Thoughts on Projects 2,3, and 4

Thoughts on projects:

Answering questions for each project:

1.     What did you learn through the completion of this project technically?

2.     What did you learn through the completion of this project from your creative process: from brainstorm to finished work?

Project 2 Panorama:

Through the completion of my panorama project number two, I learned that it is never good to have the edge of the photo fade to being the pure white of the photo luster paper.  I had an edge that was part of the cloudy white sky and I worked through learning how to edit the sky in Adobe Photoshop in order to make the sky create an edge for the photo.  I did this by using the burn tool and changing the channels.  I learned through the creative process from start to finish of this panorama project that your first mental picture of the completion of the image is not always going to be as pleasing to the eye as you first imagined.  I originally wanted this panorama to feature both sides of the house zoomed in on the train objects and then have images that were further away of the house that was in the center of this train memorabilia. After shooting though, I realized that I really wanted to focus more on the one side of the house that had more train memorabilia and just show the one corner of the house so that a viewer would still understood the location.

Project 3 Girl with the Pearl Earring:

Through the completion of my Girl with the Pearl Earring project, I learned and was somewhat shocked at the range of ability to alter a photograph in Adobe Photoshop, while still being able to make the image look realistic.  I was able to alter colors of fabrics and change the shape of the doll’s headpiece, as well as add deep shadows and even add an earring in the doll’s ear that was not actually there.  I learned from the creative process from start to finish that it was very important to try extremely hard to perfect the pose of the Barbie doll in order to mimic that of the Vermeer painting.   Although you may not be able to get it right instantly, you can always utilize Photoshop in order to work through some of the issues you were faced with while shooting.  This project really helped me realize how to use Photoshop for your own personal advantage.  I also learned that mounting is very difficult and takes a lot of time and practice to master.

Project 4 Create My Own Project:

This was the first time I have ever proposed my own project to a Professor; it was exciting but also nerve-wracking to come up with exactly what I wanted to do for the project.  I once again realized that your first idea might not be the best way to go about the completion of your project.  My original idea was to abstract a single flower in each image of my series by take an extremely close up photograph.  I found out as I was shooting that I actually liked the images of multiple flowers (bouquets) that I took much more than single flower shots because I found them to be more like miniature-abstracted landscapes.  I liked the fact that you didn’t immediately see the subject matter in the bouquet photographs as being flowers.  The single images of flowers screamed out that they were flowers so they weren’t really abstracted like I wanted. I had to work through some difficult complications with trying to get aesthetically pleasing shots that were also abstracted. 

Mike McCauslin Digital Photo: completed projects Comment on Project One

Mike McCauslin Digital Photo: completed projects: Project 2 - 2/28/12 - Panorama Project 1 - 2/7/12 - Top 10


Ok so I couldn't seem to post on Mike's blogger because I couldn't find the comment button but I just figured I would try this.  This is something I wrote earlier but wrote down in my notebook instead of on blogger because I couldn't figure out how to do the commenting.

To Mike about his first project:

I really loved the image of the older couple by the beach sitting on the bench and the couple by the water with the extremely long shadows.  I liked your idea of all of your photos being taken within a block from the beach but if you didn't tell me that beforehand some of your images wouldn't have shown me that (like the do not enter sign between the bushes photograph).  I really like how you are making up your frames individually like the image of the graffiti playground and the large building in the background and the image of the couple on the beach with the small amount of sky compared to the vast amount of ocean.  I think you just need to connect your individual images a little more in order for us to pick up on the beach theme.

Rober Mapplethorpe and Georgia O'Keeffe

NYC TRIP

During the field trip to New York City I spent the majority of my day exploring the Museum of Modern Art from bottom to top.  I spent a lot of time looking through all of the photographs in the Cindy Sherman exhibition on the sixth floor of the museum.  Cindy Sherman is a very well recognized contemporary artist.  She is known for working as her own model and dressing herself up in a large range of disguises and characters; some are seen as amusing, while others are absolutely disturbing.  The exhibition traces the career of Sherman from the mid 1970s to the present. As soon as I entered this exhibition, which is scattered throughout multiple rooms and taking up the entire sixth floor, I knew this artist’s work would be what I would write about for class.  The large range of characters she dressed up as in the more than 170 photographs was mesmerizing.  One of the first photographs I saw entering the exhibition was a larger than life image of Sherman dressed in an extravagant turquoise robe standing outside on a covered patio with intricate archways of stone near a garden (Untitled #466); I couldn’t stop staring at the image and wondering who this character was. Another image that caught my eye at the exhibition was Untitled #94, which is an image of a woman reclining.  I have chosen to discuss what makes up each of these two individual images in order to show the differences in both the positioning of the woman figure and the translation the viewer makes of each.

