PAINTING2PHOTOGRAPHY Assignment : Task 2 & 7 : Research : Phillipp Klinger

DISCLAIMER: All of these images were taken by Phillipp Klinger.

None of the above images are my own.

Phillipp Klinger is an architecture and landscape photographer from Germany. I absolutely love his work and how lots of shapes and lines are represented within his images. I also really love how in a lot of his work he centres himself to take the image to give the appearence of symmetry. He shows the true beauty that architects and designers create through buildings. He is very lucky to have been in the right place at the right time where no-one is around (unless he has a photographers pass or has photoshopped any people out of the images). His photographs are beautifully composed and look more like works of art. I am absolutely amazed at nearly every photograph of his that I look at. His images often don't have much colour in them (they're either greyscale, black and white or just muted colours). I think this is because the buildings are so dramatic and the shapes he captures make the images quite powerful so he probably feels he doesn't need colour to enhance them. Klinger's images really inspire me and make me want to travel and see all the beautiful architecture the world has. I think that Klinger spends a long time planning out his compositions to get the impact he wants. He has an eye for stunning architecture. The buildings he photographs always seem to have lots of lines, curves, squares, etc. Klinger also always manages to capture beautiful lighting (whether it's natal or artificial ) his images appear to glow.

BOOK FAIR PROJECT - Analyzing Photography Books

Thomas Roma : Found In Brooklyn

This book shows images taken by Thomas Roma in Brooklyn from 1974-1990. The images are taken over a number of years but are all styled a similar way to make them work well as a set. The images are displayed usually on the right hand page of the book with a white boarder. Sometimes the images are displayed on both sides of the book, still with a white boarder, and I personally think the images look better this way. The photographs are all black and white and landscape format.

Roma has portrayed Brooklyn to be fairly quiet and care free, as a lot of the images show run down gardens (possibly people being too lazy to look after them) and the people within the images seem to be not doing very much. The book doesn't contain many photographs of people - possibly showing that Brooklyn is a quiet place. This would seem quite ironic seeing as it is right next to the very busy city of New York City. I think the images that contain people look very staged like he has asked them to model for him instead of looking like street photographs where they are more natural. 

The book is a soft paper back and about 8x10 size. This makes the reader want to flick through the book rather than to study it slowly. A large, hardback heavy book would draw the audience in more and make them want to study the images in more detail as they would have more of an impact. Roma's book is a little bit more personal as the reader can hold it in their hands and flick through it. 

BOOK FAIR PROJECT : How to make paper

You will need:

- Paper (this could be one type or assorted):

Computer paper (printed or unprinted)

Newspaper

Textured paper

Toilet paper

Egg Boxes

Parcel paper

Paper bags

Napkins

Magazines

- Optional paper effects:

Feathers

Flower petals

Ink to create marble effect

Dye (water based or powder based)

This is the piece of paper I made for the cover of my book. I made it using newspaper, water, a blender and some ink. I tore up pieces of newspaper into tiny pieces and put them into the blender with warm water. I then blended up the paper until it formed a pulp/paste. I then tipped out the paste onto a tray which had a tea towel covering it. I then placed another tea towel on top of the pulp and used a sponge to remove any excess liquid from the newspaper and water. After a lot of pressing the tea towels together and squeezing the sponge down, I decided that I could no longer get any more liquid from the newspaper. I then peeled back the top tea towel and used black ink to create the splodges. This looked better when my paper was wet as the rest of it was a dark grey colour so the black splodges faded in more. When my paper dried it faded to a lighter grey colour which made the black splodges more dominant, which I was slightly disappointed about as it wasn't how I intended. 

Once I had chosen the size of my images for my book I cut myself two pieces the same size to make the front and the back cover. I then bound them all together with a ring-bind to properly make it into a book.

