Author: jasonhendriks

A visit to National Gallery of Victoria

On Tuesday week 7 the class visited the National Gallery of Victoria to visit some of the photography exhibition to see talented works of art and hopefully get inspired by them. I saw many incredible and intriguing photos, from Bill Henson, William Eggleston, to an Indonesian contemporary photographer Edwin Roseno, the Exhilarating photos of Amusement parks by Carsten Holler, and incredibly minimalistic yet beautiful landscape by the artist born from the same land as Brian, Derek Henderson. It is very inspiring to see very different works inspired by various circumstances. Seeing all the creative works reminds me a quote from Paul Schrader that “True creativity comes from restrictions and limitations” and watching a video of Anna Akana (Youtuber) talking to an artist. Creativity comes from playing and tweaking your capability in the limited boundaries you have. That’s what makes creativity.

An big room is dedicated to William Eggleston. He is credited for introducing color photographs in the photography world. One of his first colour photograph , the guy holding the trolleys, is one of my favorite. He likes to take candid photographs, not necessarily street photographs, but it represents the culture he was in.

The Indonesian Photographer Edwin Roseno uses product packages as pots for plants, showing the direct relation between nature-then-processed result. In his description “Green Hypermarket” is Edwin’s way of how consumable packages have been a utilized in Indonesian homes. After serving it’s commercial purpose, the packages are then used by Indonesian people for plants, changing its value to preserve life.

All of the photographers in NGV inspired me to pursue my own creative style. All of their dedication in their work deserved respect. Below are some of the Picture I took in the exhibition

 

 

Inspiration: Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson-foto exhibition

I randomly googles Gregory Crewdson when Brian told us about him when he was lecturing about photo essays, and I immediately loved his pictures. (From Wikipedia) born in Brooklyn, His photos are artistically unique that it looks like a movie screen-capture. The cinematic quality & style of his picture is done with extensive measure with lighting, composition, and editing. It just looks beautiful. He uses crew members and lots of equipment, but the result is worth the hassle. Most of his pictures remind me of the show “Stranger Things” and “The OA”. Here are some of his pictures (I even used it as my wallpaper):

Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson 04

 

Essays in Pictures

"Light my soul in the white night"

Today Brian gives us a deeper insight into our project brief, an explanation further of Photo essays. Like storytelling, photo essays are made to tell a story. and such, like a story a photo essay needs a structure, even in the compilation of the images. It needs a foundation that can make sense to the readers.

Like storytelling,  a photo essay needs a beginning, middle and end. The photos then articulate the particular lifestyle of the project, but in photo essays the images are the primary storyteller, not the story itself, the captions compliment the pictures,  giving a visual sensation and a relief of imagination.

When planning the narrative structure of the picture, Brian told us there are some things we should consider:

  • Exposition, rising action, complications, climax, falling action, resolution
  • How do you represent conflict in photographs?
  • How the photos interact with the stories when the viewers see them.
  • How to represent a normal style of life ina highly aesthetic manner

He showed us 4 main categories when constructing a photo story

  1. Establishing Image: context and environment
  2. Action image: capturing action and interaction
  3. portraits: essential to any story
  4. close-up or detail image: need to identify significant detail within the overall scene

and one important thing he told us when we are starting the post-production.

Figure what sort of atmosphere/emotion you want too leave your viewers when they finished seeing the video

Brian also showed us some of photographers which I will talk about in the inspiration part of the blog. Afterwards we got onto our exercise. For this week Brian wanted us to be in a group to make a short 7 picture photo story with the theme “The exchange”. I did mine in RMIT connect the kind of exchange we chose was the exchange of information. this is one of the photos that we made (sorry Michaela, but I look decent in this pic!)

 

Strangers

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Last Friday we had a bit of practice with taking photos of strangers. But prior to that the class had a debate over photographers rights in public spaces. Is it acceptable to take photographs of strangers and publish them as your own? What are the ethics of street photography? does privacy apply in public spaces?

Unfortunately I arrived to the class a bit late so I didn’t participate in the debate. But I remembered some of the things that we learned.

in an article written by Jessica Lake, she talk about many disputes that involves privacy, some to the favor of privacy and some don’t. She recognizes Privacy in the concept of law is “notoriously slippery and contextual” because it’s different case to case. It is hard to find a general consensus on the photography style popularized by Henri Cartier-Bresson. This is why ethics was created.

