Assignment 3

I've received feedback for Assignment 3 from my tutor - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/104013160/SBAOP3.pdf

The submission can be found in my Dropbox - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/104013160/Assignment%203%20-%20Steven%20Briggs%20-%20510812.zip

My email response to my tutor is as follows:

"Hi David

Thank you for your feedback. I was a bit surprised by your feedback re the format (particularly the grey titles), of the submission as this is the same format as I used for previous assignments. Either way, I’ll try and make it clearer going forward.

Re the lamppost, I’d not spotted that it was out of focus until you pointed it out. I would have expected that the reflection was the thing to be focussed on rather the reflected object. I think that’s quite intriguing so I’m going to do some experimenting on that to try and get my head round it.

I completely take your point re the out of focus chair in the Cup photo. I spent quite a bit of time on the composition, but the out of focus chair is probably a bit distracting. I attended a talk with Peter Fraser a few months ago - http://stevenbriggs7.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/peter-fraser-red-eye-lecture.html and remember him talking about his desire to get edge-to-edge sharpness in his photographs in order to increase the sense of objectivity.

Re my blog I think the absence of articles over the last few months reflects the fact that I took a break from things, but I’ve had positive feedback form you previously for the blog, so I’m figuring I just need to return to the levels I was doing previously. The links you provide will be useful.

With regards to producing prints for future submissions, will that definitely be necessary? I’ve always preferred the idea of doing completely digital submissions. I’ve never really printed my photographs and so I’d be starting from scratch re experience in this area and I think it might become a bit of a distraction from me actually concentrating on the other areas which I find more interesting. If you do think it’s necessary to print, would you recommend buying a photo printer or paying to get them printed?

I’ve already got some way through the exercises for Part 4 and I’ve started to think about subject matter for the Assignment. I’m not sure which way to go though. In many respects I’d like to do landscape, but I think it could be difficult to find a suitable “single object”. It would also be interesting to do portraits of specific person, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to find a suitable volunteer. So I’m starting to think that finding an interesting object (on ebay or something), to photograph as still life could be the way to go. I’d appreciate any recommendations or thoughts you might have on this."

And his response to me:

"I shouldn’t worry too much over the grey titles and obviously I hadn’t found it a problem previously wither.  However, I do know that assessors view a lot of work each day during assessment so if I can make the slight slip when slowly working through an assignment, an assessor could certainly make it when trying to get through their days quota, and anything that might annoy or confuse an assessor is best avoided.

Prints aren’t required for assessment but I did note when sent to observe the assessment event in March that assessors grumbled more when having to view submissions online. It shouldn’t affect a grade at your level though.  One thing I should add is that this is a degree level course so at some point you will need to learn all about printing.  A lot of the learning comes from experience so I recommend starting to print as soon as you are running a fully colour manage workflow.  At first I would recommend outsourcing to a lab (a lot of students use http://www.digitalab.co.uk/ as the quality is good and their Fuji frontier prints are cheap).  If you then find yourself wanting to experiment you could investigate buying your own inkjet, but this is by no means necessary."

I've started with the Part 4 exercises and I'm looking forward to working toward the conclusion of this course and then onto the next."

Assignment 3 - Reflections

Well I've just submitted my 3rd Assignment. This has been a very protracted Assignment - I started it about 8 months ago, got most of it done in the first month or so and then pretty much did nothing for about 5 months. Even when I started again I wasn't particularly focussed. This has undoubtedly lessened my enjoyment and sense of satisfaction. On the plus side though it has allowed me to take photographs in winter and summer.

Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills

I think I've demonstrated the skills required to identify colours and use them within my photographs. I would like to have found some more subtle instances of colour as well as well as being able to capture naturally occurring still lifes (something like Peter Fraser) rather than having to set these up.

Quality of outcome

I think my submission is of fairly consistent quality.

Demonstration of Creativity

I think I've shown the most amount of diversity with this Assigment and have used a more diverse range of subjects.

Context

My blog isn't as strong this time round. I think I need to spend more time on this for the next Assignment.

Assignment 3 - remaining photographs

So I've started on Assignment 3 again and still have some images to capture. I went out at the weekend to get some landscape and flowers, but had mixed success. Remaining to take photographs for are:

• Accent - I want to take a still life of an object against the Orangey tones of the wood of our dining table
• Accent - yellow flower against sky (I attempted this at the weekend but I'm not satisfied with what I took)
• Complimentary - I need to take the vase in the window again
• Contrast - can't think of anything for this!!!!