IMAGE AND TEXT Assignment : Task 22 : Images in advertising



DOCUMENTARY Assignment : Part 2 : Person X Final Piece : Review

 For the front cover of my book I zoomed in and cropped one of the images that features in the book so the cover is more abstract than just putting one of the images on the front cover in it's original size/form. I then selected one of the colours of one of the beads for my title text. I like this as it teams in with the cover image. I like how this image is quite absract and draws the audiences attention into the book, wondering who or what it is about. 

I love these photographs of photographs - it makes the audience feel as if they are delving into my mums personal life with me and my brother as children.

Even though this image shows movement and a slight blur, I really like it. The natural lighting looks gorgeous here and works really well to illuminate my mums hands to show what she's doing. 

I think my images work really well displayed in a book because the order is definately going to be kept as opposed to if I just had loose prints where the order might get mixed up. 

My book is ringbound which I think looks very sleek and simplistic as the ring bind is small.

Overall I think my images look really professional displayed as a book and the order of my images works well to show narrative and show a story of my mums life. When I first started this project I set myself a brief of 'What Mum's Do' - I wanted to show what my mum does for our family and the daily activities of mums (e.g. cooking, cleaning, looking after the family, walking the dog, etc). Through development I veered away from the original brief as I wanted to document my mums life rather than her life as a mum. As I went on different photoshoots I really liked displaying different aspects of her life and wanted to then go down the route of showing how her work life differs from her home life. I wanted to possibly display my images showing my mum at home, then at work, then at home, then at work, etc. With this idea in mind, I found myself liking the images of my mums home life more than the work life, because it is generally more colourful and interesting. So then I decided to include just a few pictures of her work life and mainly her home life. I especially love the photographs of photographs. 

I think I have done well in photographing in the style of my chosen photographer Julian Germain. When I was shooting my images I tried at all times possible to use large apertures to create a narrow depth of field.

At first I struggled a lot with this assignment and didn't know how I was going to show narrative for Person X even though I knew I wanted to photograph on the theme/subject. I attacked the subject by trying to photograph my mum in different environments even though I didn't really know what narrative I was trying to portray. When we did a group Critique in class, I realised where I wanted to go with my images - showing my mums personal life and interests and focus in on things like crosswords and puzzle books which are a part of her life that she enjoys. 

I think my set of images work really well together and my chosen order looks really good and makes the book flow. I love the colours of my book on 'Person X' and think they describe my mum quite well as I have images of her jewellery and clothes which display the colours she likes to wear. 

DOCUMENTARY Assignment : Part 2 : Task 4 : Test images and critique

Here I have tried to imitate Julian Germain's style of imagery by blurring out backgrounds on photoshop to highlight the thing that I was photographing. I was trying to recreate the narrow depth of field using modern digital in-camera techniques when I should have been using traditional in-camera techniques and photographing things on the correct settings to show narrow depth of field (large apertures). I don't like these images because they look very altered and unnatural and in future shoots I am going to create the effects in-camera.

Here I have tried to photograph my mum doing everyday activities. Here she is drying her hair and having her daily actimel drink. I really like the lighting in the bottom image but don't think it is a particularly strong image. I will try and photograph her in lighting like this in future but in different situations. I quite like the interesting angle of my mum drying her hair as you can see her in the mirror, however, I don't like the lighting in the image as it is very dark. 

Here I have tried using traditional in-camera techniques using the settings in my camera. I took these images using F4.5. I really like these images and will continue photographing my mum this way. I would like most of my set to revolve around this style of photography. These images work especially well because of the text and looks really good shot in this way.

I thought it would be an interesting concept to photograph my mums hands and never include her face. I could explain who she is and things about her just from what she is doing with her hands. Here she is cooking, working on her computer and making her breakfast. I really like the concept but I decided I didn't want to just photograph her hands, I wanted to include other things about her like objects and possibly images of her whole self. 

Here I wanted to photograph other people in here life. The first image is of my mum at work talking to a man that she works with. The bottom image is of my mum on christmas day opening her present with my brother sat next to her. I like the idea of these images but I think that they almost take away the fact that the set is completely about her and not her and people in her life. I want the images to be solely of her or of objects that describe her so I won't be using these images in my final set. 

