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From Tim, Timmy, Timbo, Timothy or whatever else you call me.
http://www.timothyniou.com

"And this life sentence that I'm serving,
I admit, that I'm every bit deserving.
But the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair."
-Relient K - Be My Escape

Memories

Recently over the last month, my school has been undergoing some construction projects. One of the buildings that is being remodled is along the way when I walk to my photography class. For a couple of days, they were tarring the roof. I am not a particular fan of the smell of tar. I find it repulsive and nauseating. However, during these particular days, the temperature was almost 90 degrees. I couldn't quite figure out as to why this particular combination of heat and the smell of tar was so familiar at the moment and it bugged me. I finally figured out why after a while. This particular feeling goes way back to when I was still living in El Paso, TX attending Carlos Rivera Elementary School.

Temperatures regularly reached triple digits in El Paso. Every morning before school started, we would line up outside in lines by our respective classes. Typically, if we arrive early enough, we would get to play around on the playground and stuff. Then, in the middle of the day, we would have our PE classes and it would be extremely hot. Mr. Vargas was the PE teacher and the only thing I remember about him is the hat he wore and the Coronado High School class ring he wore. Anyhow, our playground area surface was made out of tar and for the most part, it was just there. However, during these mid-day PE classes, it would be so hot that the fumes from the tar would start to rise and get into our noses. It was a very uncomfortable experience. Sometimes, it would get so hot that the tar would become soft enough to leave an indention. I find it quite interesting how just this simple smell of tar mixed with hot weather would trigger all this old memories of when I was in first and second grade.

It's amazing how my family went from a place like El Paso to Vancouver, WA in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I am thankful that my dad decided to take the job offer in Washington instead of the job offer in Arizona. I don't think I would have enjoyed Arizona.

Anyhow, I have finally finished my two-year stint at Shoreline Community College and am finally going to go back to a large university. I cannot stress how much I have disliked this experience. It was basically high school without any friends. Now that I am transferring, I will once again struggle to make new friends at a new place while continuing to lose old friends. I am confident that the experiences of these two years will somehow benefit me in the future, though I am struggling to see how it possibly can. Regardless, I am just relieved that this detour is finally over.

Everyone asks me if I am excited to be going somewhere new. In all honesty, I am. However, it is more of a reserved excitement with a cautious approach. Being excited has never done me any good and has at times made things worse when the fall out is not what was planned out to be. The more excited I am, the more disappointed I will be. Sometimes I wish things would just go back to being simple again like they were when I lived in Texas. Looking past the heat and the smell of tar, I was truly happy. Remembering that feeling of happiness makes me sad today because I don't remember the last time I was truly happy since I graduated elementary school.

Oh well, here's to a better and happier future.

Photography Class Assignment Final: Work of Art

This assignment is the final assignment for the class. The professor simply stated to create a photograph that we think is a work of art. We are then to write an artist statement about what we think art is and how our photograph fits the parameters of the definition that we gave art. You can click on any of the images to view them at full size. Below is the artist statement.

It is very difficult to define exactly what art is. Depending on the medium of the work, art can have very different meanings. Therefore, to find a common point as to what defines art, I’ve come to the conclusion that art is something that is able to stimulate the emotions and the cognitions of people. Art does not even have to be aesthetically pleasing to the senses since grotesque artwork is a form of art in itself. For photography in particular, there are many different kinds of photographs that can be defined as a work of art. Elements of a photograph of art can include repetitive patterns or rhythms in forms of shape or color as well as just being able to capture a moment in time that may not ever happen again whether it is a certain human expression, a natural phenomenon, or just a particular lighting on a subject. Sometimes you can go out and create a photograph while other times the photograph presents itself to you and all you have to do is just capture it.

This assignment was particularly difficult since I did not know which photograph I should use of the ones that I took. On one hand, I have a photograph that is simply just a repetition of many rectangles composed in such a way with the natural sunlight that also creates opposites within the photograph. This inspired me to crop the photos so that they fit the proportions of golden rectangles. The other photograph is of a sunset that worked beautifully with the clouds. There are no repetitive patterns in this particular photograph. Instead, there are many rhythmic waves created by the clouds and accentuated by the colors of the sunset—signifying that this is not the work of man, but it is nature.

While debating between the two photographs for a while, I remembered that a photograph was simply light that has been captured and presented in a way so that we can see what the light was like at that particular moment. This then led me to remember that when all the wavelengths of light are combined together, it creates white. Everything visible is simply just a reflection or diffraction of light—including works of art that appeal to our visual sense. Therefore, in order to capture the moment of all works of art into one photograph, I stored all of the reflected light (including light that is reflected from deep space) from all works of art and ended up with white light.

I have included all three photographs for this assignment because I have already printed them out from my printer and would like to present them anyway since they are all works of art.

Grade: 4.0

Photography Class Assignment 4: Lighting

This assignment was about different kinds of lighting: back lighting, side lighting, 45 degree lighting, diffused lighting, front lighting etc. Click on image to enlarge. This is the artist statement.

For both of the photos, I turned off all the lights in the house to obtain total darkness. The light source I used was an LED flashlight while the subject was placed in my laundry room. The main subject that I used was a basketball because it exhibits many details that can be greatly altered depending on the lighting situation—similar to a human face.

The first photo I used backlighting by placing the flashlight behind the ball. This created a very strong silhouette of the ball giving it an almost mystical and mysterious feel similarly to a solar eclipse. Almost no detail about the ball can be seen besides the outline of the shape from that angle. Furthermore, the backlighting makes the photo very flat and two dimensional. I set the exposure for 10 seconds with an aperture of f/4.5 at ISO400.

For the second photo, I kept everything in the same position except moved the flashlight off to the side about a 45 degree angle both laterally and vertically. Since the ball was static on the washing machine, the reflection from the washing machine along with the white walls in the room created a reflection that was almost opposite to the flashlight—creating the illusion that two lights were being used perpendicular of each other at a 45 degree angle from the subject. With this lighting, the intricate details of the basketball can be seen. The mysteriousness of the silhouette is gone and the subject is identifiable. Many of the intricate details of the basketball emerge. Also, the eye can then easily perceive the three dimensional aspect of the photo. I set the exposure for 1 second with an aperture of f/4.5 at ISO400.

Grade: 4.0