Blog Prompt #19

How do you ensure that your work is relevant to you?

My work is relevant to me if it makes me think. If a piece is important to me, I also feel that it will give rise to other ideas or modifications of the original piece. I want an initial photo to be a jumping off point for new processes. 

How do you ensure that your work is relevant to the contemporary world?

I think if you can get a reaction out of an image, it is relevant to your audience. When I work I guess I’m never really all that sure that it will be relevant until someone else sees it. I am trying to work in a way that will create an image that should draw emotion or a new association for an object you might not ordinarily give second thought to. 

How do you brainstorm? Do you sketch? Do you use the camera as a brainstorming tool so that you “look” at the world through the frame of the camera and capture bits and pieces of your environment?

When I brainstorm, I generally begin with a object or idea that seems fairly commonplace (the use of x-rays, books, matches, etc.) and try to find a way to modify that concept or item to give it a new life. I am a big listmaker so writing down my thoughts about a set or shoot will usually lead me to other associations or ideas. I have found that I may have an idea in my head for a project, will begin, and end up finding a completely different way to work with my materials. 

Do you combine elements of various media? How do you do this? Do you do it physically with printed images or objects? Do you combine elements virtually in the computer?

I have been working with imagery from childrens books that I have physically cut out and assembled into sets. When I shoot or create an image I tend to bring other objects into a scene, or create one from scratch as opposed to just shooting something that I have found. I am interesting in the modification of an image, but by physical means. 

How does your process relate to your ideas/concept? How does your process relate to your outcome/final pieces? Why are you using digital technology (if you are)? Why are you using analog technology (if you are)?

For my thesis, I am dealing a bit with temporance. I plan on destroying my sets I’ve constructed and through using analog processes, I am ensuring that the shot can no longer be reproduced. I am starting to work with smoke bombs, and am excited about the prospect of documenting something that will never occur again the same way twice. 

How do you judge your work? When do you think it “works”? When do you think it is “not working yet”? What criteria do you use to make these decisions? 

I think that when I look at my work, It seems to either feel “right” or that something is off about it. It’s hard to explain the criteria for this, I guess I would say that if I can get a reaction out of what I’ve created or feel a photo is thought provoking, I am happy with it. If I’m dissapointed by something, It wasn’t a failure so much as something I can learn from. 

How do ensure that your work is new, unique, ground-breaking, and/or you are breaking the mold/thinking outside the box/pushing the limits?

I'm trying to ensure that I'm thinking outside the box by doing a lot of experimentation and letting ideas evolve as opposed to being stuck on an idea and leaving no room for trial and error. 

 

Set Test Shots

Lens Layering

Joel Sternfeld

Biography: Joel Sternfeld was born in NYC in 1944. He studied at Dartmouth. He has served as an influence for many color photographers, including Andreas Dursky.

Significance: Joel shot large-format documentary style photos to help establish color photography as a respected artistic medium.

Art Historical or Photographic Movement: He worked to establish color photography as an accepted artistic medium.

Critique/Review: Ian Frazier, a writer, critiqued Sternfeld's work. His view of Sternfeld was that he did not pigeonhole people. He sees his subject matter accurately and leaves conclusions up to others. "Neither the best nor the worst that a person can be is ruled out automatically." I believe Sternfeld's ability to leave judgement out of his photographs led him to successfully document social class and stereotypes in the US.

Composition: Sternfeld's compositions are shot in a documentary style. The majority of his images have great depth of field and are shot from what seems like a bystander's point of view. Many of the compositions feature decay or a sense of looming disaster. In one image, he has shot a scene of a home on fire. The point of view from which he has made this image seems like he was documenting the pumpkin stand in the foreground and just happened to capture a disaster.

Concept/Aboutness/Idea: Sternfeld shot a number of different series, American Prospects (1987) documented human-altered landscapes in the US. He photographed everyday scenes for this project. Many of the scenes featured abandoned towns or desolate landscapes. On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam (1997) was a project about violence in America. He photographed sites where tragedies had recently taken place. He included text next to the images that explained what had happened there. He has also worked with imagery concerning social class and stereotypes in the US, abandoned railways, global warming debates, and cemeteries.

Method: Sternfeld shot large-format color photos in a documentary style. He shot the majority of these images with a great depth of field. He shot scenes where tragedies had previously occurred, desolate landscapes, and stereotypes.

Motivation: Sternfeld seemed to be interested in capturing the negative aspects of the American landscape. Many of his images feature the decay of abandoned civilizations of sites where something terrible or grotesque has occurred. Annie Hobbs reviewed Sternfeld's book On This Site and noted that he showed "America's big imperfections in a subtle and serene way."

