I will be using this mood board in order to inspire and give me ideas for the upcoming homework, responding to Ralph Meatyard’s work. His work, is highly dramatic and produces only black and white imagery. It is simplistic and often up to the audiences interpretation, therefore when I do my own photo shoot, i will be focusing on capturing very minimalist photos that also show drama and mystery.
Abstract photography, sometimes called non-objective, experimental, conceptual or concrete photography, is a means of depicting a visual image that does not have an immediate association with the object world and that has been created through the use of photographic equipment, processes or materials. An abstract photograph may isolate a fragment of a natural scene in order to remove its inherent context from the viewer, it may be purposely staged to create a seemingly unreal appearance from real objects, or it may involve the use of color, light, shadow or texture.
I quite like the abstract minimalist photography as it involves the use of editing, warping, and making the photo seem unreal, or edited to an extent where it seems unnatural. In some examples of minimalist it makes the object in focus either seem larger than life or smaller than it should be.
I also like the use of changing the colors to make it seem neon, brighter or even electrified. This effect can be used on people for portraits and can be used on everyday objects.
Julian Schulze became a master of minimalism, his work is eye-catching and very impressive. He is focused on geometric abstraction and minimalistic compositions. His images can range from simple shots of everyday scenes made up of a small number of elements to mind-bending abstractions that will leave in confused as to which direction he took the shot. Each shot he takes is expertly composed using light, shadow and color to create 2D and 3D illusions and scenes.
I really like Schulze’s work as some of his work is simple by just taking of a photo with a wide range of colors in an everyday normal environment, whereas others involve black and white structures and taking them at obscure angles to change the interpretation and the way we look and understand the photographs.
Camera Skills
Auto Focus
Auto focus is the best time saver of the camera and is found in most cameras. Initially the auto focus helps clear up the quality of the images we take. It often uses a computers to run miniature motor that focuses the lens for you. Focusing is the lens means moving in and out until the sharpness of photo is at the highest level possible. Depending on the distance of the object you are trying to focus on, will affect the distance in the lens from the film to present a clear photograph.
Manual focus
As well as having an auto focus setting on your camera you have a manual setting for focusing images. On the side of your lens there will me a switch labelled ‘’AF-MF’’ short for Auto focus and Manual focus. When you wish to use manual focus switch to manual on the camera. The main advantage over auto focus is the speed of the manual focus . All manual focus lenses have a gauge depicting the DOF at small aperture and the on the focus ring, the focal distance is depicted in metres
White Balance
White balance (WB) is the process of removing unrealistic color casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the “color temperature” of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light. Our eyes are very good at judging what is white under different light sources, but digital cameras often have great difficulty with auto white balance
Shutter speed
Shutter speed is the length of time your camera shutter is open, exposing light onto the camera sensor. Essentially, it’s how long your camera spends taking a photo. This has a few important effects in how your images will appear. When you use a long shutter speed, you end up exposing your sensor for a significant period of time. The first big effect of shutter speed is motion blur. If your shutter speed is long, moving subjects in your photo will appear blurred along the direction of motion. Shutter speeds are typically measured in fractions of a second, when they are under a second. For example 1/4 means a quarter of a second, while 1/250 means one two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second (or four milliseconds).
Using Focus-points
Focus points are often shown as small squares when you look through the camera and is seen on the viewing screen. When you got to take a photo and lightly press down on the shutter button to focus on your image, the focus pint you are using will light up. A focus point can be virtually anything ranging from a person, to a building etc. other way in which will help with focusing on your image is also considering blurs, size colour, shape.
IOS
ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization. The IOS controls the expose by using software in the camera to make it extra sensitive to light. A high ISO such as ISO 1,600 will produce a brighter picture than a lower ISO such as ISO 100. The drawback to increasing the ISO is that it makes the picture noisier. Digital noise is apparent when a photo looks grainy.
Depth of field
A camera can only focus its lens at a single point, but there will be an area that stretches in front of and behind this focus point that still appears sharp. This zone is known as the depth of field. It’s not a fixed distance, it changes in size and can be described as either ‘shallow’ (where only a narrow zone appears sharp) or deep (where more of the picture appears sharp) Because depth of field has an impact on both the aesthetic and technical quality of a picture. Sometimes you’ll want to use an extensive depth of field in order to keep everything sharp. A classic example is when you’re photographing a landscape, where generally the most desirable outcome is to capture detail from the foreground to the horizon.
Aperture
‘The opening of the lens’ The aperture is a small set of blades in the lens that controls how much light will enter the camera. The blades create a octagonal shape that can be widened or closed down to a small hole. If you shoot with the aperture wide open, then more light is allowed into the camera than if the aperture is closed down to only allow a tiny hole of light to enter the camera
Albert Renger-Patzsch was a German photographer highly associated with The Objectivity
Born in 1897 Wurzburg and died in 1966. He lived and worked in Essen and Wamel, Germany. Renger-Patzsch was an inspiring photographer, because he branched away from the sentimentality and idealism of a previous generation. In the 1920s, Neue Sachlichkeit (New objectivity) was produced in a German art, architecture and literature. Albert applied these ideas and attitudes towards certain things to his own work, and used these thoughts to adapt his camera to produce a true reflection of the world. In 1924 Albert Renger-Patzsch began his professional career as a photographer by producing the photographs for the first two books in a series named Die Welt der Pflanze (The World of plants).Although his work went uncredited. After being credited in the next book for his photographs he became an independent photographer and realised and exhibited his own photos for the first time. In 1928, Renger-Patzsch produced his most famous book titled ‘Die Welt ist Schon’ meaning The World is Beautiful. As well as producing his most famous year, Renger-Patzsch moved from Bad Harzburg to Essen and in the Folkwang Archives he set up a dark room and studio to exhibit his own work and produce images.
