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AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Unit 1 Abstract

Keld Helmer-Peterson Response

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Keld Helmer-Peterson is a Danish photographer, who took inspiration from Albert Ranger-Patzsch (who I previously researched). Peterson began his passion of photograph in 1938, where he received his first camera as a gift for graduating. In 1940 Helmer decided to try out and become familiar with war photography // new objectivity as it was a recent concept at the time

The aim of the images in this series was to get rid of mid tones, He took a normal image, which usually images of industrial machines and places, and turned it completely black and white, making the images more in contrast. In his images there is also a lot of negative space, which has allowed he structure of the metal work to really stand out to us and helps to create a sense of emptiness. The clear formal elements which are presented in this image are tone, shape and line, which are all clearly shown through the structure. The lines are also used to guide the viewers eyes around the frame of the image, starting from the bottom and then making our way to the top.  The lighting is most likely to be natural as industrial images are usually taken outside, as you can not place the tall machines inside. The ISO is not sensitive to the light, as there is no visible noise in the frame of the image, which suggests that the ISO is low. Moreover, the shutter speed is likely to be quick as the whole frame seems to be in focus, with no blur. Due to the whole frame being in focus it also means that this photograph has a large depth of field. The aperture of the camera is likely to be high, which helps makes the whole frame more in focus. Due to the nature of the image being completely black and white, it creates a cold temperature adding to the mood of the image. Peterson has cleverly used inspiration from Patzsch but has still managed to add his own ‘twist’ to make his images more unique. I really like the idea of getting rid of the mid tones as it makes the structures seem more isolated, which allows it to stand out more, captivating the viewers.

My Response

In order to recreate Peterson’s work, I went through previous photoshoots and selected four images which I thought would go well with this mid tone idea. I then opened them all up on photoshop and went up to image>adjusment>threshold. I then adjusted the slider until I was happy with the final outcome (These steps are shown below through the screen shots taken). I then changed the image sizes, in order to make them all the same size. Then on one of the images I doubled the width of the canvas sized and dragged another one of my images next to it. I then doubled the hight allowing me to place the other two edits onto the screen, creating a grid  of four. I then saved this edit to the size of an A4 paper, allowing me to print it out.

 

Screenshots

 

 

Final Outcome

 

AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Homework, Unit 1 Abstract

Keld Helmer-Peterson – Threshold adjustment experiments

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Keld Helmer-Petersen is a photographer, using various formats, shows in his photographs “a strong leaning towards extreme simplicity and graphic clarity in carefully composed compositions, often silhouetted, but more often than not containing subtle greys in contrast to pure black and white.” He leans more towards simplicity, wanting there to be obvious contrast between the black and whites of the photo.

Image result for keld helmer petersen

 

I went and created my own photos by taking pictures and editing them using the threshold adjustment option, which will change the photos to black and white and will make it look like they’ve been inspired by Peterson’s works.

Original images:

These are the original photos which I chose to use for this assignment. I chose these because they are something I can turn into an abstract photo, and I also think that they would suit with Peterson and his work.

 

 

Edited final outcomes:

With these pictures all I used was the threshold adjustment option, and played around with it until I liked them. I like how they came out, however I don’t think they would be something that Kelm would produce. Most of them seem a bit too dark and don’t have near to equal black to white balance.

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Component 2 ESA, Unit 1 Abstract

exploring Keld Helmer-Petersen’s photography

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KELD HELMER-PETERSEN:

The pioneer of Danish Modernist photography, Keld Helmer-Petersen (1920-2013), is internationally acclaimed for his images of structures, patterns and details found in industrial areas, cityscapes and nature. He started photographing in the late 1930s and first made his name with 122 Colour Photographs in 1948. This book is especially well known due to its innovative use of colour in thoroughly composed photographs of patterns in landscapes and buildings. During the 1950s and 1960s he established himself as a photographer of architecture and design. Simultaneously, his artistic work shifted towards the more abstract, as he found inspiration in German and American photography as well as international abstract art.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS:

The contrast in this image is very high creating a very dramatic and overexposed photo.  It is composed of geometric shapes and lines which crisscross each other in regular, sometimes patterned shapes and forms. It is very difficult to create this type of photo purely through camera work therefore I believe that Petersen used heavy editing in his photography in order to create this highly overexposed image whilst in the dark room. It is hard to distinguish between the foreground and the background in this photo as the lack of tonal range merges them together. As the only colours in this image are black and white, they flow and create the appearance of one large structure.

