A Contemporary Photo (P5/Q3): Printing-Compositions

To edit the print of the Masai warrior, I used photoshop and applied a dark blue filter selectively to the sky. This was done to improve the way the clouds looked, that is to make them more pronounced and to make the color less faded. When the filter was applied to the photo as a whole, the robe changed color and the warmth on the left hand side (from the sun setting) was removed, a touch that I quite liked. So I decided to apply it only to the clouds.



One thing that could be improved would be the inclusion of his hand and staff, as the staff was an important part of the Masai culture, being something which the men all carry and is used for herding cows and goats, the trademark of Masai culture. I am glad that the white beads around his wrists and those around his neck were included, as they also played a crucial role to Masai culture. This is because when doing traditional Masai dances including the characteristic high jumps, they do not use instruments, not even drums. Rather the thumping of their feet and staff and the jangling of their beaded jewellery provide the music so that the dance and the music itself are inseperable. See "Diary entry" for more about Masai culture.

A Contemporary Photo (P5/Q3): Diary Entry

Original Plan
The purpose of this project was to "produce one contemporary photo of a classic painting of your choice that includes a human subject/s." We were shown some examples in a fashion art book of taking a traditional painting or work of art and replicating this in a photo, retaining the main idea or emphasis in the contemporary photo. In this way, the original work of art was presented in a tweaked or slightly altered way, but still recognizable for the main emphasis shared shared between the new and altered version. My original plan was to do a contemporary interpretation of either Cezanne's "The Card Players" (1892) or Cezanne's "The Artist's Father" (1866).

For "The Card Players," I wanted to preserve the idea of what people do in their free time, in this case, I would update the poker set and clothing, but retain the concentration and timelessness of a game of cards.

For the
I was hoping to convey for "The Artist's Father" the way that people relax and catch up on news today, in a similar pose, but other surroundings. While this is in a cozy living room chair setting, I would place the reader in an airport with an Ipod in their ears, to show the way people relax today, which is seldom, and on-the-go.

What Really Came Out of It
In between one bad shoot and when I was planning to reshoot digitally, I went to Tanzania on the school service trip. There we were responsible for helping to build a classroom for Kirima Secondary School near Moshi for five days followed by a two day camping trip and a safari. I got a book full of portraits by Steve McCurry from around the world, and was inspired by this to get some portraits from the trip. We visited a Masai village near the Ngorogoro Crater, where I met the Masai warrior from my final print for the project. As we were walking away from the village, this man was walking parallel to us at some distance leading some cows with a staff. He motioned for me to take a photo of him with his cows, pointing to them as if to say "include them!" Considering what we had just learned about the importance of cows to Masai culture - that cows were a measure of wealth, as they provided on behalf of the chief the milk and meat for the village, thus dictating how many wives a man could have (the more cows, the more wives and children the chief can support. In this particular boma, the chief had four wives and 25 children. ) - I could see why this warrior wanted his picture taken with his cows - he was proud. After I took that shot, he came over, all smiles, and asked me to take another one. I was happy with this, since I was hoping to get portrait shots, and the background of hills and blue sky was perfect - not to mention he was all decked out in Masai clothing and beads. I don't think that I was as happy as he was though. As soon as I positioned the camera to take a photo, his smile disappeared, his hand went up with his staff, and he got a serious photo-taking face on. Immediately after, he demanded to see what it looked like, I showed him and he was pleased.

We were talking later in the car about how interesting the culture was, the polgamy, the norm for girls to be married around 12-14, the government requirement that the children attend school, things like that, especially the cow emphasis, and I thought again about how much that man wanted to be photographed. While most were hesitant to have pictures taken, besides the kids, he demanded it. I thought of the desire for people to leave their stamp and their legacy in the form of a portrait, and I was reminded of how monarchs used to have their portraits painted in those pompous triumphant poses just to leave behind a memory of themselves. Because they were proud. This was little different. this experienced warrior (for each battle, warriors cut a piece of their ear, which this warrior has) was determined to show his "kingdom" and what he had achieved in the form of a lasting picture. He stopped smiling for the picture to have a serious, dominant presence, much like monarchs posed all tall and looking off into the distance all noble-like.

The portrait that I found to be particularly representative of this habit of monarchs having themselves painted is one of Willem I Prince of Orange of the Netherlands. He has a royal red robe, and a very strong and confident, almost showy, stance.

