Ipad Experimentation

This was a medium shot of our model to do this we had to first turn the lights on and position the camera properly.Then pick up the iPad a swirl it side to side behind the model.

This picture closely resembles Patrick Rochons work except the model isn't visible but the spirals of colour behind them look like a rainbow of colour, this was done exactly the same way as the 1st picture but the swirls are easier to notice.

This image was done by waving the iPad in front of the model as well as behind.











In this image you can slightly see the picture that was on the iPad this was due to a group member moving the iPad slowly.Also we held the iPad underneath this models chin this is why you can see them lit up more than the others.

These images Were all done in the dark using a iPad picture as shown below. We used 3 people for this task 1 person held the camera 1 person swirled the iPad around and 1 person was our model.The first 3 prints are my favourite because the model in the centre is like a silhouette and the swirls around them highlight this it really links into the work of patrick Rochon.

This is the image we used to create these swirls

Solarisation of Portrait images on photoshop

The contrast of black to white is really dominate in this piece the solarisation darkens the area in which the light was shone from producing this plastic metal model.

This is the original to the solarisation as you can see the light is hitting from below which is what the solarisation darkens.







In this piece the model posing really does look slightly metal like she's been painted with silver paint.

These are my solarisation pictures done using adobe photo shop. To do this i followed a tutorial, it was done by creating circles and changing the colour of the original to black and white. Personally i prefer the first set of prints to the second set as the first one looks quite creepy like she's holding a torch over her chin in the darkness of the night, its a really good effect.

Light painting editing and Portrait Editing

I did Both these edits using photoshop aswell as playing around with the NEF settings. On this picture below i got rid of the hump at the side of the model with the clone stamp tool and then added more light in the background using the same tool.

Before

For the picture below i played around with the NEF settings and increased the clarity, I then made a new layer and outlined the model using the pen tool and made this outline of them completely black then changed the opacity of it to create a shadow for them.

After

                                                             
                                                                 

Before

I took both of these photos using a digital SLR camera in the first picture we used an iPad to create the light shown and in the second one we used a flexible table lamp to position the light where we desired in this particular shot i positioned the light so it was shining onto the left side of the model.

After

Mindmap on light

Light Painting on Photoshop

These are some of my best portraits scanned in and edited on photo shop using the ''Adobe Photo shop light painting tutorial'' I used the colour green for the first print because i thought it would be really contrasty with the black. Overall i prefer the second image because it gives it a mystical look which is really effective.

Patrick Rochon Analysis

Patrick began light painting in 1992 he then joined up with friends to form a multimedia group and built costumes of light and went on to perform in on a big screen. Patrick uses a digital camera and normally does these in dark rooms.

Link to the Picture


Patrick uses light painting to his advantage and in my option every photograph of his tells the audience a little story.
The model in this print has a slightly evil smirk on her face almost like she's planning something.In her hands she hold a while musky item it could be foam of some sort or maybe as it resembles it could be a dove.
For this image i would say he has used a blue light and shone it on the upper angle of the model making the audience focus on her face.

He uses a range of light sources to produce this effect with his models, This particular photograph was taken using 24 cameras on a 360 ring in a completely dark room.The detail he has paid attention to in this print is amazing. the contrasting blues and purples work really well together its almost like a bucket of lilac paint has been chucked all over these models.The peaceful look in the main models face conveys feelings of relaxation or peacefulness which again links into the colours used as the colour blue connotates calmness and as a cold colour it could also connotate lack of warmth.The arm reaching out of her could suggest movement in the picture as well it could signify the place in which her arm was at first.

Andre Kertez and Edward Weston Peppar Comparasion

The first artwork is made by Edward Weston Pepper it is called Pepper.Weston was born in Chicago and moved to California when he was 21. He knew he wanted to be a photographer from an early age, and initially his work was typical of the soft focus pictorial ism which was a effect that made the image look slightly blurred it was used mainly in the 19th and 20th century. Hhowever he soon abandoned that style and went on to be one of the foremost champions of highly detailed photographic images. Unfortunately in 1947 he was diagnosed with the Parkinson's disease and died shortly in 1958 during that time he stopped photography and focused on the printing on his early prints which measured over 1,000. 

