This past week I took some time to relax and spend time with friends after finals week and had a great time taking photos in the West Chester area of southeastern PA. Now that I’ve finished my Color Photography class (Art 318A with professor Sue Jenkins) I feel much more confident exploring and pushing color, and had fun playing with that in these images. I wanted to focus not only on the compositional aspects of the places I was capturing photographically, but also the way color could impact the mood of the photos.
The first location was Baldwin’s Book Store, a five story barn with four accessible floors of books. The barn was originally built in 1822 and has a lot of character. This was my first time there and considering books and barns are two of my favorite things, I was very excited!
The lighting was mainly either incandescent or fluorescent and had great contrast due to the long hallways of bookshelves. This helped add to the cozy and somewhat mysterious look I was going for when both shooting and editing, as it put emphasis on either my subject or background and creates a sense of tension. Using framing also added to this as the images feel like the viewer is spying on the subject through the bookshelves.
In terms of editing for color I did a mixture of cross processing and color grading, working with warm tones in the midtones and highlights and teals in the shadows. The already warm tones from the incandescent lighting and cozy nature of the bookshelves complimented these editing techniques and added to the story being told. I also added film grain in most of them to lean into the vintage and analog feel coming from the colors and subject matter.
The second place I photographed was Gay Street in downtown West Chester, PA which features a large variety of small businesses and transforms into an outdoor market every weekend from May to September. Once again I leaned into color and focused on emphasizing the mood of the area. I didn’t get a chance to take as many photos here but I do like the few that I did take.
I also photographed the Marywood University 2024 graduation ceremony yesterday at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, PA and had a great time photographing alongside two of my fellow photo majors Antonia Summa (@antoniasummaphotography) and Conchita Rivera (@conchita.creates) for The Wood Word. This was my last time photographing graduation as I’ll be walking across the stage myself next year and I’m glad I got to do it with friends. To see all of the photos we took of the amazing class of 2024, check us out on Instagram @thewoodword and on our website!