Untitled #466 (1981) is a chromogenic color print that was protected within a thick frame and glass; it is the only image on a wall placed in the center of the first room you enter into of the exhibition giving it a prominent position.  The photograph was 8’ 1 1/8” by 63’ 15/16”.  The photograph shows in the foreground a woman with aged white hair pulled back tightly into a neat bun.  She is clearly posing for the photo as she stands at an angle with her right hand on her hip and her left hand lightly placed on her chest.  She is wearing extravagant jewelry, including large gold chandelier earrings and multiple rings, and heavy eye makeup.  Although the background is blurred because of the choice of f-stop, you can still make out the archway and columns, as well as the garden and potted plant across the way between two of the columns.  The image of the woman and the background were taken separately.  Sherman shot herself using a green screen and then later inserted her image onto this backdrop, which is actually an image of the Cloisters in New York City.  This woman is clearly an aristocrat and her facial expression and the way she poses for the camera shows that she is a proud individual.  When you first look at this image you see this woman as being very well put together; someone who has it all.  However, when looking deeper into the image, which the large scale allows, you notice other details, such as signs of her aging, which causes you to think differently and see the reality that lurks underneath.  Her right foot is seen coming out of the slit in the bottom of her robe. She is wearing cheap pink plastic slippers with thick stockings.  The perfection of this woman is diminished when the viewer looks closer into the image.  This image is used as a comment on how the fixation of status and youth are very much important in culture today.

Untitled #94 is part of Cindy Sherman’s centerfold series.  This image is 2’ by 4’ which, at the time of its creation, was extremely large for photography.  This image as well was protected by a frame, thinner than the one used for Untitled #466, and glass.  It was placed on a wall in a room with all twelve of the images that make up the Centerfolds series.  The scale allows the viewer to submerge him or herself into the image.  The image is completely in focus and is horizontal, which relates to a centerfold found in men’s magazines featuring erotic photographs.  The woman looks as if she is daydreaming and she is not looking at the camera.  She is in a reclined position, leaning back on her elbows with her knees up and her hair tousled giving you a sexual feeling about the pose.  Cindy Sherman made this image of a woman lying there in a more feminine realm.  The images were going to be used in a magazine as centerfolds, but it was later decided that they would be misunderstood. Sherman wanted to make you feel uncomfortable as the viewer during the time you initially viewed a woman lying there.  She wanted you, as the viewer, to feel as if you did not want to invade the private moment that was taking place.

Both images are of women, but are completely different takes on the female figure.  The first image discussed is to show the importance of status and youth in today’s culture, while the second is putting a crazy twist on the idea of a pinup girl in a centerfold.  Sherman, in my opinion, through both images was successful in creating the mood and translation I was told she was trying to produce. 

Untitled #466

Untitled #94

My Project 4 Proposal

Project 4 Proposal:

My Project, titled Abstracted Flowers, will focus on exploring the idea of zooming in on well-known subjects to the point of making them abstract objects. I will be using both Robert Mapplethorpe and Georgia O’Keeffe as inspiration.  Although Georgia O’Keeffe was not a photographer, like Mapplethorpe, she used flowers as a genre in her work.  I will be attempting to use O’Keeffe’s cropping techniques in painting, which are similar to that of photography, in my shots in order to create an abstracted image of flowers.  My goal for this series is to create three to five prints of equal size mounted on gaterboard.  This project is important because it will utilize my interest in close up images and take it a step further by having me explore abstracted photography in a way that is completely new to me.  I will be creating a series of these abstracted flower images to be viewed together as a whole, which is unlike the work of Robert Mapplethorpe and Georgia O’Keeffe due to the fact that although they created multiple pieces relating to the flower genre, each piece was viewed individually.  My research will include online searches and library sources in order to view as much of Mapplethorpe and O’Keeffe’s works as possible related to the genre of flowers.

            My work plan includes this timeline:

• ^·               I will set aside six hours per week to shoot - April 1^st through the 14^th
• ^·               Postproduction will occur April 15^th through the 20^th
• ·      Printing or final presentation - April 21^st through the 26^th

Summary of Readings for 3/13

Within the first reading titled The Modern Public and Photography, Charles Baudelaire makes mockery of multiple titles of artworks.  He states that we are moving downward in progress; that every day we are losing skills that are simply obtained by patience. Baudelaire then goes on to talk about how the people that make up France and incapable of feeling the “ecstasy” that artists could show in true art and therefore the artists bow down to the French society and give them what they want.  He mentions the ideas of realism and reproduction of nature through painting and statuary.  He is completely against the idea of reproduction through photography.  Baudelaire believes that photography has become the go to industry for those who have failed at being painters for various different reasons.  He believes that photography should only be used for keeping our memories and that painters are now forced to paint what they see and not what they dream of.