The second Artwork is produced by Andre Kertez however he was a Hungarian born photographer His first encounters with magazine photography inspired him to learn photography. He was well known for his photographic composition and photo essay- which is a series of images that tell a story. Andre travelled a lot  which made his career split into 4 periods called the Hungarian period, the French period, the American period and, toward the end of his life, the International period. 

Edward Weston's theme seems to be quite natural and organic objects. this object pictured is actually a pepper but it is difficult to see because of the way it is positioned, first looking at the image i thought it was a swan because of the smoothness and neck alike stem, similarly it resembles a human with the position being the back. I think side lighting has been used in this piece as only sections of the right side have speckles of light reflected on them and below this whole object there is a small shadow caused by this direction of lighting.

This differs from Andres work as the theme is completely different as I've mentioned Edward focuses on the natural and organic objects Andres has pictured a fork which is classed as a everyday object and this image is a lot more contrasty compared to Edwards,This photograph has a lot more rough texture compared to Edwards smoothness you can really see the detail in the fork which connotates about the rough texture.

Both artworks have a close up shot of the objects within there frames this is a good effect because it lets us analyse the composition of the objects as well as the texture.

In Edwards piece the pepper is placed in the centre of the frame and because if its size it takes up the whole of the frame in comparison to Andre piece the fork is placed on top of the bowl in the frame this however has a good effect on the overall shadow.

In Edwards piece because side lighting was used the piece remains one tone, Andres piece however is a lot more contrasty with different shades of grey,white and blacks this makes it more interesting to look at and to analyse.

Because of the irregular shape of the pepper in Edwards photography i would say that maybe he found this odd looking paper in the bag and his imagination started flowing and he decided to photograph it using simple lighting and a bland background, Andre's photograph however i believe was more planned because of his very neat shadowing and how every object is perfect with no faults on it for example the bowl or plate has no cracks or chips.

Since Andre's photograph is by far more contrasty i would say in the darkroom he set his filters to a high number  to really get the detail shown and on the other hand i would say Edward turned of his filters maybe to link into his 'natural' theme.

Both photographs capture a slightly calm and relaxed sort of mood because of the simple use of lighting and objects also because of the colour being black and white which normally connotates the feeling of gloomy or a dull feeling it doesn't strike me as something that's going to lighten my mood. I think both photographers artwork are in a way complete opposites despite the similarity in the moods. Edward's photography i think was trying to show the naturalism of the objects he chose he did this throughout the processing of the photograph as i believe he didn't use any filters to boost contrast in his piece.

 Andre however seemed to embrace the technology in his photography and really use all of it to his advantage by experimenting with light in a position which creates a shadow and producing a really contrasting photography in result.

David Bailey Analysis

David Bailey was born on 2nd January 1938. He began his career working as an assistant at the john French Studio he then went on to photograph for john Cole's studio five then later on he as contracted to be a photographer for well selling magazine vogue.

This is a portrait photography of American actor/film director Jack Nicholson. Jack Nicholson was famous for his line in the movie 'the shining' which was 'Heres Johnny' in this photograph his facial expressions look like he was reacting this phrase. 

The shining was a horror movie written by Stephen king about a family that  heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father (Jack Nicholson) into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future. So this photo could be trying to portray the character he played in this movie. 

The fact that one side of his face is lighten could suggest this is the good in him and the darker side is intact the darker side of him after he changes into this violent person with his facial expressions looking close to a scream swell he could potential be screaming out as this transformation happens.

This is taken in a portrait way making the figure centred, this close up gives us a facial point as-well as we can see the whole face and facial expressions.The way the background is all white gives us a more focus on the model but to do this and still have a dark and light side of the model there must have been in a white studio with a variety of lights shining on the face of Jack.

