[MUSIC] Let's take a look at another student project. Off we go. Lauren Nalepa was a student in the Introductory Photography Course here in our Department of Art, Art History, and Design. When her class was tasked with creating a project related to pattern and texture, with no other requirements other than creating her pictures in black and white. She had to find a way to explore those visual elements that would also be focused on a meaningful creative exploration. I think that her results are very instructive. Especially for learners like many of you, who may be participating in their first serious effort at putting more than one or two photographs together to create a cohesive series. She writes in her statement, which you'll find in the reading section for this module, that she decided to explore things in her environment that she interacted with on a daily basis. Objects she found in her kitchen and other places. In this first photograph, she presents a scene that has patterns within the overall pattern of the full frame. The pattern of knives in their holder, patterns of circles, shapes, and shadows, all interact and create a larger pattern that we can follow from left to right across the frame. She takes an everyday scene, literally one she sees everyday in her kitchen, and by framing it in a very specific space from a very specific vantage point, creates a raucous pattern that, because of the lighting, has an element of mystery, at least for me. Here she takes on the specificity of vantage point and framing and takes that to an extreme, fragmenting the antlers of a deer, that we imagine were hanging as a trophy on her wall, to now become an abstract pattern of lines and shapes and positive and negative space. A very different type of picture. One in which abstraction and reality balance on a tightrope. This photograph is more like her first picture, a fragment of a fairly easily decipherable space. A room with a wall and a blank flat-screen TV set, but again seen from a pronounced vantage point, from below and a bit far this time rather than direct and close as in the kitchen picture. The emphasis is again, on the connections of patterns, both within the picture and in the picture overall, coordinating the everyday elements of her home environment. In this photograph, Lauren seems to be returning to the approach that she took to the deer antlers of finding a very pronounced pattern that is a singular entity. Instead of a room full of pattern, here again, she's concentrating on a repetition of elements that are very much the same in shape and form and content, like the tines of the antler. It too has a content that relates to the everyday life of a college student in the USA, eating snacks like granola bars that are in these packages. As you will see however, this picture is really at the center of a spectrum that she begins to explore in the rest of the series. While keeping true to her original content of everyday elements in her life, rather ordinary things really, she's going to take off in a very different conceptual mode. Are you ready to see? Well, anyone who has opened their own box of granola bars might not ever think of the previous photographs as one that was constructed, one that was of an arrangement of those objects by the photographer. When I see this next picture, this one, in the series, it starts to raise questions about the previous ones. Were those granola bars placed in that order, or is that how they were found? Were the butterfly pictures on the wall placed there for the purpose of creating her normal environment earlier or did she specifically place them for the purpose of photography? This picture is one that, for me, is tipped into that very different mode. The more directorial and less discovery oriented mode of photography. Her embrace of the creation of arrangements, of elements for the purpose of photography, takes off in this and her remaining photographs. Still hewing to the original subject matter of everyday things in life and pattern with textures. But now well into the realm of photographer as creator, as director of the scene rather than discoverer. In her final three photographs, she takes an object that is familiar to all and plans pictures that continue to explore the original elements of kitchen objects, but get further into using light and shadow to create an environment of mystery. She calls this subset, Orbit. Something that she sees as, and I'll quote her here, simultaneously a very clear view of something we see often in which you can see details that we may normally overlook, as well as being images that seem almost otherworldly. Do the eggs take on and otherworldly aspect to you? The depth of darkness that surrounds them eliminates that figure-ground relationship that we've learned in previous lessons is so important in conveying a sense of the reality of a scene. She continues her exploration of the spiral, a universal symbol for so many things in life, of course. I think this is a good series for you to think about, especially those of you who are making a serious effort of producing a photography project for the very first time. Do I think this series is complete and successful? In many ways, for reasons that I've shared already, yes. But, do I also think that it could be split into two series and continue to be developed? Well, yes again. If I take as a given that pattern and other visual aspects are important, but content is more so, then I can see one series related to home environments themselves. And another series related to objects in the everyday home environment that the photographer takes out of context and works with, almost as a sculptor might, to create entirely new scenes of symbolism out of their own imagination. Her series ends with this picture, in which the offset of patterns creates a movement both left and right, drawing the viewer ultimately to the center. Your project, at the end of only a relatively short time of seven weeks of concentrated effort, may be at a stage such as this. With excellent pictures that have much in common but which may also be seen as having some important differences, maybe enough to become two or more projects that can be continued. That would be, in my opinion, a very successful outcome for you too. [MUSIC]