Voting and Polling (Places Photo Project)

It’s probably annoyingly tiring to hear people say, “I voted!” today, so I won’t say it, even though you know what I did.

For the past few days, I wondered if I should participate in the Polling Places Photo Project, organized this time by the New York Times and AIGA. The main reason for not doing it was that I was scared, scared that the poll workers would yell at me and kick me out, or that the other voters would feel uncomfortable with someone taking photos. But fortunately, that didn’t happen. The poll workers were very nice.

At first, there was some confusion about where I was in their roster since I registered “late.” But it got all cleared up and I painlessly cast my ballot on the fancy electronic ballot. Turns out that supposed iPod-like thing that I saw in the sample ballot was huge; I thought it was going to look like a BlackBerry and whatnot.

Anyway, I didn’t take the photos of the space, but just the machines, because I was scared that other voters were uncomfortable, and I didn’t want to ask them personally for permission. I did ask for permission from the poll workers to take photographs, and I said that it was for a “national project” called the Polling Places Photo Project by the New York Times, but they didn’t seem to know about it. I mentioned “national” and “New York Times” just to gain some credibility that I’m not doing this just for myself or as some sort of partisan spy.

I took a few pics of the machines and quickly left the polling place to take photos of the signage outside, which I believe are as important as the inside. (I guess I should mention now that (for the locals), I voted at Westborough Rec Building on Galway Place in South San Francisco. I looked up the city on the NYTimes site and they don’t have any photos from SSF posted, so I’ll see mine up there soon and hopefully, someone else will post theirs, too, especially someone who had the guts to photograph the space inside.)

Here’s the farthest sign I found from the entrance. The cones were leading towards the alley-like path to the venue. Notice the yellow sign temporarily slipped between the rock things to let you know where to go.

Here’s a more official, intentional sign for the event. (Same sign as the one off-right on the previous photo.)

Here’s the alley that leads you to the entrance. It kinda made voting a shady thing where you go to the back of some building to do it.

Here’s a Photomerged composition of the end of the alley and the entrance (Click here for the entire image). Lots of blue painter’s tape with information in three languages. I didn’t bother to read them; I don’t know who does/did. Nice touch with the American flag, with the blue painter’s tape.

So that concludes my voting experience for the presidential primary. I want to thank my old roommate Mike for informing me that citizens vote for the primaries, too, and making me register, because I probably would’ve been apathetic about it and wait for the candidates battle it out before I do it for sure in November.

Flush.

Photographing for Portfolio

So yesterday, I successfully (after a devastating double-stuck-tape first try) assembled the accordion book for the Mandolins Brochure that I designed almost two years ago. I planned on putting it in my portfolio, so I had to mock it up and photograph it instead of just showing the flat designs. Today, I had a long photo shoot of the piece, taking pictures from the front, of the inside, of the outside, from different angles, and in both black background and white.

Light Source

Unlike my test photo session from last time, I used natural light through the window as my light source. It’s been cloudy for the past couple of days, and that’s actually a good thing, because the clouds emit a pretty neutral white light through my bedroom window. You’d think that a clear day would be better but I recently realized that clear skies (but not from direct sunlight) actually give your indoor subjects a blue/cyan tint because the sky is usually blue. I’ve just never put those two phenomena together because I assumed that clear skies give off “real” light because when you take pictures outside, you get a “real” range of human skin tones (because the sunlight balances it out or something).

Anyway, having a natural-light photo session meant that I had an unpostponeable deadline of the darkening sky to meet. Surprisingly, I took the last batch of my photos even when it’s too dim to see, thanks to the manual shutter speed setting on my camera; it could make a somewhat dark scene look normal.

Black or White?

So all in all, I took 367 photos today of the brochure, although I had a wide bracket of different exposures in almost every pose; I wanted to choose from more than just two or three bracket shots to make sure I got the best one. Better more than none, they say.

All the photos in thumbnails:

Actual screen size of the thumbnails:

Black or White?

Since this is my first real photo session with the light tent, I’m still trying to decide whether the white background or the black background works better. Of course, in certain situations, one is definitely better than the other. But I have two pairs of relatively unedited photos here to show the difference. What do you think?

1-B. Page 1 and 2 in black background

1-W. Page 1 and 2 in white background

And then there’s 2-B. Exterior in black background

And 2-W. Exterior in white background

At first impression, I think the black ones stand out more. But I have a personal attachment to subjects photographed in white backgrounds, so I’m not ready to toss them out. Maybe there’s not enough light to make the white really white?

Notes on the Light Tent

During this photo session, I learned a few things about using a light tent:

1. I need a larger light tent, for subjects that span wider than the width of the box, like this accordion book.
2. Having a really controlled environment with light is important. I realized that when the relatively white walls behind me and my light-color shirt reflected onto the subject, which led me to pull up a piece of black fabric every time I set off the two-second timer to take a shot.
3. The inside frames of your light tent should be prepped so you can Velcro black/white paper strips at the edges because that part of the frame also reflects unwanted hues onto the subject.
4. The top and bottom edge of the front frame (the frame your camera sees through) are useless, as they can obstruct the view of your high-angle shots or limit the amount of backdrop whitespace you would like to allow for below your subject in the photograph. I can be as brave to say that the entire front frame is useless, although I cannot be as brave yet to completely cut it out, for fear that the entire tent would somehow collapse.

That’s it for this portfolio-building update. Sorry for not posting as often as I wanted; I really want to get this portfolio done, what with the scary economy and all.

Flush.