Inspired by the musical 'Rent'

I took these photographs after watching (and falling in love!) with the musical 'Rent'. It was a culminating task for my grade 11 photography class. It's my first post on these forums, although I've been checking them daily for inspiration & tips on photography. C&C welcome!

1.

Very powerful images there flower!

I found that the story was incredibly moving.. Knowing people in the same situation is a tough reality, as well. It's a part of life that deserves some light shed upon it.

Heh, I guess these aren't too well liked. Criticism is welcome, too.. I'd love to have some ideas as to how to improve. Keep in mind that i'm new to the game! The equipment I was using: Canon Rebel XT with kit lens.. exposures vary between pictures. I used photoshop to edit them.

Wow those gave me the creeps... very good images!

Creepy pics, nice work in photoshop. I did find the posing and make up a bit contrived - but I haven't seen the show. It wasn't till I saw the last pic that i realised what the story line was - I was getting rather alarmed till then, so was glad to see it wasn't a drug promo....
Your post processing shows a lot of promise, and you have a flair for the dark stuff. Nice work!

Definately not a drug promotion! hehe.

The thing I find meaningful about them is that the people around me are seeing them; my friends and peers are seeing them. I've seen way to many people go down the wrong path towards drug use, and seen the dark side of it in my own ways. I'm glad that my friends were able to see them; it's brought a lot of attention to this usually taboo subject.. Especially for a catholic school.

Thank you very much for the comments!!

I have a few questions for the post processing, actually. I'm very inexperienced in photoshop, so these pictures were a lot of work to get the way I like. Unfortunately, when I picked up the printed versions of these, I nearly cried. After spending over a hundred dollars in prints (8X10's & 3 copies of 5x7's!!!) I saw how incredibly grainy and discoloured the 3rd and 5th pictures turned out.

I was wondering if anyone knew how I could set up my monitor, camera & any software preferences so that my results could be a little more predictable? I was heartbroken to see that they didn't turn out as well.

I realise that the post processing wasn't much help to those 2 photos, in that it would make them even more grainy.

Also; anyone know a good place to make prints in Ottawa?

Thanks again <3

Nice series, especially #1, #4 and #6.

Awesome pictures that tell a bad story i like em thanks for sharing

These are very moving images. I really like the artistic value in these. As far as setting everything up, you should shoot in raw, and get a monitor calibration device (ie spyder2, etc.). I am new to this also, or I could elaborate more. Anyways, great photos.

Wow, in So. Cal we would get in so much trouble for submitting something like that for an 11th grade photo class. Extremely moving pictures. Awesome!


Care to share some insight into the colors? They appear to be cross processed. Please explain.

Thanks for the comments!

Yeah, as for the colours.. Well, I wanted to go for that green, dingy, flourescent light look. I'm not sure how well these will show up on everyone's monitors, simpy because of the amount of post processing done; the greens are quite strong. I'm tempted to reprocess these, but i'd really love some advice as to how I can change the colours and drastically change the appearance of the photographs without loosing too much quality.

Some of them were taken in cruddy lighting, therefore I really wasn't expecting all that much of them.. any way, if anyone has tips on how to reduce the grainy over processed look, please post some ideas! Thanks!!

Thanks, Adam!

Thank you, I'm glad you like them!

Thank you for the kind words. Glad to hear that I'm not the only one just starting and getting use to all the digital stuff. If you ever find out any other tips about these types of problems, let me know! Thanks for the advice.

You may want to try to run the images through a program for reducing noise. I am expirementing with Neat Image as it is a free download for the basic program. It will take a little bit of playing with the program in order to not soften the image too much, but it may be worth a shot.