We recently were given the assignment to make a list of things we are interested in and go out and try to shoot them. This assignment was taken from the Walker Art Center’s Blog posted by Alec Soth. I took a stroll around the lake, and I was pretty pleased with the shots I got.

For this assignment, we were supposed to combine photographs with text. I wanted to use my macro filters, so I took some close-up pictures. My series is about perceptions that people have about themselves, as well as perceptions that others have about them and how they are not always the same. It is also about how advertisements affect our perceptions.

For my first digital photography assignment, I was exploring gender roles. In the first three photos, the dress represents a traditional woman’s task that the man is performing. In the next three photos, the over-dressed woman is performing traditional male tasks. There was some debate in class as to whether the dress on the male was necessary or whether the female should have been in more traditional male clothing. I feel that if the male was not in the dress, then it would have just been a man performing tasks. Having him in the dress, I feel reinforces that the task he is performing is a “woman’s” task. As far as the female goes, I feel that our society is much more accepting of women wearing men’s clothing, and that it is more out of the ordinary to see an incredibly dressed-up female performing “men’s” work.

Here’s what I’ve been working on in my black and white photography class. The project is to combine text or use multiple images. I combined pictures that I have taken with text printed on a piece of paper. For one of the pictures, I just used the text without an image. They still need some work, but I think they’re kind of interesting.