The objectivity
The new objectivity or ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ in German was a new style that rose in the 1920s it was something different that not many people had ever experienced before this is because it challenged the idea of expressionism. The ideas in the name, it opened the world, opened the idea of more abstract, romantic and idealistic tendencies of Expressionism, and is mostly associate with portraits
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. https://fraenkelgallery.com/artists/ralph-eugene-meatyard Meatyards images are usually deliberately unfocused. Therefore for my shoot I deliberately unfocused my camera to try to get the same effect as meatyard. In my images I experimented with ISO, focus control and depth of field. Here are examples of Meatyard's work:
Here are unedited JPEG examples of my shoot:
Here are some of my favourite photos from the shoot that I have edited. I used adobe lightroom to manipulate these images. I applied a black and white preset to all of my images because Meatyards images were mainly in black and white. I then manipulated the exposure, contrast and cropped some images until I was satisfied with the outcome.
Although I like the outcome of the photos of the trees and the lake, I particularly like the photographs I took of the cat behind the fence. I like the depth of field created by the unfocused fence, which therefore focuses the audiences attention on the cat. I feel the black and white preset also aids in directing the attention on the cat because the bold and vibrant colours of the green grass and ivy could redirect and confuse the audiences attention.
By now you should have generated plenty of images in response to abstract and formalist themes…
Ensure that you are incorporating the formal elements in your decision making process at all stages of the process…
Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who was inspired by Albert Renger-Patzsch, the experiments at The Bauhaus in Germany and by Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at the Art Institute of Chicago. He achieved fame for his colour photographs but he also published several books of black and white images that explore dramatic contrasts of tone. In some, we are only presented with images that are black and white. All mid tones have been removed. He created and found these images, using both cameras and flat bed scanners to achieve the effects he was looking for. These books are beautifully designed and encourage us to consider the space around the image and the accompanying text as integral to the meaning of the work.
Click on the images for more…
METHOD
Remember to use the model :
TECHNICAL -VISUAL-CONCEPTUAL-CONTEXTUAL
here are some helpful examples for you to work from…
Now you must carefully select from your images, including homework photo assignments to decide what you will present as a Final Outcome (AO4). You must look at a range of presentation methods, and show in a range of blog posts that you can…
Deadline for final selection of printed images = Monday 15th October
Follow the 10 Step Process for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :
Albert Renger-Patzsch was a German photographer born on June 22nd, 1897, and was associated with the New Objectivity.
Renger-Patzsch experimented with photography as a teenager. After serving in World War I, he studied chemistry at Dresden Technical College. In 1920 he became director of the picture archive at the Folkwang publishing house in Hagen.
In 1925 Renger-Patzsch began to pursue photography as a full-time career as a freelance documentary and press photographer. He rejected both Pictorialism, which was in imitation of painting, and the experimentation of photographers who relied on startling techniques. In his photographs, he recorded the exact, detailed appearance of objects, reflecting his early pursuit of science. He felt that the underlying structure of his subjects did not require any enhancement by the photographer. In his book Die Welt ist schön, he showed images from both nature and industry, all treated in his clear, transparent style. Such images were closely related to the paintings of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement of painters, who created detached and literal renderings of reality that were so extreme that they produced an eerie effect.
In the early 1930s, Renger-Patzsch taught photography. From the 1940s until his death in 1966, he focused on his own projects, working as a freelance photographer and publishing his photographs. His later subjects included natural landscapes, industrial landscapes, trees, and stones.
The New Objectivity was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub who used it as the title of an art exhibition staged in 1925 to showcase artists who were working in a post-expressionist spirit. As these artists—who included Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Jeanne Mammen—rejected the self-involvement and romantic longings of the expressionists, Weimar intellectuals in general made a call to arms for public collaboration, engagement, and rejection of romantic idealism.
Although principally describing a tendency in German painting, the term took a life of its own and came to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it. Rather than some goal of philosophical objectivity, it was meant to imply a turn towards practical engagement with the world—an all-business attitude, understood by Germans as intrinsically American.
The movement essentially ended in 1933 with the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis to power.
This is my favourite photography by Albert Renger-Patzsch. It shows a snake coiled up with an intense stare. I love the details on each individual scale of the snake is visible and clear for us to see, and the dark tone of the picture gives the snake more of a menacing look. The contrasting light and darks of the image makes it look dramatic, and the fact that it’s been cropped to only view its head makes us focus in the detail of its expression and it’s pose.
To produce pictures inspired by his work, I’ll be taking 150+ pictures of objects which might relate to nature, or anything that’s been man made. To copy his effect, after I take my images i’ll be editing them to have a black and white tone, and cropping them to focus on the small details, and to give them as much as a dramatic effect as possible.
Red Cross : Not happy with the picture, won’t be using it.
Yellow Circle : Not sure, might develop it.
Green circle : Happy with the picture, will be developing it further.
Blue circle : Needs to be edited.
I went around the school and took pictures , using a long lens camera. I quite actually enjoyed using the long lens camera, it being favourite so far when it comes to the type of lens. I like how I was able to zoom in and catch the small details in a sharp picture, and was able to blur out the background and focus on the object I wanted to take a picture of.
