All posts by Jess Medeiros
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Nostalgia
William Eggleston
Since the early 1960s, William Eggleston used color photographs to describe the cultural transformations in Tennessee and the rural South. He registers these changes in scenes of everyday life, such as portraits of family and friends, as well as gasoline stations, cars, and shop interiors. Eggleston looks at the world with the eyes of a documentarian rather than a curator: He shoots from unexpected angles or when the subjects are looking away. This creates the impression that the photographer isn’t there, and makes the images all the more intimate. He calls attention to familiar places, the people, and the objects that inhabit it. Here he has created a picture of an everyday scene. Shooting from an unusual angle, the mundane subject matter and cropped composition combines to produce what is considered a snapshot.
This is one of William Eggleston’s works. I have chosen this artist because his work may seem random but makes it seem alive with the vivid colours in the images. His photos show me that anyone can make any boring picture into looking more joyful. The lighting, texture and tone look beautiful and it doesn’t even look edited, it looks soft and natural.
These pictures reminds me of childhood because as a child I would always want to see the sunset and go on the scutter. The last picture is the original and the others are edited. I tried to make them as different as possible. I think this is connected with william eggleston’s work because he takes pictures of things that interest him most and edited them to make them look better and my favorite part of the day since a child was watching the sunset.
These pictures represent the road trips I would always have as a child. The first picture is the original and the others are edited. I changed lightings as much as i could so most them of could see more bright.
I decided to take pictures of the park since that’s one of the places I would be most as a child. My favorite photo out of all of these park pictures is the second one. Just love how it’s set.
My final piece is the photo above because I like the brightness of the picture. Also love how it is set and it makes it look alive.
STILL LIFE HISTORY & THEORY
Still life photography is a genre of photography used for the depiction of inanimate subject matter, typically a small group of objects. Similar to still life painting, it is the application of photography to the still life artistic style. Still-life photography’s origins reside in the early 20th century. Art photographers emerged such as Baron Adolf de Meyer. Most still lifes can be placed into one of four categories: flowers, banquet or breakfast, animal(s), and symbolic.
First still life painting:
The painting generally considered to be the first still life is a work by the Italian painter Jacopo de’Barbari painted 1504. The “golden age” of still-life painting occurred in the Lowlands during the 17th century.
Most famous still life artists:
- Paul Cézanne, 1895
- Caravaggio
- Georges Braque, 1910
- Henri Matisse, 1910
- Paul Cézanne, 1898
- Jean Siméon Chardin, 1728
- Vincent van Gogh
- Adriaen van der Spelt, 1658
- Francisco de Zurbarán, 1633
Most famous artists these days:
sara tasker
Yukiko Masuda
What is vanitas?
Vanitas is a still life painting of a 17th-century Dutch genre containing symbols of death or change as a reminder of their inevitability. Vanitas is also a still life artwork which includes various symbolic objects designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures.
What is Memento Mori?
Memento mori is an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death. The concept has its roots in the philosophers of classical antiquity and Christianity, and appeared in funerary art and architecture from the medieval period onwards. Memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’. A basic memento mori painting would be a portrait with a skull but other symbols commonly found are hour glasses or clocks, extinguished or guttering candles, fruit, and flowers.
Photography Quiz
1) What is the etymology (origin & history) of the word photography?
Writing with light
2) What year was the first photograph made on camera?
1826 (Joseph Nicéphore Niépce)
3) When did the first photograph of a human appear?
1838 (Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre)
4) Who made the first ‘selfie’ ?
Robert Cornelius (1839)
5) When did the first colour photograph appear?
1861 (James Clerk Maxwell)
6) What do we mean by the word genre?
A style or category of art.
7) What do we mean by the genre of still-life?
An image that shows inanimate objects from the natural or man-made world.
8) What was the main purpose of the Pictorialist movement?
To capture moving objects.
9) How do we describe the term documentary photography?
Capture images that truthfully portray people, places and events.
10) What is exposure in photography?
The amount of light that reaches your camera’s sensor.
11) What controls exposure on your camera?
Aperture, shutter speed, ISO.
12) What control on our camera records moving objects?
Shutter.
13) How do we explain depth of field?
A view across a field.
14) What factors affect Depth of Field?
Lens aperture, distance from camera to subject, and lens focal length.
15) What is composition in photography?
The arrangement of visual elements within the frame.
16) What is your understanding of aesthetics in art?
Concerned with the nature of beauty and taste.
17) What are contextual studies in photography?
Consider factors outside of the image, as well as inside the frame.
18) How many images are captured on average every day worldwide?
4.7 billion.
19) Which portrait is the most reproduced in the world?
The Queen (Elizabeth II)
Formalism
Formalism is a critical and creative position which holds that an artwork’s value lies in the relationships it establishes between different compositional elements such as colour, line, and texture, which ought to be considered apart from all notions of subject-matter or context. Photographers focus on more than one thing in formal and visual elements such as line, shape, repetition, rhyme, balance etc but their main ones are flatness, frame, time and focus. These are some photos examples of formalism of that were took from photographers.
The key components of formalism are:
Line
This image is by Chris Yiu
Definition of line in photography is a straight or curved geometric element that is generated by a moving point and that has extension only along the path of the point. The type and general direction of lines in your image convey meaning inside the photograph.
Shape
This image is by Hanjin
Definition of shapes in photography is the visible makeup characteristic of a particular item or kind of item, spatial form or contour and a standard or universally recognized spatial form.
Form
This image is by Todd Vorenkamp
Form is three-dimensional. Form has overall height, width, and depth and is produced by the shadows and highlights on an object in a image in photography.
Texture
This image is by Todd Vorenkamp
Texture is the visual or tactile surface characteristics and appearance of something. Texture in the photograph is similar to form in that it is revealed by variations in tonality and presented in two dimensions. Texture can be elusive in a photograph, depending on the subject, the lighting, and the forms in the image.
Colour
Image by Todd Verenkamp
Definition of colour in photography is a phenomenon of light (such as red, brown, pink, or grey) or visual perception that enables one to differentiate otherwise identical objects and the aspect of the appearance of objects and light sources that may be described in terms of hue, lightness, and saturation for objects and hue, brightness, and saturation for light.
Size
Image by Todd Verenkamp
Definition of size in photography is a physical magnitude, extent, or bulk : relative or proportionate dimensions. The camera, lens, and print can render large objects small, or small objects large.
Depth
Image by Todd Verenkamp
Definition of depth in phography is the direct linear measurement from front to back. Depending on the quality of the surrounding air or atmosphere, distant objects in a photograph will have less clarity and contrast than objects in the foreground.