104/365: Up a tree

This... this is the project that took up most of my month of April. Those of you keeping score at home may remember I've had some issues in my Intro to Digital Photography course, namely, the fact that my prof has rigid views of what constitutes "good photography" and what doesn't. Consequently, he's low-balled my grades, saying "It didn't look like you put much effort into them." This led directly to my "Missing Persona" series, which was a shot across the bow. I got an A for that one, but a grudging one at 91, not nearly enough to pull my overall average up from the B he'd stuck me at. So this series is my response, double-dog daring him to not give me a strong A for this project, and an A for the course overall. I hold grudges. When I'm old and grey, I'll telling my grandkids about this epic battle of wills. Win or lose, I'll have fought it on my terms.

Ironically, this first image is only here because this is the direction my prof tried to steer me. He wanted to rein me in whereas I wanted to push farther beyond the envelope. So I allowed this one concession. My project consisted of two, core concepts that I felt would feed off each other to create a profoundly surreal visual experience. The first of these elements is "levitation," a form of photo composite trickery that's A) quite popular online and 2) something I'd never attempted before. So that's what's on display in this image, Bug climbing a mesquite tree in defiance of gravity. This serves as my "control" group, giving visual context to what is yet to come when I add the second element, one that is--photographically speaking--close to my heart.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Canon EF-S 10-22mm
Lisa On Location

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