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Alfred Stieglitz – Songs Of The Sky
ALFRED STIEGLITZ
“photography fascinated me, first as a toy, then as a passion, then as an obsession”
He was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was born on January 1, 1864. He was friends with German artist at the beginning of his career and he brought his first camera and traveled through the European country side photographing landscapes and peasants. He began to self teach himself about photography and he won first place for his Last Joke, Bellagio photography in 1887 from Amateur Photographer. In the main part of his career he considered himself an artist but refused to sell his photographs. His father decided to purchase a small photography business so he could earn a living in his chosen profession, Stieglitz paid his employees a high wage as he wanted high quality images. He then started getting awards for his photography exhibitions. He brought his first hand-held camera in late 1892 and he used this to take his two best known photos which are Winter, Fifth Avenue (right) and The Terminal (left).
SONGS OF THE SKY
His photographs called ‘Songs of the Sky’ are focused on landscapes of the sky, which have abstract qualities. The title of these images are related to music, which shoes Stieglitz intended to do.
Moodboard;
These 8 images here are my inspiration for this shoot. I like how the dark and light in the images contrast each other and they all have different moods such as danger or a sense of heaven. He has really shown nature giving off many emotions in this project and it makes people looks at the images very differently because you can feel an emotion when looking at these images of clouds, something so simple yet with so much meaning.
This image by Stieglitz is one of my favourites because the natural light is seeping through the waves of clouds. The leading eye point in this images would be the whiter parts of the image because it captures the eye as it is contrasting up against the dark duller coloured clouds in the image and this shows how nature works together to create something so simple but beautiful and I believe that was Stieglitz’s motive behind this image, to show the earth for what it is. This image also has little editing to it, so it is showing the natural creations. 
SHOOT 1
When performing my shoot, I regularly came back to the 8 images above, so regain inspiration and to remind myself of the images he took.
These three images here are a few I selected from my shoot, just to show the variety of images I took. All three images have been edited into black and white and also have adjusted the contract slightly, to make the white clouds pop more. To help me get these images I regularly came back to my moodboard I created earlier before starting to shoot, to remind myself of the way he took his photos and to regain inspiration, to form new ideas.
EDITING/PHOTOSHOP
When editing this photo I focused in editing the darkness of the images, to create a higher contrast between the tones in this images. I would use this image as one of my final images because of the way the clouds look, the texture looks soft, so it gives the image a calm mood, but with the dark background the clouds look more vibrant and bold.
I was also experimental with my images, mirroring them using Photoshop, to make my own abstract photo. I mirrored each image then joined them together to make one photo, this makes the image more interesting and creates a contrast.
These are the steps on Photoshop I took to get the finished result of joining 2 mirrored photos together;
FINAL IMAGE
Before 
After
These images demonstrate a before and after editing. The final, completed image has been edited into black and white but I have also edited the darkness on the image and the contrast. I made the contrast high to show the different tones and shade. There is a depth of field in this photo, the top of the photo feels more close up to the white sheets of cloud and then the clouds become smaller which makes them look further away, even tho everything was in line. The clouds have made many different unique shapes, which creates a more interesting photo as there are more shapes to look at and admire. The images just looks satisfying because of the different tones and shapes around.
Colour and Texture
Aaron Siskind
Aaron Siskind is an American photographer who is a part of the abstract movement. Siskind captures the abstract qualities of layers and texture. Aaron Siskinds work focuses on ideas of distraction in nature and architecture. Siskind intensified this approach to photography with the abstract movement with close-up framing and an emphasis on texture, line and visual rhythms, creating abstract images of the real world. Siskind was one of the first photographers to combine what was known as “straight” photography (recording the real world as the lens “sees” it) with abstraction. Siskind turned away from the social/political world post-World War II, and instead looked inward to seek meaning in the mostly inanimate forms he observed around him.
