Justin Appleton: Missed Opportunity

    In today’s world, Images are so instant to take with the evolution of cellular phones. It’s almost impossible to not capture that “Kodak Moment” that can spawn at almost any instant. Growing up, I’ve played and succeeded in just about every sport manageable. I’ve had pictures taken of me at Giants Stadium and have had the privilege of even showing face on the front page of local newspapers. However, if there were a picture I could take, it would be my first time at Madison Square Garden.
    Ever since this moment, I’ve been a die-hard Rangers fan. I watch every game and I’ve been proud to call Madison Square Garden my second home. I remember walking in with my father and one of my three brothers. Compared to watching the games on television, I felt like everything was in HD. Now not only was it my first game, it was an extremely significant playoff game. The arena was packed and the crowd had a certain electricity to it. The game ended up going into double overtime. Eventually, my Rangers were able to find the back of the net and the roar of the crowd is still like nothing I have ever experienced to this day. This was the image I wish I had captured. That instant of a split second of 18,OOO plus fans leaping in unison, pumping their complementary rowdy towels and screaming out of pure enjoyment.
     As a film major and a fine art minor, I always envisioned my projects transferring into the world of sports. I think a project like this would certainly tie into a project I would love to do. For my at play project [basketball] I attempted to captured the motions of the sport. For my at large project [baseball] I captured more of the spectacle of the game. I never accomplished what I wanted to and capture the raw emotion of athletics. As a fan, I would love to one day attempt to document the impact of sports on a community, proving athletics as way much more then just a game.
   

Justin Appleton: Lens Blog

Post War Italian Independence


   

   Out of all the intriguing pictures on this blog, I found this one to be one of the more interesting ones. The main reason I chose this image was because it resembles the characteristics of a film still as opposed to a pure photograph. The composition with-in the frame maximizes the minds imagination. Along with that, the form of low-key lighting provides a dramatic effect similar to a classic Hollywood film noir.
    Mis-en-scene is a film production word basically defined as what is compiled inside the frame. The photographer uses his lens to identify with all the players in the setting of this small town “deli”, for lack of a better word. There’s the regulars, dressed in all white, the milk-man, who I’m assuming uses his bicycle for timely deliveries and the villain, who is lurking in the shadows. I feel like all of this is setting the stage for a dramatic climax.
    I used the term film noir before, which was influenced by certain artistic movements and two that come into play when discussing this image. Chiaroscuro is an expression mainly used in painting and drawing but is basically defined as high contrast between light and dark. This produces strong shadows. This is evident with the man in black hiding in the dark on the far right side of the picture. Despite the villain’s image, the rest of the lighting is rather bright along with the cast’s wardrobe. The other movement is Italian neo-realism, a post war film movement emphasizing the financial struggles of Italian post war economy. I feel this is somewhat self evident because of the context of the photo. The film that most comes to mind is “The Bicycle Thieves” a famous neo-realist flick that tells the story of a father who depends on his job that requires a bicycle.  I envision the narrative of the milk-man and the bicycle he depends on to survive.
    As a film major, this image attracted my attention for several reasons. I believe it was during an episode of HBO’s “The Wire” that claims, “You need a lot of context to understand anything”. With that being said and despite the historical approach to the photograph, I strongly believe that this image can stand alone. Because of this I didn’t originally hear a voice in terms of a subject matter despite being well aware of the history behind the image. All in all, despite the picture being without a doubt a photo of the documentary style, my cinematic state of mind fell in love with the picture as being a neo-realist/ film noir film still.

Cheryl Parisi: Graffiti, Art, Vandalism?

When you see graffiti on the side of a highway overpass, or the top of a billboard don’t you wonder how they were able to get up there, put it up, and get back down without getting caught?

To the older generation they see graffiti and say “ugh they destroyed that building!”, but to todays generation, graffiti isn’t vandalism, but art. It doesn’t necessarily take away from the beauty of a building, but adds to it. Graffiti has become a big part of society today, it can be found everywhere from the sides of buildings, to album covers of great songwriters. Well know graffiti artists went from being hunted down by the cops for putting up their work to selling their work in galleries for thousands of dollars. A lot of time, thought, and effort go into it a good portion of the time. It can be something small, or it can be something large. Its not only done with spray paint, but some are posters cut up into several pieces then assembled on sight and glued to the wall, while others are small, and put in places where you wouldn’t notice unless you knew where to look.

