Harry Morey Callahan was a twentieth century American photographer, he was born on the 22nd of October 1912. Callahan grew up in Detroit, Michigan and briefly studied chemical engineering at Michigan State College. Callahan became interested in photography in 1938 and was influenced by the work of Ansel Adams after attending a lecture in 1941. He taught photography at the Chicago institute of Design in 1946, and in 1940 he took over as head of the department for photography. In the other half of the 1970’s, Callahan had developed a liking to colour photography and his colour images became the reason to his fame. He wanted to explore the possibilities of this creativity and kept on doing so. Sadly, on the 15th of March 1999 Harry had passed away leaving over 10,000 prints for the next generation to take inspiration from.
Although Harry is famous for his colour work and his portraits of people, I personally love his work on nature, especially in black and white. Although you are unable to view the usual vibrant and beautiful colours of leaves, in the black and white photos the dark tones create a moody and dark mood. Harrys style can be viewed as very minimalist and I like how he uses natural forms to create his abstract photography. Harry tends to use natural lighting in his photos which accentuates the fact that he is taking photo of nature. The fact that he took so many black and white photos could conceptually mean that he believes nature doesn’t need colour to look beautiful.
Shoot 1:
Inspiration:
My Recreation:
These are some of the edited photos from the shoot. I send these photos from my camera to my phone and I used an app called VSCO to edit them. I applied different black and white filters, mainly B1 and B5, however I also adjusted the exposure and contrast until I got the result I wanted. I liked reducing the exposure to create a dark atmospheric look.
Shoot 2:
Once again, I applied filters from VSCO and adjusted the exposure and contrast until I got a result I wanted:
You should all have a valid login now…which provides you with a Hautlieu Creative account so that you can start creating andcurating your own blog.
This will be your normal, everyday login details. We expect you to check your emails everyday too…and get used to using Office 365, and follow us on Twitter too (HautlieuC).
The blog provides you with a neat platform to showcase your learning, including knowledge and understanding and of course your images too.
You should have access to the Media Drive (M : Drive)…this is where you must store all of your files. Please check this!
You will learn how to adapt and organise / store your image files…and you must manage file sizes carefully.
We will teach you step by step how to use the blog…then it is down to you to look after it and present your work as thoughtfully and carefully as possible. Each time you publish a blog post…it is then available for marking and assessment. Unpublished work will not normally be marked…thus affecting your progress and success.
We will also comment on your blog posts regularly…which will appear as a new email for you. You are expected to respond to the advice and suggestions accordingly. We constantly track your approach to lesson, independent study and overall progress.
You are expected to take responsibility for your own learning, progress and success during A Level Photography…
minimum 2-5 hours per week
weekly photo-shoots (200+images) must clearly demonstrate a range of approaches, reinforcing the techniques you have learnt
complete any / all incomplete class tasks by the end of the week
contribute your own photo-assignments + research
seek out opportunities to extend your learning / skill level
if you are absent you must check the blog daily / check emails for instructions, guidance and advice and complete in accordance with deadlines for your teaching group (these may change depending on timetable).
Enjoy…and good luck!
Task 1
Create and publish a contact sheet (evidence of a photo-shoot)
Describe and explain what a CONTACT SHEET is…
Create a gallery / grid of images from a recent photo-shoot and upload to a blog post
Why are contact sheets useful / essential
Try annotating / colour coding / cropping / arranging your contact sheet to show the start of a selection process
Look at the examples below which include work by William Klein and Elliott Erwitt. Both photographers were known to include contact sheets as part of their final images as well as experiments.
Remember…you can Add your images to a powerpoint, then convert to a JPEG and upload to the blog using JPEG File Interchange Format or try creating them as screen shots.
William Klein
Elliott Erwitt
(Homework)Task 2 Photographing Paper
Take an A4 piece of plain white paper
Scrunch the paper into a ball
Using your iphone / camera photograph the ball
Think carefully and creatively about how you can transform the paper ball…
Try to show various approaches to composition and framing, exposure, lighting, movement, focus, shadow-making
Take as many different, interesting, quirky, sequential, right, wrong and intelligent photographs of the paper ball.
Create a visual blog post that relays your experiments and outcomes clearly
Include references to any artists / ideas that have influenced your outcomes
Evaluate your process and present a final image / set of final images
Lissy grew up in a small town in Canada between a cornfield and a tall forest, and frequently played pretend in between them. Her interest in photography began at the age of 12, spurred by the obsessive fear she would one day forget her entire life were she not to document it.
As a teenager she became far less fascinated with documenting life, and far more intrigued with escaping it. By creating surreal landscapes and building elaborate blanket forts, she hid from the trials and tribulations of teenage life until, at the age of 18, she moved to New York City to pursue a career in photography.
Now her work focuses on the combination of her two loves; documentary and surrealism. Combining forces to create whimsical imagery that still centres around every day life. Her work is often inspired by the vivid colours of early childhood, reoccurring dreams, the blurry way we see things when we are either too happy or too sad, and the soft hands of the high renaissance.
Her work has been exhibited in New York, London, Toronto, Boston, Munich, Detroit and Guatemala City.
Hattie Stewart is an Artist and Illustrator based in London, UK. Although she is best known for ‘doodlebombing’ over influential Magazines, her tongue-in-cheek artwork moves fluidly between many creative fields including Fashion, Music and Contemporary Art, including working
Stewarts work, even though it is not directly photographic, has given me incentive to incorporate forms of art to manipulate my works. Breaking the boundary between photography and art can be quite a sensitive subject, but I’m hoping to banish that and bring the two together.
