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AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 1 Abstract

Keld Helmer-Petersen

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Keld Helmer-Petersen

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Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who achieved widespread international recognition in the 1940s and 1950s for his abstract colour photographs.

Helmer-Petersen was born and grew up in the Østerbro quarter of Copenhagen. He started taking photographs in 1938. At an early stage, he became aware of the trends in international photography; in the 1940s he subscribed to the US Camera Annual and in this period became familiar with German inter-war photography, which had developed at the Bauhaus and in the Neue Sachlichkeit (The New Objectivity) movement.

The international prospect and an interest in contemporary art and architecture contributed to the fact that at the age of 23, Helmer-Petersen, as one of the first Danish photographers, began to work with an abstract formal language. Inspired by the Bauhaus and Albert Renger-Patzsch, he published in 1948, the bilingual book 122 Farvefotografier/122 Colour Photographs. This was an audacious debut by an auto didactic photographer who wanted to assert the position of photography as an independent art form. Today, the book is considered to be a pioneering work in the area of colour photography.

Examples of his work

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My Images (Unedited)

Process Of Editing

 

Firstly, I went on image, adjustments then threshold.

I then decided to play around with the sliders to achieve the photo below.

Then I decided to play around with brightness and contrast to improve the look of the photo.

My Images (Edited)

Here are my final four photos edited with the threshold effect. I really like how these images turned out because I think they are quite similar to Keld Helmer-Petersen’s style of photography. I really like this style of editing because it gives it a very unique and abstract feel to the photo.

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formal elements: shutter speed and exposure

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PROCESS/AIMS: For this photography skills photo shoot, we concentrated on capturing different photos relating to shutter speed, exposure and white balance. Trying out different setting, at different intensities (i.e 1/20, 1/8, 1/4 for shutter speed) in order to see what effect this will have on the final photos.

SHUTTER SPEED:

In order to capture the effects of decreasing the shutter speed, we had a person walk across a white backdrop. The motion blur seen by the subject shows us that a slow shutter speed has been used meaning that a crisp image was not take. It is also clear that the shutter speed was very slow due to the overexposed background, as more light is let in the longer the shutter is open. The effect is caused by the relative motion between the camera, and the objects and scene, motion blur may be avoided by panning the camera to track those moving objects.

WHITE BALANCE:

White balance is a setting on your camera which is used to control how colors are captured in different types of light. When you correctly set your white balance, you are taking into account the “color temperature” of the light in your scene. Color temperatures range from cool (blue tint) to warm (orange tint). In these next photos I experimented with changing  the white balance of the images. I firstly set my camera to the daylight setting which in effect made the images slightly warmer in appearance. the white walls of the school clearly shows this when compared to the image below. I set my camera to the auto white balance setting which in turn made the white very neutral, not overly warm or cool toned.

EXPOSURE:

ISO in Digital Photography. In Digital Photography ISO measures the sensitivity of the image sensor. The same principles apply as in film photography – the lower the number the less sensitive your camera is to light and the finer the grain. In these next couple of images, the changing of ISO can clearly be seen. It was an extremely bright and sunny day therefore I knew that turning up the ISO to a higher setting (such as 800 or 1600) would result in very over exposed images with little potential. Setting the camera down to ISO 200 resulted in a more manageable image that is well exposed.

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

Keld Helmer-Petersen biography and response

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Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who achieved widespread international recognition in the 1940s and 1950s for his abstract colour photographs.The pioneering effort with 122 Colour Photographs brought Helmer-Petersen a grant from the Denmark–America Foundation to study at the Institute of Design in Chicago. During his stay at the school, he both taught and studied under (with others) the American photographer Harry Callahan. Helmer-Petersen began to experiment with the contrast in graphic black and white expression influenced by constructivist artists and their fascination with industry’s machines and architecture’s constructions.A selection of the photographs that Helmer-Petersen created in Chicago was published in the little book Fragments of a City (1960). This offers a portrait of the city in thirty five tightly composed graphic images and is a radical example of Helmer-Petersen’s graphic and formal experimentation.