Opinion: I am most interested in the concept behind On This Site. I respect Sternfeld's ability to document emotionally charged spaces. He truly seems to be capable of documenting imperfections of the American landscape in a beautiful way.

Text and Image

Composition: For this image, I brought together two photos from an old roll of film I had forgotten about. One is out a bedroom window, and one is of a dusky Lake Michigan. I wanted the word "dreamt" (apparently spell check does not think this is a word and I have been using the British version of "dreamed" for a while?) to cut through the horizon line of the lake, and felt the colors from the old film were similar but had enough contrast to make the type legible.

 

Concept/Aboutness/Idea: I made this image primarily to experiment, but chose the imagery and text based off of dreams I have had about home recently. I think I've been generally tired of being confined to the house and thinking about being at home at the lake has translated over to my sleep.

 

Method: I masked out the word "dreamt" on my first image of the coastline, places the bedroom window photo over it, and flattened the layer. Today was a day for simplicity.

 

Motivations: I really just wanted to experiment with text and the unusual colors brought out in the old film in my camera. I'm not sure the image conveys a sense of longing, but the text and photos fit well with how I was feeling at the time. 

 

Evaluation: I am happy with the ways the colors from the old film play off of each other, and feel that the hazy aspect of the film grain adds to the airy, dreamlike feel of the imagery.
 

Extension: I think that these techniques will carry over into my graphic design. I would like to experiment more with text, but it will likely take a backseat to other kinds of image making. I am glad I learned how to use masks this way because I have been curious for a while, and never learned the technique.

Diane Arbus

"Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like giving a hand grenade to a baby.” -Norman Mailer

Biography:

Diane Arbus

March 14, 1923- July 26 1971 (Suicide, Age 48)

Diane was born Diane Nemerov in New York City, and attended Fieldston School for Ethical Culture

Both Diane and her husband Allan were photographers. Diane got her start taking photographs for her father’s department store and later began to shoot commercial photography with Allen for publications such as Glamour, Seventeen, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar. Both Diane and Allan admitted to hating the fashion world.

Diane quit shooting commercial photography and photographing on assignment around 1956.

Significance: Diane was known for shooting deviant and marginalized people such as dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, circus performers, and the mentally ill. For these people, their “normality seems ugly or surreal.”

Art Historical or Photographic Movement: Diane was not considered a part of any sort of movement that I could find, but shot photos in a documentary manner.

Critique/Review: Susan Sontag was especially critical of Diane’s work. Her essay, “Freak Show,” considered Diane’s work void of beauty and claimed that her images did not make the viewed feel compassion for her subjects. Sontag’s essay itself has been criticized, and Arbus noted that she had photographed Sontag and her son, causing a bias. Other critics found her work “an extraordinary ethical conviction,” “filled with life and energy,” and “revolutionary.”

Composition: Arbus generally shot portraits in a square format with black and white film. In many of her images the subject is slightly off center and the content tends to be unsettling or uncomfortable for the general public. Most of her images have fairly high contrast, and her subjects are in strong focus in the frame.

Concept/Aboutness/Idea: Diane Arbus shot photos of castoffs and outsiders, and considered herself a part of this group. She felt as if she could capture someone’s spirit through a photograph and was relentless in pursuing these images. She caught subjects in moments of “terrifying pathos and empathy.” By documenting these people. They could no longer be ignored by society. Her subjects included nudists, sideshow freaks, transvestites, the mentally ill, and mentally handicapped children.

Method: Early on, Diane shot with a 35 mm Nikon that shot grainy images. She later switched to the crisp square images of a twin-lens reflex Rolleiflex. In 1964 she began using a twin-reflex Mamiya. In Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, Arbus shot an image of a thin boy holding a grenade and grimacing psychotically. Her technique when shooting this boy was to wear down his patience until the boy who, in contact sheets, looked very happy, but now seemed unstable. For other images, Arbus visited the homes of people that society may seem as outsiders or deviants, including mental institutions and circus tents.

 Motivations: Arbus felt that she could relate to these marginalized people and, by documenting their lives, made them impossible to be swept under the rug by society. Diane has been accused of exploiting these people.

Your Opinion: I find Diane’s work beautiful, although somewhat unsettling. I envy her ability to be fearless in her documentation and feel that she gave a voice to members of society who might not ordinarily be heard. I think it was brave to even recognize that she felt the way that they did, and related to their alienation. 

“A photograph is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.” -Diane Arbus

Blog Posts 17 & 18

17. What do you think the next technological innovation will be in photography? What is the "future" of photography? What will photography become or how will it evolve in the next 100 years? How do you see photography melding with or distancing itself from other types of media?

