Digital Fine Arts Photography week 3

In this weeks photography lesson we were explicated as to the true definition of several terms which we had issues with previously;

Semi- half, unfinished or incomplete (can be a metophor)

Photography doesn't have to be a photo of something it is your perception of something- depth of feild should be taken into account.

In the presentation shown to us this week we learnt about large format imaging (8 x 10 camera). We learnt about four major contributing photographers to this style of photography and learnt that to shoot with this type of camera your images cannot be spontaneous, as thousands of shots cannot be made and in order to take these photographs you needs to be organised and set up the set precisely.

Richard Avedon- fashion photography

-made his name in the 60s

-took heaps of photos of celebrities

-experimented with black and white photos (took photos of people on a white backdrop [worked with two others to help him] due to this he was able to take multiple shots of the same image)

-pays really close attention to detail which is illustrated in his photography

Richard Avedon was one of my favourite photographers in this lesson because he took his photographs bearing in mind the smallest among of detail, but that make people beautiful.

(Image to the left is copyright; Richard Avedon)

Richard Misrach- works with colour (landscape) mid west America

-photographed images to evoke consumerism and human interaction with the environment

Gregory Crewdson- Highly controlled environment used to tell surreal stories

-David Linch of still photography

-Very dark images using light to evoke meaning

-Photographs set an interesting narrative

-Some of his images were created in abandoned houses, decorated to deliver a story

-Doesn't use photoshop to alter images after

Gregory Crewdson was my other favourite photographer in this lesson because his photographs evoke solitude, lonliness and depression and capture surreal but beautiful images.

(Image to the left copyright: Gregory Crewdson) The image to the left demonstrates fears of body image and can suggest that teenagers are very much infulenced by what the see on television and in magazines and can have a very negative impact on the physical, emotional and mental state.

Andreas Gursky- focuses on consumerism (ie. factories)

-Photographed in colour

-Scaned negatives and made mutiples

-Manipulated and altered images/objects to create another image/object.

-Very controversial photographer as how much of a photograph can be alter until it is no longer considered a photograph

Digital Fine Art Photography Week 1 & 2

Week 1 of digital fine arts photography was an introductory to the course. During this lesson we learnt about the programes that we will be using in class, such as Image Capture and Adobe Bridge CS4 and created Blogger and Flickr accounts.

Week 2 of digital fine arts photography we learnt about different photographers in history, such as Alexander Rodchenco, Eugene Ache ect. We learnt about Henri Cartier-Bresson (decisive moments photographer), Lee Freelander (2D shapes photographer) and William Egelston (colour photographer) who used a 35mm lens in revolutionary ways. My favourite of these photographers was Henri Cartier-Bresson because he was able to create beautiful unstaged images and could see the world for what it was through the lens of a camera.

(Image to the left is copyright: Henri Cartier-Bresson)

"The decisive moment, it is the simutaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of a event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression." Henri Cartier-Bresson.

After the presentation we were given a list of words in which we were supposed to take photographs of. These words were; Extreme-close up, wide angle, surface, mixed lighting, blurry, drab, tasty, self-portrait, semi, portrait of a stranger, beautiful and ugly. My issues with taking these photos was that for the first 20 minutes I was trying to work out the functions of the camera and how to focus and what to put the Aputure and Shutter speed on. Also I didn't know what some of these words mean and what the where supposed to portray/represent.

Surface

Blurry

Ugly