MOPA Visit, Recreation & Reflection

The exhibition that stood out to me the most and was my favorite was James Balog’s. Most of his photos are related to nature and have different elements included in them. For example, fire, ice, water, nature. The pictures that were present that were under the sign ‘On Fire En Llamas’ were the most interesting for me to look at. The detail there is with the burning of the fire and the firefighters covered with ashes. I wanted to recreate those pictures but of course in a safe way. For my pictures I took of my backyard, I applied an orange radial gradient effect to represent the fire burning in his actual picture because of course I did not want to start a fire. For the pictures of the firefighters, I loved the emotion that you can sense through the photo which is touching due to the job being very dangerous. I used my sister to recreate these pictures and she applied black eyeshadow on her face to represent the ashes. For his photo, ‘Ancient Air Bubbles Released by Melting of Greenland Ice Sheet Greenland’ I took pictures of the water bubbles that appeared on my car from a day after it rained. Balog’s ‘Vanishing Ice Hello Evanescente’ collection of photos were beautiful to me. I walked away after looking at this collection with a new appreciation of how beautiful nature and the world is. Overall, my experience visiting the Museum of Photographic Art was really good. I had been to this museum and Balboa park plenty of times, but to go specifically to appreciate this exhibition made the experience more enjoyable and after leaving, I was inspired to continue photography since I have been enjoying doing it more this semester.