Studio II images

Just some images from my last studio class at UArts.  They are about my feelings of being overwhelmed by the mess in our house when we were moving in.  We actually packed up and moved everything in the week before finals, so I had to do all of this in one week.  Not easy.  I was trying to merely use the studio strobes to get the feeling of real room lighting, but without the dim shadows, light fall-off, and tungsten yellow-orange color cast.  For some reason, I felt the need to get a window into every shot.  It's nice that by looking out the windows and seeing light outside, the room is expected to appear darker inside.  It is simply not expected and therefore a bit cinematic--not real. Perhaps it's the fact that I love the old metal windows in this house.  

A few more from my latest series.  I would say more about them, but I'm exhausted and keep falling asleep....

The Altered Subject

Okay, so I'm pretty sure this is the last prescribed sort of assignment I'll be getting from my Junior Workshop instructor, David.  We were to alter our subject in some way without using Photoshop.  I had the toughest time coming up with something.  I've been pretty out of my element and out of it in general for a couple of years now, so I didn't know how to handle this.  I had a couple of ideas, but they were weak at best and still not "me".  So, I talked with my instructor, he gave a few examples of what the concept means, and I said, "well, the last thing I was doing that really worked for me were these little set-ups".  He said, "Well, there you go."  I think I was able to visualize what I wanted to do within minutes of the end of that conversation.  That was a just a few days ago, and the assignment was due today.  I had two weeks to do this, and spring break was one of them, so if I'd known what I wanted to do, I could have gotten many more than just the three images done.  I thought I was done with the set-ups, but I like how these turned out.  I think I'll finish out the semester with this work and make it my final.  Should be fun--tons of work, but fun.

I started these at 3am and worked through to nearly 1pm.  The furniture in the rooms is purchased dollhouse furniture which I have painted to make look aged and used.  I wanted the rooms to look run down, colorful, textural, and off-kilter.  My subject here is still life, but I've tried to make it look a little more surreal.  Strange thing, a couple of days after I spoke to David, I took one of those ridiculous Facebook quizzes.  This one was "which painting are you?"  The result was Magritte's Son of Man.  Silly, but it was like an omen.  I wanted the still lifes to overpower the rooms they were in to transform them into completely new objects.  Just something a little ambiguous, unexpected, odd, and maybe a little uncomfortable.  The rooms feel a little oppressive to me.  I wanted the color to be both muted and intense, hence the browns mixed with the almost neon colors.  I like that play.  I also like the way the vibrant freshness of these fruits and veg contrast with the dirty surroundings--feels kind of like hope to me, and they elevate the importance of their surroundings in that respect for me.  The fruit and veg were attached to the boxes they were in via large screws jutting into the boxes from behind.  I wanted them to appear to be floating--just there, like that's where they should be in that environment.

.....I could go on and on about this, but I have reading to do and am already feeling sleep taking over......

  

The Altered Print

There is a longstanding project or  topic I've been considering and working on in bits and pieces for a while now.  A few months ago, I came across this little book in an antiques mall.  It's titled Addison's Sir Roger DeCoverley.  It was published in 1917, but I believe the story predates that.  As I started thumbing through the book, I found many parallels between this character's situation with a pretty, highly intelligent, and ultimately deceptive widow, and a situation of my own.

This work is part of recent assignment I had at UArts.  It was titled. "The Altered Print".  It was designed to get students to consider all portions of their work, from start to finish: shooting, processing, and the final print.  The final print was to be altered in some way, and concept was to be considered when making the decision as to how to alter these prints.  I shot the images digitally, then made a print.  I altered that first print by applying a solvent (of sorts) to the ink so I could move it around a bit.  I tried to make them look like monotypes at this stage.  I then put these altered prints back through the printer.  I made a high contrast version of each image with text taken from the book and printed that on top of each of the altered prints.  I wanted them to resemble handmade illustrations which might belong in a book, reflecting the source of the text, the story in it, and my own vague little tale.  It was also important to me that these have an altered digital feel to them.  I like the idea of hand-manipulating something digital which itself makes the notion of manipulating the hyper reality of photography a problem for people today.  My intent here was to obscure the obvious, to confuse, to be vague, and to allow the viewer to draw his own conclusions.  I think I may have obscured things a little too much, and perhaps erased more than I would have liked of my own story.  My situation is my own though, and no one can ever really know another's experience.   

Alternative Camera Assignment

It took me a couple of weeks to find the time to put this work up.  It's just been one assignment after another--busy busy busy.  This one was based on using "alternative cameras".  This was of course an experiment that forces the photographer to consider what he or she is photographing based on what the camera "sees" or how it functions, quirks and all.  God knows I have a plethora of what would be considered alternative cameras because I've been using them extensively for the past few years, but in the spirit of the assignment, I decided to get a new camera--a couple actually.  I loaded each one with films of differing speeds because there is no other way of adjusting for changing light.  One of the quirks that these cameras have concerns framing problems.  It's similar to that of most Diana cameras, where the viewfinder is a little off in relation to what the lens sees.  This camera is WAY off, and as a result, there is too much space to the right of and below almost all of what I was framing for.  It takes some getting used to.  My Holgas don't seem to have this problem, but my Diana does--same thing for a couple of students at school who used a Diana.  The thing I liked most about the camera I used this time, was the angle of view--nice and wide.  I purposely chose sweeping vistas for most of my shots, but I think the images where the subject is a bit closer work better.  With many of these toy cameras, there is a lot of vignetting, although I think it's more a matter of having a blown-out center rather than dark corners.  I think there is a difference and this should be taken into consideration when choosing film speed.  This  camera really plays up this sort of imagery, so that you see a wide view, but you're confined to the space with the boxing in of the corners.  It's sort of like trying to capture a huge space in a small box.  I had noticed the numerous power lines throughout the greater Philadelphia area and am fascinated by them.  I think I'll try photographing them with a toy telephoto lens next time though to make them look even larger in relation to what exists below them.  As for what I'll be using this camera for now--it's my new snapping camera.  I like to have one with me at all times, and this one is just great fun.  It really is good at getting a lot in at a closer range, and the color contrast is just crazy--especially with chrome film which has been cross-processed.

Reinventing the Familiar: Family Photos

Homework due this week was fun and creative, not to mention, fairly easy.  Just one image and it could be created however you chose.  This was my take on a photo of my brother-in-law and his family.  I thought it would be funny to use one person to portray all of the members of the family.  I only had myself, so that's who I used.  It's a creepy image, but it makes me laugh.  

Last in this series

These are the last few which I have digital files for in this series.

Same series....

Some more from the same series

Some old work but new to this blog

I tried posting these the other night, but they were originally files from digital captures of the actual photographs.  Can't remember now why I documented them that way rather than scanning and adjusting the negs.  Probably part of an assignment.  Photographers are often hired to professionally photograph the work of other artists, and I know I've had assignments where we had to do this so.....

The scanned negs would have been much better--lost a lot of detail and the blacks were more gray than black.  That meant having to adjust the levels and a tad more detail may have been lost trying to bring up the blacks.  Hopefully, the burning in of the reflected light around the edges won't look so spotty this time.  Fingers crossed.