On the other hand in the second reading, Photography and Photography and Artistic-Photography, Marius De Zayas thought of photography as the “herald of a new artistic age”.  Photography is stated as not being Art or as being an art. Art is stated as being the Idea and Photography as being the Nature.  It is said that through nature comes ideas.  The reading discusses how some artists get their inspiration from museums and therefore they build on the past; except for Picasso (an artist of the time), who searches for new forms.  Europeans conducted experiments using Africans by having them draw from nature; those experimented on always gave importance in decorative items that represent abstract expression.  It is stated that form can only be “transcribed through a mechanical process, in which the craftsmanship of man does not enter as a principal factor.”  Photography is said to be the representation of concrete facts. It is later stated that although photography is not Art but that photographs can be made to be Art.

The third reading titled, The Paradoxes of Digital Photography, by Lev Manovich starts by discussing technologies that have all extremely changed what a photograph is now.  Manovich then goes on to talk about how computer graphics simulates sets and actors in movies and that film may soon disappear but not cinema.  He also talks about that a difference between traditional and digital photography is the amount of information that is included in an image.  He mentions a program for Macintosh called Live Picture that can allow someone to work with a photo at any size.  He discusses the difference between a film-based photograph and a grid of pixels taking up computer space on a hard-drive.  Manovich says that 3-D computer graphics can technically be digital or synthetic photography.  He states that the goal of computer graphics is not exactly realism but more photorealism; that they are attempting to depict something either from the real world or something made up as realistically as possible.  He uses Jurassic Park as an example to get his points across. 

David Hillard

David Hillard documents his life and the lives of others around him in his photography.  His work focuses on “the personal, the familiar and the simply ordinary”.  Hillard manipulate the physical distance to in turn show emotional distance.  Although Hillard’s images are of the familiar and ordinary, he makes the viewer recognize the deeper significances within these average actions and moments he captures.  Hillard utilizes panoramic photographs made up of multiple single images.  He maneuvers the viewer’s eye through the photograph by altering the focal planes from panel to panel; this manipulation is impossible to attain with only one single image.

http://www.davidhilliard.com/about.html

I really enjoy how Hillard has altered the perspective through these three panels.  At the left image you see a mirror image of a little child standing naked within a metal bucket.  This mirror is the only thing within that first panel hanging on the wall.  As the viewer we are not seeing the mirror head on but more from about a 45-degree angle.  The center image is of a woman, most likely a mother, bathing the child.  This is the same child that we see in the left panel but this time the child is seated and looking up at her mother.  Her mother is gently grasping the child’s shoulder and back.  This image is backlight by a large window with white curtains covering it.  Upon the table there are other items including a towel.  The panel to the right has three potted plants, one of which sits upon a small wooden table.  The table also has a small towel and what appears to be a shampoo bottle.  This image also appears to make the table look as if it is at about a 45-degree angle from the viewer.  This image contains the corner of the room.  David Hillard has made this image that at a quick glance one could think of as just being one full image with nothing altered.  This image would be impossible to capture as one image because the reflection of the child in the mirror does not resemble what is happening within the next panel at all; this manipulation of multiple panels is one of the main reasons Hillard enjoys shooting this way.

When looking at these three images they line up almost perfectly from panel to panel whether you are looking at the rock wall or the mountain range or even the trees.  Hillard plays with the focal points of these three panels.  In the panel to the left Hillard has made everything in focus including the trees way off in the distance. The center panel has a shallow depth of field forcing the viewers eye to focus on the rock wall that is in the foreground.  The grassy area behind the rock wall and the trees, clouds, and mountain range off in the distance are all blurred. The panel to the right has a man grasping onto the rocks; both the man and the rock wall are in focus.  There is detail in the grass that is not extremely blurred but the rocks that separate the grass from the trees are blurred along with the trees mountain range and clouds.

These panels are placed one on top of the other.  The bottom image is an up close image of the ground with a puddle that shows the reflection of the buildings that make up this alleyway.  The center image continues the streaks of the puddle in the bottom image.  There is a man in all black bending down as if he is picking something off the ground who is in focus.  Further back there is another man standing who is out of focus.  The image gets more blurred the further your eye goes down the alley.  The top panel is of an image looking up from the alley.  The image is not looking directly upward it is more on an angle.  Although the images seem to line up perfectly the top image is taken at a different angle than the bottom two images therefore when the viewer sees the three panels together as a whole the perspective is altered creating a warped feeling that makes it feel as if the buildings are bent.