Shoot idea

Doing some research before going to bed paid dividends as I woke up the other morning with a great idea for the book cover. The idea initially was to take 3 shots and take these 3 images and layer them in photoshop. As this is something that could be achieved in the darkroom I thought about what the 3 shots would need to look like.

The first image needs to be an old man seated smoking with a whisky nearby.
The second image needs to be a young man seated smoking with a Guinness nearby.
The third image needs to be colourful stained glass window.

It needs to look something like this:

Other notes:

• The images of the men need to be dark - 'film noir' feeling.
  
• They do not need to be recognisable.
  
• Lots of darkness around them - lots of shadow.
  
• Perhaps only side of the face and smoke visible.
  
• Stained glass to be colourful but have an ethereal quality and be the only source of light.
  
• The stained glass window needs to be over exposed or blurred or perhaps a crash zoom.
  

After discussing my ideas with Chris I have decided that I need to set this up in the studio. I need to do some research so I can show Vinny/Steve what effects and shadowing I want to achieve so that they can advise me on the best set up for the studio and lights.

I will need to create a 'fake' stained glass window and have ideas on how to make that.

Research - Arthur Tress

Have taken inspiration from Arthur Tress' work (both colour and black and white) for the feel I want to achieve with my image. His work has also given me inspiration and ideas on how I want the studio set up. These images, which mostly come from his 'Shadow Series' have a film noir feel to them and the colour images which were created for the requiem for a paperweight series have the ethereal quality that I am looking for.

Office Workers Returning Home







Clock Watchers











Boys Flying Dream

Previous Book Covers

The following are designs that have been used as book covers for various reprints of At Swim-Two-Birds:

Initial Ideas

After reading extracts from At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien and finding reviews and opinions about the book - the following words, phrases and ideas have given me inspiration:

Addressing the devices of fiction 

Exposing illusion 

Finn MacCool

Fair

White 

Bright 

Sureness

Certainty

Irish 

Guinness

Student

Smoking 

Horse Racing tipster

Narrative Chessmen 

Catholicism

Postmodernism 

Teeth stained by tobacco 

Zany 

Deadpan

Manuscripts 

Laziness

Hangovers

rebellion 

Cattle Ranchers 

Cowboys 

Breaking-in Colts 

Pigs Grunting 

Insanity of Irish History 

The Riff is the point 

Mad King Sweeney turned into a bird at Swim-Two-Birds 

Final Image - Family

Joanne and Ellie

I purposely left a large border on the image on the 10" x 8" paper as I wanted to see the frame of the negative. The enlarger I use has a neg tray that is uneven and produces the blurry border which I find apppealing. It also allows the edge of the negative to be visible in the final image.

Contact Sheet - Me and Ellie

I have been photographing my close family members for years and have some lovely images of them. However if I am to consider intimacy and a close family member then I have to look at my horse. Not just because she is a child substitute but I also feel the need to represent her as family as I am about to have her put down. She has been very ill over the summer and I do not think it would be fair to put her through another cold winter.

With this in mind I have been spending a lot of time with her and I recently took her for a walk and captured images of her using the Canon 300D and the Canon A1 with black and white film in it.

Contact sheet from the walk.

DIGITAL

I am still trying to get some images like Tim Flachs - but these are a failure. Also it is very difficult trying to control a horse wants to race off up the lane and two cameras. I was lucky to get any images at all to be honest.

BLACK AND WHITE

I much prefer the black and white images. They have a much more intimate quality. After looking through all the imges the one that struck me was the image with both of our shadows and Ellies nose in top left and image 22.

I processed images 30 and 22 in the darkroom to see if they had potential.

22 has a wistful quality. I have many photographs of Ellie looking across a field showing what has caught her attention. This one stands out for me as the jump just in front of her is shaped in a 'V' and gives a nice lead in line to make you follow the view across the field.

Image 30 is the winner for me as it shows me doing the two things I have always loved doing throughout my life. Horses since I was 4 and photography since I was 17. The finishing touch on this image for me is that her nose has just cut into the top of the image - just so you don't forget she is a horse!

All of these images are very intrusive - they are a final fond farewell to something that I love very much. It will break my heart to make, and set in motion, that ultimate decision.

My Images - contact sheets

To get the balling rolling with this assignment I took photographs of people doing the things they enjoy the most. As I was at a Sheep Dog Trial I tried a couple of ideas.

Uncle Jim

Although we are outdoors and he is carrying his crook. He does not have his dog and is not in the act of doing a trial - I think this loses something and the images would have benefited from the presence of the tools of his hobby rather than just the crook.

Nij Puppy Training


I love this set of images as Nij loves his sheep dog training and Tess is only 16 weeks old and is learning the first few important lessons - this was a lesson for 'down'. A very important instruction for a sheep dog. She is being encouraged with the use of treats.

Whilst I love these images I do not think they are right for this assignment as they are not close family.

My Images - in the style of ...

... in the style of Bill Owens

I liked the before and after shot Bill had created from one of his 'Suburbia' images. I decided to recreate a before and after with an image I had of my mum hanging out the washing.

I showed this image to members of my family. They all said "but she is not hanging out jeans in this one" Lordy.

Research - Bill Owens

Bill Owens

1938 -

Photographer, brewer, distiller and raconteur.

His book 'Suburbia' published in 1972 has wonderful black and white images of families at rest and play in the suburbs of America. His photos are taken with a certain amount of voyeurism. I love the fact that people are just 'doing their thing' and he has captured them in a compassionate and amusing manner. Although voyeuristic it does not feel intrusive. He obviously has a relationship with the subject and they are at ease with him.

Although she is looking at the camera this does not have the feel of a portrait. It is intimate and amusing.

