I went out shooting and played around with my lens baby. This is only the second time that I have ever used it, but I think my results were pretty neat. This lens has a tilt-shift effect, but in a small frame, as a 35mm, it's more dramatic.

Here's one of my results from this




Not my usual style, but I like it. The lens baby affected this image by only have a small plane of focus, where instead of the entire image being in focused, only the very top of the weeds are.

Starting Off

Welcome to my blog!
Here I will be updating with pictures of the day, and other projects that don't quite make it to my website. Also will probably update with tons of thoughts and whatever else I feel like saying here.

A little bit about myself, my name is Jessica Davis, and I am currently in my senior year at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) studying Photography with a concentration in Advertising Photographic Illustration, and will be graduating in May 2010. I am originally from central New Jersey, and after school hope to be working and living in NYC.

This is a project one that I worked on over the summer. In my parents garden they had some nice looking flowers, but being up at school I never see it die, so what I did is I picked one, and every couple of hours I would make a scan of it to note the progression of it's life.