Theme 2 - Final images - Part 1

I have chosen to include the following images in my portfolio:

Specification:

Nikon D300
No Flash
18-70mm lens
Shutter speed 1/10s
f2.8
ISO 200
Focal length 32.00

This image was taken during a Gala dinner at work and I wanted to take a single image to try to represent the whole evening. I felt that Champagne was a great symbol for luxury and extravagance so I decided to take a picture of this. This picture was not tweaked in photoshop, this is how it looked in camera. The only thing that I have done is to resize it.

Specification

Nikon D300
No Flash
Shutter Speed 1/60 sec
f4.0
ISO 1600
Focal length 34.00


This image was taken during the same gala dinner as this image above. The theme of the evening was Autumn and I wanted to try and capture the essence of this in a picture and I felt that the image above demonstrated this nicely. I like the colours of the candle light and the composition. I was unable to use flash as this would have destroyed the soft light. This being the case, I increased my ISO to 1600 to enable me to capture the soft candle light.

Theme 2 - assignment planning 1 - red rose - Ernst Haas

Ernst Haas

Ernst Haas was born in Austria in 1921 and died in NYC in 1986. He was well know for his colour photography although some of his earliest work was actually in black and white. Before Ernst Haas, colour photojournalism was not very common and he very much became a pioneer of it. The picture shown below is one that I particularly like because of the colour (I love red), the subject and the swirling patterns created by the rose petals.

Equipment

• Nikon D300
• 50mm lens
• Even light source (daylight)
• Red Rose

Plan

I plan to recreate this image by using the equipment stated above and use natural light. I will use a 50mm lens with a shallow depth of field to enable me to focus the viewers eye to the central focal point of the image. I will shoot from above and tweak the colours to boost them slightly in photoshop.

Original picture:

Specs:

• f5.6
• 135mm
• ISO 200
• 1/50 sec
• RAW file

I shot this from above in on camera flash light, however, in order for it to resemble the Ernst Haas picture, it needed some work in photoshop.

The resulting image looks like this:

This image, does resemble the origional Ernst Haas image, however, the rose is a different shape and the tone of Red is significantly brighter in this image.

Theme 2 - Still life - Research - Irving Penn

Irving Penn
American, born 1917

Born in New Jersey,Irving Penn studied design at the Philadelphia Museum School, where he became a student of Alexey Brodovitch. In 1937, the year before he graduated, several of his drawings were published by Harper's Bazaar. From 1940 to 1941, he worked for the art and advertising director of Saks Fifth Avenue, and the following year he spent in Mexico painting, a medium he subsequently abandoned. Returning to New York, Penn was hired by Vogue magazine, first to create ideas for cover illustrations, then to photograph covers as well as editorial illustrations for the interior of the magazine. Working closely with Alexander Liberman, Penn developed a highly stylized, graphically compelling form of fashion photography which did much to define post-war notions of feminine chic and glamour. In his fashion and portrait photography, Penn favored the use of a neutral backdrop of gray or white seamless paper, or alternatively, the use of constructed architectural sets which created striking effects with oblique, diving diagonals and upward tipped perspectives. Penn also created numerous still life compositions for the magazine: carefully orchestrated assemblages of food or objects characterized by a play of three-dimensional and two-dimensional forms. In 1953 Penn opened his own commercial studio and almost immediately became one of the most influential and successful advertising photographers in the world.

Eschewing any notions of naturalism, spontaneity, or chance, Penn has always favored the rigidly controlled, formal conditions of the studio. Thus, even when photographing North African nomads, New Guinea tribesman, Peruvian Indians, or Hell's Angels, Penn contrived portable studios that permitted much the same degree of elegant and structured lighting and composition that he used to photograph fashion models and socialites.

in addition to his fashion and commercial work, Penn has produced a body of art photography. Using platinum and other precious metal processes, Penn has photographed urban detritus (cigarette butts, crumpled wrappers, etc.), the torsos of plump artists' models, and most recently, still lifes of skulls, bones, and construction materials. While the subject matter represents the antithesis of his fashion and commercial work, as does the use of artisanal printing processes produced in numbered editions, both bodies of work reveal the same preoccupation: balance of form and carefully calibrated composition, with nuances of light and tone, presenting a subject that is emotionally neutral or kept always at emotional and psychological arm's length.

Irving Penn studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School from which he graduated in 1938. Penn's drawings were published by Harper's Bazaar and he also painted. As his career in photography blossomed, he became known for post World War II feminine chic and glamour photography.

Penn has worked for many years doing fashion photography for Vogue magazine. He was among the first photographers to pose subjects against a simple grey or white backdrop and used this simplicity more effectively than other photographers. Expanding his austere studio surroundings, Penn constructed a set of upright angled backdrops, to form a stark, acute corner. Posing his subjects within this tight, unorthodox space, Penn brought an unprecedented sense of drama to his portraits, driving the viewer's focus onto the person and their expression. In many photos, the subjects appeared wedged into the corner. Subjects photographed with this technique included Martha Graham, Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O'Keeffe, W. H. Auden, Igor Stravinsky and Marlene Dietrich.

While a master of the studio flash, most of Penn's portraits are lighted with window light. For travelling to New Guinea and other locations to photograph indigenous people, Penn created a portable studio with a skylight deployed facing north with impressive results. These pictures had the same feel as his portraits of celebrities; fully adorned, naturally lighted, yet placed before the neutral backdrop, his tribal subjects appear as strangely defined models for a 19-century ethnographic investigation.

In 1950, Penn married his favorite model, Lisa Fonssagrives and he founded his studio in 1953. They have one son together, who is named Tom.