The portrait of the Masai warrior from Tanzania shows similar characteristics, though far removed by time and cultural differences. He is also confident and dominating. the red robe is a nice echo, as is the shared characteristic of the need to leave a mark showing their achievements and what they own, what they are proud of.

A Contemporary Photo (P5/Q3): Image Bank

Photorealism

Photorealism (art movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s) is defined by wikipedia.org as:

"a genre of painting resembling a photograph, most recently seen in the splinter hyperrealism art movement."

The movement consists of projecting a photographic slide onto a canvas to enlarge the photograph to at least ten times the original size in order to preserve accuracy and precise nature of the photograph. It is a movement sometimes compared to the "trompe de l'oeil" movement, where paintings were done in such a realistic way as to look real and three-dimensional rather than two-dimensional.

Most times, the photographs-to-paintings are made in such a way that color and imagery are emphasized using reflections or other tricky techniques that render the painting authentic and hard to replicate without technical proficiency.

Paintings From Photographs - Ralph Goings

Ralph Goings was born in 1928 in California, USA. He is known for being a realist painter, particularly from painting scenes of diners, pickup trucks, and hamburger stands from photographs. He studied at the California College of Arts and Crafts. A quote about his choice of art (from Wikipedia:Ralph Goings).

"In 1963 I wanted to start painting again but I decided I wasn't going to do abstract pictures. It occurred to me that I should go as far to the opposite as I could. ... It occurred to me that projecting and tracing the photograph instead of copying it freehand would be even more shocking. To copy a photograph literally was considered a bad thing to do. It went against all of my art school training... some people were upset by what I was doing and said 'it's not art, it can't possibly be art'. That gave me encouragement in a perverse way, because I was delighted to be doing something that was really upsetting people... I was having a hell of a lot of fun..."

Ralph Going's technique includes painting with a brush on canvas, the same technique used in most classical art. He began in the 1960s taking photographs of real scenes and over the years transitioned to taking photos of scenes set up in his studio, where he could control all elements of the process. He then works from the photograph to the canvas and uses the photo less and less as the painting takes on its own. Also similar to classical art, the paintings have a focus on light. In "Ralph's Diner (1982), the light streams in from the window and creates interesting reflections and shadows in the retro diner. The ceiling reflects the light unevenly, and the sleek lines of the countertop are accentuated by the shiny reflections. There are shadows in the right hand side and on the left, in discreet areas, making it more realistic and three dimensional.

Ralph's Diner, 1982

As Edward Lucie-Smith said,

"One thing that Goings' work does have in common with photographs is its examination of light. Photography records, not objects as things in themselves, but the fall of light on objects—in other words, the way in which light is shaped by anything that interrupts its trajectory from the source."

Ralph goings is fascinated by surfaces and the way that light reacts and reflects off of them. He says this is what drew him to diners in the first place, and after that to taking pictures of the details of ketchep and salt shaker bottles. I chose this image, "Pepper Detail" (1983) to show the way he takes a fraction of an object and also to see more closely the effect of this style of painting from a photograph. The lines are thick, the reflections glossy, and the effect is to take something otherwise mundane and make it interesting.


The subject matter and the style are the aspects of Going's painting that set them apart. Goings takes seemingly mundane subjects and presents them in such a way as to point out that it is worth looking at, worth considering the value of. Many paintings are those of pick-up trucks, diners, hamburger stands and others that emphasize the rolling stone nature of American life.

"Diner with Red Door" places a woman in the side of the composition in order to make her seem as just an afterthought, or just in the image by chance. The real focus is the diner, an impersonal place where people come and go.

"Diner with Red Dorr" 1979

"Ford Overdrive" (1970)

"Ford overdrive" 1970

All prints are found at his web page: 'Ralph Goings: Four Decades of Realism'

Photographs of Paintings - Gregory Scott

Gregory Scott's homepage, impositions, describes his medium of photographing paintings as, "photographic images of people and places with drawings and paintings." In his Gregory Scott Artist Statement he claims that he is both a painter and a photographer, and that the two for him have always been closely linked.