PAINTING2PHOTOGRAPHY Assignment : Task 1 & 6 : History of Photography and Impact on Art

Camera Obscurer:
Camera - Room
Obscure - Dark

Photography:
Photo: Light
Graph: Draw

This image was taken by Nicephore Niepce. It is as far as anyone knows the first ever photograph taken in France. It was taken using a camera obscura, captured onto a piece of Pewter plate and had an 8 hour exposure. The photograph is called "The View from the Window at Le Gras" and was taken in 1825. It is now displayed in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center and is listed as one of the 100 photographs that changed the world.

This photograph is called "Boulevard Du Temple" and was taken by Louis Daguerre in 1838. It is the first known photograph to have people in it. This photograph was taken on a 10 minute exposure and the people have been captured because the man getting his shoes shined and the boy doing it for him were stationary for this length of time. Other things may have been passing during this time, but weren't captured because of the long exposure. 

This was the first ever negative taken by Fox Talbot.

Fox Talbot:

Fox Talbot was the inventor of the Calotype process - the first form of positives and negatives - which enabled photographers to mass produce images. He wanted to invent this because he couldn't draw, so creating an alternative way of capturing images.

Louis Daguerre:

Louis Daguerre was the inventor of the Daguerreotype, the first popular photographic process. This process was one of the only ones where no copies could be made/mass-produced of images (it cannot be transferred onto any other light sensitive medium). 

Adolphe Disderi:

Disderi was a french photographer who started his career as a Daguerrotypist. He became famous when he invented the 'carte de visite' which was a small photographic image which was mounted on card. This enabled mass production of photographs as they were printed on card rather than glass or coated metal plates like before. In 1854 he patented the printing process. The 'carte de visite' were 6x9cm and 10 could be printed on a single sheet. 'Carte de visite' meant visiting card and people/visitors could buy them (like the modern post card). Disderi's invention lead to the decline of the Daguerrotype as they were a worldwide craze. 

Eadweard Muybridge:

In 1872 the former governor of California Leland Stanford - a businessman and race-horse owner, hired Muybridge for some photographic studies. He was asked to solve using photography the popular debate - whether all four feet of a horse were off the ground at the same time while trotting. The human eye could not break down the action quick enough so the horses movement had to be captured with a camera. He used advanced technologies in shutter speed to take multiple images to show the horse whilst trotting and then further studies into a horse gallop. 

George Eastman:

Eastman was an American innovator who founded the Eastman Kodak Company in 1989 and invented roll film. This helped to bring photography into the mainstream and more people could have a go at it. Roll film also helped motion picture film and was the basis for its development. The name Kodak came from Eastman's favourite letter K. He said it was a strong letter and the name Kodak came from his mother creating anagrams. 

Kodak Brownie:

In 1900 first ever simple and inexpensive camera was created - the Kodak Brownie. The Brownie introduced the concept of a snapshot as people could carry it around and snap pictures of things that they wanted to without having to set anything up. It was intended to be a camera that anyone and everyone could use as it was simple and only cost $1. The Kodak Brownie slogan was "You push the button, we do the rest" This meant that people could push the button to take the photographs they wanted to take, send the Brownie back to Kodak where they would develop the prints for them, then Kodak would send the Brownie back to the photographer/user with a new film in it and their printed images. 

Impact on Art:

Traditionally artists were employed by the rich to paint a single or family portrait to preserve the sitters appearance for generations. It was also used to display the world and capture it's physical appearance and capturing royal and political events in history. Painting was also used for creating art pieces for the church. 

When photography was invented and went public in 1839, it was a huge threat to the livelihood of painters as people and things could be captures more quickly and cheaply than painters could. This was a huge disappointment to artists/painters as they felt that their jobs were not wanted. However, photography gave them the freedom to express themselves using different styles of art and experimenting with different techniques. They weren't constricted to just having to truly represent people as accurate as possible, and therefore lots of art movements developed such as impressionism, expressionism, cubism, futurism, dada, surrealism and more.