Time Lapse

This is a time lapse of me making a veggie burger. 

Nature Nurtured in the Urban Age

Nature Nurtured in the Urban Age

I realized that sometimes unintentionally I had taken a series of photographs that examined nature versus the manmade. Whether that is trash or construction zones battling it out between neatly planted lines of almost man-made flowers, the struggle between the real planet and our made planet was there all around me. For my final collection of images I decided to juxtapose nature and those man made idiosyncrasies.

It is really eye opening once you examine that strangeness of our lives. We look as plants that grow on their own, fighting for life in sidewalk cracks and call them weeds. At the same time flowers are planted intentionally around our urban landscapes to make us “appreciate nature.” In all reality we appreciate it by covering it with cement and concrete and throwing our refuse all over it without a second thought.

We continue to create and build and construct modern technologies from roadways to computers and machines and it’s confusing where earth’s real place is in our plans.

 Sometimes it’s good to just lie in the grass and be quiet, while we still have the chance.

Enjoy,

Akasha

~ 

Back Alley Ways by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Filth by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Broken by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Loving Outside by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Bottle Neck by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Mc'Flurry  by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Technology by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Man Made Trash on Grass by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Controlled Nature by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Two types of ground by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Construction Zone by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Caution by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Cathedral by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Tufts in the Wind by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Make a Wish for the Future by Akasha Brandt. Digital photography class @ Point Park University 2012.  albrand1@pointpark.edu

Portraits

Candid

The Best Thing Until the Day after Forever

Serious /Fun

My portraits are of a couple. I photographed Sarah and Bob at Schenley Park. They had a fun time playing on the playground and hamming it up. The pictures turned out to be interesting because Sarah was serious and posed and in most pictures Bob was being very silly. It was an interesting dynamic to see visualized, like it is in Serious/Fun.

Panorama

Oakland Party

Phipps Conservatory

Frick Park

HDR

The Cathedral of Learning- Strong despite the Bomb Threats

Dandelion

Phipps Conservatory

I really enjoyed the ability to add vibrancy to these pictures with HDR. I think they look so colorful and almost other-worldly perfect. All of them were taken at twilight, yet they look so bright.

Abstraction

I made this set with old time-y writing devices. As a writer I often get frustrated with a piece and feel it looming over me oppressively staring me down. I can imagine a movie where a writer is struggling with writers block and different parts of the type writer just stare at him judgmentally.

Gears

unFocus

Word Disassociation

Three dimensional images

We took pictures as a class in the Strip District of Pittsburgh. The things that stuck out to photograph for me were the small oddities in some of the shops.

Small china Geishas in a specialty shop. I  like the way the girls seem like they're moving.

A disembodied head in a smoke shop in the Strip. He seems to be happy even though he's a floating head.

A spider garland left after St. Patrick's day in the Strip.

Photography reaction to Koyaanisqatsi

Isn't it funny how nature tries so hard to push it's way through our urban landscape? It grows over and our walls, sidewalks, and debris. Nature is chaotic and beautifully random but we consider anything we don't plan or trim or coddle to be weeds. We find them gross and aesthetically displeasing. So we plan nature. We plant flowers that are pleasing to us, plant grass inbetween the confines of concrete walls, and put trees in symmetrically lined rows. We order them and grow them to our pleasing trimming, preening, and fertilizing the desirable and weed-wacking the little buds that push through the sidewalk cracks.

Koyaanisqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi was an interesting film examining our relationship with the natural and unnatural order of the universe. The goal of the film seemed to be to compare events in nature and events in urban environments. At first the film starts with a monotonic primal music with chanting of what I believe sounds like the word "koyaanisqatsi." There are shots of cave paintings, exploding volcanoes, and waves crashing with clouds rolling. I believe this was to set up natural chaos.

All the while these things are happening, there are time lapses of nature on mountains and landscapes to show the passing of time on nature. Eventually the film switches to mechanized modern objects. Cars, planes, and tanks. They are shot with their own chaotic music but it begins to sound more modern slowly. The images are frantic with a lot of repetition, such as cars in a row in a traffic jam. These shots set up the unnatural man made chaos. There are also shots of man made explosions such as bombs and missiles which mirror the lava and natural explosions from the beginning. These are the parallels of nature and the unnatural. The message is communicated by the way images of nature and the unnatural are juxtaposed, since there is no other dialogue or explanation other than the definition of "koyaanisqatsi" to mean life unbalanced. I also like the use of appropriate silence in the movie where you are set up for an even more unsettled feeling, and the way that the modern scenes seem to have a different soundtrack of more 80s reminiscent soundtrack. Almost David Lynch-esque at some points.

Over all, the movie gave me a sense of anxiety towards the way we are. The mechanical way society is, car after car, building after building, all the while time goes on illustrated by the clouds and light changing during time lapses. The urgency that time is never going to stop and we constantly go through an assembly line of life in our urban societies, always moving like the tides. Everyone walks on the streets, their individual lives and goals blurred by the sense of group dynamics. Even later when the camera focuses in on individuals you still are left with a feeling of mystery. They are one small part of a whole sidewalk full of people and all the while time is going on. We are part of an eternal tapestry of chaos and it all seems a little meaningless when we die and others take over the oppressively stressful urban landscape, while the waves and clouds are eternally in their own state of chaos with no goals other than to eb and flow.

Motion

I continued to try to pick small everyday subjects with an urban feeling. I spent a lot of time in a construction zone down the street from my apartment. I find it interesting that we have all these cones and caution tape but people rip it and run over the warning signs regardless.

f/36.0  1/8  ISO 100

f/36.0  1/8 ISO 100

f/ 36.0  1/8  ISO 100