His style or "imposition painting" developed over a period of time, beginning with producing paintings of people very closely cropped so that sometimes body parts were missing. Later, be began to fill in these missing body parts with photographs, and this led to his current style of imposing a painting in a photograph to replace or fill in what is missing. He seeks to explore different approaches to imposing paintings into a photographic medium. The artisic ideas that he explores in his paintings include: "dimensional perception as viewed in a painting vs a photograph; the demarcations between photography and painting; perceptions of photographic truth; and introducing the artist's hand and imagination into the world of the literal photograph." He seeks to achieve emotions of "humor, play, desire, loneliness, and melancholy." He uses especially the titles to help convey meaning. For example, this photograph, entitled "Disconcertainty" is typical of Scott's style. There is a person sitting facing a painting of a road seemingly running through their living room. The torso of the person is a painting imposed on the actual subject with the brace supporting this painting clearly visible. The painting is lonely, as the figure is naked and seems to be troubled by what they see before them, which of course, is a painting. This brings up the question of what is real and what is all appearance, what to believe, and gives the painting and photography medium another dimension.


Disconcertainty (2003)

Scott's technique consist of ways to make the photograph honest and "accessibe to all audiences." For example, showing the supports for the paintings included is done intentionally so as to not conceal that they are paintings. This is to avoid the final piece from looking as if it was digitally produced or in some other way altered. All the alterations, the painting designed to open up the photograph and conceal/reveal some other detail, are meant to be out in the open and easily visible to the viewer, authentic. Also, part of the technique is choosing a title to appropriately convey the meaning, like the title "disconcertainty" of the first example, a hybrid of two words to make a word that gets the message across. I did a double take because it took me a second look to realize that wasn't a word.

The image, "Framed" is consistent with Scott's technique. A man peeks through a canvas which holds the image of another man who seems to be looking at the first. The second is an echo of the first: wearing glasses, no shirt, with short hair" and poses the chicken or the egg question. Who came first? Who is more authentic?

Framed (2003)

The last example is one without people in it, yet consistent with the style all the same. A misty scene of trees has a square canvas covering one section of the scene with a desolate looking tree: bland white background with a single small tree. I wonder if the painting is really covering up something behind it, or if it is making the image more lonely and desolate. While the painting seems to be simple, it adds a more barren and lonely feel to the piece.


Little Tree (2003)

Gregory Scott Artist Statement

More images at the edelman gallery. Especially check out: Homage, where the tree and person fuse together, and "Poets' Graveyard" where one canvas is at an angle which makes the photo even more effective.

A Contemporary Photo (P5/Q3): Theory Notes

Composing a Shot for Effect

In order to achieve a certain effect, there are several techniques to use which make the subject or the purpose of the shot apparent. To highlight the meaning of the image, it is important to think about these things to make the shot have meaning rather than simply a photograph of something you came across.

For one, when shooting an image, decide first what your main focus is going to be. Rather than seeing a nice view and taking an image decide what you want to focus on: a certain person in the scene, a hill, the sunset... In this case as demonstrated by Kodak: Composing your Pictures, the photographer has focused in on the children, eliminating all other distracting people and directing the eye towards them. This proves very effective in this case. In the first image, the picture is too general, but closing on on the two childrem along the fence achieves the effect by isolating the children. In some cases, this can be done after shooting, ie enlarging the shot in the darkroom and cropping out some information.


However the angle of the shot cannot be edited in. You must decide at that moment which angle highlights the subject and hence gives the desired effect. Changing the angle of the shot can usually help drastically when trying to achieve a certain effect. Taking shots from above or below standing level can change the size, and hence the importance, of the subject. For example, in Tanzania, when I was taking some shots of the children I crouched down so that I was at their eye level. The effect of this was to be able to see their faces better. Instead of looking down on children, this presented equality and made it easier to look at the children straight in their faces so as to see emotions better.


In the second example, the angle is from above, to emphasize the crouching action of the little girl.


Another way to achieve a certain effect is to use leading lines to guide the eye towards a certain subject. Leading lines are those in a shot that naturally guide the eye towards the center of interest, sometimes off in the distance or closeby. In this case from Kodak, the lines of the road converge at the walking couple, drawing the eye towards them. Also, note that the righthand white stripe is diagonal. Including diagonal lines in a shot, or adjusting your angle so that these are included is a good technique to use because diagonal lines tend to make the shot more interesting and dynamic.

In this example from How to Take Perfect Pictures Every Time: Leading Lines, curvy lines in a road are used to draw the eye to the cyclists - the one in the forefront in particular rather than just a group of cyclists.


Another thing to remember when trying to achieve an effect, particularly when shooting an image of people is to let those people do their thing. Instead of posing them in a specific way, 'catching' them doing their normal or characteristic things, in other words taking a shot of them in action will yield a more meaningful image than one that is posed a certain way. In this case, from Kodak: Photographing People, a candid shot of the couple is taken which helps to achieve a lighthearted, playful effect.