Tag: photography

Mimesis: An Imitation

by jasonhendriks on March 27, 2017 in media 3, Uncategorized • 0 Comments

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.

Coming up with Ideas

by jasonhendriks on March 13, 2017 in media 3 • 0 Comments

Progressing further into the month, I had a love & hate relationship with my bed. My bed kept flirting with me to put my body on it. I have work to do. but then it put on this blue sheet and and it somehow pats itself, and I couldn’t hold it anymore.

Anyway, during this peaceful Labour day I start to brainstorm ideas I want to do for my second project brief. I decided to do a mimesis on Duane Michal’s work, around the whole concept of how his photography works, and that is a self-expressed story. The unique style of Duane Michal’s and his flexibility photography style caught my attention. He succesfully expressed the questions and visualized emotions and thought he has in hi mind. He is expressing the reality of his state-of-mind and I love that he is brave enough to do so. I like to call that behaviour “not giving a f*ck to society” .As I posted before his work usually revolves around love, mortality, philosohpy, sexuality. But since I react like a 5 year old when talking about sexuality, I wouldn’t indulge in that topic. Instead, I would focus the theme around technology, Friendship, and Happiness. I want to visualize something that I have in my mind for a while now. The things that I have brainstormed were mostly expressions I want to tell the world, about technology and self-imagery, One funny story I experienced, a question that has been on my mind, and one of my hidden personalities. It is a first step, brainstorming, so the ideas would have to be carved and carved until it’s perfect. For the project’s technicalities side, I have thought about the project’s process that utilize different kinds of light situations, and what I have to do to achieve it and with Brians’ suggestion, I rented a camera from the A/V loan for the photo shoot day. Looking forward to how my project turns out.

Re-live

by jasonhendriks on March 7, 2017 in media 3 • 0 Comments

Falling back to the well of education, I resumed the second year of University. It’s blazing hot here in Australia, and my pig-body isn’t helping. But why am I here to nag, when I can tell you about core subject. I get the opportunity to explore more about photography, different way it is used. I read an introductory project: Photomediations: A Reader and I learned that popularly photography is divided into 2 aspect; photography as art and photography as social practice.

Photography as art is explainable by itself, you’ll mostly associate it with it’s value, exhibitions, galleries, abstraction sometimes in need of interpretation. An extension of panting, photography as art is another medium for artist to express their sense of artistry.

The latter aspect, does not only explain that photography is an agent of social change, but it is also a representation of society, it’s behaviour with photographs, and the popular taste in photography.

The photographs above are a result from Tuesday’s practice with Brian, there were supposed to be more photos, but these ones were the only one I took with my camera.

Uses of Photography, First day

by jasonhendriks on February 28, 2017 in Uncategorized • 0 Comments

The first day of our media class, Brian introduced himself and immediately we were shown a 20-minute documentary of Henri Cartier-Bresson, a French photographer and the pro-creator of Magnum photos. The video told us about Cartier-Bresson’s intake on photography. Famously known to create the genre of Street Photography, For Cartier-Bresson, a photographer needs to be quick (quick, quick), to get the decisive moment right. One of the most profound lesson I learned from the French photographer is not to label your photography. Because it limits on what you are capable of doing. Do not focus on what kind of pictures you take, but how you take your pictures.

Other than the incredible documentary, our class were handed with lots of canon DSLRs to start learning how to use them. With a 4-member group, we tried calibrating ourselves with the cameras and took some pretty interesting shots. The fact that it also was a sunny day makes it all the better.

Inspiration: David Uzochukwu

by jasonhendriks on May 22, 2016 in Inspiration, Photography • 0 Comments

Let me get this straight. He’s 18 and he’s already a professional photographer.

He started taking photographs when he is 10. as time progress his photography style morphed into a dark-fantasy-surreal-dreamy. my favourite. Added by the high-quality of the photos, he succeeded to create beautiful images that promote human beauty. What I personally loved about his photographs is the colour. It’s a little dis-saturated and greyish. But most photographers like him is suffering from some emotional-distress, hence the same sensation you get from his images. Here are more of his pictures. Enjoy.

Light, Dawn & lamp light

by jasonhendriks on April 24, 2016 in Photography • 0 Comments

Photography 101 assignment

I am a photography enthusiast, though I am still hoping to be able to be a professional, right now I am more focused toward my major that is Media communication.

An unpredicted idea spring always gives the best kind of work, that is why I love serendipity. But whether or not serendipity exist, you should not lean your back towards it.

I have a big passion towards photography. I focus especially in portraiture, because I find every person to be very complex. But with my photographs I want to share emotions from my perspective. I am very inspired by Evan Atwood, Rachel Bran , Kylie Thompson, Brendon Burton and any other similar photographers. I’ll try to give you the best photos can explain my sight

Noticing

by jasonhendriks on April 22, 2016 in Media 1 • 0 Comments

So two days ago i just read John Mason’s “the discipline of noticing”. Of course, I didn’t try to do any of the excercise he mentioned but he taught me one thing, that to notice, we require effort. Because we are given thousands of stimulation every day, our mind would have to be selective and blurs out all the ones not necessary for us. Maybe that is what marketing student try to overcome #randomthought.

To notice is not just to experience, but also to reflect upon it. We see advertisements, we feel the heat, we hear the taxi’s engine, but we do not notice. What the text meant by noticing is by realizing that I am typing, I am looking at my screen, I have acomputer with, I am studying abroad, my carpet pattern’s is circular, and so on. When I travel to a new town, I always have this perception of unfamiliarity, that a place is new, and thus everything that I saw wasy interesting to me. But the roads that I had travelled in my hometown for the past 17 years seemed colourless and not vibrant. But when I try to change my perception, as if everything that I saw was new, I began to notice how much things had changed. Another simpler example is your growth. You seem to never notice that you were getting taller and older, until you’ve seen a photograph of yourself when you were still an infant.

To notice is to make a distinction, to create foreground and background, to distinguish some ‘thing’ from its sorroundings.

John also describes about recording. To him, recording is the desire to keep a memento of the things you notice, in the form of a note, journal, or for me, photographs.

By making a brief-but-vivid note of some incident, you both externalise it from your immediate flow of thoughts, and you give yourself access to it at later date, for further anaysis and preparation for the future.

I think this is one of the reasons why we are subjected to read this article. To make great media content we have to notice all the media sorrounding us, to be inside the group. We would use that to show people the things left behind, un-noticed. Because sometimes we try to create the most interesting and complex form of media, when we forget the simplest ones. What I learn from this article is to notice the simplest things, and figure out the best technique to represent what I notice in the most interesting form.