Taking photographs

I was out taking photographs this weekend and it struck me that I actually feel that my photography has got worse since I started the course. I think this is for a number of reasons:
1. Part of the process I'm going through is about un-learning some of my previous conceptions of what made a good photograph. This means that I'm having to go back to basics to find out what I think works and what doesn't work.
2. Previously I used to go out and shoot the big fish - i.e. I'd find out where the big fish were (usually by looking at other people's work on flickr, finding the location and then visiting it in order to pretty much recreate the shot. This was effective, but kind of cheating.
3. I'm now comparing my work against genuinely good photographers as opposed to people on flickr, so my work is worse, relatively as well as absolutely.

One productive conclusion that I came to was that as I might often be unsure of the precise photograph I was trying to capture, I should probably be comfortable that I need to consider my first visit to a location or subject as a scouting mission, where I can learn about what works and doesn't work without feeling the pressure to actually capture assignment ready photographs. I can then return to the location/subject with  more focus and control.

Richard Misrach - Pace Macgill Gallery

Of all the exhibitions I went to see in New York, this was the one I was most excited about after I'd seen details of it online. I think I'd seen some of the photographs before - or maybe it was from the first series of beach shots by Misrach- and I'd liked them,but the reason why I was most intrigued was because of the size of the prints. In the Deadpan chapter in "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" it talks about the importance of size of the prints and I'd been looking forward to seeing photographs at this scale - here was my chance.

The series was called "On The Beach 2.0" and consisted of large and detailed photographs of people on the beach and in the sea taken from above (presumably in a helicopter). The most compelling photographs to me were those of the sea.  They stood at about 8 feet tall and really towered over you as you viewed them.

Some of the photographs were just of the sea, in various lights. 3 of these were presented next to each other, they were subtly but significantly different - more variety of the sea could have been captured, but instead it looked like it was the same sea, same day, just a few hours apart. It had a strange emotional effect to stand in front of them. The power, immensity and beauty of the sea was somehow captured and boxed and presented for view. It was strangely evocative of experiencing the beauty of the sea in it's real form - even though it was from a perspective that is not usually seen. It seemed to bring back the experience and emotion of seeing the sea.

Other sea photographs actually contained a human figure in the centre of the picture. Sometimes the figures weren't immediately obvious, instead what you see first is a disturbance in the sea,which then invites you to step closer to the photograph, and then closer still, with each step you expect to find that the photograph has stopped working and has somehow become distorted (e.g. pixelated), or become an exercise at looking at the medium (like looking close at an oil painting in order to investigate brush strokes), but instead you find yourself looking at a small segment of the picture, which works perfectly at this close range due to the detail captured in the print - in fact you could cut an 8" x 10" segment out and put it in a separate frame. I found this whole experience fascinating and truly novel - it was like looking at the photo on 2 completely different planes, I was stepping back and forth in order to experience each plane.

These photographs were also very emotive. For me they caused me to contemplate the nature of identity, of individuality, of man's role in nature and the act of contemplation and reflection itself.

Miles Aldridge - Steven Kasher Gallery

In honesty I probably wouldn't have visited this gallery if I wasn't already visiting galleries in the same location. I think the work would fit under the tableau genre/style, which I generally find a little difficult to engage with.

To my understanding the work was playing with female role stereotypes - particularly that of the domestic, but passively sexually attractive mother and housewife. The subjects/characters seem to be breaking out of the constraints of former passivity - but seem to be doing pretty well at looking like fashion models as they do it. The work is highly colourful, glossy, polished - everything is perfectly placed, hair and make-up remain nicely in place.

Overall they look like fashion shots. If I was a woman I'm not sure I'd be particularly grateful of the roles being foisted on me by society being toyed with (and regenerated?) in this way, I think I'd want art to be more direct in destroying them.

The shots were interesting, but (to me), not inspiring.

Terry Evans - Yancey Richardson Gallery

This was the first of the private galleries that I went to. I was surprised at how open and inviting it was and that I could just wander round completely at my own pace without any questioning or interference. All the galleries that I went to after were just as good in this respect.

These works by Terry Evans were square, black and white aerial landscape views. I was at first unsure whether they were models rather than real landscapes. They had little to no human context and it was difficult to grasp scale. As such the photographs had a very graphical focus, this was emphasised by the rich tones and lighting.

