
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Strange Perspective

Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Robert Adams - Summer Nights, Walking Exhibit



There are absolutely no people in any of his shots and there's very little else other than the structures and objects Adams looks at. They're also shots from very unpopulated areas so there's a sense of loneliness in each picture. These images also focused on capturing light in the deep darkness of a suburban neighborhood where that light can accent certain features such as lamp posts or brickwork. It creates such a high contrast between the objects shown that your focus shifts immediately to what he wants you to see. The light is not always the focus of each shot, sometimes it's the shapes in the shadows or the textures that they create that are highlighted in his photos.
Night time photography is a tricky skill. Knowing your camera is important because there's so little light to work with. Also, using flash was out of the question because a flash will create a light source that's directly from your point of view. This light source basically wipes away all the interesting detail you were trying to capture in the first place. Adams' photos were all done without a flash to accentuate those points of light better. My camera however is a point and shoot camera. The largest F-Stop I can use is 3.5 so already I have a problem, so the aperture can't open as large as I want. ISO range goes up to 800 but there's too much grain at 800 so I settled for 400 in this case. At this point though, any picture I take would come out pitch black so I ended up breaking some rules. I set the shutter speed in some cases to 1/5th. This is BAD, but wrestling with a point and shoot can't be helped. I also didn't have my tripod on me so what I ended up doing was setting the camera to shoot multiple shots as long as I held down the button. I also leaned or placed the camera on top of whatever I could find to try and stabilize it and hoped for the best. The end result is a hundred blurry shots but eventually if I stayed long enough I got 1 or 2 visible, here they are:
The phot on the lower right is of the back alley of a building in my neighborhood. I love this one because of the mood of the shot. Also the clothes being blown by the wind on a rainy night with just one lamp illuminating it. There's a lot of mystery here and if you look at the lower left, is that a person? An animal? I really don't know and it actually scared the heck out of me.
The image on the top middle was an attempt at composition. It was taken near the first image on the same night, I thought the way the light shined with the rain drops on the car added a real textured feel to that portion. I also wanted to place that light right on a point of interest in the frame as a draw for the eyes.
The photo on the top right was taken the night before from a second floor window, again of a building in my neighborhood. In this one, I noticed the way the lights on the left and the light on the right side create this triangular shape, pointing you to look to the right.
The last image on the lower left was taken on Sunday morning...at 1:20AM in the train station. I was on my way home and the lack of people there was perfectly in line with the type of photograph Robert Adams has in his photos. I tried to divide the image into a top portion and a low portion which would be divided by darkness and light.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Inspiration in Gray
Camera Work Magazine 1903 – 1917
“In 1902 Stieglitz formed an invitation-only group, which he called the Photo-Secession, to force the art world to recognize photography "as a distinctive medium of individual expression." “
I really liked some photographers that worked for a magazine in the early 1900s called Camera Work, many of them were Pictorialists and by the end of the magazine's run the issues evolved to show more form the Straight Photography movement. At first it seems like they all worried about just using fancy papers and brushing over the negative to create these painterly looking photos. But when you think about it, it’s really no different then what people do as designers in a sense. You’re adding drama or impact to an image so that people remember it. They were trying to mimic painterly styles from classical art like sculpture, only with their photography and I think that was pretty impressive for the time.
Gertrude Kasebier and Pictorialism
“Käsebier, who drew her images from the real world but often boldly manipulated her prints, said her art depended on knowing "what to leave out." “
"The contrast of this woman’s softness and aggressiveness have caught my attention and confused me all in one gasp.“

Kasebier was also important because she was one of the first notable women in photography of that period, I can't imagine being the first of anything much less being renown for that. Kasebier was also a mother herself and spent a lot of time photographing mother's and their children. The thing about her pictures I liked the most is there seems to be a narrative in them. In this link of her image "Thou Art Blessed Amongst Women", you can look at it and begin to image a scene in a story or try to give some crazy meaning to it by dissecting the technique behind it. It's got a blurry dream like quality but it's also got this really strong contrast so you can tell what the focus of the image is.
"The term Pictorialism is used to describe photographs in which the actual scene shown, is of less importance than the artistic quality of the image. For Pictorialists the aesthetics and, the emotional impact of the image, was much more important than what was in front of the camera."
While I don't necessarily think that photography has to entirely be one way or another, I really liked the message from this movement. You can learn a lot about drawing from using resource materials like photographs to draw from so it's funny to see these men and women who were doing the opposite of that. It was also very hands on, they did a lot of post production like combination printing and fudging negatives to get the look they wanted. In a way, it's like what we use Photoshop to do today so you can feel a real connection to this movement.
Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand and Straight Photography
“Stieglitz's internalization of avant-garde art combines with his own expertise in extracting aesthetic meaning from the urban atmosphere.”

