Research for studio techniques
Pastel
Sydney Sie
Sydney die is a Taiwanese photographer and graphic designer, who often works in animation and motion graphics. She uses ‘real props’ to create a composition that she likes. The colours that she uses are very monotone and flat to give the image an unreal appearance. She likes to describe her images as what it would be like to keep the eyes open whilst sleeping, almost a daydream. This whole combination gives the images a surreal and ambiguous feel.
Taipei is the capital of Taiwan, Sie grew up in this area and she describes the city as convenient, diverse and chaotic. This busy environment influenced her photography as she wanted to capture a mix of a lot of things that don’t make a lot of sense together, but somehow work. The city is described as ‘the color of 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the color of the unconscious people mixed with many flavors, people, moisture, and space’
Story telling, femininity and gradient colour are all aspects that are at the forefront of Sie’s work. Her aim is to create bright and eerie images that also contain surreal moments, made through analogue and different digital approaches. She builds her own compositions through imagination-with angular shapes, boxes, exposed body parts, optical illusions and stories. All of these things stimulate the imagination
References:
-https://www.nssmag.com/en/art-design/7685/take-the-box
-https://girlsclub.asia/meet-the-artist/sydney-sie/
Maria Marie
Marioly Vazquez grew up in Mexico, with a photographer as her father. She never thought that she would become an artist is the future but she always admired her fathers ability to capture moments with his camera. She lived in Paris for a while and this is where she discovered her eye for details. In a world full of chaos and confusion and hatred, she discovered that an eye for detail was very valuable. As Mexico was viewed as a dangerous and scary place, especially to live, Marie wanted to show the world how she saw her hometown. She would say, ‘it’s more than that’ about Mexico, and she would show her friends pictures of the landscape that she had taken on her iPhone. Her main interest was picking out interesting colours, patterns and textures within the places around her.
“I started to fall in love with the way you can tell visual stories to other people, how you can find beauty in the unexpected places. So, I decided to pursue photography much more professionally.”
Her aim throughout her images was to show a nice side of Mexico, turning ‘ugly’ things interesting to look at using colours. Inspiring people to look more deeply into unexpected things, as you might find beauty in them.
Evaluation for Pastel shoots
For my shoots with the title theme ‘pastel’ I decided to take massive inspirations from Sydeys Sie’s work and some from Maria Marie. Sie’s images contain a flat and interesting feel due to the soft colours and the neatness of the placement of the props. For my shoots, I decided to paint my own artwork on boards inspired by the artwork within Sie’s work, these contained pastel gradients and blurs. I wanted to capture my model in various odd positions, that were intriguing to the reader. Marie’s work focuses on exposing beauty through things that people often wouldn’t look twice at. I took some images of my models feet, inbetween various plants, to create beauty in something that isn’t often thought of a appealing. I used various plants and places them around and on my model in different shots to get different compositions within my shoot. The subject matter of my images seem unusual and wouldn’t normaly be placed together which makes the images unique and memorable.
Off the ground
Brooke Shaden
Brooke Shaden is a photographer that stands out amongst many many photographers that digitally edit their images. The field of photography is very varied and contains many different aspects too it. Shaden captures intense and explosive shots that have an intense outcome of illusion and fantasy.
There’s no idea of how Shaden creates her images however they are seemingly perfectly captured.
She has been inspired by surreal photography and the possibilities that come with it. Her images aren’t just about capturing a moment, the images tell a story and spark possibilities for each reader.
Rachael Koscica
Koscica’s images contain tricks and creative aspects to them. She focuses on creating false reality use and dream like scenarios within her images. Her series, ‘dream’ projects beautiful and and fanciful world.
There are many aspects of floating, falling and balancing within the images, this creates a very interesting, powerful and emotive image that captures the eye and creates a story. Each image is different and they are full of colour and contrast. The colour choices create intense images and the colours can determine the mood of each image. Her imagination is very creative, making her images surreal.
People can mix magic with reality in order to create an intriguing concept throughout their images.
Evaluation for off the ground shoots
Throughout my off the ground shoots, my aim was to show a conflicting reality in my images. I took inspiration from Rachel Kosiaca in the way that I wanted my images to contain aspects of disbelief and floating. When I think of ‘off the ground’, I immediatly think of people floating and de-fying natural possibilities of the world. I used balloons within my images to portray the action of floating. The balloons were then attached to my model on different parts of her body. This was to give the illusion that parts of her body were floating and were ‘off the ground’. I attached some balloons and string to lots of different pieces of her hair which caused her hair to stand up and seem and though they were pulling her up off of the ground.