The way Jack Nicholson's facial expressions are i would say this was planned, However this photography was potentially taken in the 60's where no digital cameras were made so it was taken using a film camera which means David bailey had to make sure he got plenty of snaps of Jack Nicholson and everything was exactly right especially the lighting.

The mood of this piece creates fear in the person analysing it because of the expression on the models face as-well as the way the lighting is positioned. I think the artist David Bailey was trying to show the personality of the character Jack Nicholson played though still image using only facial expressions and lighting.

Light mood board

1, 2- David Bailey
3, 4 - Patrick Rochon
5, 6 - Mario Testino
7, 8 - Janne Parviainen

Linking to the work of others

Picasso - Light painting 'centaur'

Picasso was a Spanish man born in 1881-1973, In this picture he sort of resembles a cave man because of the surrounding and the way he is standing implies this. This could also be implied from that he has drawn a bull like character i would say to do this he put his SLR camera on a very very slow shutter speed and with a laser pen or a led light he drew this character using the continuous line technique as well the room would also have to have been quite dark linking into this cave idea.

David Baliey - The Rolling Stones

David Bailey was a Englishman born in 1938, He is described to mostly take pictures of celebrities bench why this is a picture of 'the rolling stones'. This picture was taken in a studio and he has particularly shone a light on their faces as this is the lightest medium he has also put a lot of focus on the faces of the singers this is a good effect.

Andre Kertesz - The Fork 1928

Andre Kertesz was a Hungarian artist born in the years 1894-1985, This picture of a fork says so much more than its appearance a fork is a everyday item something we use everyday. The tone as well are excellent in this picture there is also a strong contrast between the light and darker tones.

Edgar Martins - from the 'Diminishing Present' project (2003/2005)

Edgar Martins is a Portuguese photographer but he works in Britain he was born in 1977, This is a quite natural photograph as all the light present is in fact natural light and also light from the street light this gives the photo a more realistic look to it.

Light project introduction brief

My understanding of this brief is that we will be exploring light in different ways and seeing what it does to a particular photo we will be combining this with still life,portrait, night time photography and painting and after experimenting we will need to have a final piece mounted and evaluated.

Evaluation

My Evaluation


The theme for this project was called contextual studies its aim was to give us an insight into photography and help us get used to experimenting with SLR cameras. To come up with ideas for this piece I produced a mind map, which helped me evaluate my ideas and choose which one is most interesting.

For my final prints I created a series of signs photographed and then added a figure in front of the signs and processed them again and then I did a A3 print with just this idea on and mounted them all together. Overall I'm pleased with the way my prints have turned out they have a slight urban look to them.

It was quite time lengthy to make my prints, I had to get the exposure time for the A3 print just right (as I had to nearly triple the time of what it would be normally) also because I was placing two negatives in the same negative carrier the light dimmed a lot and it was difficult to see where to put the photographic paper as well as that I was using tracing paper it was a bit too experimental with all the materials I was using.

Although the technique was complicated, I enjoyed experimenting with all the different materials I used and seeing which worked well and which didn't.

My final prints are road signs and a figure of a girl in front of some of them, they link into the theme of everyday because road signs are things that we see everyday and perhaps we don't always acknowledge them but they are always there. My initial ideas were to have 3 projects one road signs one figurative photographs and one footwear but because of time and experience with the camera, I decided to narrow it down to one also the 3 ideas didn't really support each other as well ass the 2 did.

If I could go back I would organize my time more efficiently and maybe do the three ideas and link them all together by doing a mounted sheet and placing all these images on there.

For some inspirational research I looked at two photographers one named Sharon Elphick who created college like photographs of signs and the other being Richard Renault, the artist who inspired me the most was Sharon Elphick because her everyday signs all jazzed up and bright in colour made me do the opposite and maybe convey how we would see the signs- because they are black and white we wouldn't acknowledge them that's what the figure in the image relates to as well because she is kind of blacked out you wouldn't really acknowledge her.

