Some of my Recent Photos

Some of my favorite photos I’ve taken recently… and my cats:

 

Imogen Cunningham

I was looking through the photograph archive on Imogen Cunningham’s website and was blown away by every picture. Some of her work dates back to 1910 or 1920s (the first one below!) and still looks extremely modern. Some of her other photographs have a story telling/myth feel similar to Julia Margaret Cameron. Please check out http://www.imogencunningham.com because her work is very inspirational.

Phil Poynter

Another groovy fashion photographer is Phil Poynter. I was really attracted to the repeated figures in a lot (but not all) of his work. I think it’s a very effective technique for advertising prints but also speaks to the idea of mass produced products that are being sold (clothing; images).

 

Steven Meisel

“Steven Meisel and Eyeball worked together to blend fashion, photography and graphic design in to an innovative 30-page spread for Vogue Italia’s most prominent issue of the year. This also required designing the front cover of the magazine itself.

Each spread became its own digital collage, designed to showcase the models in a moody, urban environment, with splashes of bright color standing out against the dark backdrops. Steven Meisel photographed his models on a green screen backdrop with as few physical props as possible. EyeballNYC composited these images on top of their digitally created backgrounds, which were pieced together from still photographs of New York City. The end result was a surrealistic juxtaposition of high fashion against a dark film noir cityscape.” (source)

I would consider this a controversial set of images, considering the subject and the media (digital collage and green screen!). The narrative is interesting.

Flower Photograms

““Through The Green Fuse” is series of photos by Robert Buelteman, actually they are photograms. His technique is quite complex and dangerous, it’s based on Kirlian photography. He places flowers and leaves on a color transparency film, on top of that he lays plexiglas with a sheet of metal in between, floating in a liquid silicone. Then he hits everything with an electric pulse which causes the coronas and outlines to appear on the film. The last step he needs to do, is hand-painting it with a white light coming from an optical fiber. It can take up to 150 attempts to get this right. You can read more about it at Wired.”

3-D Sculptural Photographs

“The Polish photographers Szymon Roginski and Kasia Korzeniecka worked together to create these images for the “O Mia O” Spring Summer 2009 collection of Ania Kuczynska. First they photographed the collection which they then cut up and transformed into 3d objects. The result was photographed again and used for the “O Mia O” collection.” (source)

With my admiration for modular origami, I thought this series was really awesome. It adds a whole new level of “depth” to the scene. Reminded me of Hockney as well.

Ansen Seale

These are really awesome “slit-scan” photos by Ansen Seale (click for more from the series “Temporal Forms”). The shots are made in camera and even the wikipedia article makes it sounds really complex. Maybe something to try in the future when I have plenty of time on my hands. Anyway, this technique eerily distorts the image:

Hedi Slimane

I thought these editorials by Hedi Slimane, a French photographer and designer, had a really intriguing environment. They’re also in B&W and seem like they could serve as inspiration for future Body Shot projects. Interesting menswear fashion photography.

http://www.hedislimane.com/fashiondiary/index.php?id=7 for more from this set and Hedi’s photo “Diary”

Holga Response

This handout was pretty short but I liked reading it as an overview of Paul’s lecture. I thought it was interesting that Holga’s are special and used so much because of their relative simplicity and their quirks – things that make it a “lemon”. I have a SuperHeadz.Tokyo toy camera and love using it for the same reason. It’s nice to have something light that you can always carry with you. The handout also says to try and take pictures in bright sunlight. This will be difficult in Bellingham unless we keep getting random days/hours of sun.

Light and Shadow Reading Response

Plato’s “Cave” is mentioned right away in this reading, which was also brought up recently in my English class while we were discussing Reality versus/and Illusion. I like the multifacetedness of shadows, and the reading highlights the idea of ignorance and hiding (negative connotations) whereas they can also be mysterious and intriguing. The text also described film noir as revealing truth, not hiding it. I look forward to using meaningful shadows as graphic elements.

I thought it was interesting that “color temperature has to do with the actual temperature of the physical process taking place”. I never thought of it that way and just assumed that this aspect was purely visual. This interaction of physical environment on what we see in a color photo would be an interesting idea/concept to explore further.

I’m also very interested in film making, so I was glad there were so many references to movies and film styles (like film noir). Hopefully I’ll get to explore some of the characteristics of these styles in future projects in this class.

I would like to try back lighting or overhead-lighting a subject. They aren’t very conventional for everyday photography (advertisements etc). The rest of the technical information about equipment will be a good reference for the light room project.