Image result for KELD HELMER-PETERSEN plants

My Response

Editing process

In order to recreate Peterson’s work, I went through previous photo shoots 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>adjustment>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 height 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.

AO1 Develop Ideas, Uncategorized

Threshold

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USING THE THRESHOLD TOOL

To start, I opened my photo in Photoshop and cropped the  photo to my desired size.

Go to image ~ adjustments ~ threshold. The picture should adjust to black and white and a window with adjustments should pop up. Using these levels I played around to achieve the effect I wanted, which was the majority of the picture being made up of negative space.

 

I find negative space can add an eerie, obscure manner to the photograph. Normally we associate a busy, noisy picture with being the best image out there, but we never really stop and pause to appreciate minimalism in all its content glory.

 

I used the steps above with all the photographs to create my final works.

 

~crazy upside down~

 

~trust me, you’ll fall~

 

 

~out of the blue~

 

~weaved up together~

 

 

 

 

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

High Contrast

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Keld Helmer-Petersen was a danish photographer, who grew up in Copenhagen. He was gifted a Leica camera in 1938 which started up his career in the world of photography. Keld was good at spotting trends within photography at the time and how it was all war influenced which then progressed into The New Objectivity.  Albert Renger-Patzsch was a big inspiration for him and opened him up to abstract photography and in 1948 he published the bilingual book 122 Farvefotografier/122 Colour Photographs. Colour photography was his first style but he began to experiment with contrast in black and white photographer, which is what he is now known for. He was influenced by constructionist artists and their interest with industry’s machines and architecture’s constructions. His photos displayed large amounts of structure and patterns within industrial areas.

Original Images

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Image

Image

Editing

original image
Image-Adjustments-Threshold
Image-Adjustments-Threshold

Final Outcome

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

Ralph Eugene meatyard biography and response

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Ralph Eugene Meatyard was born on the 15th May 1925, in Illinois. At the age of eighteen he was forced to join the Navy, at the time of the Second World War. Lucky the war had ended before he was sent on an overseas assignment. Soon after the war he dedicated his studies into becoming an optician, but still continued with his passion for photography.

His photographic series ‘No Focus’ has combined his occupation with his hobby, showcasing what he was really passionate about. In this series the photographs are completely out of focus, reveling what it is like for blind people seeing the world. This powerful photographic series changed the way people captured photographs, as it went against the stereotypical techniques we would use to capture an image. His work within this series is very inspiring to photographers as it shows that experimentation with the camera is vital part of photography, and that breaking the stereotypes can actually result in effective images.Image result for ralph eugene meatyard zen twigs

My main inspiration from his work was this composition from his ‘Zen Twigs’ series. I took a liking to this due to the fact that within the frame, only one thing is in focus with the background out of focus or ‘blurred’. Within my interpretations, I utilized this skill but used it focusing on objects in the foreground and the background. 

AO2 Explore Ideas, Homework, Uncategorized, Unit 1 Abstract

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

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Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925–1972) lived in Lexington, Kentucky, where he made his living as an optician while creating an impressive and enigmatic body of photographs. Meatyard’s creative circle included mystics and poets, such as Thomas Merton and Guy Davenport, as well as the photographers Cranston Ritchie and Van Deren Coke, who were mentors and fellow members of the Lexington Camera Club. Meatyard’s work spanned many genres and experimented with new means of expression, from dreamlike portraits—often set in abandoned places—to multiple exposures, motion-blur, and other methods of photographic abstraction. He also collaborated with his friend Wendell Berry on the 1971 book The Unforeseen Wilderness, for which Meatyard contributed photographs of Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. Meatyard’s final series, The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, are cryptic double portraits of friends and family members wearing masks and enacting symbolic dramas.