A man hard at work.

Before


After

I like the idea of revisiting images and will try this myself.

Bill Owens more recent work is of food. He has visited food outlets and kitchens to photograph food. These images are very reminiscent of Martin Parr's work - this might be because of the high level of saturation in the images. I think it gives them a very harsh and un-food-like quality. The food is not appealing and I would not consider eating it. These images are my favourites from that series.

Getting started

I thought I had finished this assignment - but I now realise I had prepared it all on a word document but had forgotten to put it onto the blogger jobbie.... so here goes.

Lead in Lines

Lead in lines provide a natural entry point into the composition and carry the eye into the scene. These could be rivers, streams, walls and hedges in landscapes or arms and legs in portraits - any line that travels into and through the frame works well. Diagonal lines should ideally run from bottom left to top right.

Converging lines are more powerful as they not only lead the eye through the scene but they also add a strong sense of distance and depth and make the composition look three-dimensional.

Foreground Interest

Placing subject matter in the foreground can create depth and scale. This is achieved using a wide-angle lens, features can be included that are at your feet. Wide angle lens also exaggerate perspective so that subjects closer to the camera are much larger than the distant features. This illusion conveys depth because your brain knows the distant features are normally bigger. Make sure a small aperture is used (f/16 or f/22) to ensure everything is in focus front-to-back.

Colour

Warm colours = yellow and orange are soothing and restful.

Green = refreshing.

Blues = cold and hostile.

Contrasting colours like blue and yellow or red and green make a composition more eye catching. Colours that complement such as red and yellow are more gentle and atmospheric. Warm colours advance so they work well in the foreground while cool colours (green and blue) recede so they make better backgrounds.

Red is the most potent of all colours and will dominate a composition even if those areas are very small in the frame.

That's about the size of it

Have had next assignment - Family. One of the warning sentences in that is "careful sizing of images wil be required to ensure that you do not run out of allocated web space". I think we need some instruction on this. I know for sure that ALL the images I have put into the Signs of Life assignment have not been resized and some are HUGE!

Help please Mr Tutor that is reading this.

My Images - in the style of ...

... in the style of Picasso

A still life that has a Picasso feel to it - before his cubist days.

My Images - Lightbox and Fuchsia

EXPLORING STILL LIFE

Still Life with Lightbox and Fuchsia
Decided to try some macro still life phtography using the Canon 300D and 50mm macro lens and a lightbox as a source of light.
Contact Sheet

Decided 0259 was the nicest image - however there is very little depth of field as I could not reduce the shutter speed any lower. I would like to try this again using a tripod for the camera so I can use a longer shutter speed and a clamp so that I can keep the flower still. The camera was handheld and I was holding the flower between my fingers!

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My Images - in the style of ...

... in the style of Cezanne

Research - Paul Cezanne

Cezanne
1839-1906
One of the greatest artists of our age. He painted many still life's with classical motifs.

Woman with Coffee Pot
This is a small detail of the whole image and shows how Cezannes images were becoming more abstract - in this detail we can see violets and complementary yellows and blue shadows - not realistic but as a whole they are very effective. The ellipses in this are not in perspective.

Still Life with Plate of Cherries
Here the plate of cherries are not in perspective with the other items on the table unless there is a block under the table cloth tipping the cherries forward so we can see them in full. As Cezanne worked his paintings became more and more abstract. What are the marks he makes depicting? Are they real items or creative abstract images?

Still Life with Basket of Apples
Big, bold brush strokes. The perspective is disjointed; the right side of the table top is not on the same plane as the left - but evocative none-the-less.

Apples and Plate of Biscuits
The items are placed on a box with a hinge fastening. The similar colours for the surface facing side of the box are the same which at first confuses, particularly as the motif on the box is similar to that on the wallpaper.

Tureen, Bottle and Basket of Apples
Table top composition with all items on the table and in a clearly distinguishable room.

Vessels, Cloth and Pot-Plant in Flower
This is a messy composition and unusually green is the predominant colour.

Vessels, Fruit and Cloth in Front of Chest
This image is compact and dense and the composition is a triangle. Without this the image would have been dull, the chest in the background acts as a balance to the verticals and horizontals in front of it. Perspective seems to be a little odd in this painting as the items in the foreground have depth and feel 3 dimensional but the background seems flat and 2 dimensional. The screen and the chest merge into one. The colours in the apples appear in the chest and this leads the eye around the painting.

My Images - Spiral Staircase

EXPLORING STILL LIFE
Spiral Staircase at Warwick Castle

Found this spiral staircase very exciting and it reminded me of a Henri Cartier Bresson image. I was using Canon 300D with 18-200mm zoom lens.
0201 has my feet, the camera strap and another person in the image and it is poorly composed as you can see the window ledge.
0202 the composition is much better but the full sweep of the staircase has been cut on the left of the image.
0203 this is much better with the stairs visible all the way until they are hidden behind the top of the stairs.
I decided to process these to see if I could tidy them up - the wood on the handrail nearest to the camera was too bright so I burned that part of the image so that the wood was a similar shade to the stairs. I converted to black and white but not quite because I wanted to keep the almost metallic Green on the main handrail. The results can be seen below.

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The spiral staircase was inspired by this image by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

My Images - Window

EXPLORING STILL LIFE
Warwick Castle - Window Stays and Handles

On a recent trip to Warwick Castle I became fascinated by the window mechanisms. Above is the contact sheet of the digital images I took using Canon 300D 18-200mm zoom lens. I did not have the Macro lens with me and rather wished I had.
After showing the images to Steve he suggested converting them to black and white.
Below are the images processed. I have converted them to black and white, adjusted the contrast, cropped and cloned to tidy up one of them.

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