Overall enjoyed the project and in the future I would like to see what other techniques are possible to do with a SLR camera.

Inspirational Photographers

Sharon Elphick

This is a piece of photography taken by Sharon Elpick. 

For one of my final pieces i wanted to do a photo shoot with signs as the theme these will be signs we see everyday linking into the theme. I will take both coloured and black and white prints to make my mounted sheet stand out. Sharon in this piece has particularly taken photographs of road signs she has maybe used a digital camera to do this as they seem quite plain.Although i described it as 'plain' i do like the way she has mounted the pictures together using a great amount of arrows to create movement in this piece.One thing that this piece has that the others don't is colour and Sharon has used a variety of this in this piece, This is one thing i definitely want to add to my final outcome to give it a bit of  oomph. 

Richard Renaldi

This portrait photograph was taken by Richard Renaldi, I have chosen him as my second artist for inspiration because my second idea will be emotions and in Richards photographs i think he really captures this.To make this photograph Richard has used a large aperture with a small number setting to make the background blurred and the image in front clear this gives a good effect because it makes the artist focus on the person in the image who is shown quite dominate over the whole piece.The emotion on this subjects face helps us with the meaning of this photograph i would say the emotion in this piece is anger, Maybe he is angry with himself this could also link into why the background is blurred because he knows he has done wrong and wants to analysis his problems by blanking out the surrounding world.

Final Ideas Mindmap

Man Ray Analysis

This is a photo gram made by man ray or rayograms as he called them. Ray produced his first photo grams after he came to Paris in 1921. He believed that he first discovered them as an accident in the darkroom However it seems likely that his discovery was prompted by artist Tristan Tzara. Man Ray named the results of his efforts “Rayographs”—a play on his name.
I think the theme of this piece could be Innocence because although it has a gun in the centre of the photo gram i believe that this is a toy gun because the bullet holder is not intact and the alpha block that surround it are childlike, they is also some kind of circle object which i believe could be a bouncy ball going with the theme innocence.However the theme could also be taken as violence as you could look at the alpha blocks as symbols of people and the gun plays a kinda on Russian roulette with them although the bullet holder is out perhaps these people do not know that and still play the game carefully.

The artist created this work using the photo gram process whereby he put objects underneath the enlarger machine and exposed it to the white light for an approximate time, By shortening or lengthening the time of exposure you can control how dark the background of the silhouettes are,The shorter the time, the lighter the shade will be so i would say he exposed his photo gram for about 10 seconds because the background it quite dark.Also looking at the alpha blocks you can see a slight shadow which shows movement, To do this he simply halved the time he exposed his print for and during that time moved his prints slightly and then exposed it for the remaining time to give the piece this shadowy effect.In fact looking at the whole piece as a whole it seems as if he has moved all the objects in the photo gram.

 This piece links into our lessons at the moment because we are ourselves producing photo grams and this piece of work has inspired me to use different kinds of objects and maybe to make my objects relate to each other so they can all link into one particular theme whether that be violence or innocence like man ray or another theme i choose to do.

SLR Pictures

These are my best prints taken from an SLR camera, these were later mounted on a A2 sheet.

Final Prints

These are my chosen final prints which have been mounted on a piece on A2 card

Roni Horn Analysis

 

This is a piece designed for 'Flash Magazine',Created by Roni Horn.Roni Horn is an American visual artist and writer.Roni has been know to explore the nature of art through sculptures, works on paper, photography, and books. She describes drawing as the key activity in all her work because drawing is about composing relationships.

