Author: Benita

Henry Fox Talbot

Henry Fox Talbot is famous for his development of the calotype, an early improvement of the daguerreotype. The talbot is created from the form of negative-positive, from that multiples can be made.

This type is exciting to me as it picks up tons of detail really well while still being able to easily inverse the image in photoshop. Although his work isn’t too much what I’m going for, I do want that level of detail and the ability to retain that information even after inverting the image. For going forward with this artist, I’m planning to take inspiration from his level of detail and the quality of said images.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Henry-Fox-Talbot

Louis Daguerre

Louis Daguerre was a french artist and photographer. He was mainly known for his invention of the eponymous daguerreotype. The daguerreotype was the first publicly available photography with a less expensive process and yielded more viewable images. From this, he was known as one of the fathers of photography but also composed art, was a scenic designer and was a developer of the diorama theatre.

This piece specifically attracted me as it actually captures a busy street with people constantly moving, but the photo presents us, viewers, as still. The only human visible is the shoe cleaner and the man as they have been there the whole time the photo was taken. This photo intrigued me as to me it looks like a ghost town, extremely barren and gone, but when learning that it was taken over the span of an hour, and the movement wasn’t captured, is so charming. The fact that there was life moving inside the image, but we can’t see it through the image, makes me feel so confused and quite excited. I want to incorporate something similar in my work, something where I know there is movement, or something similar, that cant is seen in the image but only known till given the knowledge. For me, this can be through the wind affecting the trees and moving them, or just having people walking in front. The movement that may/may not be captured is something really exciting to me.

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/daguerre-louis/

I think all of the images work really well being blown up into a0&a1 as I can actually see the small details but can just see the entire image and back away and take the image in. It did take a bit to choose where to place the images as I’m so used to collage boards having to be a certain way but after I got over that and with the help of classmates and the teacher help, I started to figure out what looks good where and what works being next to each other and where some should move to different sides. I say photography was a bit of a struggle because halfway I was at a standstill at where my work was going to take me as I could see others produce ideas from their work I had nothing at that moment, after playing around and bringing in new items I figured where I was going to head into. I say another hard part was choosing what photos I wanted to use and what I would do with them, but that was quickly dealt with when we had critical discussions and had input on what I could be continuing my idea with. I mean I did have ideas, especially from artists presented to us in class, but they never really stuck with me as there was something I wanted to do but never attracted me to make art in that way. This semester was definitely an experience and something new to play with and the idea’s presented. I’m happy with my final work and proud with the final result.

I spent wk 12 photoshopping and pulling idea’s together and planning what works. I had made them with the thought of what the relationship between the pinhole and tabletop, the relationship of the photoshops to the brief and why I see the work/connect. For me I wanted to incorporate the idea of microplastics in our environment, so the nature overlapping with our outside city and the lego pieces on top/in the plants for me is the dosage of microplastics not only we eat but our new environments provide. I think that maybe yes I could have done something different with photoshop and the photos I had but I do really think that these give the idea I want to present and I enjoyed playing with the image and manipulating the end result of each photo.

I spent both weeks playing around with more tabletop(?) photography to have more materials to use with photoshop. Since I had an idea in mind I started to apply these to how I could perhaps manipulate into the vision I had. I spent wk 11 also planning out what photos I could use together and the idea’s that each photo comes with. My idea was to have a mix of pinhole photography and tabletop (I keep forgetting the name T^T) as it mixes the media and idea’s presented in each type, and I also get to explore the relationship between the two.

For Wednesday we continued with pinhole photography. We got kind of lucky and had the same weather as the past Thursday. I only am saying we are lucky as if the weather had changed it would be hard to understand the time for our photography, so the similar weather quality let us take photos immediately without having to worry about doing new test strips. I also spent Wednesday helping two other classmates who weren’t there the past week and catching them up on everything. It was nice to teach them as not only did they learn, but I also got to refresh myself in the process of everything and make myself remember the details about how to do it. it was great as I had forgotten little steps as I was speeding through it and only realise some mistakes. I used bigger papers as I got confident in my ability. I’d say Wednesdays came out great as some parts are softer than others, showing this movement and wind, what I’m trying to incorporate. For my Nature Drawing itself, I want to incorporate the movement and technology of humans so if I get the wind to move nature or have people walk in front of my pinhole then I’m extremely happy about that.

Thursday we moved to a new type of photography, cyanotype. This one is different as we still used the same light-sensitive paper, but we used a machine inside the dark room that projects light for specific times and brightness for any time we want. This one was fun as we got to choose and manipulate how the images will come out. This was fun as thinking of the possibility of what we can add and change was extra exciting. I used plants from my garden as I wanted to keep the greenery used close to me and personal as I love just sitting at the door and looking at the garden, as It gives me a sense of calm and peace. This was a new challenge but fun and quick to learn and id say I nailed it! for the extra last one, I had wanted to see what would happen if I just had put a plastic bag around and id say it gave it such a fun texture that id so definitely keeps using.

For the second half of Sem 2, I have photography! for the first week of an intro to this, we first learned the focus of this brief and how we will be doing it. The brief for us is Nature Drawing itself, something that I’m interested in as I’ve always loved seeing nature either reclaim the world with abandoned places/being left alone or seeing how we humans push the earth for self-benefit. For Wednesday we had to take photos around AUT to see ourselves the greenery, the places where nature interacts with us in our lives. I had mostly interacted with chancery as that’s a place I frequent as the building there and the nature used is aesthetically pleasing.

On Thursday when we started doing pinhole photography. It was something new as I’d never really heard of pinhole photography so it was a learning curve. When we started we all had a bucket with a tiny hole, but every hole has the slightest difference that changes the image quality so we had to do a few tests to figure out what was the perfect time for exposure for us individually. I had done three tests with a pretty overcast day, with more sun coming out later, and figured my golden times are 1-2 ish minutes. From taking the photos we had to develop them in a dark room. For me, it was hard to get used to walking in and out of the room, but still getting used to it. I say developing the photos is pretty straight forward and easy to understand.

I had chosen these works as they are the ones I enjoy more, the ones I believe have the best that I’ve put into it before. This half-semester was an experience as I’ve never done this with my art. it had felt as if it was kinda a reset and everything I knew while also not disregarding my ability in art. These have been stuff I’ve never done and was a great experience in my art-making journey this first half of the semester. It’s a fun new way to use paint and apply art, and would most probably adapt these techniques further into my own art-making skills.

Same with week 6 but just doing some play with only painting the shadows, light and what I first see in the image. It’s fun to test out different ways that an image can be represented as I’ve always kept it one note while painting so playing with different image representations was a fun learning curve for me. I also had one have no gesso, one with thick gesso, and one with thinned-out gesso as I wanted to see how I would react to the application. It definitely made different impacts on the application and final result, with thick gesso taking in the best application while none was hard for the image to not run. It was definitely an experience to stretch fabric and to also paint on it in this format.