There wasa sliky quality to the shots, contrast was reasonably high but there was still detail in the images (I'm guessing they were medium or large format).

There was no obvious political or philosophical statement here - except maybe about mans imprint on the landscape. In this regard it did raise interesting questions - does man have any impact/significance, negative  or otherwise - but offered opposing answers

One of the shots literally made me gasp because it was so strikingly beautiful. It consisted of a road (possibly a highway/motorway), which swept itself across undulating hills. The light was that of a setting sun - the road almost glistened and the hills cast shadows on the grass. It was at once abstract and also emotive of real world experience.

Martin Parr, Jason Evans - Aperture

Martin Parr
I was again struck by the irony of being in New York, attending an art gallery and seeing an exhibition of a very British photographer - in this instance Martin Parr and his "Life's a Beach" series. As with the Paul Graham pieces I was reminded of my youth (days out in Mabblethorpe!),and struck by the inherently 70's colour palate - which is great but I'm troubled as to how to take inspiration from this without being retro. It was interesting how the more recent photographs looked inherently less compelling from a colour perspective, they also had a more digital feel about them which wasn't as emotive as the earlier shots.

The series was taken over a number of years, including shots of approx a year ago. The prints were at varied sizes, but some were reasonably large. In comparison with some of the other exhibitions I went to the prints were not displayed as consistently across the series - I felt this made the viewing experience less engaging and immersive.

I was fortunate to be in listening range of a guide talking some visitors through the exhibition. However, I was struck by lack of detail commentary of composition, use of colour or purpose. Instead the commentary was more foussed on subject, location and culture. This often seems to be the case, which I think is unfortunate. One interesting comment however was that Parr is a colector of holiday postcards - I think this insight provides a new perspective on his interest in his subjects.


As is often the case with street photography I was struck with wondering how candid these photographs were - clearly some of then would have involved conversations with the subjects before the photograph (I don't think they were intended to look otherwise - this was particularly the case with the more recent shots in  Thailand), but others look like they're supposed be candid, but I wonder whether they are. The shot below is the prime example of this - it's hilarious (as well as being a great composition), but I find it difficult to believe that it's not setup.

Jason Evans

There were a lot of quite academic/philosophical  concepts at play here which I think I'd need to read about in more detail in order to understand and comment on. However, they key feature was the placement of coloured round stickers which the artist had placed onto the prints. This had an interesting effect of emphasising the 2 dimensional surface layer of the 3 dimensional image. This was both an interesting idea and also made for an interesting viewing experience as the eye moved within the image and also onto the surface of the image itself.

???

I'm not sure who the artist was (think I'll write to Aperture to find out), but actually the most interesting photograph I saw in Aperture was by an artist who had compiled a montage of sunsets from photographs posted on Flickr. This was both visually engaging and a really intriguing and thought provoking idea. The colours were obviously warm, but also varied, and the almost polkadot patterned composition caused a smile as you moved closer to it and realised what the dots were - suns! 

For me this piece raised questions about the nature of shared photography; the consistency and universality of this subject from photographs all across the globe; the consistency underlying a very individually felt and expressed experience (i.e. watching the sunset); ethics of consumption of other people's shared work/photographs/experience etc etc etc. It was one of the most interesting pieces I saw while I was in New York.

MoMA

I saw work from a number of photographers at MoMA, here are a few thoughts and reflections.

Dora Maurer
These pieces studied and reflected on the nature of movement and perspective. Details of perspectives were included as part of the piece.Geometry and mathematics were a crucial consideration within the work. The resulting pieces were almost montaged together.

Tracing Space I and Tracing II were of most interest to me. They presented interesting ideas in relation to the Part 4 Assignment which involves taking a single subject under multiple lighting conditions.

Stephen Shore
There were a few pieces by this influential colour photographer. The most interesting was recently shot in Ukraine of a family bathing on the shore of a lake.

Oscar Munoz
The piece disaplyed was called "Game of Probabilities". It involved 12 identity photographs which had been taken of the artist over a number of years. Munoz had then cut these into strips, woven the strips together and then rephotographed them. I thought this was a fairly direct and fascinating piece which questioned the ability of photography to represent a person over time as well as a comment on the nature of identity and time. In addition, it was compelling from a purely aesthetic perspective.

