Andre Kertesz – Chez
Mondrian Vase of Flowers This week, you are required to
shoot a colour or black and white photograph of a vase of flowers. We will assess this image in
critique on Tuesday 13th November 2012. Shoot, edit and upload an
image that represents a vase and flowers in a location or
studio environment. Demonstrate an understanding of relevant theories
mentioned in the presentation including macro, tripod use, colour
temperature composition and exposure. Richard Peregrine
- so,
black and white!
30/10/12 at 1 o' clock
Ideas for a location
shoot;
On top of my drawers,
clear anything un-needed that will clutter up the subject, try it
with and without.
Windowsill with
reflections. Of what?
Bathroom. (To represent people beautifying themselves as a flower) If I could get a
good angle? On a chair in the bath? Abstract.
Surrounded by photo's of
family life. On the floor.
Take a picture in the same
location to show the decay, so would have to do the other ideas first
and then set up the camera on a tripod in an out of the way place.
Used as a mask. By people
in blackburn.
Looked up Still life
Photography/still life photography artists:
Final image will be in a
Negative format, so will need both dark flowers, also have a black
and white umbrella that may look good. Inspired by the images above, I don't know how this effect was achieved but would like to see what happens in negative.
I noticed at work that there were a lot of shopping list, either left behind or lost so I thought i'd take a picture of a few that I had found for this project.
The reason that caught my attention was the fact that quite a lot of them had booze written at the top of them, before anything else booze was the most important.
It wasn't till later on that I discovered it all the same person as it's all the same hand writing.
I found the one lonely peg just outside my house and it fit the bill for lost an found so I thought i'd use it.
Cubist- still life = Fruit, flowers, wine bottles, instruments, inanimate objects, parts of things, newspapers, fragmenting letters and dead nature.
The Unswept Room, c.200AD
The floor is filled with bones, leaves, fish shells, if it was today, what would you see? Tricking the eye = trompe l'oeil Which when looking, it up has been applied to wallpaper,
As
a group we explored the people of Blackburn, how to represent the
style and culture of modern day life. Individually I wanted to learn
more about Blackburn it's self as I'm not from here and would like to
find out about the culture, so I chose to photograph the statues and
sculptures.
I
chose to stick to Blackburn town centre and to concentrate on the
statues in the town, of which I only got 3 of but there are so much
more.
I
captured The mother and child statue at Cardwell place, the Grandma
and child at the Boulevard and Queen Victoria.
The
twelve pictures I have selected to represent Blackburn are
Grandmothers perspective as it is unique view point of what I feel
the sculpture is about. The focal point is the child’s hair but
you can still tell that they are holding hands and what the child is
reaching for.
Guy
eating chips-2 is named so as I cropped the picture, the shot was
taken candidly and Debbie had walked into the shot. The guy is
sheltering from the rain under the arch of an old, shut down pub
whilst on what, I assume, to be his dinner break. It seems like the
guy has found a use for this abandoned, run down and forgotten about
building in this overcast situation. It was suggested that the
picture was over exposed so I auto corrected it on Lightroom.
Lonely
guys, as this photo should be called shows how de-socialised people
are becoming, the man at the forefront looked as though he had given
up, really depressed and alone but I wasn’t able to capture that.
I took this candidly but he was aware of us before I took this
picture so I wasn’t able to capture the full extent of the emotion
in his face. One thing that I do notice is that it is the old people
that are sat on their own, even in the back ground there are two
young girls interacting with each other and Via Mobile and an old
lady sat next to them alone, also a young family, a dad walking with
his daughter. When I showed this picture to the class it was
suggested that the picture would be better if I took this from a
lower angle and I am inclined to agree.
Mall
was taken the day before this task was set, as I had to go to
Blackpool and noticed this shot when getting off the train. I like
the dramatic dark cloud reaching for the Mall and the light
surrounding it highlighting the buildings and busy street below. A
comment made was that it would be better it there were one or two
people sat in the chairs on the platform, again it was over exposed
and was changed by auto correct in Lightroom.
DSC_0050.JPG
was taken off the cuff whilst trying to capture the bi-folding doors
on the bus as it seems like a nostalgic thing to have. I'm happy
that I did as I caught this lady walking through and now looking at
it as an independent image I like the colours that make the space.
DSC_0057.JPG
or Jubilee, I took as you see this scene all across the country, the
reminisce of a great celebration. A lot happened this year, all eyes
were on Britain and everyone wanted to celebrate, to show just how
great we can be but when it comes to pulling down any decorations
nobody whats to know. I don't feel that the point of the image gets
across as the broken flag bunting is dwarfed by the old building but
it is there to notice if you look hard enough.
Family
cropped I took as the statue represents family and just behind it a
modern family sits. I learnt later that there had been a big uproar
about the mother in the statue not having a wedding ring. Yet it is
common place and widely accepted that most mother are not married or
even have the father in the picture. I like the lighting in this
picture, a break in the clouds aloud the sun to cast a minimal
shadow and highlight the forms of the figures in the picture
connecting them together.
Pigeon
cropped, for this I was looking at the composition through the
square hole. It was shear chance that as I pressed the button a
pigeon flew by and I was really impressed as that never happens to
me and street photography can rely on that chance.
