Edward Steichen  

Edward was a American fashion Photographer that was working for the Conde Nast magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair while working with J. Walter Thomas in advertising in 1923. During these years he was highly known to be the highest paid photographer in the world.

During the war Edward's experience aerial reconnaissance photography had given him a new apprecaition of the outstanding and potential realistic manipulated photography, with its expressive detail that is compelling and rich range of tones. 

David Bailey- Celebrity Portraits                         

The person who is closing eyes I feel like that is portraying that he is a dreamer, dreaming of ideas, he is a calm and relaxed character

Doing portraits it's important to look at the portrait and see who it is off and see how it relates to the person and matches to their personality and how they should be represented. I think David Bailey has chosen Jack Nicholson to do a portrait shoot is to capture how people can have a dark side to their soul, achieved this by selected a lighting at an angle of his face to emphasize his side of face. He chose this famous actor known in Hollywood who played different roles such as cynical and menacing characters such as the joker in batman film to portray a dark psychotic character to image to show that it's hard to notice a psychopath as everyone can be naturally crazy. Jack Nicholson is well known in a film "The shining" where he is depicted to be a murderous psychopath, I believe that David has chosen this actor to portray anger, fustration just as a psychopath would feel and wanted his image to look kind of comedic in the way his mouth is perched into a square leading people to think its not spontaneous and wanting to give out a message across that everybody has a dark side by making half the actors face lit dark which I find it interesting.

Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art

SUNDERLAND

The current exhibition in Sunderland was titled 'You Are The Company In Which You Keep' where the group were experiencing different collections of film, digital photography and collages from various artists. In the gallery there were a good range of interesting styles and ideas to help me in future.

http://www.ngca.co.uk/exhibs/default.asp?id=191&prnt=18

'burn' is a horrendous creation: a dream-like sequence which leads to self-destruction and tragedy. The main characters are seemingly unaware of the destruction all around them- indeed the disaster speedily all around them and quickly enclosing. The characters ignore the fact that their house and belongings  being destroyed with no concern for the future. 

Evaluation

First time I got this assignment I thought that the film camera will be challenging as it's new to me but learning something new can be fun and interesting. I hardly know anything about street photography or any photographers who do this topic so started to research on the definition to grasp what is behind of it and a way to tell a story if needed. Street photography overall was hard to figure out the right settings as I'm too used to looking onto screen after taking shot and just improve on it but the film camera you can't and  can't redo the shot which hurts as that day and moment has gone. I have been unlucky with films as they been getting fogged, scratched and dusty so I had to wash them but then ended up have streaks across the negatives and half an developed negative. Starting shooting the rolls of six films I was hoping that this old film camera actually works and not break on me sometimes it does as the camera takes time to get power from the battery as I was getting freezes when shooting saying BC which I guessed meant battery change even though the battery is fine so that stopped me from chilling around the streets noticing shapes, shadows, facial expressions, as I seen moody, stressed, worried emotions which is interesting and spotting the tones and creases on clothes when passing a variations of lighting example dim light which made me focus on Fstop to constantly quickly change before the shot I want vanished.  The most exciting part of this project is seeing the processed film from the drier seeing if my story of travelling around the streets has come to picture successfully.


For my theme of this assignment is that I looked at how people lives their lives on the streets such as cafe's as in the way they communicate with others showing different gestures, facial expressions and postures and looked at how architecture around us but finding it in window reflections making my images looking all abstract. I find that window reflections can help the image have more things to look out for such as shops that's near, old victorian buildings so that the viewers can get the feel of my surrounding I was taking place on shooting film. I found people looking in different directions intriguing as the light hits on side of face showing light to dark and making creases in clothing a nice texture. Photographing people on the streets has shown relationships on the way they walk in a group, partners or single such as the cafe shot where theres like two on left and right and a women alone in the middle just breaks up the image to me, not looking too much of people so you can get the feel of atmosphere of that place which gives a calm, relaxing sensation.

Street photography has given me experience to view the world differently and take in to thought and look out for the architecture and the view of people living their daily lives. Through this project I think I have gained great social skills and more confidents in going out shooting on my own. Overall I think this was new to me and a big push for me to stick in and stay interested. For my finals of themes I had linked my images with Jakub Ostrowski, Martin Parr, polly Braden and Vivian Marier as they all helped with ideas on how to portray the human interaction and bearings on what to look for in the streets and show the views visually what I see and feel that is an eye catching pass by moments in the streets.

Prints So Far That I Would Like To Experiment With For Finals

The man in the picture looks as if he's not amused with the cafe he just left and there's a lot of detail on his clothes. I didn't notice the women looking through the window I was mainly intrigued on the man's moody character. I find that the women looking through the window gives a sense of feel what the cafe's atmosphere is in the way she's sitting all gormless. 

I like this image as everyone is just not bothered that there's an man posing like a statue and I find that cuts off the clothes colouring he's around as everyone is wearing dark clothing and there's him right in the middle bright white. 

I really like this image because of how different everyone facial expressions area and their postures it just gives character and something to look for in the picture. This style looks all crisp as the ground is all broken up into streaks, darkness, bright white and the windows has caught some words from other shops and cafe's around me.

This image I think that its the shadows that's making me like this as it draws my eyes and the figures are all kind of blacked out that blends with the bold colouring buildings.

Group Critique

Group critique wasn't that terrifying as I thought, instead it turned out to be good for me to express my interpretation about my work and give me a chance to go out of my comfort zone and talk to the group.

Before I had to began  the group critique I was given a question sheet to help me reflect on my work and others when trying to describe the photographs. The question guide sheet enabled me to think more creatively on idea and the concept when viewing photographs.

The group had to put all of their own folded up descriptions into a hat and then pick one and try and find out which photographs fitted with description which I found difficult and had to repeat reading the description to get my head around it.

After we had found the students work fitted with description I had picked out of hat I then had to talk out loud describing creatively by looking at their photographs and description to help me give out my thoughts on what student is portraying, I said something like she is interested in photographing subjects that are lost and found such as why is their historical structures about what is the fascination of this is their a hidden story behind this.

The frightening thing about this group critique is the thought of students not liking my photographs but had to just take their opinion as it's the eye of the beholder, everyone sees differently.

At the end of the group critique I then had to fill in students strengths and area of development which is helpful for us to improve on a specific weakness.

Darkroom- Developing Film 

 

Technique I use to pop open film canister is using a 2p my first time in dark room opening the canister was not fun i had to come out to take a breather as I wasn't as quick as everyone else that caused me to freak out but caught up eventually. The next stage is to roll the film into reel which is fussy and my film kept coming off and going to the floor and trying to pick up the film in the dark ending up hitting my head on table ouch :(

I have to make sure that the door is fully closed properly so I don't get light into room and going into my film which will cause my negatives of being fogged.

When I have finished doing the real I then have to insert the cylindrical tube in the middle of reel and put in the tank and fit the funnel in tank to take in the chemicals. 

I measure 75ml of developer and dilute it with 300ml water and pour into developer tank.With the thermometer I need to check the temperature which is needed to be set at 20 degrees. When the temperature is right I then pour in tank and agitate for a minute and stop for 10 seconds and carry on doing this for 20 minutes. Then throw the developer away and go and fill funnel with the stopper and agitate this for 20 seconds and pour stopper back in bottle. Then I use a fixer and pour it into funnel that is fixed to tank and agitate this for 3minutes and pour fixer back in bottle to be reused. I then wash the film for 20 minutes to wash off all the chemicals and place into drier for 30minutes.