PROCESS:

This is the most successful set of images based of the work of Keld Helmer-Petersen who focuses on over exposure of images creating simplistic line work in his work. I applied this same technique to my work through the use o threshold on Photoshop, as the example shows down below. By decreasing the threshold, the image becomes more exposed and white, by increasing the threshold, the image becomes less exposed and black. I tried to keep all my images to the middle of the scale which prevented them from becoming too overly over exposed or underexposed. The images which I chose to include in this work were ones which contained a lot of strong, geometric, line work. I found that the more busy, and packed a photograph is, the more messy the threshold filter looks on it, therefore i chose to stick with fairly simple photographs.

This is the threshold tool which appears on Photoshop, adjusting the scale from one extreme to another makes it over or under exposed.

This is the before and after the threshold has been applied to the image, clearly showing the extreme contrast it has between the different geometric shapes in the picture.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS: 

In terms of the technical aspects of this image, the light is coming in from the top left hand corner of the image, creating a lot of exposure making it more white whereas the right bottom corner of the photo has less light hitting it, creating more shadows. In this photo I used a fairly long lense as the subject  the image was high up and could not be phothraphed without the aid of zoom, giving a fairly small field of view. In the original photo, the ISO was set to 600 as it was a bright room and I felt that in order to combat the possible overexposure I should decrease the ISO.  The grain on the original photo is quite fine therefore the image is detailed and sharp.

After applying the threshold filter, the image has been totally flattened out due to the lack of tonal range, only being composed of black and white. It is difficult to distinguish between the background and the foreground in this image. The photograph is mostly composed of very strong and bold line work. There is also a sense of pattern in this image due to the repeating lines and triangles. There is no real sense of space in this image as the abundance of line work fills every part of the photo.

I created these images with the intent of capturing as many  geaometric shapes as I can because I knew that this would work best when applying the threshold filter. More organic shapes tend to look too busy and messy in a sense as they have too many tonal ranges and shadows.

 

My final pick of four successful photos, which have the threshold filter applied to them.

ORIGINAL IMAGES: 

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Component 2 ESA, Uncategorized, Unit 1 Abstract

Successful Photos From Photo shoot

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ANALYSIS AND APPROACH: 

These four photos were the ones which i felt were the most successful out of the Photo shoot I personally did. I really focused on the formal elements which I had to cover such as exposure, shutter speed and focal length. In the first and fourth photo I mainly focused on exploring exposure, changing the ISO speed to 200, resulting in a very dramatic and dark photo. I captured these photos with the aid of a tripod as I found that lowering the ISO speed resulted in shaky photos that distracted away from the main formal elements which I attempted to capture. In the fourth photo, the glass bottles were in  a very dimly lit room therefore i changed the ISO setting all the way to 16000, which allowed the colors to pop and stand out.

In the second photo, I experimented with changing the focal length. I zoomed into the piece of broken glass and used manual focus in order to focus on it, this resulted in  a very blurry backdrop which was the main aim of this shoot. I had the same approach with the fourth photo, the radio post was quite far away from me which forced me to zoom in. The backdrop is not as blurry as compared to the first photo as I used the infinity focus setting on my camera to see the type of effect it would have on the focus.

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 1 Abstract

Threshold Adjustment

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Keld Helmer Peterson was a Danish photographer who spent most of his working life as an architectural photographer. He was inspired by Albert Renger Patzsch, the experiments at the Bauhaus in Germany, Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Although he was best known for his coloured photographs, he also published several books of black and white images that explore dramatic contrast of tone. Some images are purely black and white since all the mid tones have been removed. He created and found these images using both cameras and flat bed scanners to have the effect he wanted. He encourages us to consider the space around the image and to use high contrast to create abstract photos.

My Response

To respond to Keld Helmer photography work I will use four abstract images that I have already taken and experiment with the threshold adjustment on photoshop to adjust the black and white contrast. I will then merge them together so different formal elements can be seen in one image. Using Keld Helmer Peterson’s style of photography will make me consider the negative space around the objects.

Adding threshold effect to the image
Adjusting threshold level

On each photo individually, i adjusted the threshold level to create images in black and white with different contrasts.  When increasing the threshold level the negative space became darker and  decreasing made the negative space brighter. Afterwards on powerpoint i grouped the images together so the black areas would merge together and connect to create one image. The formal elements line, shape and pattern can be seen in these images. The most dominant formal element that can be seen is line as they appear in different widths and different directions (horizontal, diagonal, vertical). The formal elements would regularly appear in Keld Helmer photographs. What i like about Keld Helmer photographs is that the negative space is the main feature. Although his images appear simple and reject colour and form, they are visually effective. I think my response was a success since I have incorporated his style into my photography and have experimented with the threshold adjustment for the best final outcomes.

AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 1 Abstract

In depth Image Analysis

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Image Analysis of my interpretations of  keld helmer petersen 

These are my two favorite images from my edits because i feel the the back ground being light creates a focal point on the main dark section of the of the image and the object. The negative space being white created contrast much like in Helmers work because that was his main intentions to create images with negative space that is white, so your main attention if drawn to the the object that is portrayed in dark/black. Using the threshold on Photoshop i managed to discard all of the mid tones within my images creating a contrast on depth and light, dark. The image with the triangle, i really like how the refection is portrayed as a section with a triangle and therefore shows the little scratches and details on the triangle which to me makes the triangle look more in focus and the background blur our much like the camera technique of depth of field. This was unintentional but i feel like it brings more depth and technical value the the image. In the second image, the background being light contrasts the metal cage and it stands out and all most pop out from the back ground much like a 3D IMAGE. The light and dark detailing of the rust on the cage adds the aspects of photograph technique and getting an images correctly in focus and creating a focal point that the audience is instantly drawn to.

 

 

 

 

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 1 Abstract

Week 4 Homework Photoshoot – Uta Barth

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I have produced a photoshoot using some of the camera a skills that I have developed on during the first few weeks. After taking time to learn and practice skills such as depth of field, exposure and focus, I have incorporated these skills into my shoot, and have take inspiration from my chosen artist, Uta Barth, in order to produce a photoshoot that uses abstraction, as well as the other camera skills.

Uta Barth

Uta Barth is a contemporary photographer living and working in America, who focuses her photography on separating the subjects used in the photograph, from the photograph itself by using a mixture of blurred images, and bright light in her photographs, allowing the colours of her image to blend into one another, further distorting the image and creating an abstract effect. Barth often takes a minimalist approach to her work, using subjects such as walls, windows and bland natural scenes, in order to draw more attention to the light and colours used in her work. Barths work incorporates a mixture of minimalism and abstraction, and she combines this with a bright but simple colour theme to draw attention to the fact that her work goes against what many people consider to be good art.

I have chosen Barth to be my inspiration, as I believe that her work makes good use of colour, light and interesting subject matters, while also taking a minimalist approach to a lot of her photos, making them more unique, and allowing them to stand out.

My Response:

For my photoshoot, I took inspiration from Barth when it came to the type of subjects I used, and the lighting I used. For my camera settings, I made use of the manual focus, making sure that the image I was taking was out of focus to create the same effect as Barth. As well as this, I experimented with the exposure of my photos, in order to mimic the bright light used in Uta Barths work.

The following is a contact sheet containing images from my photoshoot:

These are the photos that I was able to take after taking inspiration from Barth, and using the same techniques and processes as her. I made sure to focus on making sure the lighting resembled Uta’s work, and changed my camera settings to do so.

The above image is a good example of the different camera settings and techniques I used. For this image, I adjusted the manual focus of my camera so that the background was completely out of focus. I then adjusted the ISO setting to a high number (1600). By doing this, I was able to maximize the amount of light that the camera allowed, and because of this the image I took was extremely bright and light, which mimics the work of Uta Barth. By using this combination of out of focus images, with a high ISO setting, I was able to create images similar to that of Barth.

The following images are those that I have decided are the best from my photo shoot:

All of these images use the skills I developed after analysing the work of Uta Barth, including manually putting the camera out of focus, and adjusting the ISO setting to a higher number so that the images included the most light possible. All of these images used an ISO ranging from 3200 to 6400, and I manually adjusted the focus so that the subjects were as out of focus as possible.

I tried to take most images of naturally lighter spaces, as well of adjusting the ISO, these places included outside, and out of windows, to mimic the very light effect that Barth’s images give.

The subject of the above image is the corner of a window, and I zoomed the camera in so that I was only framing the top corner, abstracting the window. A lot of Barths work centres around using subjects such as windows that produce natural light, to maximise the amount of light in the image.

Barth sometimes uses subjects in her work that remain in focus, while throwing the background out of focus to draw maximum attention to the abstracted subject. The first image is my own, while the second is Barth’s, from which I took inspiration. This technique makes the image interesting, as it provides the viewer with a point to focus on, while also allowing them to remain curious about what is in the background.