Thursday, 25 September 2014
Research Log
John Perret
https://exploringculturesearchinglight.com/tag/john-perret/
John Perret is a practising landscape photographer. He takes many photographs of landscapes that are leaking with colour and portray a real sense of depth. Many of his pictures are similar to the one above. The shades of sunset colours are what attracted me to this image, and the stretched silhouette spread across the whole photograph in the background represents a line, therefore having three of the formal elements covered in one photograph. I don't think that I'd include landscape photography in my project because I wouldn't be able to find landscapes with character in my town.
Anne Geddes
Anne Geddes is an australian photographer known for her unique photographs of babies. She usually portrays them as flowers, small animals, fairies or fairytale creatures. Anne focuses her pictures on one colour each time. She rarely includes a variety of colours in one individual photograph, making colour the focus of the image. Anne transforms an innocent feeble baby into an even more adorable fragile character. Form is also introduced in Anne's photography, where the babies in her pictures include lots of shade and a tiny amount of shadow. I believe that I could possibly use Anne Geddes in my project because I love the fact that colour is the focus, as colour is my favourite formal element.
Patrick Demarchelier
Patrick Demarchelier is a famous french fashion photographer. He has shot many fashion covers since the late 1970s, for several major fashion magazines, including the Paris, British, and American editions of Vogue. Nicole Kidman was photographed by Patrick and many other photographs of his have been shot in black and white which displays tone. A lot of the people he takes pictures of have fair skin, are dressed in black and model in front of a grey background with plenty of shadows involved in the image aswell. It's a possibility that I include inspiration from Patrick's photographs somewhere in my project, because I believe that photographs in black and white are extremely effective.
Antti-Jussi Liikala
Antti-Jussi Liikala is an independant photographer from Finland. Many of her photographs include a lot of reflection as she finds extraordinary places to capture extraordinary pictures. Her photographs usually include a bright mix of colours around the same shade which blend together to create an eye catching piece. I might possibly use reflection somewhere in my project, however it won't be reflection on water, perhaps a mirror. Therefore Antti-Jussi Liikala may or may not make an appearance in my project.
Nick Knight's photography illustrates a lot of manmade and natural pattern in one photograph. He cooperated with fashion designers to create crazy patterns on clothing and crazy materials which form unique pattern when the model is spinning around in them. He creates explosions of colour with clothing and materials which makes a natural pattern along with a burst of colour. I love his style of work and believe that if I could come up with outfits as chaotic as these then he'd most certainly be a photographer I use as inspiration for my project.
Alan Sailer
Alan Sailer is well known for his photography that produces obscure photographs, where he works in his garage and shoots various things with a pellet rifle and photographs the results. The secret to his photos is a microsecond flash, where it allows the viewer to embrace the most microscopic detail of a period of time that they have never seen before. His photographs demonstrate movement very effectively and you can see this formal element in every piece of his work. He's unique and an extremely creative individual who may make an appearance in my project when I want to shoot something with a pellet rifle.
Nicholas Samaras
Nicholas Samaras is one of the most passionate and committed underwater photographers. His love and dedication to sea and its creatures in combination with his characteristic effort to bring out to surface the beauty of the marine world with a unique aesthetics, established him in a very short period of time both in Greece and abroad. Many of his photos are similar to the two above, forming a strange but unique shape in his photographs. His photographs contain a lot of fresh colours as he focuses on pictures underwater, but mainly shapes of interesting sea creatures and bodies. His work from my perspective is very original and I really do like it, however I don't feel that his style would be necessary in my project.
Steve McCurry
Form in photography can be portrayed through shades or shadows. Steve McCurry's pictures display form as he photographs peoples faces which have a large variety of tones in their faces, illustrating how they are 3D individuals. Steve is an American photojournalist who is best known for his photograph "Afghan Girl' which I've provided a picture of above. Unless I decided to focus my project on people's faces and facial features, I don't think that I'd include Steve McCurry's photographs in my project as inspiration.