Ethic defined by Cambrige UK dictionary; “a system of accepted beliefs that control behavior, especially such a system based on morals”. It basically a code that defines what is wrong and right in an activity it is related to.  Most corporations have codes of conduct but they don’t usually publicize it, but in the Media and journalism department, it is strongly highlighted.

I believed that ethics are created so that an activity does not benefit only one side of the participant. When you are doing media/journalism, your main work is with other people, sometimes peering into their personal lives. Ethics guide me how far I can go/ow should I go if I want to go that far.

Brian gave some articles to help consider the morals in street photography; one made by Eric Kim and by Nicholas Goodden. They give you question pointers to consider before you press the camera shutter and after, such as considering how would you feel if some stranger take a picture of you? and having a quick conversation with you subjects. One good suggestion from everyone, is to ask for consent. It is never wrong to ask permission first even though it takes away the candid aspect. But like Kim said, you can ask them to just continue their activity, and some of the best shots are stylized. Even Henri Cartier-Bresson talks with the people he photographed.

Even though ethics are a crucial pointer in a media practitioner’s life, codes of conduct are not legally binding because it is only a set of moral principles. ethics concern your own morals and later people’s perception about you. Taking a picture in public is not considered a breach of privacy. But then again, in the context of Australian law “public” and “privacy” have their own very specific definition. One example that I learn, you can take public photographs in the State Library of Victoria, because it is a public place (according to the law you must not be a nuisance). But listen to this, the train in the train station is not a public place. Metro train is not a government owned company. Law is interestingly confusing.

 

 

Mobile Media Photography

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I wasn’t able to attend the Tuesday studio, so instead I spent the time reading Daniel Palmer’s “Mobile Media Photography”  and checking the course guideline about the future assignment.

Palmer talked briefly about the evolution of mobile photography, an event he had predicted “could mark a change in social record-keeping…” but even then he didn’t thought that it’s progress could have gone so far and critical. He observed that mobile phones has changed the way photography behaves.  He noted many other academic’s response to it. Such as Daniel Rubenstein calling the spontaneous photographic practices as “visible speech” because of how quickly the images can be transmitted. Mikko Villi then added by saying those instantly transmitted photographs extends the traditional photography form of communication. Pictorial conversation or ‘visual chit chat’ is now the norm of communicating.

Then Palmer focuses on IPhone, the most popular and one of the most successful camera phone. He talks about the history of IPhone’s features and the emergence of IPhone applications, that affects the aesthetic of camera phone images. He said Instagram, “a hybrid of the Polaroid and the telegram” said Chesher that enables users to connect directly and personally with an audience by sharing their visual experience.

Photographs attract eyeballs, and where there are eyeballs there lies the possibility to make money

Camera phones played a role in the rising ‘citizen journalist’ for reporting world events. Their Raw images are many times used by the media (albeit sometimes unverified for it’s legitimacy) and Palmer believe this would only likely to continue.

Because many people may use iphone over the same area, Kate Shilton describe “participatory sensing” as an emerging form of mass data collection that may, under appropriate conditions, be conceived as a form of self-surveillance-an opportunity for individuals and groups to provide possibilities for community exploration, such it sometimes be called ‘reality mining’ to provide information to benefit the community. For example, the VandalTrak app allows its user to take photographs of illegal graffiti which could be uploaded with a geo-tag for police and other organizations.

Camera phones are no longer only concerned with reproducing the world, but might also enhance and augment our experience of it.

Because of the prevalence of photographers (not professional ones) of exploiting privacy or private pictures being unleashed/ used inappropriately, now There are mistrust of professional photographers working in public spaces like the beach, even though in history photographers are celebrated to work without the explicit permission of their subjects.

Photography has long been involved in configuring the boundaries between private and public space

Palmer’s points sound very interesting and I agree with some of It. Social media and camera phones has thinned the line of “Privacy” and often even questions the existence of it’s own meaning for people who knows it. It’s use and benefits are a double edge sword, because it can benefit anyone, regardless of intention/purpose. This brings back the question, what is photography, and what is mobile media photography? Does photography mentions a specific skill, or an ability?

