Thursday, 28 February 2013

Exam Unit - Second Starting Point - Everyday Life




  • Why have you selected this starting point?
  • What are you planning to look at for primary/secondary research?
  • Which artists/designers will you be looking at (you must select a minimum of 3 from the theme)
  • What materials/techniques would you like to experiment with? 
  • Which experiment(s) are you planning to make?


I've selected this starting point as I think it's interesting to capture everyday things that we would usually ignore. I think there's something interesting about not taking picture of obvious beautiful things but capture the ordinary things we usually don't take notice of. For my primary research I am going to places to take pictures. For my secondary research I am going to go onto pinterest for inspiration and also research some individual photographers. I would be looking at Man Ray as I've seen his work before and loved his work and would be interesting to look again. For my experiments I would be looking at reflections and looking at compositions and framing. 

Exam Project - Indepth Anaylsis - Eve Arnolds


The image of Marylin Monroe was taken by a Photographer called Eve Arnolds. Eve Arnolds was American  and was born in Philadelphia in 1912 and died aged 99 in January 2012. She's has been a photographer since 1946 and photography in 1948 and the new school of social research. She was based in the Us but went to england in 1962. She had a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 1980 and also won many awards including National Achievement Award in China and Lifetime achievement award america society of magazine photographers. In 1995 she was made a member Royal Photographic Society. The image is of Marilyn is resting on a bed in black and white whilst making a film called ''Misfits'' Screen played by Arthur Miller. Eve Arnolds said:

''If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument. '' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Arnold


The composition of the image is straight on above the model quite close up but allowing some background in the frame so it's obvious she lying on the bed. The image is in black and white and quite contrasty with the white pillows and the models dark make up. I think there's a nice balance between the two tones as the contrast is not overwhelming. I think the fact that is black and white make the image look quite basic and simple.  I think the arrangement of the image is visually pleasing.

I think that Arnolds would have told the model to be natural and I think this pose reflects this.  I think she was used a black and white film camera with not any lights. As then has gone in the darkroom and maybe cropped down her image a little bit and kept the filters quite low and making sure that the image comes out quite natural. I think that maybe some dodging and burning was involved on the models face as the image looks quite light.

I like this image as I think that the atmosphere was chilled and comfortable and the models looks very naturally and doesn't looked forced. I can image that the model had a very good relationship with the photographer which is symbolic in the photograph. I think it was to come across as simple but beautiful. I like images that haven't have much edited and was taken perfectly in the first place. Words that come to mine when i see this image is natural, calm, beauty, feminine, intimate, close.

Tuesday, 12 February 2013

Exam Unit- Digital Images


 Here is some images I took own my phone on train taking images on the platform. I really like these images are theres so many layers in the photograph through the glass.

 Here I have adjusted the hue and saturation to really empathise where the camera has caught the layers.
For this image I used the posterise effect so you can really see the reflection back onto the train. This is really my favourite image. 

Exam Unit - Chosen Starting Point





     I have chosen this starting point because the theme really interests me. This is a theme that I haven't really               visited during the course so I felt like I wanted todo something different. I also felt like you could do a lot of interesting things with the theme and you many techniques such as double exposure and mirroring etc. To provide my researches I will be looking up artists through their websites and looking at photography websites to research these artists. I plan to look at Cindy Sherman for this theme as I have researched her before and found her work very interesting. I also plan to look at Eve Arnolds and Bruce Davidson because they look interesting to me also.I'd like to work with different materials during photo shoots for example props. I really want to push myself and try different techniques I have never used before. I also like to experiment with different use of materials like build up layers in top if one another for example paint. The experiments I would like to make and really bright colourful images. 

Exam Unit - Mindmap


Sunday, 3 February 2013

Personal Project - Evaluation




 For this project we had the freedom to do pretty much whatever we wanted with our new learnt techniques from the last project. Still involving our theme we chose at the beginning of the year, mine being 'documentary'. For this project we had to chose three artist of our choice and research about them, presenting our ideas through the project and produce a final outcome at the end.

I researched three different artist to help me with my ideas. I also looked through pinterest at different techniques of others. I wanted to look a lot about distortion and out of focus images. I then began to find other artists like Tin Tin Cooper that used these techniques which I then began to practice those techniques and evolve them into my own. playing around with scales and colours.
 
Tin Tin Cooper and Lin Tianmiao were the main influence over my final as i adopted both techniques of photo weaving and out of focus images. I also re worked the idea of out of focus and cut my images up into strips and masked certain makes in order reinforce the idea of distortion. Also the idea I got my final outcome from was Jason Travis with photographing models with everyday objects underneath. I liked the idea of having a little insight and story about the person and finding out what precious to them for them to have and carry around everyday. I wanted to take this idea and make it in two my own. With help from the other two artists I was able to do so.

I think the photo weaving worked particularly well and I really liked the way the came out playing around with the scales of the weaves to create a more interesting effect. I am really happy with my outcome as I felt I have taking Jason Travis idea and improved it and made it my own.

If I could improve my final outcome I would have retaken my darkroom images as I feel that the out of focus touch looks almost accidental and I wanted it to come across that I intentionally made the images out of focus. Also if I had taken better care of my negatives they wouldn't scratched and I could have used a lot more photographs and wouldn't have been so limited.

Overall, I found this project interesting as we had a lot more freedom than what we have had in the past. We were allowed to really improve our own techniques that we have enjoy throughout the whole photography course and manipulate this into one final outcome. By having less pressure and freedom, it made me pushed myself and think about what style I wanted to have and what kind of photographer I wanted to be. Again, I really enjoyed this project and very happy with my final outcome.