Art is a way of life.
Showing posts with label Object. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Object. Show all posts

Friday, 28 October 2011

OBJECT SHOOT


Today was my object shoot and can safely say it went just about right, it could of been much better in terms of organisation with the props staying on the carpet.
I should of got them all attached on the carpet the night before, but I did think it would be ok for them to stick on with tape as tested before.

However, on the day it turned out that a new technique saved the shoot!
I had to cut holes in the carpet with a carpet knife and wrap inviable wire around my objects and up the carpet to tie a knot.

These things happen, but if only this came to me beforehand.. 




Thursday, 27 October 2011

Preparation for Object shoot

Today I went into uni to get everything ready for my shoot tomorrow!
I had to make sure the carpet was the right size of the board it will be masked to and to also get all my objects to stick on the carpet!



Monday, 24 October 2011

Colour and Transformation!

In Todays lecture we looked at Colour Transformation and how your colour in objects transforms what the object means.   - An Emotional Signifier 


The colour pallet affects the mood of the image as it provides a code to how we should feel - Each colour represents something but with sometimes two meanings, for example - Green is connotations of jealously but also shows positivity - on the 'GO' (traffic lights) Red is a symbol of love and passion but can viewed as danger and fear.      

Photographers with colour ;

  • John Paul Caponigro ;
'' Reality exists only through representation. There is no correct way to see things''
  • ''photography is a medium, a language, through which I might come to experience directly, live more closely with, the interaction between myself and nature.''

    Robert Maplethorpe - 
  • William Eggleston - The 'Father' of colour photography (high saturation+mundane images become important due to his lighting choices
  • Stephen Shore - Photographs the everyday/mundane but makes them more through colour

John Paul Caponigro 

Born in Boston in 1932, Paul Caponigro is renowned as one of America’s most significant master photographers. When he was thirteen, he began to explore the world around him with his camera and subsequently sustained a career spanning nearly fifty years. He is currently regarded as one of America’s foremost landscape photographers. 

Acclaimed for his spiritually moving images of Stonehenge and other Celtic megaliths of England and Ireland, Caponigro has more recently photographed the temples, shrines and sacred gardens of Japan. Caponigro also inspires viewers with glimpses of deep, mystical woodland of his New England haunts. 

He approaches nature receptively, preferring to utilize an intuitive focus rather that merely arranging or recording forms and surface details. 

Music has always been an essential aspect of his life. Although he shifted from the piano to photography early in his artistic career, he remains a dedicated pianist and believes his musical training and insight contributes significantly to his photographic imagery. In his photographs the visual ‘silence’ becomes as tangible as ‘sound’.

Paul Caponigro has exhibited and taught throughout the United States and abroad. Recipient of two Guggenheim fellowships and three National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants, Caponigro’s images will be found in most history of photography texts and contemporary art museums.





http://www.independent.com/news/2008/feb/14/emmeditations-silver-photographic-studies-paul-cap/


Using shells, leaves, flower petals, stones, and other detritus from the natural world, Caponigro meticulously arranges found objects into compositions of intimate proportions. The inanimate models are often paired in curious partnerships: Abalone shells are propped against a cross-sectioned piece of wood, playing off of the silver gelatin print’s capability for high contrast. The deliberate positioning of photographic props are the result of a well-thought-out artistic process; for each composition, Caponigro took a week or more to find the perfect complement of light, texture, and shapes. “It would have been too easy to have a simple setup,” Caponigro said. “I would take my time setting up materials and putting them together so that they felt right.” The artist is a naturalist at heart; it is that sensibility, matched with his innate artistic intuition, that allows him to see the potential in these 

Print Information: All photographic prints are archivally processed gelatin silver prints made from original photographic negatives by Paul Caponigro. Prints are dry-mounted on 4-ply, acid-free mat board. They are window matted and signed in pencil on the front of the overmat at the lower right corner of the print, and are ready to frame. No digital manipulation is used at any stage of the process. 


Jerry Uelsmann, photographed by Capaigro.


Photographer, Ryszard Horowitz, states ;
I have been aware of Jerry's work for 40 years. All my life, I was very much interested in making pictures as opposed to taking them. Back in Poland, I saw a magazine called Ameryka, a beautiful color magazine. In this issue they showed the work of Art Kane, Ernst haas and Uelsmann. What struck me about his work was that he was doing a lot of darkroom work and in-camera manipulation, and I was extremely taken by the fact that there was someone in another part of the world who thought the same way as me and wanted to do that. His work appears in every history of photography. Also, he has generations of students who spread his gospel. Certain of his images, because they are so strong and so personal and use such bold symbols, once you see them, you cannot forget them. He knows who he is and what he is doing. His work transcends fashion. He 
doesn't give a damn about fashion, and there are only a handful of photographers who are like that.


Harowitz was amazed and struck by the fact that there was someone else out there similar to himself, in
regards to photography. 









Tuesday, 11 October 2011

Still life inspirations for object

Looking at the work of Sam Taylor-Wood and Paul Biddle as inspired me to make my object shoot as eye-catching in great detail and creative skill as their work represents.


These self-portraits by Sam Taylor-Wood are truly inspiring. As she explores notions of weight and gravity, she places herself in situations where her interior and external sense of self is in conflict.