Ansel Adams
The photograph above is typical of Ansel Adam's work. He was an American photographer who focuses his work on his country's wild and scenic areas. Drawn to the beatuy of nature's monuments, he is regarded by environmentalists as a monument himself, and by photographers as a national institution. His work includes a lot of depth, tone, form and lines. The first thing viewers pay attention to in his pictures are the lines; straight and curved. He captures scenery like the dessert where they're made up of curved lines but form a straight line as a whole. The picture included above respresents this. Ansel's work is creative and original, however not suited to the kind of project I'll be escalating onto.
Ron Bigelow
Ron Bigelow focuses his photography on natural formations such as trees and leaves, where texture is portrayed thoroughly through his work. A lot of his photographs give off an effect of the texture in them as being rough and tough, along with crisp and sharp. Ron also uses colour contrasts to make detail in nature more noticeable as the colour differences represent the cracks in the subjects of his pictures. I like Ron's work, because he focuses on such natural objects yet makes them interesting and intriguing through a photograph. I don't think i'd be including his work in my project though because he doesn't really inspire me.
Robert Capa
http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL535353
Robert Capa takes most of this photographs in black and white; shades that emphasise tone. His work contains deep meanings and each photograph creates an impact on the viewer. He was a Hungarian war photographer and photojournalist who covered five wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War. There's usually more than one thing occuring in Robert's photographs as he bases his pictures on real life occassions, where multiple actions take place. He sadly wouldn't be a photographer that would be included in my project because I don't think I'll be focusing my pictures around real life situations from the past.
Miles Aldridge
Miles Aldridge is a British photographer who is famous for his decadent colour-saturated fashion photography in magazines such as Vogue and Numéro. His work has slight cartoon characteristics as his models' make up and hair is always so flawless. The bold bright colours make it evident that Miles' photographs are not natural because it's clear that costume and setting design is always taken into consideration before he captures his pictures. Miles is an appropriate photographer for my project because his pictures are fun yet create an impact on the viewer because his photographs are discretely deep with a meaning/purpose. He's likely to be included in my photographer research.
David LaChapelle
David LaChapelle is an American commercial photographer, fine-art photographer, music video director, film director and and artist. He is best known for his photography, which often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages. David LaChapelle is one of the most interesting and innovative photographers of this generation, proving every now and then that photography is an art. His conceptual photography, full of colors and saturation, has a deep connection with the bizarre and the fantastic. Nearly almost all of his photographs contain elements of chaos as there isn't one single wasted area in any of his pictures. David's photographs are extremely wacky and inspire me to perhaps create a piece as crazy as his, which tempts me to include him in my photographer research.
Ellen Von Unwerth
Ellen von Unwerth is a photographer and director born in Germany who specialises in erotic femininity. She worked as a fashion model for ten years herself before moving behind the camera, and now makes fashion, editorial and advertising photographs. Ellen's work offers a distinctly sexual and playful version of fashion and beauty photography. Her photographs are captured in black and white which emphasises the tone in the faces of the individuals she photographs. Ellen's work is similar to Patrick Demarchelier's in how they both take pictures in black and white, and considering I admire the tone and effect their photographs contain, one of them may make an appearance in my photographer research and project.
Steven Meisel
One of the most iconic fashion photographers of all time, Steven Meisel easily remains the one photographer with whom all the models aspire to work.He has photographed every cover of Vogue Italia since 1988. Steven is an American photographer who obtained popularity and critical acclaim with his work in US and Italian Vogue and his photographs of friend Madonna in her 1992 book 'Sex'. His work contains the formal elements reflection and pattern which have been desmontraed through the two photographs above. His work also contains many more formal elements. Every picture has been captured at it's best, every inch of space being filled with creativity. I like the patterned clothing that his models wear, and am tempted to attempt an outfit similar on one of my models that I photograph. His work is extremely inspiring and I really like it.
Terry Richardson
Terrence “Terry” Richardson is an American fashion, portrait and documentary photographer. His work explores ideas of sexuality, with many of the pieces featured in his books Kibosh and Terryworld depicting full-frontal nudity and both simulated and unsimulated sexual acts. Initially, many of Richardson’s subjects would be shot before a white background but he eventually expanded to other backdrops. He is also well known for posing with his subjects, often trading his trademark glasses with them so they may “pretend to be him” and vice versa. An example behind each of these have been illustrated above. His work contains many elements of fun, as when you scroll through his photographs you can tell the amount of enjoyment that's been experienced throughout his photoshoots. I'd like to take pictures that portray the word "fun" to the viewer, just as Terry does.