I
noticed the composition of Queen Vic when we stopped for a break at
the benches and I looked up at her. The branches framed her well and
I though that I would include them in the shot and I'm glad that I
did.
With
Sky line I was going for the shape of the ramp to the square tower,
the detail on the ramp and the sky. You could probably take this
same photo in 20, 30, 50 years time and it would probably look
exactly the same.
Stick man, (as it should be called) I took as this elderly gentleman look quite discerning qualities. I
don't know if it was the stick or the jacket and jeans but I liked
the look of this man and the way he walked and carried himself. He
looks quite calm, in the shadows heading for the hustle and bustle
that lay before him in the bright light of day.
The
picture I have chosen as my final image is Burial ground, the reason
that I took this picture in the first place was that Wes and I were
walking through the grounds and Wes had noticed this, he hasn’t
been to Blackburn as much as I have and noticed this enough to call
it out. I hadn’t, or had seen it and just dismissed it but when you
read it, it shows how dramatically the culture has changed. You see
sighs everywhere now about how places are a smoke free or an
alcoholic drink free zone in public places.
Is
it a case of a nanny culture or common courtesy, is this needed for a
lack of common courtesy that everyone possesses, do we not have the
common courtesy as we are being nannied?
Back
in the day we probably didn't need to have all of these signs about
at as it wouldn't have even been thought about to drink and do drugs
on a burial ground. I also like the Bokeh effect that has happened in the trees due to the shallow depth of field. Research on Ian Berry http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=2K1HZO85GKJ5M&SMLS=1&RW=1073&RH=604 This web site has some quite interesting images on it that tell the story of Blackburn with it
In 1913 French writer Charles Péguy wrote …"the world has changed less since the time of Jesus Christ than it has in the last thirty years".
What kind of changes do you think he was referring to?
We
talked about the Eiffel tower and it's impact on society, how this
became a symbol of how nature was being over taken by industry.
The
Eiffel Tower itself
is
to represent a person in time standing tall and to proclaim Paris as
a metropolis, it
was visible from all around the city for everyone to see what ever
class you are which
was important at the time.
It
also offered an arial view of the city, which was a view only very
few had seen, like Felix Nadar who had taken photographs from his hot
air ballon.
So
the Eiffel tower was a great leveller of people and offered a new
perspective on the world around them.
This is the perspective people were subject to before the eyes were open to seeing the world from great heights and angles.
1854 painting of The Crystal Palace
Aundre
Derain – In the mountains.
It
was used this as a different way to represent space.
In
the years after 1888 a great technological age came about with -
Cotton
industry
Technology
for home and work place
Flight
Transport
Movies
were brought out
Secularisation
War
Photography
Lightbulb
1879
Kodak
1888
How
do you think all of this technology effected painters?
It
made them redundant and gave them the freedom to look into
experimental and created “ism's” Fauvism, surrealism,
impressionism ect
This
new influx of technology meant that people would move away from from
the country to the city and effected art. No longer were fields and
farmer the popular subject as it changed to city scape's.
Transportation was one factor in this as the scenes became
fragmented ART IN THEORY BOOK QUOTE.
Fernand Léger, The Card Players, 1917
It looks industrial, fragmented, Mechanised, use of colours.
Leger, Three Women (Le Grand Dejeuner), 1921
It's like clockwork, shading = industrial he finds it adaptable.
Leger, Mechanical Elements, 1924
insert concept.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, ‘Manifesto of Futurism’, 1909
"We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness.
We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath – a roaring car that seems to run on shrapnel is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
For too long has Italy been a dealer in second-hand clothes. We mean to free her from the numberless museums that cover her like so many graveyards".
From Art in Theory, pp146-149.
Eadweard Muybridge photographs, 1880s
Muybridge photographs, 1870s
Giacomo Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912
Boccioni, Dynamism of a Cyclist, 1913
Umberto Boccioni, The City Rises, 1910
Georges Braque, Violin and Candlestick, 1910
Pablo Picasso, Le Torero, 1912
Metropolis directed by Fritz Lang, 1927
Jacob Epstein, TheRock Drill, 1913/14
Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 19, 1911
Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1912
"When religion, science, and morality are shaken (the last by the mighty hand of Nietzsche), when the external supports threaten to collapse, then man’s gaze turns away from the external toward himself.
Literature, music, and art are the first and most sensitive realms where this spiritual change becomes noticeable in real form….they turn away from the soulless content of modern life, toward materials and environments that give a free hand to the nonmaterial strivings and searchings of the thirsty soul".
Extract from Art in Theory, pp82-89, p87/l.1-12
Kandinsky, All Saints, 1911
Reading for 22/10/12:
Georges Braque, ‘Thoughts on Painting’ (1917) in Art in Theory, pp.214 & 215
Pablo Picasso, ‘Picasso Speaks’ (1923) in Art in Theory, pp.215 – 217, p 217,l.23-36
Silverdale at Jenny's point was the first place that we visited, it was quite blustery and hard to get to. It was worth it though, but a good place to stop an work on some Hyperfocal distance.
The Tombs of St. Patrick's was a fantastic place to visit, it's in Heysham down the coast from Morecambe at the remains of the old Chapel.