Taylor-Wood stated; 
"Praise really isn't that important to me from anyone other than the people whose opinion I respect. I don't crave it – and I never read reviews any more. I know people say that, but I really don't read any of them. I have done in the past and it affects you so fundamentally that you know in the future that just one wrong word in an otherwise nice review can be really upsetting. I remember one particularly bad one after a show that I thought had been the best in my life. It blights everything – and yet it's just one person's opinion." 


Paul Biddle - Still Life

Biddle's work strikes me! As I am completely and utterly stunned by his technique and skill.
When observing his work, so many questions enter my mind

  1. What made him of think of that?
  2. What does it mean to him?
  3. How did he create such fine art?
  4. Why is he creating work like this?
  5. How does he feel when producing this work? 
  6. Does he place his work in order or is it completely random?
  7. What does he hope to achieve with his talent.. by putting his work out there, what message is he sending to his observers? 
  8. Where does het get such amazing objects? - does he make them?
  9. Some sort of computer animation must go into his work?
  10. How long does it take to create one image, yet alone several? 



Biddle's work of fine art is intriguing and very imaginative.











Object shoot - Lighting

In the summer I traveled to Italy - 4 cities ; Venice, Florence, Siena and Rome

In Rome is where I got see Carravagio's dramatic Chiaroscuro (light and shadow) paintings, my father and I were captured by his work out of everything else we saw in the gallery's. 

I've decided to go for my lighting in the style of painter Carravagio as he illustrates dark backgrounds with the subject in colourful light.


  • http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2621/caravaggio-pioneered-photographic-techniques - in this article it states how the artist 'fixed' the image, using light-sensitive substances and projected the image to then trace and paint it. Many more artists also used this technique and what is so fascinating about it, is that this was 200 years before the camera was invented and yet these people had the skill to produce such mind-blowing art. 
Art history scholars have long known that Caravaggio worked in a sort of darkroom, illuminating his subjects through a hole in the ceiling and projecting the image onto a canvas using a lens and a mirror.
It is believed that Carravagio was the first to use this technique in paintings in the 16th century. 
  • I want to represent harshness in my image with an dark black background and have the child's objects lit up and saturated. 
  • The way forward to this image is to use Broncolor pack and an small soft box. 

Object Tutorial

In Today's Object Tutorial - my peers and I discussed our ideas for the Object shoot placing on the 28th
I knew what I felt strong about - something thats happening around the world - Child Abuse

My initial idea for the my shoot was to get objects such as ;

  • Tennis ball - to represent the Earth
  • Headlines around half the side of the globe and artificial flowers/butterflies on the other half of the globe to convey how the world is meant to be a magical and beautiful place for kids
  • Soft teddy bear - to represent the child
  • Duct tape on the mouth to show that they have 'no say' X
  • Rose petals sprayed black to portray death
Title of my piece - Scarred hearts+souls 

Screen shot from movie The Lovely Bones


This idea came to me after looking at the work of Dan Tobin Smith - series of exploding teddy bears

  • When looking at these images it 'provokes an emotional response' and you instantly think of children


However after listening to my peers thoughts and opinions, I realised how I need a solid idea in context, therefore after looking at the work of David Bate - his series of Bungled Memories - the simplicity conveyed in his work yet has a bold powerful meaning.
Bate stated in an interview  -“In the end, it’s about the meanings that people bring to the work and not what I impose in the pictures. I think it’s more of a dialogue or translation. If people understand the work very differently from the way I intended it, I think it’s one of the interesting things. Although I wish for certain frameworks and I try to give those as much as possible, I don’t think that an artist or a photographer has the rights to decide the meaning of the work that you give to the world.”
http://camerareality.com/2011/10/25/shaun-h-kelly-camera-reality-from-an-interview-with-david-bate/


This changed my idea completely into the style of Bate's. My intention was to portray to the audience that a child's world is turned upside down when abused verbally or physically. After speaking to my tutor Jonathan, a perfect idea to illustrate 'a child's world turned upside down' was thought of after our discussion.  We decided to show a the floor of a child's bedroom, but tilted upside down as the ceiling, therefore all the objects on a child's bedroom floor will be hanging from the carpet as shown below.




Materials required for shoot production ; 1metre board, soft toy ball, soft blanket, carpet, teddy, milk bottles

Friday, 23 September 2011

Devices for 'Still Life' controls amount of light

In todays class I learnt of what tools to use to control the amount of light in Photography studio shoots

Required;

- Black gobo flag
This blocks of light from going into the camera

1x - Black reflective
1x - White reflective
- Fresnel lamp 



This is what American Photographer - Richard Avedon used to get his shot for American west series











Monday, 19 September 2011

Object Unit Breif


The Object consists of taking inspiration from the history of art and using a visual approach, employed in traditional still-life painting. The point of the brief is to construct a photograph based upon a current social issue. 
• What current debates or issues concern you? Inspiration may come from the media (newspapers, radio, internet, television, etc)
• There may be something you wish to make a comment upon, such as your experience of an aspect of the local Medway area.
• You may feel strongly about issues such as vegetarianism, starvation, or consumption, for example.