However, it did make me wonder whether the approach was somewhat dated (think it was complete in 2007), as the challenge/question now is about the transigence of identity and representation in the digital realm.

Bill Brandt
There was a significant selection of Bill Brandt's work on display. For me, some of the most interesting pieces were of his nude studies. These high contrast images, often taken at close range and with exaggerated perspective really emphasize the form of the figure in a very graphical way. The shots are driven by shadow and light. Many of the photographs were taken on the beach, but others were taken in domestic settings - which actually make the photographs seem dangerously close to vintage porn...! However, the work is at most subtly erotic.

I've never been particularly interested in nude photography, but I did find this set interesting.

Paul Graham
A number of pieces were displayed from Graham's piece on the A1. The presence of this work kind of made me laugh - I'd come all the way to New York to see something of the history of American street photography and instead was faced with something intrinsically and passionately British, which on the occasions I've seen it before has always reminded me of my own childhood.

However, it was good to see these pieces in the flesh. The photos were surprisingly small, but this made the colours seem even bolder and impressive, especially when the pieces were viewed in quick succession or at the same time.

From a personal perspective as a photographer I kind of get troubled by colour photography from this period though.  I worry that it work so well because of the period itself - the colours from the 70's and early 80's were typically more bold and garish. In addition, the photographs seem to work from a nostalgic perspective. These things combined make me wonder how a photographer can produce similarly effective work in current times.

Trip to New York

Over the next week or so I'm going to put up a bunch of posts about exhibitions I saw in New York, however I thought it worth putting up a general post about my holiday from a photography perspective.

So this was a family holiday and in truth I went with little intention to take anything but snaps. This was a bit frustrating as I was repeatedly aware of fantastic photo opportunities sitting there waiting for me. The flip slide was that I was aware of how easy it was to just fall into the trap of taking cliched genre shots - particularly of street scenes. However, I've always loved playing with a well trodden cliche. But even capturing these cliches would have taken time and patience that I didn't have.

I thought I might be able to get some lucky shots for my current Assignment, but soon decided that this was best forgotten as it would become frustrating for my family and then myself.

However, I really didn't want to miss up the opportunity of visiting some of the art galleries. The obvious one was MoMA as it features in so much of what I read. I managed to convince my wife and family to attend as well - though they did walk round at a different pace to me.... Overall I was a bit disappointed as I was expecting more from the archive and a greater number of photographers represented, it was also extremely busy.

I was also staying just round the corner from the Aperture offices so managed to visit their gallery on a particularly rainy afternoon when everyone else wanted to hangout in the hotel.

My wife and kids also then decided that they wanted to go and see a matinee of the Spider-man musical and I was given the option (which I took), of taking some more time for myself visiting some more galleries.

I did some research on other galleries it was worth visiting - surprisingly other than MoMA they were all private galleries (so nothing in Guggenheim!?), but many were in the same area as Aperture (Chelsea) and so I was able to visit these the following day.

There were undoubtedly a whole bunch of other galleries that I could have attended, but it was fantastic to be able to go to these galleries in the Chelsea area, all of which were very quiet and welcoming and contained some really inspirational work.

Viewing this amount of work in different galleries gave me a new perspective on this means of viewing photography. The size of the work starts to have far more bearing on the work itself, as does the ability to really linger on a set of work one piece at a time or scanning across multiple images at the same time, drifting from one back to the other, viewing from a dinstance or stepping in really close. All of this is very different to the act viewing digital images (often of mixed quality and size) over the internet - it feels very static and stale in comparison to the gallery experience.

Back from the break....

So it's been over 4 months since I really did anything for my degree or any kind of photography really. This just kind of happened unintentionally when I got caught up in my other creative hobby (making music - www.soundcloud.com/seb_7), and ended up wanting to spend all my spare time doing that rather than photography. I think the trigger back to photography came from a recent holiday to New York (there will be several blog entries on that coming up), but also simply from the fact that I tend to spend a few months a year on my music (typically spring for some reason) and then tire of it, only to return to it again the following year. Odd. Anyway, now that the drive to create music has subsided there is more space to get back into my photography (if I'm honest, music is my real passion, photography is more of a cerebral activity which involves less personal expression).

I decided not to force myself back onto the course but instead to just wait until I wanted to return to it.

I think one of the things that gave me the confidence to take the break was reading an article on the OCA site about a student who had taken 2 years to do their first Assignment submission. Kind of made me think that I should relax a bit and enjoy things a bit more.