This piece named Cabinet by was created she says for the audience to get quite a reaction from it, when I first analysed this image the words creepy,unusual, scary and disturbing came to mind. Although roni said she wanted the audience to put themselves in this frame the clown like image she said was a metaphor for mirror, the piece was in fact a self portrait she wanted the viewer to put themselves in this role. She says in an interview about the piece that the clown isn't what interested her into making this piece 'Basically, the clown thing isn’t what interested me originally. Not historically but more in the idea of appearance.' She then goes into detail about how she interpreted the clown 'The clown is not about actuality. It’s the opposite, it’s of appearance; it’s a symbol. And the cloud, all it is is appearance; it’s moisture and air.'

 

Although Roni didn't mean the image literally alot of people would look at this picture and instantly become scared.In the film industry clowns are portrayed as scary monster type things films such as batman and IT goes long with this theory.Also it is known that alot of people are terrified of clowns and maybe that's why roni could have used it.The contrasting colours red and white work well almost the whole piece is white and this brings the red out even more.The red in this piece is used in the normal places n which you would expect to see it on a clown however because of the movement it makes it look like it is smeared blood.

 

I believe the deeper meaning of this piece taking aboard Roni horns actual meaning is that everybody has a wild side roni said she wanted the audience to put themselves into this role and normal clowns tend to be energetic and lively when they perform to children.  

 

This photograph was taken using a fast shutter speed to capture the movement, It was taken as several portraits and then combined as one to form a series of different portraits with different emotions.To make this piece took a lot of skill i would say because to be able to capture a moving image in the position she wants takes alot of hard work

Justin Quinnell Analysis

This is a pinhole photograph, photographed by Justin Quinnell. Justin Quinnell is a UK pinhole photographer began his career when he picked up a camera at the age of 11 he then went on to completing a degree in fine art, Next he began teaching young people photography but it was soon proven harder than he thought because the kids couldn’t afford regular cameras but he'd seen them come in with coke cans from time to time so he decided to first make a camera out of that which proved successful as the youth were exited it worked and were asking if they could take their cameras home. Justin particularly loves pinhole photography because of the excitement of not knowing how the image is going to turn out he compares it to life and says "if you knew what was going to happen tomorrow you might as well top yourself". Justin has experimented with a range of different objects to make his pinhole cameras from small ones to do the mouthpiece pinholes to large wheelie bin cameras to take pictures of whole scenery.

This Pinhole Photography is called 'Rosa mouthpiece', Rosa is Justin's daughter and judging by recent photographs of her I would say this picture was taking about 4 years ago.

Like I mentioned earlier mouthpiece cameras like this one were taken with a small camera that fits inside the mouth and he placed his daughter in front of him whilst opening his mouth. This made the picture come out on a small piece of film which he later expanded.

 I have chosen to analyse this piece of work because in my opinion its very unusual to contrast a baby with an open mouth almost like he’s eating her which I’m sure is not the case, but this photograph also stands out because its more personal in some respect most of his photographs are of local scenery whilst this one displays his child which makes it more unique to his other pieces.

To understand Justin Quinnell work deeper I watched this video which was posted on his website:

http://www.pinholephotography.org/ and the video which was:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7kuamHV3og&feature=youtu.be%20

I think this piece maybe does have a deeper meaning that is that he is getting to know his daughter and is also introducing her to his career what he does and then he is including her in it so it could be showing us how he is building a relationship with his daughter. The title of the piece doesn’t really inform us of what the piece is about of whose baby it is in the piece but I suppose a simple title intrigues most people to then go and do some independent research on Justin whereby they discover more about the piece.

To make this piece I believe a great amount of skill went into it because he had to leave his mouth open for quite a while without shaking for the image to be captured he also had to hold his daughter and babies are quite fidgety so this also took a great amount of skill.

The artist uses quite dark colours for this image but then contrasts it with putting bright pale colours for his daughter this altogether makes the piece look like a photograph taken from a regular camera. I think tone is the most important formal element in this piece because there are quite a lot of dark areas as a pose to brighter ones.

My first reaction to this piece was how did he do it? Because I didn’t know it was possible to create a pinhole camera small enough to fit inside the mouth, the work has inspire me to try different things with a pinhole camera and not just capture pictures of the outside world.