The Boyle Family
The Boyle Family is a group of collaborative artists based in London. Boyle Family aims to make art that does not exclude anything as a potential subject. Over the years, subjects have included: earth, air, fire and water; animals, vegetables, minerals; insects, reptiles, water creatures; human beings and societies; physical elements and fluids from the human body. Boyle Family is best known for the earth studies: three dimensional casts of the surface of the earth which record and document random sites with great accuracy. These works combine real material from the site (stones, dust, twigs etc) with paint and resins, preserving the form of the ground.
My Own Responses
Analysis of my Best Outcomes
Double Exposures
The next two pictures are finished double exposures.
Minimalist Mood board
MY INSPIRATION:
This is a mood board of a set of minimalist images which i am including into my research to get me started with my homework task and give me inspiration for my photo shoot. I particularly enjoy this homework task as minimalism often involves a lot of color and simplicity of shapes and forms.
Colour&Texture
Ernst Haas-Water
Haas was an Austrian-American photojournalist and colour photographer. He incorporated his photojournalism and photography as a medium of expression and creativity.His father was photographer and encouraged Ernst, but it was only by his fathers death in which he became intrigued by photography when seeing his fathers darkroom. Haas used black and white film for much of his career, color film and visual experimentalism became integral to his photography. He would make his own photographs, translating his passion for poetry, music, painting, and adventure into colour imagery. Once he began working in color, he most often used kodachrome, known for its rich, saturated colors. To print his color work, Haas used the dye transfer process whenever possible. An expensive, complex process most frequently used at the time for advertising, dye transfer allowed for great control over color hue and saturation. As the technology of color photography evolved and improved during this period, audience interest in color imagery increased. Many of the magazines that published Haas’ work, such as Life, improved the quality of their color reproduction, and increasingly sought to include his work in the medium. Despite this progress, many photographers, curators, and historians were initially reluctant to consider color photography as art, given the technology’s commercial origins. His images don’t have a focal point, the picture as a whole speaks, not just one area of the photo. He uses natural lighting to create the clear reflection, he has relatively low level of control due to the fact he can’t position the whereabouts of the sun, so his pictures may have been planned. His photos have contrasting tones, some areas are warm some are cold, his work clearly empathizes the beauty in colour. When I think of colour in photography I picture a vibrant, detailed flower, but Haas, creates colour from objects such as transparent water.
I decided to use Ernst’s water photos as inspiration for my final shoot. I used the puddles of water on a swimming pool cover and on a kayak as a focal point for my reflections and ripples. My texture came from the leaves and water, my colour from the blue and red. In my first and second photos I was influenced by Ernst’s water reflection photos, I got my brothers to stand in the same direction in which the sun was shining in order to achieve the distorted reflections. Natural lighting was the easiest way for me to achieve the reflection, I found I had relatively low levels of control as the positioning of the sun determined the angles at which I could take the photos. I also found it hard to take pictures without them being over-exposed due to the high intensity of the sun, the ripples however were easy to create and added a sense of structure and pattern. I had to crop all of my final outcomes in order to get rid unwanted negative space which interfered with the overall colour combination.
Final Outcomes:
Photoshop Mirroring
Original Image
Editing Process
Firstly I doubled the canvas height so I would have room for a copy.
I then Duplicated the image and selected it using the marquee tool, then I proceeded to transform the image.
Once I had transformed the image, the layers must be flattened to that the image will stay as one singular layer for when i next transform it.
Finally i decided to repeat the process to end up with this final Image.
Final Image
Colour and Texture In Photography ( in progress)
For this project, I attempted to show contrast between colours and textures through the medium of photography. Colours and textures allow for photographs to become more interactive, as a viewer can be drawn in by bright and contrasting colours, and texture allows for the photograph to feel more genuine and real. Because of this, the use of texture and colour in photography is important, and for this project I have attempted to portray these factors in a more obvious way, allowing viewers to see how colour and texture can really effect an image.
For my inspiration for researching texture in photography, I decided to take influence from the work of Ernst Haas, specifically his water photography.