I think Straight Photography is great for illustrators because he’s looking for the geometry hidden in objects. As a person who draws, that’s what you’re looking for...the pieces that make up your subject. Being able to see that is hard, you can’t just look at a combination of people or an object and see these invisible lines very easily. It takes awareness and an eye for it, something I’m hoping I can develop. It's really strange to me that Pictorialists are all about editing photos but Straight Photographers believe in capturing only what's in front of your lens. It's total opposites but I like both because they bring so much to the table when you're looking for inspiration for art or design. The image on the side here is a incredible in how you can look at the lit areas and really start to get a sense of the shapes that are there.
"The White Fence"
"Chair Abstract, Twin Lakes, Connecticut"
Paul Strand was featured in the final issues of the magazine and his work is the one I think I may have subconsciously been channeling. His image of "Porch Shadows" is so simple, yet a lot of people don't even realize that's what it is if you didn't tell them. He was sort of like the "heir" to Alfred Steiglitz since that was his mentor and his images evolved under Steiglitz. Strand would be photography of all kinds but I liked specifically his eye for capturing the shapes from silhouettes and objects. It's simple everyday situations or items turned into unique images.
I noticed that a few older photographs I took myself were similar stylistically. This kind of surprised me when I got back home because I hadn't known about Paul Strand's work until a week ago I think. While this isn't the only kind of photographs Paul Strand took, I liked these the best. They're so simple but hard to do, that's a cliche I know, but it's so hard to put into words.

That one I took in full color because I wasn't thinking about taking it necessarily for this project, but below I set my camera to black and white and decided to try and see if I can get some shots of things like Paul Strand's "Porch Shadows":
Strange shapes, diagonal patterns, lots of heavy geometry and shadows were what I was looking for. I have a feeling though that I kind of went off the deep end and tried to be TOO clever for even myself. Now I was looking too hard and trying these weird things. It might be good in an experimental sense but it was hard because I found myself struggling to take photos instead of just taking photos. It's very different from the Brooklyn Bridge photo because I didn't really think more than 2 seconds before I just looked up and took that one where these I think maybe I was being way too deliberate. I do like the one on the right in the second row though, it somehow looks like a house with some dried vines growing beside it. The one below it I also like because of how the image seems to be separated by these 2 strong contrasts. It's also kind of strange that it's very similar to the Brooklyn Bridge one I took as well.
*edit : Added 2 more images to the middle of the group. One of a building in Union Square where the shapes of the building on an angle looked kind of interesting. If I had a higher point of view instead of from below it might have looked a lot better. The image next to it looks almost like an abstraction, like an octopus fanning it's arms out. I once again placed the point where they intersected at a point of interest. This is actually the underside of the roof of the train station exit right in Union Square.
As an illustrator I like Pictorialism and I want to give it a try in the near future if a project calls for it or if I have time during a break. On the other hand this very geometric version of Straight Photography that Stieglitz and Strand practiced are great because the world we live in today provides a lot of opportunities to try it. If I can merge these sensibilities together, I really think I would come out a better photographer as well as an illustrator in the future.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Lines and Patterns
A Blast From the Past
I found this Fisher Price wooden horse toy abandoned on a lone sidewalk. They don't make things out of wood these days so I thought it was quite a rare find. I wonder if it was really abandoned there or did some kid have the trust enough to leave it there? Under the shade of the car next to it, I decided to try and zoom in on it to get a good shot. The one above is the zoomed out view while the one below is zoomed in. I tried to frame it with the rule of thirds in mind but I guess I was kind of off? Again, it's rather hard to try and get a truly unfocused background when you can't go lower than F3.5. In the extra sunny conditions, I had to go up to F8.0 to get some of my pictures to not be so overexposed. It's really a trial sometimes to wrestle your settings into place when you're new to this. Anyone which one is better?
Standing Alone
Monday, March 8, 2010
What-chu' lookin' at!?

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