Contextual : The photo was taken around 20 years after the end of the Second World War. The photo was taken in an old factory that made all things from railroad cars to trains and in the Second World War his family made ammunition for the Nazis. The photo was taken in 1963 by Jewish photographer Arnold Newman.
Conceptual : The image was taken as a form of payback for the Jewish community on the Krupp family after supplying the Nazi’s with ammunition for the entirety of the Second World War. Newman made Krupp look evil and have shadows around him with light in the background. He makes Krupp look sinister and mysterious but also not in power as the photo was taken looking down on his subject. This references the Krupp family power when the Nazi’s relied on them during WW2 and how after the war ended their power had gone.
Technical: The lighting in the photo is harsh and has a very large depth in the photo. The photo transitions from a very dark and sinister tone to a free and light one. The photo is deep and is taken to make the sinister figure in the centre of the image look below the viewer as if he is not in power.
Visual: The color pallet of the photo are dark and mysterious with a lot of dark colors and then quite white and bright colors swell. The darker and more mysterious colors are in the foreground of the photo near the man and the brighter and more normal colors are in the background of the image. The photo is clearly three dimensional and the different layers of the photo can be seen clearly. The image has some symmetry and very straight lines.
I created this gallery image using adobe Photoshop. Firstly I had to find a blank gallery image on the internet and download it. Next i opened the image on Photoshop and dragged the images i chose onto the gallery one by one. I resized and aligned the images on the far wall first so that they are all the same size and have the same distance gap in between all of them. I next put the last image on the left wall and distorted it so that the angles of the top and bottom of the image were similar to that of the ceiling and floor. Finally, I edited the images to all have some shadow and depth so that they look real.
I chose the images in the gallery because i was attempting to put together a gallery focused around color and light. All of the images either have a wide variety of vibrant colors or warm candle light in them. I like the gallery method of displaying our images because it shows what the images would look like in the real world and helps you decide if the images you used are as good as they look close up as they are from a distance. The gallery method has helped me see that the images I have chosen are not actually my best.
Ralph Eugene Meatyard (1925–1972) lived in Lexington, Kentucky, where he made his living as an optician while creating a wide variety of photos. 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.
Frederick Sommer
Frederick Sommer (September 7, 1905 – January 23, 1999), was an artist born in Angri (Italy) but raised in Brazil. He earned a Masters of Arts degree in Landscape Architecture (1927) from Cornell University where he met his future wife Frances Elizabeth Watson (September 20, 1904 – April 10, 1999). They got married in 1928 and they had no children. The Sommers moved to Tuscon Arizona in 1931 and then Prescott, Arizona in 1935. Sommer became a citizen of the United States on November 18, 1939. In the 1950’s, Sommer began to experiment with camera less negatives. He drew with soot, dirt and grease on pieces of glass. Below you can see two images of Sommer’s, one of a very deep and vast landscape of Arizona which includes rocks, hills, small and large shrubs and many cacti. The image is focuses close but gets less detail as it goes further back in the photo. The second image is that of his experiments in the early 1950’s with camera less negatives on a piece of glass. It includes a very random but human touch as the light comes through the drawing he made on the glass.
My Ideas
My Finalised Images
My Favorite
I like this image the most because the vibrant colours of the paperclips go well with the plain wood background. I also like how the image turned out after editing it on photoshop. I edited the brightness down and the contrast up to bring out the colours. I also adjusted the levels, curves and exposure to give a glow and contrast with the neon paperclips. I finally edited the vibrance so that the background had a richer and warmer tone.
Ernst Haas was an Austrian-American photojournalist and colour photographer. During his 40-year career, he bridged the gap between photojournalism and using photography for expression and creativity. He was a photographer for many big companies such as Vogue, Life and Look. Haas received the Hasselblad award in 1986, the year of his death. Haas has continued to be the subject of museum exhibitions and publications such as Ernst Haas, Color Photography(1989), Ernst Haas in Black and White (1992), and Color Correction (2011).
The photos above are abstract but vibrant and have a strong reference to the human world compared to natural photography. Some of his photos contain a very strong theme of reflections showing the real subject of the image. Also he takes photographs with a low shutter speed letting in more light and visualizes motion. In my interpretation of Haas’s method of taking photos i will include colour paired with low shutter speed and reflection to show subjects of the image.