Haas was fascinated by the concept of water, the way it reflected light and the dynamics of its movement. Haas’ water photography maintains an abstract feel, yet displays clearly the unpredictable way that water moves and interacts with its surroundings. Haas often edited and cropped his photographs in order to abstract the context of his images, and used colour and grey-scale to experiment with different ways of further abstracting his images. Below are examples of Haas’ work with photographing water:
As displayed, Haas makes use of contrasting tones and colours in order to draw more attention to his images. Bold colours draw the viewers eye, while the use of texture in the images (often due to the movement of the water) allows for the viewer to stay intrigued, as it gives the image an sense of realism, and enables the viewer to relate to the image.
After analyzing the work of Haas, I produced a photo shoot focusing on emphasizing the colours and textures naturally found together. I tried to focus on colours that contrasted one another, and textures that really draw attention to the image. Below is the contact sheet as a result of my photo-shoot:
I took inspiration from Haas, and in doing so produced a photo-shoot which heavily took into account the texture of the image subjects. For my images, I focused on zooming into details, which in turn produced photographs displaying texture, such as the image pictures below:
This image makes use of both colour (contrasting the darker background with the lighter toned water droplet) and the rough texture of the rust at the top of the image, and the way that this contrasts the smoother texture of the water droplet. Haas often used darker tones in his image backgrounds, to emphasize the water that would typically reflect the light, and present as a brighter, lighter tone. I have taken inspiration from this method, and I believe it is an effective way to show contrasting textures through the use of light and shade.
The above 2 images were taking using a slow shutter-speed, and I feel like these images focus more on showing contrasting colours. The image was taken with an ISO of 1600, and so the photograph is very bright, which I feel exaggerates the colours, and helps to show the contrast between the yellow and white portions of the image. This image is still using the subject of water, but I feel that the combination of a high ISO and slow shutter-speed has helped to distort and abstract the image, so that the main focus of the viewer becomes the colour and texture, rather than the subject itself.On top of the bright colours used, I feel that the texture also draws the attention of the viewer, as the movement of the water captured by the slow shutter-speed has caused the texture of moving water to be captures, especially towards the middle of the images. This gives the images a rippled effect, and helps to present them as more 3D, rather than a flat image, which in turn draws the attention of the viewer.
In addition to taking inspiration from Haas, I also further explored the use of, specifically, colour in photography, by taking inspiration from the photographer Franco Fontana.
In order to explore colour using Fontana as inspiration, I first analysed his work in order to understand how he used colour to best emphasis how the different colours contrasted each other. The following image is a collection of his work that I used for inspiration:
Fontana uses very vibrant and bold colours in his photography, which helps to emphasis the contrast of colour, which draws a lot of attention to his work. Fontana typically uses naturally occurring bold colours, usually focusing on buildings and field landscapes, in order to draw attention to the bold and bright colours that can be found in everyday life.
After analyzing Fontana’s work, I produced a photo-shoot of my own, using the same mindset and bold colours that occur in Fontana’s work. The below image is the result of my colour-focused photo-shoot:
This colour focused photo-shoot
Double Exposure Technique
First I overlapped the background layer image with a similar image.
Afterwards I changed the opacity of the overlapping image to 50%
I then changed the exposure of the background image to make it brighter and to add variation in tones.
here are a few other images I have created using double exposure.
Experimenting with shutter speed
Shutter speed is the amount of time a sensor in a camera is exposed to light.
If the shutter speed is very slow, then the image will have a high exposure which means it will most likely be bright. This is an ideal setting to use if you are taking images in a badly lit place place as it will make the image less dark. This would not be ideal to use in a bright setting, as the image would most probably be more overexposed which means it would come out too white. A slow shutter speed is also idea if you want to purposely capture images where things are moving, to create a unique effect. This setting is used to capture light painting or a smooth water effect.
On the other hand, if the shutter speed is fast then the image would have a very low exposure this means it could cause the image to turn out underexposed, which would make the image come out darker than intended. This would be an appropriate setting to use in a properly lit scene as the sensor wouldn’t need to be exposed to light for as long in order for the image to come out with a regular exposure. Fast shutter speed is used to capture things that are moving very quickly, as the image will be taken a lot quicker
Experimenting with a Quick shutter speed
1st attempt
2nd attempt
My most successful outcomes
Experimenting with slow shutter speed
My most successful outcomes
