Unit 2
Fantastic And Strange
I made a mind map of my current ideas for what to do for my current theme.
My Pinterest
I made a Pinterest board of my theme and there is a sample of this below.
Jerry Uelsmann
Jerry Uelsmann is an photographer who uses a darkroom as supposed to photoshop to create surreal images. He does this by layering the images over each other by using different enlargers. The pictures can look weird because it is not what you would normally see in real life but of something you might see in a dream or in your head. The photographer tries to make someone looking at the image think that it is subconscious rather than what you are seeing with your eyes.
Critical Understanding.
Journey into the Night (2006) Jerry Uelsmann.
I have chosen this photograph because it different to his other pictures. The picture shows someone hands holding a birds nest which contains and egg. The wrist symbolises a tree bark and the fingers as branches. The birds nest is nestled securely in the hands. This could represent a human cradling a newborn baby and protecting it like a bird protects its egg.
The image is displayed as black and white and in my opinion, i think that this makes it photography more realistic as supposed to his previous work which is more subconscious.
The composition of the photograph appears calm and peaceful. This is because the image is the only thing in the picture on a black background, which gives its serene effect.
The photograph is a close up still image which has been created in a darkroom and a combination of several images . The size of the subject makes it resemble that of a solid oak tree which could signify stability, strength and status.
The image is displayed as black and white and in my opinion, i think that this makes it photography more realistic as supposed to his previous work which is more subconscious.
The composition of the photograph appears calm and peaceful. This is because the image is the only thing in the picture on a black background, which gives its serene effect.
The photograph is a close up still image which has been created in a darkroom and a combination of several images . The size of the subject makes it resemble that of a solid oak tree which could signify stability, strength and status.
Mari Mahr
Mari Mahr creates black and white pictures in small collections. Some of her work is culturally influenced by her native country of Hungary and the pictures of pre-war Europe which were passed down by her mother. She merges both images from her mother and others which are said to be memories of her past. she does this by adding objects to the existing images and re-photographing them.
Mari Mahr '"Presents from Susanna", 1985
The picture above shows a young girl sitting down and possibly taking a portrait.
First Set of Images
For my first set of images i took pictures of two completely different faces.
In photoshop, I layered the pictures over each other and adjusted it to Dark colour.
Then I changed the contrast and moved the picture slightly left to change the position of the picture so it looks disproportional.
First Image
My second image.
Evaluation
WWW: The contrasting colours in the image.
Harry Callahan
Creating digital paper negatives
I made these paper negatives by inverting them in Photoshop and flipping them
Second set of images
Darkroom paper negative double exposure experiments
Third set of images
Final pieces
Evaluation
I chose Fantastic & Strange because I thought that it would be a theme in which many ideas could have been thought of .
Firstly, I made a Pinterest board of what I thought fantastic and strange was. Using my Pinterest board I made a mind map of the ideas and artists that I thought was most relevant to my theme.
The artist that mainly stood out to me was Jerry Uelsmann. I looked his work when he created pictures using double exposures in the darkroom. I then had the idea of merging images together in Photoshop which is when I created my first piece. Then I looked at his work in more detail in order to think of the effect of his images. I noticed that he made images may have been made to be surreal and out of the ordinary.
This lead to an idea of creating double exposure in the dark room using paper negatives. To start with I used a Canon EOS 6ood to photograph pictures of trees and and an arm to use ans the paper negatives. I turned these images into paper negatives in Photoshop by flipping the images horizontally. I did this so that when I printed them on the photographic paper they would be the right way around. I also inverted the images so that they would come out in black and white after i developed them. I also used a A4 piece of Card and cut out a circle in the middle. I did this so when i placed the paper negatives on the photographic paper I could cover a piece of the photographic paper with the cut out circle of card to stop it being exposed under the enlarger so that the second image i layered on top can be seen.
I think that this worked quite well as you could see both the tree and the arm. However, I think that to improve it i could of tried to make the images more detailed, as they looked underexposed. I then tried to merge the pictures together but without layering them over each other. I took images of three different parts of a skeleton; the skull, the chest and the legs. I then took images of Busra's head and body. Using Photoshop I placed the two images that went together (e.g. the skull and body) and flipped and inverted them. Afterward I printed them on the photographic paper and used 10 seconds of light exposed.
Firstly, I made a Pinterest board of what I thought fantastic and strange was. Using my Pinterest board I made a mind map of the ideas and artists that I thought was most relevant to my theme.
The artist that mainly stood out to me was Jerry Uelsmann. I looked his work when he created pictures using double exposures in the darkroom. I then had the idea of merging images together in Photoshop which is when I created my first piece. Then I looked at his work in more detail in order to think of the effect of his images. I noticed that he made images may have been made to be surreal and out of the ordinary.
This lead to an idea of creating double exposure in the dark room using paper negatives. To start with I used a Canon EOS 6ood to photograph pictures of trees and and an arm to use ans the paper negatives. I turned these images into paper negatives in Photoshop by flipping the images horizontally. I did this so that when I printed them on the photographic paper they would be the right way around. I also inverted the images so that they would come out in black and white after i developed them. I also used a A4 piece of Card and cut out a circle in the middle. I did this so when i placed the paper negatives on the photographic paper I could cover a piece of the photographic paper with the cut out circle of card to stop it being exposed under the enlarger so that the second image i layered on top can be seen.
I think that this worked quite well as you could see both the tree and the arm. However, I think that to improve it i could of tried to make the images more detailed, as they looked underexposed. I then tried to merge the pictures together but without layering them over each other. I took images of three different parts of a skeleton; the skull, the chest and the legs. I then took images of Busra's head and body. Using Photoshop I placed the two images that went together (e.g. the skull and body) and flipped and inverted them. Afterward I printed them on the photographic paper and used 10 seconds of light exposed.