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:
First I overlapped the background layer image with a similar image.