I think that photography may move into working with 3-D just as movies have in the past several years. Perhaps cameras will be created that capture both still and moving images simultaneously. In the next 100 years I think that photography could become increasingly popular as technology becomes inexpensive and accessible, which could be a good thing, or could mean a world full of photos of flowers or kittens. I definitely see photography melding with other types of media in the future. We already have applications on our phones, iPods, and computers to take photos, and I can only see the availability of these tools growing. I think that having all of this technology may cause people to have a sort of “photographic reformation” in which analog methods are referred back to and considered precious.

18. Create your own definition of the word "photography”.

For me, photography is about capturing a moment, or series of moments, in time that evoke an emotion or force a reaction. These moments can bring sadness, joy, anxiety, fear, curiosity, and the like. 

Matchbox Motion

Composition: For my stop motion composition, I wanted to offset the box of matches and use the black board like something of a stage for the match to move across. The match gets too close to the corner at one point about halfway through the video, I would change this part of the composition if I were to shoot it again.

Concept/Aboutness/Idea: I was thinking about experimenting more than I was considering a solid concept. I did want to work with something that is known for changing it's state. I chose the matches because you could stop the motion of the flame and watch as it transformed from wood to ash.

Method: For this project, I taped down my camera, tabletop, and the box of matches so that everything would stay perfectly still unless I moved it myself. I then made minuscule changes to the scene and shot each frame so that the match moved out of the box, across the table, spun in a circle, and burned down. I put all of my images together in Photoshop, but could not replicate it a second time for whatever reason.

Motivations: My main motivation was just to experiment with the concept of stop motion and make a video that was not overly jumpy. 

Evaluation: I think this video turned out how I expected to, I would like to try it with a series of matches or with ice or something else that changes it's state. I could improve on some minor parts where the motion of the match could be more smooth.
Extension: I wonder if I could try this in combination with projections? If I changed what was being projected over the frame each time, or had the same image for a few frames at a top, it could potentially be interesting?

Blog Prompts #12-16

#12 Describe some differences between still photographs and moving images.
 Moving images could be seen as more dynamic, they are made up of many still images placed in a specific rotation. Still photographs capture a single in moment in time where moving images capture a sequence of events. Still images can be combined to make a moving image.

#13 Describe some similarities between still photographs and moving images.
 Both still and moving images are capturing an event. Moving images can make a still image and still images can be used to make a moving image. Both can be used to show the passing of time, whether that be a moving image itself or a long exposure.

#14 Describe some links between photography and the concept of “time”. Describe some links between photography and the concept of “stillness”.

A long exposure can literally depict the passing of time. Photography can be used to stop time and freeze a moment in place. A series of photographs can illustrate the events that happened over a span of time or event. Photography and stillness are similarly linked. Any action can be made still when captured with a camera. Photography can also be used to depict the feeling of stillness of peacefulness.

#15 Describe how you can you “activate” a photograph that you have already taken. In other words, how can you transform a “still” image into a “moving” one?

You could make a still image a moving image by making new layers and cutting apart and modifying the photo. Warping and blurring the image could make it look as if it were moving or bubbling over. You could make multiple copies of an image and move them from one side of the frame to the other to mimic movement.

#16 Describe how you might take a “moving” image and make it “still”. 

You could make a moving image still by taking a screen shot or pulling a still from film. It would be interesting to watch a video and work to capture stills that captured the essence of what the film was really about. You could literally take pieces of shot film and tear it apart so that it is an isolated image. It would be interesting to do this but overlay different stills to create a multiple exposure of sorts.

Composite

Composition: For my composition, I wanted to focus on my hand and place a small scene in my palm. I cropped my image so that the house would be the focus and shot the background image in morning light. I wish I had been wearing a plain shirt because there could be a lot more contrast between my clothing and the miniature scene.
 

Concept/Aboutness/Idea: The idea behind this image was simple in that I just wanted to play with scale changes and what is expected v. what can be constructed in Photoshop. I was more focused on experimenting as opposed to creating a concept for this photo.

 Method: Initially, I shot a photo with my hands out in front of me. I used the polygonal lasso tool in Photoshop to cut out an image of an abandoned house and placed it on a new layer. I then cut out my hand and placed it on a new layer so that my house would appear to fall behind my hand as opposed to sitting over it. I cut out some birds and threw them in there for fun as well. Viola! Instant composite.

Motivations: My motivation for this image was really just to play with the idea of scale while getting used to some of the tools we're learning in Photoshop.

 

Evaluation: I think the concept of playing with scale and lighting of this image are working. I could improve on the contrast between the house and my plaid shirt. In order to make the image more convincing I might consider changing the sharpness of the house so that is fits with the rest of the image.

Extension: I would like to continue to work with the idea of scale to create a surreal aesthetic. Learning to construct images in Photoshop and playing with different layers has helped me to have a much better understanding of CS5.