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.

Edited Pinhole photographs

After the pinhole camera was made we began taking images of outside the college in some of my images i placed my mobile phone in front to see if it could also pick up the light from my phone.

These are my images above as they were when they came out of the dark room procedure, I then manipulated them on Photo shop and added different effects to them.

To begin with i went to change the brightness and contrast as seen above this just made it easier to recognise the darker and lighter areas

Then i Used photo filter to put colour into it as seen below

And then i used Hue/Saturation to do the same and produced the image below

But overal i edited my picture using hue/saturation and came out with the image below, i made it like this because to me this was the most realistic transformation i could have done.

How to make a pinhole camera?

Step by Step guide

• To begin with we were told to come to lesson with tins which could be mash potato tins or hot chocolate any tin the same size as them.
• Secondly we washed out our tins if need being then painted the inside and lid with black acrylic paint.

• Once the tin dried we were told to measure out a dot 5cm from the bottom of the tin and then use a ruler and draw a 1cm square around the dot.
• After the square was cut out using a craft knife we then gathered a piece of foil and began roughing up one side of it with sandpaper.
• After that was done, we placed a small hole inside the foil piece, coloured it in with a black marker pen and stuck it onto our tins with black duct tape ensuring it was firmly stuck down and the pin hole was in the centre.

• We also cut out an addition piece of duct tape to place over the pin hole like a lens cap
• Then we went into the dark room and placed a piece of photography paper inside our tins and put the lens cap on and the tins lid on to ensure the tin was completely light sensitive.

• To make sure our camera was completely light sensitive we took our camera outside with the lid and lens cap on just to see if any light could get through, we then processed the images to check for any light exposures if this test was positive you would have to make adjustments to your camera but if your camera proved negative then you could proceed with the next step.
• Then finally our pin hole camera was complete and we could proceed with taking pictures!

Pinhole Photography Mood board

This is my interpretation of a Pinhole camera mood board although I made it more like a college with just images and no text it includes the work of all three photographers which are:

Steve Irvine

Kate Cooke

&

Justine Quinnell

Links to the Images used:

Tree Trunk

Valley

Road

Chairs

Bedroom

Stone scenery

Building

Trees

Figure sittng on stone

Woman on Chair

Woman in Library

Building

How the pin hole camera works!

My Definition

A pinhole camera works by piercing a small hole into a light proof box this hole creates light inside the box the light is then selected from the scene opposite and inverted producing an inverted scene inside the box which will be captured on a light sensitive piece of paper this operation is called camera obscura. 

Some History 

The camera obscura has been known to scholars for decades a Chinese philosopher and the founder of Mohism, Mozi referred to this device as a "collecting plate" or "locked treasure room." Since then many people tried to expand this idea by producing pinhole cameras in a large scale examples are below:

Technical Studies

(The Brief)

This is the photography brief which basically just introduces us into the course and gives us a incite into basic photography such as working with SLR cameras and manipulating the use of light as well as developing films and spending time in the dark room. Also this course involves a good amount of research into other photographers working with similar materials.

AS Photography Lesson 1

First Photography lesson Playing around with celebrity images on Photo booth with different effects using a Mac

Photography Technical studies