Danyel Fogarty
Staff Writer Students from the photography classes at the University of La Verne were busy preparing the Irene Carlson Gallery last week with their best photographs for a photo exhibition, which opened on Monday.
The work of the Photo 450 (Studio Photography) class is the main attraction to the gallery.
Gary Colby, professor of photography, and Kevin Holland, photography lab coordinator, ran the classes.
Each student from the class chose a theme and had his or her own unique display.
The themes ranged from pin-up photography to contact prints.
Senior Carrie Callaway chose to do pin-up photography because she is not only a photographer but also an artist, and pin-up work is her specialty.
She used Adobe Photoshop to give her pictures a unique look.
“I took and scanned the pictures and also used watercolors and used Photoshop to layer the two to make a composite image,” Callaway said.
Janice Sullivan, a CAPA student and administrative secretary for the communications department, took a decidedly different approach to her photo display.
She took close-up macro photography of different kinds of fruit.
“It’s difficult to take close-up pictures,” Sullivan said. “The stuff I chose to display are abstract, things people eat all the time and you wouldn’t believe the detail they have close up.”
German Jimenez, a sophomore, did black and white photography with projections in a portrait.
Jimenez took portraits of sponsored skateboarders as well as action shots and blended the two together.
“It’s not done in Photoshop,” Jimenez said. “It’s one picture.”
In senior Jaclyn Ly’s display, she chose to not even use a camera to do her photography.
She did contact prints, which are photo prints with origami exposed to the light.
“This is something that represents me,” Ly said. “And the cranes have sentimental value to me, it’s a way I can express myself.”
All of the Photo 450 students learned a lot in and got lots of enjoyment out of the class.
“I enjoyed doing the project,” Sullivan said. “Kevin and Gary worked with us to do what we needed to do and helped us get what we wanted.”
Junior Chelsea Riggins agreed.
“450 is a lot of work,” Riggins said. “But I really gained something from it rather than it being a waste of time; it was fun.”
However, Photography 450 was not the only class to have its students’ work on display.
The three other photography classes at the University also had their best pieces of work on display.
The Photo 210 (Elementary Photography) students are very excited to see their work displayed along side that of the more experienced students.
“It feels awesome to have a picture on display,” freshman Maria Villalpando said. “It’s the first mounted picture I took, which is crazy because I could do better now.”
The Photo 310 (Photoshop) students, meanwhile, showed off the techniques they learned in class, demonstrating how well they could layer photos together to make a composite image.
The photographs will be on display in the Irene Carlson Gallery through commencement weekend and concluding on May 31.
The Gallery is open on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., but prospective visitors may call ahead for after-hours or weekend visits. Gallery admission is free.
Danyel Fogarty can be reached at sadeyez619@hotmail.com.
Journalism operations manager at the University of La Verne. Production manager and business manager of the Campus Times.