Solve Sundsbo
Solve Sundsbo is a norwegian fashion photographer, working with such brands as Yves Saint Laurent, Dior, Gucci, Hermès, Bally and Armani. Solve, at the beginning of his career, thought that he would never make it in the photography industry. Luckily enough, he got a call from Nick Knight (who I've also included in my research log), one of the most famous photographers of Britain, who was looking for an assistant. For a young fashion photographer, there are few better places to start. The hard work paid off and Sundsbo is now regarded as a fashion-world institution. One colour is usually the main subject of Solve's photos, or a colour with different shades. I really like his pictures because they're creative in a different style to most fashion photographers.
Wojciech Grzanka
Wojciech Grzanka was born in Poland in 1981. He lives in a small village called Jelcz-Laskowice and works as a web designer with his friends for “Helldesign” although his real passion is photomontge. Their photomontages are inspired in his own life, events, surrounding people, thoughts, music. This passion is the reason that he is almost never seperate with his digital camera. Wojciech's finishing pieces are all created in photoshop. His pictures are dark and mysterious with aspects of fantasy. I most likely wouldn't include Wojciech's work in my project because it exhales too much of a negative view which I dislike.
Frans Lanting
Frans Lanting is a Dutch photographer specialising in wildlife photography. For more than two decades he has documented wildlife and our relationship with nature in environments from the Amazon to Antarctica. He portrays wild creatures as ambassadors for the preservation of complete ecosystems, and his many publications have increased worldwide awareness of endangered ecological treasures in the far corners of the Earth. His photographs include practically all ten formal elements. I love his work so much because he captures such amazing photographs of different animals. I'd love to include him in my project as inspiration, but there's sadly no way that I'd be able to capture pictures of penguins for instance.
Neville Coleman
Neville Coleman OAM was an Australian Naturalist, underwater nature photographer, writer, publisher and educator. Coleman began scuba diving in 1963, exploring Sydney Harbour. Later he joinned a scientific study group and, in 1969, commenced a project aiming to document the entire marine life of Australia, using underwater photography. His work is colourful and inspiring, as it's hard to believe some pictures that he actually captured; they're rather beautiful. Neville Coleman has left the world richer from his discoveries and has created a unique visual Legacy for future generations to treasure. I won't be able to use him as inspiration for my project because I don't want to focus on underwater sea creatures, but nevertheless I still admire his work.
Wednesday, 24 September 2014
Illustrated Discussion
Formal Element Illustrated Discussion
The formal elements are not something that ordinary people take into consideration when living every day of their life with ease. Formal elements are something that come more in handy when it comes to photographers and artists who are trying to explain what it is that they're seeing. These formal elements are as follows: line, form, colour, pattern, tone, depth, texture, reflection, movement and shape. Not everybody visualises something in the same way that another individual does, hence why it is important that the formal elements are used in a conversation based around a photograph or a piece of art. They're also present in the visual world and can always be noticed no matter where on earth you are.
Line
Line
This is an image that includes lines discretely. People walking through a forest would never appreciate the lines that a crowd of tress form, and only notice them when captured in a photograph. Personally I feel that lines are one of the most impotant formal elements because they make up practically everything that the human eye can see. Lines can be found in something round, straight, slanted, curved, tall, small, thick, thin, 3D etc. They're important in photography because lines can lead a person's eye to something within a picture.
Form
Form
Form is the three dimensional nature of an object. Most objects that include form create a shadow when the sunlight is beaming down on it, which is one way in which an object is classed as having form, as no 2D object would cause a shadow. Another way in which form is detected in an object is through alterations in shades. This image to the right has different shades of whites and grey's because different amounts of light are focused on the areas it's easier to reach. The areas that don't have light on, are then displayed in a darker tone. This is another factor that demonstrates form in a photograph.
