Category: Uncategorised

These are my links for my online presence to show my progress throughout

https://www.instagram.com/ecm_photo

https://elinamiller.wixsite.com/photography

 

Today my photo book arrived with all my photos. Overall, I am very happy with how it turned out and I really like the pictures inside. The general colour theme of my book is yellow and orange, two ver happy colours which make me feel warm as the photos do too. This was done intentionally because the theme of ‘Home’ is something that makes me feel warm and happy inside. The photographs I took for this project turned out a lot better than I was expecting because I decided to redo my project at the last minute and it was very difficult and stressful but I finished it in the end and I am very pleased with it. I like this theme better than my last one because it meant I could focus on something that was personal to me rather than something that I wasn’t sure where I was going with it. Furthermore, in this project I also focused a lot more on detail and beauty, which was my aim and I kept it that way and didn’t go off topic.

 

Today we went to the Grand Parade campus in town to do a workshop on cyanotypes. We learned that Anna Atkins, who was known as the first woman to ever publish a book with photographic images using cyanotypes. Her work really fascinates me because the plants she used to make the cyanotype images were very beautiful and we later learned the process, which interested me even more.

1. First we each printed a chosen image that we previously made into negatives using Photoshop
2. Next, we coated the paper with a chemical solution of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide away from sunlight and left it to dry in the dark room
3. Then we placed the negatives onto the paper when it was ready and with a piece of glass we covered it. Next, we put them under the UV light for a few minutes until the paper turned bronze. The first time I put mine under the light for 6 minutes and the other 2 I did for 7 minutes. I like the 7 minute ones because the detail was just perfect in the end.
4. The final step was to wash the images under cold water until it turned blue.

 

The British inventor of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot produced his first ‘photogenic drawings’ in 1834 and then made his first camera negative the following year.

In 1833, he began experimenting with the possibility of creating accurate images of the world through mechanical and chemical means. By 1835 he had produced his first camera negative, and soon realised that a positive image could subsequently be obtained by further printing. “With one image taken outside his front window in the Abbey’s South Gallery, his country house in Wiltshire, Fox talbot lay the foundations of British photography” states Eamon McCabe in the photography documentary Britain in Focus: A Photographic History (BBC Four, 2017). This shows us that photography has changed a lot over the years starting from Fox Talbot taking the first photo to John Herschel, making the first cyanotype and others inventing new processes which has lead to us taking digital photos today.

Toister (2019) quotes “Photography today is a changed art form. Partly because it is no longer an autonomous medium, it is certainly not a distinct one. In fact, photography is arguably better served if understood as media.” This also suggest that photography mediums have changed even though we still use these methods professionally and for fun in today’s world. This shows that photography is so old and it’s gone down in history all these years and become what we know as digital today.

References:

BBC Four (2017) Britain in Focus: A Photographic History. Available at: https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand/index.php/prog/0E7E5043?bcast=125108148 (Accessed 8th January 2020)

Toister, Y. 2019, “PHOTOGRAPHY: Love’s labour’s lost”, photographies, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 117-133.

Josef Sudek was a Czech photographer born in Bohemia  on March 17th 1896 and died in Prague in September 1976. He is best known for his for his photographs of Prague.  Sudek was originally a bookbinder but during the First World War he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1915 and served on the Italian Front. However, in 1916 he wounded his right arm which led to his arm being amputated. After the war his disability meant everything he did was limited so he onto study photography in Prague for two years. On the other hand, his disability gave him leeway to make art, and he did a lot of romantic Pictorialist style work in the 1920s. Sudek devoted his life to beauty and ‘used photography as a way to to explore the world around him, and it was in many ways therapeutic,’ says specialist Anne Bracegirdle, introducing the introspective Czech artist who found solace in still lifes amid wars and political turmoil.

 

 

References: 

Artnet.com. (2020). Josef Sudek  Artnet. [online] <http://www.artnet.com/artists/josef-sudek/> [Accessed 6 Jan. 2020].

En.wikipedia.org. (2020). Josef Sudek  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Sudek> [Accessed 6 Jan. 2020].

 

 

Edward Weston was a 20th century American photographer who is most famous for his images that focus on lighting, detail and composition. Weston enrolled at the Illinois College of Photography after failing to start a photography career in California without a degree. After finishing his course in six month he returned to California with more experience and began working as an assistant in portrait photography in Los Angeles. He even opened up his own studio in 1909 and in 1932 he helped form the influential Group f/46 alongside well-known photographers such as Ansel Adams and Willard Van Dyke.

On January 1st, 1958 he died of Parkinson’s disease at his home in California. Due to his significance in the area, the beach where his ashes were scattered was named after him. Today, his works are held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.

 

References:

Abbott, B. (2005). Edward Weston, Los Angles, J. Paul Getty Museum

Artnet……, Edward Weston, Artnet, viewed 21st December 2019, <http://www.artnet.com/artists/edward-weston/>

 

I took some photos around the house of objects that you possibly wouldn’t find in a normal household as well as some photos of my family being quite close together. Overall, I am very happy with these images.

Today I arrived in Colombia and staying with my parents. Due to jet lag I started photographing unique objects around the house such as book, pottery, pictures and other furniture. These object are both things you would typically find in any household and things that not every house has, such as cultural objects. As my family have been travelling for the past 26 years there are a lot of objects in my house that come from different parts of the world and have traveled with us all these years and seen many cultures.

One issue that I had when taking these photos was the light. The light outside was white strong because of the sun, which was something I couldn’t control so I had to choose a better location. On the other hand, there was other rooms that had very little light and the artificial lights were a dull colour that wasn’t very nice so for these images I edited them so that the colour of the light wasn’t noticeable and those that were to dark I heightened the exposure and contrast in Lightroom.

I decided to change my idea and continue from last year’s theme of ‘Home’. For Christmas this year I am going to my parents’ house in Colombia for a few weeks. Although this isn’t where I consider home to be, even though I used to live here when I was younger, I am going to photograph how my parents live together with my younger sister and focus on the detail of their home. Home is my family. My aim is to focus on the beauty and detail to create a more coherent set of images.

I am going to photograph objects and furniture around the house in different rooms such as the kitchen, living room and bedrooms. Because my family have lived all around the world for most of our lives our house is very interesting because we have many things from different counties that we take with us as memories. This is what makes our house different from most people’s family homes.

 

Today I went to Brighton beach again to take some more pictures of my friends but I found it difficult to depict my ideas because I still wasn’t feeling inspired and I still wasn’t sure where my project was going with the portraits. It was it was raining and it was dark outside so my models were cold and it was dark. However, the photos I took were not as bad as I was expecting although, they did not fit in well with my theme and I did not have a coherent set of images.

Out of all the pictures I took these ones was one of the best because of the composition- they are very simple and there isn’t much to them. I like the second one in particular because of the blurry movement and it looks like Braley is kicking the camera away, portraying rebellion and youth culture. On the other hand, they don’t portray my original theme.

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer who is most famous for his candid  and street photographer, also known as capturing the decisive moment. He was also one of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947. In 1940 he was taken prisoner of war and in 1943 he was lucky enough to have escaped and joined an underground organisation to help other prisoners escape too. Follwoing his escape, in 29145 he documented the liberation of Paris with a group of professional photographers and filmed the documentary Le Retour (The Return).

 

References: 

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. (2020). Biography – Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. [online] Available at: https://www.henricartierbresson.org/en/hcb/biography/ [Accessed 5 Dec. 2019].