 

Kelly Malloy: Recovery

A ringing sound fills my ears as I roll over in bed. The sound is not my alarm, but the daily noise of hammers striking nails and the angry buzzing of wood saws. It is 8 a.m. and the workday has begun. It’s been a year and a half since Hurricane Sandy decimated Breezy Point, a small beach town located right outside New York City, and the rebuilding process has just barely begun.

 Deemed the “Irish Riveria”, Breezy Point has always been a small town, where summer residency reaches a high of 12,000, and settles down to just fewer than 5,000 through the winter months. The streets, which were once lively with activity, are still eerily quiet, deserted except for construction workers.

It has been a hard return for most, a mix of waiting on money from the government or insurance companies, waiting for permits to clear for all levels of construction, or trying to find a contractor, it has been an arduous last year. We are still in recovery, and for most it will take years to return to the normalcy of daily life. We are a patchwork town now, where homes are spaced apart by empty sand lots. And yet, throughout everything, we have not lost our sense of community, the love for our town, and our neighbors.

Paul Sarris Final

Artists Statement

               Throughout my time here in college it has become more evident how terrible humans are to the earth. Humans are constantly ruining the beautiful landscapes and cities throughout this country because of our industrialization and just lack of respect for the earth. I was influenced to do this project because I am from northwestern Connecticut and all there is around me are farms and just houses with a lot of land. I took the opportunity to travel and show all of the different ways that humans are negatively impacting the earth. In this series of photographs I explored; pollution through mass amounts of cars, littering, power lines and factories industrializing beautiful landscapes or just being wasteful of space by leaving abandon buildings and houses that are burnt out. This project made me aware of how wasteful humans really are with all of the resources that we have.

Alvis Urdaneta: Final Project

Since the creation of social media, businesses have tried to harness its power to promote their products. Websites like Yelp have been operating as an “online urban guide” where any consumer (no matter what their bank account holds) can go and write a review on a business. This sort of access to consumers has both helped and hindered all types of businesses as a result of the reviews dictating their ratings. While websites like these are causing controversy in the business world, none have yet to mention the effects websites like these have on society. In 2014 citizens know to be cautious of what they post on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but what about the reviews they post about gentlemen’s clubs on Yelp?

Yelp has taken one of the greatest taboos of society and allowed people to publish their every thought on it. While it is known that strip clubs exist and may be up the block, the clubs themselves have taken a step back and tried to blend in and be as presentable and professional as possible, even if it is just so that they do not get shut down. Before, attendees of the clubs were not so public about how they spent their evenings. Now, websites like Yelp have equated strip clubs with restaurants, shopping centers, and even hospitals and have given everyone a soapbox to stand on to share their opinion alongside a photo of themselves and their information.

            This series illustrates societies’ desensitization to their own anonymity contrasted against each clubs’ presentation of their business. 

Alvia Urdaneta: Missed Opportunity

Alvia Urdaneta

Documentary Photography

May 11, 2014

Professor Ray

Missed Opportunity

            One evening last fall, my father and I were driving around Long Island. Being from Pennsylvania, my family rarely gets to come out to New York, and when they do it is always for some sort of special occasion. I cannot remember anymore where my father and I were going that evening, because one moment has overshadowed the entire visit.

            At one point in our drive, my father and I were driving through an industrial neighborhood on Denton Avenue in New Hyde Park. The street has a great blue-collar vibe during the day, with husky men walking around covered in grease on their way to the deli on the block to lunch. But it was nighttime and the street was empty, it was cold and very dark. It was then that my dad (a fellow photographer) stopped the car suddenly as we saw a school bus parked next to a junkyard, burnt up and destroyed from what must have been a fire.

The bus was captivating. We both could not stop gawking about what a magnificent site the bus had become, but were also conflicted with the idea of a school bus on fire. We both instantly started listing ways we would want to photograph the bus, and could not get over the visions of how the photographs would look. Unfortunately, neither of us had our cameras, so I took out my phone and snapped this image of it with promise to come back.

                             

By the time I returned to look for the bus camera in hand, it was gone. Just like that the opportunity for all of those great ideas was missed. Since then I have thought about that bus and tried to think of ways to have that opportunity again. Now with summer approaching, I hope to reach out to some junkyards to see if they will let me photograph inside the yards.