Anyway, I'm going to write up a number of entries to cover my time in New York and then I need to pick up where I left off with Assignment 3. I aim to submit it in July.

Photography as Contemporary Art - Chapter 5 - Intimate Life

I think this is one of the least interesting chapters to me, although Ithe more I see of this type of work, the more I warm to it. The chapter talks about the style of photography which capture the day-to-day, confessional, activities and interactions of people as they live their lives. It's highly subjective and as the title of the chapter suggests - intimate. The photography is typically unpremeditated and almost snapshot - many of the pictures look like they're taken from a family album (and that's why I find them difficult to appreciate). However, this seeming lack of care for technical precision is use to enhance the intimacy.

One key difference with the family snapshot is that it usually focuses on key life events. But here the subjects are captured in their most normal, unromantic settings. The photographs will often deal with taboos, or subcultures.

Nan Goldin is the most obvious and well publicised photographer who fits into this mould. She didn't take photographs with art in mind, her photographs don't purport to be anything other what they were - her attempt to capture the day to day lives of herself and her friends. My concern (and one referenced in the book itself, is that those photographers who hav come after her were not so innocent of the artistic and commercial value of their work and so therefore the work becomes more pre-conceived, contrived and therefore less intimate.

I guess one of the reasons that I feel this way about this photography is that I was a bit of fan of the Face (and similar), magazines in the 90's and I witnessed the proliferation of this imagery for the purposes of fashion photography (the book references this also), and the associated development of the 'heroin chic' look. This was fine at the time, but I find it difficult to take seriously now. "The fashionable" and "the cool" are inherently at odds with art for me.

What to me is more interesting is later in the chapter when we come to artists such as Ryan McGinley who are more knowingly and openly playing with photography as a means of enabling a group of people to present themselves in a certain way and create their own narrative - for consumption by others. The work Japanese artists Hiromix and Yang Yong falls into the same camp.

I also think where photography comes to be used as a means of documenting aspects of family life - almost as a means of self-therapy - are also interesting.

Larry Sultan  combines new work combined with family snaps, film footage and transcribed conversations to tell his families story and history.

Colin Gray's work to study and understand his parents relationship as their health deterioriates in old age seems genuine, heartfelt and unpretentious.

Assignment 3 - progress

Well, I went out with my second-cousin/nephew today and I'm getting there with the shots I'm taking for Assignment 3. Got most of them ticked off or at least know what I'm going to take, but have a couple o excpetions:

• Need 2 more subjects for Accent
• Need 1 more subject for Contrast
• .....

The street photography I did didn't offer much up and I don't think that nature is going to provide with the above unless I wait for Summer or Autumn,...... hmmmm,.......

Paul Graham

I was recommended to look at the work of Paul Graham by my tutor. His name rang a bell. Peter Fraser also talked about him quite a bit in his lecture which I attended.

I followed the link which my tuture provided me (http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com), but decided that I would read some of the articles on there before looking at his work.

The first article is by someone writing about Graham's work - David Chandler (http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/writings.html). He talks about Graham's approach almost as a stream of conscious activity, but with the same meditative seriousness with which Fraser talked about his work. Apparently he was inspired by some of the writings of Chekhov. There is a quote in the article which seems to fit wonderfully:


‘And when he was crossing the river on the ferry, and then when he was walking up the hill, looking down at his own village and across to the west, where the cold crimson sunset was glowing in a narrow band, he realised that truth and beauty, which had guided human life in that garden and at the high priest’s, had continued to do so without a break until the present day, and had clearly always constituted the most important elements in human life, and on earth in general; and a feeling of youth, health, and strength – he was only twenty two years old – and an inexpressibly sweet expectation of happiness, of unfathomable, mysterious happiness, gradually overcame him, and life seemed entrancing and miraculous to him, and full of sublime meaning.'
                                                                                       Anton Chekov, The Student

The article I read which is written by Graham is also very interesting (http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/writings_by.html) - particularly because Fraser actually talked about it at one point and quoted a section from it. In this article Graham talks about how it seems to be difficult for art critics and curators to conceive of his work and others like it as art. Because it isn't staged like the tableau photography of Jeff Wall (for example).