 

Mimesis: An Imitation

Mimesis, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the principle of the creation of art. Plato believed that all artistic work is a form of mimicry/imitation, that God is the only creator, and human art are ‘shadowy’ representations of their ‘ideal type’. “Thus, an artist, by skillfully selecting and presenting his material, may purposefully seek to ‘imitate’ the action of life”.

And through Project Brief 1 and 2, Brian wanted us to find an mimic an artist, not for just for the means to imitate their prowess , but also to find our own ideal type. To know which ideas and people that inspire us is crucial in forming our own photography.

And so each of the student has to make a series of Five photographs that ‘imitate’ a photographer of our choice. For me, as said from the previous post I chose Duane Michals.

I find Duane Michal’s work to be very attractive, artistically and ideally. To rebel the photographic norm and include text, to me is beautiful, because he broke out of the box and challenges what is considered not normal.

In planning to create the series of photographs, I dug through may of Duane Photos and tried to seed which relevant elements can I group together. I searched through museum websites, Pinterest and also articles about Duane. Duane’s images bears the philosophy of youth, Death, gender and sexuality. After a brief thought I decided not to imitate Duane’s philosophy, only his photography style, because I think to try to do that would cross the line of imitation. Rather, I wanted to do things that concerns/surprises me, that I have been pondering for a while. I didn’t go in to the specifics and started to pour out ideas into my sketchbook

I had a lot of Ideas, but only some can be realized. To check the final photos I’ve made, visit my portfolio here

These two pictures are some of the ideas that I managed to create. The first picture is the idea I had in mind of life  “Everybody’s questions” . Because I was taking my photos in natural-light, I had little control about it. So instead I focused on the composition, juxtaposition and the framing. I already had a quote in mind, made by myself and I want the picture to represent it to be someone lying down and sleeping. I included the IPhone so that people knew that this picture was more recent, and the book complimented the idea of ‘thinking’.

When I took the pictures, I obtained 2 similar but very different photos. Both have the same composition, but each has a very different light and angle. One has a slight lower angle to it, but when I took the photo, the sun was shining bright, and it casted the leaf’s shadow over my friend. The other one, is the opposite of it. This result in soft and contrast pictures.  In the end, I chose the picture with the shadow because I prefer the separation between the light and dark areas. But in taking pictures of both, I used my Panasonic Lumix G7 with a 50mm lens. You can see the picture I chose from the link I put above.

The second Idea about happiness in solitude “Free me from myself”. I wanted to do a sequence photo for this one. The story about a person finding happiness through his/her own self. The initial idea was to be at a cafeteria, with a high school thematic scene. But when I was at the Summit Camp. I found a pathway that sloped over beautifully, and I improvised the Idea from there. During that time I was using a 5D Mark III borrowed from the A/V Loan with a 50mm f1.4 lens. The first few photos from the sequence, I set the Aperture low to accommodate the intense light, and to also show clearly the whole scenery surrounding the subject. The last photo’s Aperture was higher so I can blur the background and focus on the now-closer subject. In this sense I’m changing the focus of the foreground as the subject gets closer.

The third picture “Give Me That” also didn’t go according to plan, but the principle Ideas was still the same. It was about obsession over self-image. It was supposed to be a photo-sequence, but I couldn’t make the pictures work, and it doesn’t look overall relatable. Instead I tried improvising and came up with the girl taking the phone directly away from me (the photographer). I used my Lumix camera with a high Aperture to get the blur from my hand. It still delivered the message I wanted say, so I am happy with this picture.

