AT 11.2 Karsh

Out all the images in the Karsh exhibition at The WAG the one that stood out for me was the one of Peter Lorre, 1946 a Gelatin silver print. I loved the way Karsh places his subject in the frame, dramatically lights the subject, and captures Peter Lorre's eyes. For me the eyes say a lot and Peters eyes were captured in that sinister character he always plays in Alfred Hitchcock films. Peter Lorre was introduced to Karsh through Alfred Hitchcock who often cast Peter as a villans in his movies. And that is what Karsh was trying to invoke in this image. Setting up this shot seems to have been really hard seeing how he shoot it in such a low light setting, he must have taken a long exposure and got his subject to stay a still as possible. You still get a sense of blur coming from the smoke. Which brings me too the printing aspect, to me it seems like he would have had to use yellow to get the high lights in as bright as possible and then having to burn in on the dark parts to get the dramatic effect.
I've been to Karsh's exhibit 3 times now and it never gets old. His work captures the true face of each character he photographs. His images scream and tell more about the character then some of the read ups I've done about these people.

True colours

I really liked this assignment because colours are everywhere! But at the same time I found it challenging because I don't use a lot of colours in my art work, with black and gray as my favorite colours I tend to work those more often. So I wasn't sure if my colour block assignment was going to be good at all but by the end of it, it really surprised me.

When I decided to take images of colour I wanted the colour to be dominent in my images so I first thought of foods because I always associate red with apples, green with lettuce, and yellow with bananas. But when I took the image for my yellow it was an image of a cupcake with yellow icing this made me very happy, yellow just seems like happiness! And on top of a cupcake! It’s a very happy, delicious match. Then when I photographed for the colour green I got the leaves of something I can't remember but the image feels organic and fresh. With the image of the pink flowers (fake flowers) I got the feeling of warmth and cuteness I'm not sure why cute though... Then when I took the image for blue this image made me feel calm and smooth
easy going.

When I asked my girl friend how the colours made her feel she pretty much said the same thing. The yellow made her happy (and hungry), the blue felt calm and green very earthy.
The thing I found most surprising was the image I got of a man molding glass with fire. At first you see the bright orange glow of the flame but before the flame you see the blue flames and when you think of blue you think cold and not of fire but at the hottest point of the flame its blue then it goes orange where as you usually you feel warm and hot from orange.
By the end of it all I felt successful with my images by showing their true colours...
*insert song True colors, by Cyndi Lauper here *

To the Zoo!

Going on a field trip after a hard test, while it's cold outside, on a miserable rainy day... Sounds lovely doesn't it? Well after a crazy week of tests and a week intensive shooting we needed to have some fun. We really didn't expect it to be fun but it turned out to be a fun time hanging with the girls. Andrea, Sheldean, and Hannah made the cold experience easier to handle with all the laughter. After we let go and sucked it up we took some awesome pictures. I'm not sure the animals were really happy to be out either but they still looked cute enough to take pictures of. We also ended up finding other interesting things around the Zoo other then the animals to take images of. Like each other, and the fact that it was Boo at the Zoo and Fall time made things a little more interesting to Photograph.
Enjoy the pics.

Walk towards the light.

For this class assignment we were required to take images of the sun rising, sun setting, night time light, mid day light and of a cloudy day. I loved it! I got to sleep in the Pembina Valley and wake up to the best sun rise, and end the day with the perfect sun set.

AT 6.2 Photographic Hero - Karl Blossfeldt

Karl Blossfeldt

Karl Blossfeldt was born June 13, 1865, and died December 9th, 1932. Karl was a professor, a sculptor, an artist, and a photographer. As a self taught photographer many of his photos were taken with a homemade camera with the capability of magnifying its subjects up to thirty times its actual size. Not much is known about his hand made camera but what was known about his work was the printing which was a high-quality Photogravure printing process it wasn't the quality of his prints that made him famous but in which way the plant was shown. His work went on to be the base of his teachings, and what he did with Ironworks. His attention to detailed curving and his observations in organic forms allowed him to use his photographs as a teaching tool, this was the basis for a formal language of construction that could also be applied to objects and architecture.

That being said I tried digging around a little more on Karl Blossfeldt to try and figure out his camera and printing methods. Well not much was said about his actual homemade camera but that it had amazing abilities of "zooming in 30 times its actual size", that his subjects (plants) were placed in front of stark objects like a grey cupboard to avoid camera shake and that his homemade plate camera was equipped with very long bellows. The grey back ground makes sense so that the tonal range is flat thus giving all the attention to the subject with out having to light it in annoying positions and as for the bellows his camera had extra long one to achieve the 30 times zoom on the subject.

And as far as his printing methods Blossfeldt used a high quality process called Photogravure. Photogravure is a printing process where images are printed using forms of mechanised etching of plates. Which makes sense when talking about Blossfeldt's work his photographs had so much detail that you'd need a printing process that would have a wide variety of tones from depth of etch. It's the "wells" and "tooth" in the actual etching that give the varying depth to hold ink.

Researchers also say that Blossfeldt's work have tint of green to them. I've noticed too that most of the prints i've found online do have a greenish tint to them. I believe he did this for the effect of making his botanical collection of prints seem more organic and true to it's natural state because adding magenta would give a photo more contrast when printing photographs and not green.

From looking at his prints they are pretty consistent having the image pretty much smack dab in the center or if a plant had a curve in it he would place the subject so that it would have symmetry in the frame. Take Plate # 38: Polystichum munitum (magnified 6 times) the thick stem of the evergreen fern is placed to the left but balanced on the right by its tightly curled point. Plate # 55: Adiantum pedatum (magnified 8 times) another type of fern shown in this image works for me because it has sense of flow to it. and finally Plate # 58: Aristolochia clematitis (magnified 5 times) this is herbaceous plant almost looks like a baby bird, but I can see why with this image that Blossfeldt would use this as a teaching guide for architecture what's apparent in this image is the detail in structure of this plant.

Composition at home.

For the past 5 months I thought that I was familiar with my environment... Nope not quite! My partner and I just purchased our first home together and have been living with a house that's been gutted, so find things to take images of was going to be hard, especially because we still live out of boxes. But I thought wrong, my images turned out better than I expected. There were plenty of objects wanting my attention. Who knew we had such interesting, varieties of design elements through out the house, the house is 100 years old.
Enjoy the slide show!

Walking around the Exchange with Hannah.

Today Hannah and I got partnered up to take portraits of each other. We were the last ones to leave and the very last to come back, I think they were about to send a search party out after us.. Oh well we both got great shots! I hope Hannah's turned out she had a horrible subject. Just kidding.
Enjoy!