Contact Sheet
My Finalised Images
My Finalised Image Edits
For the image above, I slightly increased the brightness and contrast to give the image an extra warm glow. Finally I adjusted the curves slightly make the background slightly darker.
For the image above, I cropped the image so that the plate and candle in the middle of the frame (rule of threes). I decreased the brightness and increased the contrast so that the image is in contrast with the theme of darkness and light. It also gives the candle a starlike visual and a warm glow. I also increased the exposure and gamma correction slightly to make the subject of the image clearer and decreased the offset.
Fo the image above, I cropped it to be in line with the rule of thirds in the centre of the frame. I also increased the brightness and contrast to warm the light from the candle.
For the image above, I increased the contrast between dark and bright and increased exposure and gamma to make the line of light and the different colours distinguishable.
I cropped the image above to the rule of threes so that the lit up logo on the glass bottle was in the centre of the frame. I increased the brightness and contrast to bring out the outline of the logo and writing with a white light and a warm tone either side of the bottle.
I cropped the image above to the rule of threes so the plate and candle were visible and centred in the frame. I decreased brightness and increased contrast to bring out a very bright and warm set of colours that bring out the pattern on the edge of the plate. I increased the exposure and gamma to brighten and make the colours and light warmer.
For the image above I did not have to crop the image as I took it originally as a close up in the middle of the frame on my camera. I turned the curves down which made the tone and shadows decrease. I lastly turned the vibrance and saturation up to bring out the neon like colours.
For the image above, I didn’t have to crop the image as I believe it looks better from a medium shot distance. I turned the brightness and contrast up to bring out the bright colours. I also increased the exposure which really brings out the contrast between the neon blue and pink.
I cropped the image above using the idea of the rule of three to centre the subject. I increased the saturation and vibrance to bring out the glowing colours and make them contrast each other and the pitch black background.
Finally, I cropped the crystal to the rule of three and increased the vibrance and saturation to make the colours really ‘pop’. This is effective because the background is blurred and the camera when taking the image focused on the reflection of the canon logo on the camera.
Nick Albertson is an artist from Boston Massachusetts and was born in 1983. His work has been exhibited in Chicago, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and New York as well as internationally. His work is very pattern bases and focuses on themes such as repetition, line, shape and texture. I have shown some of his photo shoots below.
Immovable Shadow
Manufactured Gestures
White Light
Tape Cuts
Photo Sprays
Ernst Haas
Haas was an Austrian-American photojournalist and during his 70 year career, began using photography to express creativity. He was born in 1921 and died in 1986. He is famous for his long shutter speed images that really show natural movement. One of his common subjects for his photographs was water and throughout his career seemed to have a passion for different ways light is reflected and refracted. Haas photographed many different things throughout his career which i have listed below.
Flora
Creation
Abstract
Motion
Americas
Comparison
Nick Albertson Ernst Haas, Germany (1977)
The lighting in Albertson’s image is very bright and we can tell by the type of light that the image was most likely taken in a studio using artificial light. Also there is contrast between the bright and vibrant colours. However, in Haas’s image we can tell that the light is very natural and there is little to no contrast. Also the colours in the second image are not vibrant and the lack of colour creates a dull tone.
Alberton’s image is taken as a close up as we cannot see the surrounding of the image which was done deliberately to compare and contrast the colours to the dark and angular shadows in the background. However in Haas’s image the photo is taken as a medium length photo as we are not seeing the image from far away but at the same time we are not seeing it up close.
The first image is very angular and colourful, however it has not much depth but we can still see the shadows made from the angular tape. This is similar to Haas’s image as it also is very angular and casts angular shadows but lacks the vibrancy of the colours. The first image is most likely cropped to get the very angular and minimalist features but i do not believe Haas’s image is cropped because he wanted to keep the man made and light and dark features.
Albertson’s images were taken from the early 1990’s – now so he had the opportunity to work with the best equipment to take precise and vibrant colours to his wishes compared to when Haas took his photos from around 1930-86 when he died.
I firstly opened the image in Photoshop. I then selected the image and copied it. Then I edited the size of the canvas to double the width of the image. Then i pasted the image so two of the same image are side by side. Then I flipped the image horizontally so the background from on the side meeting both images were the same. I then flattened the image so that the two previous layers became one single layer. Next I copied the image again and extended the canvas vertically doubling the height. I then pasted the image and flipped the image vertically. Finally I cropped the thin white border around the image and saved it.
Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer who became very popular and internationally recognized in the 1940’s and 1950’s. He was praised for his abstract and colour photographs and his career lasted about 70 years and he had a very strong interest in modern architecture. This included very industrial and structural areas. He contrasted the images to be very black and white which later in the project i will interpret myself.
Original Images
My Interpretation
The vivid and opposing contrast of the black and white in the images creates a very dark and shadow filled world. It seems very ghostly and empty. The way the images have very distinctive edges and empty spaces reminds me of threshold artwork.
Improved Interpretation – Originals
Improved Edit
In my first interpretation, the edited images look very similar and still a lot like the original photos. In my second interpretation of the black light project, I have taken the images in a room in shadow looking at a bright window. This means that the background is more white and the contrast between the background and the object is very visible. This makes both images look very different to my previous images as they look very art like and similar to threshold artwork. In the image above, I have used more of the threshold tool to pick out and show the individual particles in the bottle of the soap bottle. By making the particles visible in the image, I have accidentally created a black patchy surface in the top third of the image.
In the photo below I have scrunched up a piece of paper. I placed the paper on a black background to show contrast from dark to bright. I have also got a contrast between blue and red in the image and edited the colours to be more vibrant using an editing software.
In the photo below i have edited out the artificial light from the room we completed the photo shoot in. I also turned the mage into black and white and made the shadows and dark colours more dramatic and deeper.
I have edited the image below to have half colour and half black and white to represent the contrast between light and dark, black and white and day and night. I firstly took one image and made a copy of it, then i edited one to have colour and the other to be black and white. Then I used an editing software to split the image and piece it back together perfectly so that there was one side with each.
The image below is of a paper plane in front of a black background being lifted up by a string. I have converted the image to black and white and made the shadows and dark colours deeper and the lighter colours lighter. I then edited out the string that held the plane out from the image.
Formal Elements (Image Above)
The lightest part of the image is to the right (red) side. The background is black and there are some shadows in the contours of the paper. There are two clashing colours of blue to the left and red to the right.
There are random and scrunched up lines throughout the photo. There are also curvy and ripped edges.
The paper reminds me of a rock as it is random and has different surfaces.
The paper is very central in the photo and to either side of the image we can see the glow from the paper.
The texture and surface seems to be very random and contoured which creates some slight shadows. The surfaces in the image a varied and range from random and ripped to flat and straight.
The image ranges from very light and bright colours to dark and lifeless tones.
Albert Renger-Patzsch (June 22, 1897 – September 27, 1966) was a German Photographer associated with the new objectivity. He was born in Würzburg and began taking photographs at the age of twelve and after service in the First World War he had his first museum exhibition in 1927.
Albert Renger-Patzsch’s attitude towards photography involved exploring light, rhythm, line, texture, repetition and many more. He published his famous book ‘The World is Beautiful’ in 1928 which consisted of 100 images which had a lot of detail. Patzch’s work is sharply focused and matter-of-fact style. His work references the aesthetic of The New Objectivity that became quite popular during the Weimar Republic in Germany (1919 – 1933).
Patzsch’s ideas and values of photography are similar to an American photographer called Edward Weston. Weston is known as one of the most innovative and influential American Photographers and one of the masters of 20th century photography. Over his 40 year career, Weston took photos of many different subjects such as including landscapes, still lives, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. Similar to Patzsch, after taking photos of cities and subjects in cities, he went to the countryside and took photos of rocks, trees, rivers and more. Over this 2 year stay in nature, he produced 1,400 negative images using his 8 by 10 camera.
My Photos
Repetition
Half of my images are that of symmetrical patterns inside my house. They are similar to some of Renger-Patzsch’s photos as they are symmetrical but random at the same time. For example the image of the bookcase is very aligned and symmetrical but at the same time random as the books are not perfectly symmetrical or the same.
Final Outcome
I believe the image above is the best from the photo shoot above. This is because i have used the metal railing to frame the incinerator. I have also edited the contrast, curves and cropped it so that the rule of thirds line up with the metal railing.
A contact sheet is similar to a negative but in positive colors. This contains thumbnail images of all the photos from the shoot. This makes it very easy for you to see what images you like and what might need improvement or removal.
The purpose of a contact sheet is to be able to quickly scan a series of images to find the keepers or the ones chosen to be enlarged.
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