“My camera wasn’t made to capture the stars” happened when I went stargazing with my friends. I captured the picture using my Lumix camera mounted on a tripod, with a high aperture (f1.7), high ISO (3200) and really low shutter speed (3 seconds). I increased my aperture because in the light condition lower aperture would definitely not help with the exposure, and the car was far away, so I put the focus on infinity. Surprisingly the low shutter speed managed to capture the car’s front light spread. It illuminated the path in front and created a dome of light with my friend’s silhouette. Without the tripod, I would never be able to get this picture, because my hand would shake too much to get a proper focus. Here I realized the creative ways I could play with small light in darkness

The last picture “Am I Lonely?” was made in the halls of my apartment. It was also a spontaneous shot, But it was motivated my and Idea I had to do a picture about loneliness. With the fluorescent light condition, I rememberd Duane Michals picture of Andy Warhol

 

So with a tripod I did a self-portrait with the Canon 5D Mark III 50mm Lens. I set a medium ISO (400), low shutter speed (2 seconds) and high aperture (f2.0). When the shutter clicked, I moved my face left and right immediately until the camera completes itself. And it resulted in a motion-blurred face. The 2 lights beside myself created a sort of frame that sits well in the picture as well.

Going towards post-production, I didn’t edit the pictures extensively. I used Lightroom to edit the RAW images, turn the color images to black & white, and give slight orange tint so it felt vintage. Some of the pictures I took were overexposed, so I reduced it in post-processing. That includes lowering the luminance of overly bright colors. In this case, they were mostly green.

I inserted the text (Duane Michal’s signature style) using Adobe Illustrator since I found more flexibility in using it compared to Photoshop. Most of the text in the pictures were self-made, except for the poem written by Rainer Marla Rilke. At first, I used my genuine handwriting, but after showing the preview on Friday class, I found my handwriting to be terrible. So for purely aesthetic purpose, I used handwritten fonts to write the texts. All of the fonts that I used were Royalty-Free and can be used Commercially.

In the process of doing this Project Brief, I came across many challenges, specifically in the production process. But I managed to overcome the obstacle with on-the spot improvisations.

Reviewing the work I did, I realized that I enjoyed Duane Michal’s photography style. Staged photos are challenging, but fun to do because you can unleash your creativity. I liked to use text as a means to give broader context to the picture, and I agree with Michals that a picture doesn’t worth a thousand words (at least most of it). Because giving context is providing idea to be understood, so that people can relate to your work. It could tell a story otherwise could never be told. And typography as part of the whole picture has it’s own aesthetic style.

I learned many creative process, trying to play with low-light situations, trying different angles and compositions. But I hope for the next project I will pursue more skills in a controlled environment, like a studio.

Thanks for reading, have a good day.

 

 

Almost There

& these feeling won't last

Last Friday The class had a small preview of the work that everyone made. I was astonished to how good their pictures were. Though it made me feel less about myself, I was happy that everyone got great pictures. Brian extended the due date for the assignment to Monday, And I hope to finish it by then. I made a couple more photos after the small presentation, which I will post later along the reflection post. I hope you guys will enjoy the pictures that I made. Happy weekend everyone

Halfway through the project

Tuesday I showed Brian some of the sample pictures I had made. Mimesis, the second project brief entails an imitation of a renown/public photographer’s style. Because I choose Duane Michals, the American photographer known for his text in pictures, I am very interested to try to incorporate my handwriting into  my work.  I’m very happy that Duane keeps an eye on both the technicalities of his photographs,  while also focusing heavily on the composition on his pictures. Since most of his photos are staged, he has the capability to express his creativity any way he wanted.

Planning the project Brief, I wanted to express some of my thoughts into a picture. So my work is kind of a self-expression of what is in my mind. The picture above is one example I took with my friend. We were at the Summit Camp and I happened to cross this pathway while cruising for pictures. The place was beautiful. The sun was blazing hot, every plants and trees grow taller than humans, so you would feel like you’re surrounded by giants. But if those giants have white petals and perfect to have a picture with, then you wouldn’t feel overwhelmed.

Week 3 in Progress.

 

Brian brought the classrom to practice in a studio environment. It is located in building 8 level 7 and we played with the lighting equipment available in the room. Brian showed us different techniques of lighting, how even the slightest change of lighting-angle can impact the result of the photo. The lighting equipment in the studio seems very high-end. Unfortunately not everyone in the class is tech-savy, so Brian controlled most of the lighting, showing different hues and temperature the lighting can exhibit. Everybody tried practicing, with interesting and cool results. I became a short model myself, and (maybe) it convince me I could become a model.

The picture abouve is one result from the class practice. It was done with one lighting to the model’s right (or left from her perspective). The images look is similar to a chiaroscuro painting, very contrast look between the subject and the lighting.

 

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