Final Project

  Ever increasing in size and availability and filled with stores specializing in everything from shoes and clothing to baseball cards and cell phones, the shopping mall has become a staple of the American landscape.  When starting this project I had planned to seek out the different groups of people that call the mall home.  I was seeking out the bands of teenagers that linger in the food court or arcade with nothing better to do or the tired shopping companions abandoned in the various seating areas too tired to continue.  What I wasn’t expecting to find was that the mall is largely filled with those too young to even be there on their own.

  Small children dragged along by their parents can be found in all corners of the mall.  We can find them pretty much everywhere strapped into strollers or kept close by the clutch of a hand.  They’re in the food courts and department stores, the corridors and seating areas.  Their frequency throughout the mall is a nod to how young we begin acclimatizing our youth to cultural norms.  And, it’s interesting that this is not the first generation that will be part of mall culture for their entire lives but just one of many.

Final Project by Maggie Terrels

For my final project I chose to photograph dogs with their owners. I tried to focus on the connection between dog and owner. I really enjoyed shooting this project because I, myself am a huge animal lover. I have always had dogs of my own growing up and now that I left home and live in my own apartment I adopted a dog from the North Shore Animal Hospital this November. I bring her to the dog park often and I figured it would be interesting to try and capture the relationship of other dogs in the park with their owners. I went back to my local park in Islip a few times, and I went to Central Park as well. People in the city were less reluctant to let me take their picture because they were in a rush. I got my best shots at my local dog park. Overall I really enjoyed shooting this project. I had fun meeting new people and their pets.

Fiore Italiano (Italian Flower)

            My parents and my parents’ parents and the generations before them grew up with what you can call a green thumb. My Nana, 91, on my mother’s side, still lives on a handful of acres on Long Island that my grandfather, her husband, and his father had worked for to buy for my family. With all this land they built gardens, green houses, and planted countless trees and raised farm animals.

            When I spoke to each of the owners of “The Little Flower Shop” in Locust Valley, New York and “Constantino’s” in Glen Cove, New York, I fell in love with them immediately because they reminded me of my family. Both of the owners are not originally from America and they came here with whatever money was in their pocket in search of a different life. They came here and found that they could not achieve the job they had imagined for themselves, but along the way they discovered a love for growing and tending to common and exotic plants.

            In this series of photographs my main purpose was to show the viewers the owners and what their hard work has accomplished. 

Final - The Scar Project

Whether they are subtle, or very distinct, all scars have stories. They say something about the exterior of a human that not even a tattoo can depict. They become a memory, a badge of honor, something that we will always have on the canvas known as our body.

I myself have many scars. Childhood scars, surgical scars, accidental  scars.  I look at these scars no different then I look at the rest of my skin. They are a part of my outer appearance, a part I never wish to change.  I take pride in the fact that I have a four inch scar running across my breast.  It might look unappealing to most, but to me it is a mark that holds years of emotion and strength. 

Missed opportunity-Jen Brunjes

Missing photographic opportunities is something that unfortunately happens to me regularly. The lack of a camera in my life makes it so every single day I miss something I should have shot. I recently spent a week hitchhiking up state into the mountains. Without my camera I felt as if every minute there was something I was missing. From the people giving me rides, to the mountains I was climbing, I wanted to photograph anything and everything, but I couldn’t. I found myself regularly putting my hands in front of my face as if I were holding an imaginary camera and pushing the imaginary shutter, just to attempt to capture the image in my head. If I can’t have a permanent hard copy of the images I am seeing, I may as well have a hard copy inside my head. I have missed so many photographic opportunities. So many experience left to be captured just floating about waiting to be immortalized on film, but forever left to fade in my memory.

Missed Opportunity--Rebecca Banks

Missed opportunities are the moments that stick with every photographer. They happen everyday, and they don’t care whether you happen to have your camera with you or not. They are the moments that can be over in a mere second, but they nestle themselves into the back of our minds forever. Once you’ve experienced a missed opportunity, it sticks with you forever. Either subconsciously or not, every time we go out to take photographs those missed moments shape the new moments we choose to capture. We are forever looking for the thing that we missed. Missed opportunities can often be the influence for the aesthetic choices of our future photographs. The image itself may now be different, but the general spirit or idea within the photo can be the same. Missed opportunities are what keep photographers on our toes. These missed moments keep us engaged in the world around us. Having experienced a lost moment and knowing it could always, and almost definitely will, happen again, is what keeps us looking, keeps us seeing. As much as these moments suck, for lack of a better word, to experience, we need them. They are often a key factor in the creation of something new, something unique, something different, and if we always found these moments so easily, we would lose that drive and that individuality.

Shakera--missed opportunity

From taking this class I have learned that every day there has a moment worth capturing. I usually do not carry my camera everywhere with me and with my horrible blackberry camera it is hard to take a good picture of something I have seen. One opportunity in particular was when I was in the subway with my brother and there was a group of dancers down there performing. This is usually typical entertainment seen in the subways but something about this group of dancers really stood out to me. All the members in the group had a different style from one another but their love for dance was shown in their performance. Even though I could not stay long to watch the whole performance, I still remember everything about them so vividly as if I did take a photograph of them.
If I did have my camera with me I would have been able to capture the trick one of the female dancers did on her hands. The move is hard to describe with words because it was one of those moments you just had to be there to see. It amazed me how such talented people were dancing for money because it is hard to believe how they don’t have a job or if they do, they must not be satisfied with it. The crowd watching the performance would have been an interesting picture because all different types of people were observing them. The crowd demonstrated that entertainment can really bring all types of people together without being put into a category for that moment.