The focal length of a lens is determined when the lens is focused at infinity. Lens focal length tells us the angle of view—how much of the scene will be captured—and the magnification—how large individual elements will be. The longer the focal length, the narrower the angle of view and the higher the magnification.
What are the four types of focal length?
Wide length – for landscape, architecture
Standard – for street, travel and portrait
Short telephoto – for street photography and portraits
Medium telephoto – for sports, wildlife and action
Mary Ellen Bartley is an American artist well known for her photographs that explore the tactile and formal qualities of the printed book and its potential for abstraction. Her work has been widely exhibited across the world for example at the yancey Richardson Gallery in New York and The Drawing Room and Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York. Bartley’s work has also been featured in several exhibitions exploring themes of the book and objects caught in transition from the analog to the digital realm.
During the period of lockdown due to COVID Mary decided to make a project where she took a picture of the same objects every day for a month. These objects consist of a book, sponge, mug, milk bottle, a glass cube and a small dish, everyday she manage to take a different picture with a different meaning, for example she would change the lighting and the order of the objects with only using natural light t6he whole time. She did this project to help show the beauty in everyday objects that would usually be ignored or abandoned.
A photomontage is known to be a collage created by cutting and gluing other photographs to create a new image. It allows artists and photographers to express their work in a different, more visually pleasing form. If they have similar pictures not exactly the same that they would like to display together a photomontage allows them to do that, you can also be really creative with it by ripping and cutting and using superimposition. Superimposition: to impose, place, or set over, above, or on something else.
Examples of photomontages
History of photomontages
It was first used as a technique by the Dadaists, (Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century) in 1915 in their protests against the First World War. It was later adopted by the surrealists who exploited the possibilities photomontage offered by using free association to bring together widely disparate images, to reflect the workings of the unconscious mind.
When did photomontages become popular?
Throughout the 1970s and ’80s postmodernist era photomontage techniques became popular as a form of pastiche or political protest, as seen in the work of British artist and designer Linder, while today, photomontage techniques are continuously updated by contemporary artists in surprising and unexpected ways.
What is the difference between collages and photomontages?
A collage is a composition of materials and objects pasted over a surface; a montage is a single composition created by juxtaposing a series of pieces of paper, photos or other media to create an artistic image.
Mary Ellen Bartley is a photographer who is known for her tactile and formal qualities of abstract images. Her work focuses on geometry shapes and simple colours to create a painterly style image. She created a range of image throughout lock down called ‘7 Things Again and Again’ whereby she used the same objects and took a picture of them everyday changing their positions slightly each time.
Some examples:
Her work:
Some of my examples:
For these images I used some household items that I found around my house and placed the onto of a fire place to give the objects a clear background to help to objects stand out.
Overall I am happy with how these image turned out and think the simple, natural colours go well together with the hint of silver adding somethings to draw the viewer in.
Mary Ellen is a famous abstract photographer exploring the tactile and formal qualities of the printed book. She works to look at the geometrics and pure form of where her objects she photographs goes.
throughout this week I have been attempting to replicate her methods.
I worked to place objects in unique and different settings, whilst playing around with the placement of the camera angles.
Not only does she create uniquely placing images of books and other still life objects, but expands her work by cutting out pieces of her already made pictures, and re-adjusting them in smooth but also ridged ways, eventually creating an unique and attractive image.
New Objectivity was a movement in German art started by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in the 1920s. It was a reaction against expressionism. It offered a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of Expressionism.
Here are some examples of new objectivity art:
This is a left wing photography style called Dadaism, it links to new objectivity.
After importing all my files into photoshop, all being the same pixel size, I started to Edit the images using cropping tools.
My main keyboard controls used where Crtl+A, Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, and Ctrl+T.
I used the select tool in photoshop to create a messy image with layers, why not.
Eventually I saved 4 edited images.
My idea behind these images was for more of an abstract feel to them, where some of them would interlink within one another, whilst making this textiles effect on the images. And for fun I wanted to create a face using the materials I had, to spice it up a bit