He makes an attempt to describe how the work of artists such as himself should be conceived:
"So, what is it we are discussing here - how do we describe the nature of this photographic creativity? My modest skills are insufficient for such things, but let me make an opening offer: perhaps we can agree that through force of vision these artists strive to pierce the opaque threshold of the now, to express something of the thus and so of life at the point they recognised it.  They struggle through photography to define these moments and bring them forward in time to us, to the here and now, so that with the clarity of hindsight, we may glimpse something of what it was they perceived.  Perhaps here we have stumbled upon a partial, but nonetheless astonishing description of the creative act at the heart of serious photography: nothing less than the measuring and folding of the cloth of time itself."

And it was these last few words which Fraser quoted - "nothing less than the measuring and folding of the cloth of time itself".

The second article is certainly one I will read again and again - Photography is Easy, Photography is Difficult - which covers everything that title implies. Both the democracy and the speciality of the act of taking photographs.

And then I looked at some of his work.

A1 - The great north road : I looked at this set for 2 reasons, 1 because it looks like it was his first set and 2 becauase I remember the A1 a lot from my childhood in Lincoln. There is a sense here of travelling down this road and capturing something of it's transience and wastefulness of being on the way somewhere  passing through as opposed to having arrived. Some of the photographs have wonderful colour, the following shot is entirely what I envisaged when saying I wanted to capture green trees and blue sky to show similar colours:

End of an age : This is really interesting. The set is a series of portraits of different people which in turn show the subject at turning angles so that across the set it is as if a single subject is turning round, almost like an animation.

American night: I found this set extremely powerful. Again, the sequence seems to be very important. Very light high contrast photographs which seem to have a single, drifting figure in the centre of a flat, urban landscape. The figures I think are black. And then periodically the image is instead a high contrast, highly saturated photograph of middle class suburaban house and instead of any figure there might be a car. Later in the sequence are pictures of people, all black, again drifting, but this time up close and very personal.

I'm not sure how to describe this set and the emotional resonance it has. Unsettling. Unnerving. Hypnotic.

Seeing Paul Graham's work has underlined and increased my interest in having work as a set where the whole is greater than sum of it's parts.

Peter Fraser - Red Eye lecture

I attended the lecture by Peter Fraser at the Manchester Art Gallery last night which was organised by Redeye - http://www.redeye.org.uk/programme/peter-fraser-talk .

What I took from the lecture is that for Peter Fraser there is a definite spiritual aspect to taking photographs. He talked of being in an almost meditative state when he takes a photograph. That when he's in that moment he sees the subject in a way which is completely different and which is very special to him. With the excpetion of occasionally placing a background behind his subjects, he never changes the scene which he photographs. I found this really inspirational.

The lecture was also particularly relevant to my current course part - colour!

It was interesting (and slightly at odds), to hear him talk about the commercial aspects of being a contemporary artist. It was also interesting and surprising how he talked about the technical aspect of capturing and printing photographs - this aspect clearly mattered to him.

I was a little briefer than I'd expected (1 hour and 20 minutes maybe), and we didn't delve into the detail of his approach as much as I would have liked. I was also frustrated with myself for not asking any questions. Questions I wish I'd asked:

• Are you always looking for things to photograph or do you do it as a deliberate and separate activity to everyday life?
• When you see a subject you like how do you approach it?
• Do you take one or multiple photographs?
• Has this changed since you moved to digital?

I'd read a little on Peter Fraser before the lecture, but I intend to get a book which is about to be released by the Tate on him as I'm keen to know more. There is also an exhibition on him at St Ives, it's over 5 hours drive away but I'm still very tempted to make a trip at some point!

Overall I found it kind of mind-blowing. There's something about being in a situation which is absolutely concentrated on the art of photography, surrounded by like-minded people whom I'd never normally come in to contact with that makes me feel dizzy. It's complete escapism from normal day-to-day life and it's the exact reason why I started this course. I can't wait for the next one!

Part 3 - Exercise 4

This exercise is to mimic the effects of using colour filters in black and white photography. In digital, following  conversion to Black & White you can raise the brightness of red/yellow/green/blue to recreate the effect of using a filter. This has the same effect as a filter because, for example, a yellow filter will let more yellow light than any other colour, so had the effect of raising the brightness of all yellow objects.

colour

b&w - unfiltered

red filter

The above photo is the equivalent of using a red filter - the red top is now significantly lighter than it was previously.

yellow filter

And now the yellow filter makes the yellow top lighter.

green filter

The green top was pretty dark so while it's made lighter it's still quite dark.

blue filter

And now the blue filter.