Unconventional portrait
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus was an American photographer who was particularly well known for her black and white images of what she called the ‘deviant and marginal’ of society. these , usually presented in a square frame, included circus people and transgender people, and those of extreme heights.
Despite Arbus being very keen on these specific individuals, she told all of her friends and family that she did not want to be famous for only photographing ‘freaks’. She was highly respected by 1972 as she was the first American to be featured at the Venice Bienniale. She commited suicide the same year.
“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know,” she said.
She worked with a large variety of things including strippers, carnival performers, nudists, dwarves, children, mothers, couples, elderly people, and middle-class families. There is plenty of contrast within her images as she photographed ‘strange’ things within familiar surroundings. She befriends her subjects instead of objectifying them. By doing so, her photos contain a rare aspect of psychological connection from the photographer to the subject.
Antonin Kratochvil
The main goals of Kratochvil is to document the time in which he leaves in, including all of the parts that’s don’t particularly want to be seen. He was a refugee and used the archive of film as a journal. He has a very unique style of photography and therefore stands out from the rest. His work contains many photo ‘defects’ and things normally people would consider mistakes, however he reversed them and turns them into the main focus of the images.
He shot for Mongolia's street children for the magazine published by the Museum of Natural History ranging to a portrait commission with David Bowie. Kratochvil's ability to see through and into his subjects and show the truth has sparked interest by many.
Sarah K. Stanley, called Kratochvíl's book Vanishing,
"a unique compilation of images by a photographer who is distinguished by his great sensitivity to the plight of humans beings and animal species seeking survival in endangered habitats.’
Evaluation for unconventional portrait shoots
Within my unconventional portraits, I used magnifying glasses to distort the images by zooming in and out of different parts of the image. The magnifying glass distorted my models face in unusual ways which creates a different conceptual meanings to my images. Similar to Diane Arbus and Anton Kratocvhil, I focused on finding interesting compositions and outcomes through unusual ways that are often not used within common portrait photography.
The outcomes of my images were asetheticaly pleasing du to the colour balances and wide variety of compositions within my shoot.
Illusion
Tiago Silva
Tiago Silva sees the world in a different perspective by playing with optical illusions, shadows, perspective, colors by using a lot of creative ideas that he comes up with. None of his images use editing or manipulation software.
Silva says that he has always had the belief that taking generic things, for example sunsets, is just too basic and dull for him to enjoy. He looks out for unusual within his images, trying to make each photo different from the last.
He works very spontaneously, and he can often take some of his most interesting works whilst simply just out for a walk. ‘During the shoot, people always stare at me, probably thinking "this guy is crazy," after seeing me jumping 4744239 times, but when I show them the finished optical illusion photo, they realize why I was doing all that and laugh, start following me, and sometimes even trying to take the same picture.’
He explains how his image ideas could come from loads of different places: graffiti, a landmark, an object, a shadow, or even a piece of cloth. He tried to focus on the current situation in the here and now, not thinking about the future as he believes that the best things happen by chance
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Eric Johansson
Johansson grew up on a farm in Sweden. “Growing up in the Swedish countryside has had a great impact on my visual style. Many of the environments I use in my pictures are places around where I grew up, with wide open landscapes and small red houses”. From a very young age, Erik had a huge interest in computers and drawing. He said that playing video games allowed him to explore ‘other worlds’. He was given his first digital camera when he was 15, which he enjoyed experimenting with although he says that he prefers the post capture manipulation on the image as he can control that and create things that can’t be captured on camera. “In the end it all comes down to problem solving, finding a way to capture the impossible” this quote from Johansson is inspiring as he sees no limits in his abilities.
For him, he says that taking photographs is collecting material in order to realise his ideas and that a finished picture can consist of hundreds of images. He sees each new piece work he does as a new challenge. Johansson focuses on capturing ideas within his photographs, unlike traditional photography which is capturing moments. Different stories are portrayed through different compositions and objects within the scenes of the images. The goal is to make the image seem as realistic as possible, even if some of the ideas within the photograph are impossible to achieve in real life.
Evaluation for illusion shoots
For my shoot based off of the brief ‘illusion’, my main focus was to distort my model within my images. I wanted to create an illusion that parts of her face were changing through water. To achieve this, I got different sized wine glasses and filled them with water. I placed the glasses at different distances away from the models face. The affects of this is different levels and kinds of distortion to the image. I presented the final images in different ways, including upside down, cropped, black and white and colour. This created variety within my final series for ‘illusion’.
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