Colour
Colour
Colour, in my opinion, is the main formal element that allows a photograph to exhale a certain feel as soon as someone lays their eyes on it. The brighter the colours, the more positive vibe someone will get from the picture. A photograph lacking in colour or being created with dark colours would be one that emits a negative aura. This idea is not set in stone, however the majority of photographs wanting to provide a positive message will include some form of bright colour. Selective colour in a photograph is also extremely effective because it draws the audience to the focal point of the photograph. This is useful when something with importance in a photograph needs a spotlight.
Pattern
Pattern
Pattern is the repetition of something of the same style e.g. this picture of cactuses. They're not one hundred percent accurate, but onetheless they still create a pattern when studying this photograph. Patterns can be classed as natural or manmade. Natural pattern being designs in clothing, prints on the coats of animals or the growth of a flower, and manmade pattern being wallpaper, buildings or carpets. Pattern is an essential formal element because it enables a person to talk about a photograph that includes a sequence of objects/prints etc. Pattern is also extremely attractive to the eye and creates detail in nearly every picture.
Tone
Tone
Tone is the range of light to dark in part of an image. This is a very important formal element amongst a photograph because when we look at any object or a scene in nature, our eyes scan the entire view. Sensitivity of the human eye towards a level of brightness is so responsive and quick that we can see the detail in the brightest and darkest area of the photograph. In the photograph to the left, the leaves contain different shades of colour and tone. The leaves floating above the water are the subject of this photograph, however they wouldn't be as eyecatching if the colour in the water below them wasn't of a darker tone. This is why tone is an important formal element.
Depth
Depth
Depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. It can be demonstrated in photography depending on where abouts the picture is being captured from. Depth causes the subject in a picture to look as though it decreases in size as the subject becomes more narrow the further it travels. For example, this photograph to the right looks 3D, and the path also looks as though it gradually becomes smaller and smaller the further it escalates in the distance. Depth allows the human eye to see an area in a photograph the same way in real life.
Texture
Texture
Texture photography is one way of drawing the viewer’s attention into the image. It's virtually how an object appears to look or feel .Photographs that use this technique create impact by showing different textures e.g. this picture of a leaf close up. This surface almost looks rough, however we know that most leaves are soft. It's the detail in this leaf that creates a rough impression, but this photograph also looks smooth and 'run your finger across it soft'. Close up photographs are more effective because they allow the audience to see more detail.
Reflection
Reflection
Reflections can be found in many ways other than just a mirror, but also through a puddle, window, computer creen and water. Reflections are not always accurate. Sometimes they are a precise duplicate of what's being presented infront of a mirror, and sometimes they are distorted when presented above a puddle. These different types of reflections emphasise creativity when it's in a photograph. The image to the right for example is one that teases your brain for a second until you realise that it's actually perfectly normal and not a magic trick in the slightest. Reflection is an important formal element when it comes to a photographer wanting to use their imagination and be extremely creative with a piece.
Movement
Movement
The formal element movement is used to portray a photograph that isn't still. An example of this is the picture of horses to the left, all in mid action with their hoofs in the air. It is evident that they're moving because their legs are bent a little off the ground and their manes and tails are drifting away in the wind. Movement in photography can also be shown through a blur in the background which also portrays how a moment was captured mid action. This formal element creates a piece of work that looks more real life and 'in the moment'.
Shape
Shape
Shape is a two-dimensional element basic to picture composition and is usually the first means by which a viewer identifies an object within the picture. Even though shape is only two-dimensional, with the proper application of lighting and tonal range, you can bring out form and give your subjects a three-dimensional quality e.g. this photograph to the right. The first thing I notice as a viewer is a circle. This may be a 3D object, but it's the circle that I notice at the very beginning of laying my eyes on this photo, which is the shape behind this picture. Anything in this visual world can be classed as a shape, as long as it has an outline. Therefore, shape is an essential formal element when it comes to everyday life.
All ten formal elements are used for a reason. I applied all of these formal elements to my descriptions of the example photographs; without them I would not have been able to write evaluations/descriptions in such detail. They are an extremely crucial tool when it comes to talking about photographs in photography.
Monday, 22 September 2014
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