Assignment 3 - Preparatory thoughts

I want to tackle a number of themes or subject types for this Assignment. It would make sense to have 4 themes and take 1 of each relationship for each theme. However, in practice with some themes it may be difficult to capture all the relationships. Anyway, themes I think I'm going to use are:

• The Street (I can take a similar approach here as I did for Assignment 2)
• Still life (as stated previously I want to do found still life's rather than staged ones. However, looking at the brief for the assignment it actually says that using both arranged and found subjects is recommended, so I'll bear this in mind)
• Portraits (I'm thinking that experimenting with different clothes and backgrounds could work here)
• Nature (I think the palette will be limited here, but being able to demonstrate an ability to find less obvious colours will be good. The palette will be especially limited as it's the middle of winter.)

The Street

As above, I can take a similar approach as previous. No need to think too much about the specifics of what I'll photograph. 

Still life

Again, think I just need to look for inspiration on this one. However there are a few things I want to look out for:

Complementary - cool morning light with something standing out

Similar - warm colours, tungsten light

Amend - 12/1/13
Come up with a few subjects for this now:

• The rather tacky gnome in the back garden has red, yellow and blue on it
• Coloured pegs on the washing line
• Coloured bottles in the bathroom

Portraits

Complementary - Green top against red brick

Similar - Same Green top against trees/bushes

Contrast - Red top against blue background

Accent - any of the above where I can find a large enough background to keep the subjects' top small

Amend - 12/1/13
Tried doing this with my son but he got bored after about 2 minutes. Need to find another model.

Nature

There is a tree I really like which I'd like to take some photographs of for this.

Complimentary - blue and orange sky

Similar - green trees, blue sky

Contrast - green trees, orange sky

Accent - small green tree against blue sky

Amend 12/1/13
Think I might really struggle to find much colour in nature at the minute. The sky is either completely over cast or completely blue. And there is very little colour in the trees....

Colour Theory

I've found a number of other interesting articles on the web re Colour Theory

http://www.framedreality.com/color-in-photography-color-theory

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/colour_theory.shtml

http://www.tutorial9.net/articles/design/simple-practical-color-theory/

http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/digital-photography-101-the-basics-of-color-theory.html#b

http://www.creativephotobook.co.uk/pg09007.html

http://www.oca-uk.com/data/resources/basic-colour-theory.pdf

To be honest, they don't really say that much more than what is said in the coursework except for some points on Receding and Advancing colours. Nevertheless some of them go into a bit more depth and present the information in some interesting ways which may be helpful when I do the Assignment.

Part 3 - Exercise 3

This exercise looks first at combining each combination of primary and complimentary (opposing on the colour wheel), colours. What's more the objective is to combine them in the ratios recommended by Goethe:

• Red : Green - 1:1
• Orange : Blue - 1:2
• Yellow : Violet - 1:3

I'm not sure I got the ratios exact, but they're not far off. I also have to be honest and say that while I can see that the colours work well together, I'm not necessarily seeing that the ratios of particularly important in terms of getting them to work together appropriately.

Red and Green in a 1:1 ratio.

Orange and Blue in a 1 to 2 ratio.

Yellow and Violet in a ratio of 1:3

The second part of the exercise is simply to choose some subjects / scenes which have colours which I find pleasing.

The first is blue and green, with a some neutral brown and grey around them. The blue and green both have an earthy acidic quality to them which I think makes them work together well. Both colours are quite cool. They are next to each other on the colour wheel and so have Harmony by being Similar.

The next 2 colours also have Harmony by being Similar - next to each other on the colour wheel.

Part 3 - Exercise 2

For this exercise I needed to find scenes where a single colour dominated and then vary the exposure in order to see the impact on the colour.

This leaf presented a wonderful bright, sharp yellow. The blue of the glass table it fell on also provides a strong complimentary background.

This leaf has wonderful warm orange tones.

When they're a bit brighter the tones become more lively.

And dull, but still rich when underexposed.

Coke-red - it's a classic.

The purple towel contains it's contrasting compliment within it (yellow). The blue background is also the side colour for the purple.

The blue of these drums doesn't seem to change that much as the exposure changes.

The green in these shots is far more subtle.

Additional shots

There is a definite orange to this wood

A number of greens here.

And again, a number of blues here - including the sky.