Clarity, composition, careful arrangement of objects or people, form, and the use of light characterize Penn's work. Penn also photographs still life objects and found objects in unusual arrangements with great detail and clarity.

While his prints are always clean and clear, Penn's subjects vary widely. Many times his photographs are so ahead of their time that they only came to be appreciated as important works in the modernist canon years after their creation. For example, a series of posed nudes whose physical shapes range from thin to plump were shot in 1949-1950, but were not exhibited until 1980.

His still life compositions are skilfully arranged assemblages of food or objects; at once spare and highly organized, the objects are raised to a graphic perfection, articulating the abstract interplay of line and volume.

Legacy

He has published numerous books including the recent, "A Notebook at Random" which offers a generous selection of photographs, paintings, and documents of his working methods. Penn's wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, died in 1992.

Below are some images that I have created to emulate the point of view and subject matter of Irving Penns work.

Picture 1:

I chose this subject matter because of the colours, shapes and textures they provide. I wanted to create an image of contrasting shapes and textures hence the liquid on the spoon, the lettice's messy and ramdom form, the carrots simple and straight form and the tomatoes round shape. I tried to emulate Penns simple subject choice, focal point and point of view. I like the simplicity of the shot and the clean lines and edges. The slightly embossed paper and the pepper, create just enough distraction.

Picture 2:

This image is even more true to Penns simple approach. I have left out the pepper so it is an even more simple and straight forward image.

The issue with this image is the lack of contrasting colors, all of them apart from the red tomatoes are quite bland. I prefer the top image as it has more definition and contrast in both the texture and the tones.

Picture 3:

This next picture is taken using Penn as an influence as I have diverted away from the view point, favoring a lower line of sight.

Because of the shorter focal length and lower line of sight, there is more detail in the lettuce leaves and in the salt, resting on the spoon.



Theme 2 - Still life - Research, Georgia O'Keefe

Georgia O'Keeffe was and is considered one of the greatest female artists of the 20th century. Best known for her still-life paintings, O'Keeffe carved her niche early on with the help of Alfred Stieglitz and his Gallery 291. She painted natural settings at their most basic; large-scale flowers, bones and landscapes. O'Keeffe captured the raw brilliance of nature that only she could see and exposed us to its beauty.

While most people may not be as familiar with O'Keeffe as they are with Picasso or van Gogh, we have most certainly, at one time or another, been exposed to her work. She is most notably famous for her paintings of large, oversized flowers. Her first such painting was created in 1924 and gained a good deal of buzz in the art world. What is also unique about O'Keeffe's work is that while she painted nature, landscapes, bones, and city structures, not once did she venture to paint people in all her work.

Theme 2 - Still life research - Jan Groover

Jan Groover was born in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1943. Ms. Groover pursued an education in art receiving her B.F.A. in painting in 1965, from Pratt Institute in New York then receiving her Master's in Art Education from Ohio State University in 1969. After teaching art in junior high school then University of Hartford in the early 1970's, she turned to photography. While she experimented with a range of styles and vision she is perhaps best known for her still life images of ordinary objects, kitchen utensils, plants but taking her images with vibrant color and larger than life close ups. She received grants from New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Ms. Groover enjoyed a wide range of artistic expression. The larger than life imagery from her photography found expression in platinum-palladium printing, exaggerated images with brilliant color and luminance. She enjoyed writing and published "Pure Invention: The Tabletop Still Life" in 1990. She also taught at the State University of New York College before moving to France where she lives now.

We don't know exactly what led Ms. Groover from a career of formal art to that of photography. She is quoted stating: "With photography I didn't have to make things up, everything was already there."

I was originally attracted to Ms. Groover's photographs for their vibrant color and larger than life imagery. In her life, there is a sharp departure from photographs depicting motion, time, speed, and color to what perhaps she is best known for, simple everyday objects found in the home. One review states 'she turned to her kitchen sink' for new ideas. Many of her photographs depict kitchen utensils, knives, forks, and other subjects found in the home such as bowls, dishes, or house plants.

Her pictures were taken with a 4x5 view camera. Her photographs stressed and illustrated her influence and obedience to formalism. A favorite photograph of mine, "Untitled, 1979. JG #95.2'", has a blend of shapes, curves, and lines that is almost hypnotic and yet when I first looked at it, it was easy for my imagination to see many other things. I see shell, and ancient ruins, and wares of a Roman triumph. Perhaps this is an expression of Ms. Groover's alignment with formalism. Any shape can captivate.

Does any shape have gratifying qualities? Does any shape have special detail when we take the time to observe? The image above accentuates silver and yet we see tarnish drift to iridescence and mirrored reflection.

"According to Groover, the meaning of the objects is of no importance; only the shape, texture, and form that falls into a particular space is important."

What a wonderful tribute to a photographer and a tribute to her art. Her ability to share and see illuminating quality in the most simple of things says much about her vision. When I reviewed Ms. Groover's work, it is easy to mistake some of her photography with her prints. Her photographs possess some of the 'larger than life' color and detail... of a print that was privileged with additional editing. According to one writer, "Groover makes pictures that are interesting not so much for the things they show us as for how they show us these things".

Taking on board Groovers affinity to knives and forks, I created the image below using the following equipment:

1x Nikon D300

1X tripod

1X 50mm lens

Daylight

piece of embossed paper

Knives and forks

Sauce

The knives and forks on their own, I felt were quite uninspiring so I decided to raid the kitchen cupboards and use different coloured sauces to add a different texture,  different colours and a different aspect to the image.

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