Belinda Chiu/”Make Your Mark”

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People have different ways of expressing themselves in the form of art; some people paint, others sketch, and in my neighborhood Elmhurst, people do graffiti. I decided to choose the theme of “Make Your Mark” and took photographs of different forms of graffiti in Elmhurst and in Woodside.

To begin with, I made sure my camera was in the setting of “Day Light” since these photographs were taken on sunny days. I put the flash on automatic so my camera would automatically detect when it needed more light or when it did not. On my way to the train station, I passed by the park near my house and came across a tree with the carving: “CARLOS ♥’S MARIE.” The carvings seemed to have been etched out using a carving knife, for every letter was crudely cut and the round letters such as the C and the O were jagged. I specifically chose all of my photographs of graffiti as the center of the picture so it would be the focal point. There are numerous Chinese supermarkets in my neighborhood, all of which do not open until after eight o’clock, and in the span of dusk to opening time, people take advantage of spraying graffiti on the metal gates. I stood at one end of the gate and took an angled shot of the stark white graffiti spray on the dull gray gate.

For this project, I roamed my neighborhood to find the generic graffiti on the walls of apartments and stores, and took shots of as many graffiti art as I could. I was particularly entranced by a form of graffiti art next to a club Nuves on Queens Boulevard, which features a person driving a blue car with smoke trailing behind him, and a large panther crouching down glaring at any bystander that passes by. A few years ago, this graffiti used to be a bland image featuring only dull, dark colors, but now it is enhanced with bright purples, blues, and pinks to attract the attention of passersby. I changed the setting of my camera’s color to “vivid” to capture the vibrant colors of the graffiti.

I recalled passing graffiti numerous when I was driven to Woodside; a particular form of graffiti was always drawn under the overpasses of trains. These graffitis were always painted by “Two Famous Artists,” artists that I have always admired. They always sign their names and label their art, and at this location they named their artwork, *WOODSIDE on the Move.* Over the years, their works have been graffitied over by other people, which made it difficult for me to take quality photographs. They use the entire canvas of the walls under the overpass, which presented difficulties for me to take photographs of the entire canvas. I stood at one end of the photograph of the horizon and the baseball teams and did my best to capture their entire works. There was a photograph I took of a series of colorful boxes which were shadowed by trees; I tried to reduce the shadows from the tree by increasing the exposure, saturation, and the shadow of the photograph using iPhoto, and decreasing the contrast of the picture. The photograph of the flowers were also shadowed by the tree leaves, so I used iPhoto again to increase the saturation and highlights, and decrease the exposure and contrast to capture the colors of the flowers that I saw in person. The ocean painting was extremely large, and I was unable to capture the entire picture even from standing across the street, and one of the beams obstructed my view of the painting.

Performing this project was extremely enlightening for me because I noticed I overlook the details of the neighborhood I have lived in my entire life. This project helped me be more observant to my surroundings and learn to make use of the myriad settings my camera has to offer and make use of adjustments I can do with iPhoto.