This has been quite a challenging but eventful week for me. I have learned how to build an online gallery for my images with Wix, which can be found here.
http://kdfphotography.wixsite.com/kdf1
It was not as challenging as I had assumed it would be, and it is quite satisfying to see the whole thing taking shape as a vehicle for my ongoing work.
My project proposal has mutated into a different beast, with me now deciding to concentrate on my own work and to curate an exhibition of work by visually handicapped photographers alongside it.
To this end I have made contact with a blind society and they are going to ask their members for volunteers. They have about 30 already!
I have been very lucky to have been offered a very large exhibition space for my own work, and I have decided to split this in two for myself and the curated part of the project.
I am looking forward to the challenge of curating work by others. the examples I have seen so far are both impressive for their attention to composition and surprising for their attention to detail. There seems also to be a certain amount of humour present, of which more at a later time.
Saturday, 12 November 2016
Friday, 4 November 2016
Peer commissioned micro project
This project was an opportunity to find out if I could deliver an image requested quite specifically by one of my peers. I must admit to being a bit trepidatious when I first considered it, but as time went on it definitely got easier.
This is the brief that Philip gave me "The theme is "autumn flora". The twist is to produce an image of some autumnal flowers, but indoors in a still-life. And possibly shot in the style of the impressionists."
I don't usually do still life, much less work indoors, so I thought this was going to be quite a challenge for me. I thought long and hard about what "Autumn flora" might mean. Flowers that appear in autumn? Fungi? I finally decided to show flowers that had come to the end of their lives, their autumn, if you like.
I guessed a bunch of dead flowers wasn't going to show what was asked for, and would not show what I wanted it to.
I realised quite quickly that there had to be something else in the image to point the viewer towards the theme of autumn. So I decided to stage the flowers (Roses in this case)with apples, autumn leaves and a conker. i figured this would give a sense of the season and possibly act as allegory for the autumn of the flowers.
The photograph itself was quite straightforward to make once I had worked out the composition. I decided to add a few jars of pickles and preserves to further show it was autumn, and took the photograph.
The next problem was how to make it look impressionistic? I knew from previous studies that the impressionists were not really enamoured with decay or death, preferring to celebrate life in the main , with just a few exceptions.
So I used a bit of artistic licence and decided to make the photograph look more like a late renaissance image, a time when the fascination for dead animals and rotten fruit was at its strongest.
I darkened the image down a bit,gave it some more soft focus, added a partial vignette and gave it a bit of a dirty wash to make it look like a painting with the varnish going off a bit.
Philip was happy with the result, so I count this exercise as a success.
Once again I have found that working outside my comfort zone has been really quite fulfilling. As I have said before I do not really see any new challenges in what I do usually, and i feel I am become stale within it. These new challenges are helping me to use my creative side in a way I would never have considered before. I like solving puzzles and solving problems, and this seems to be giving me an opportunity to do both. I know the finished image is quite amateur, but I am beginning to see how I could make my work look at least as if I might know what I am doing.
There were a number of abortive attemptsw, different lighting composition etc, and a few follow here.
This is the brief that Philip gave me "The theme is "autumn flora". The twist is to produce an image of some autumnal flowers, but indoors in a still-life. And possibly shot in the style of the impressionists."
I don't usually do still life, much less work indoors, so I thought this was going to be quite a challenge for me. I thought long and hard about what "Autumn flora" might mean. Flowers that appear in autumn? Fungi? I finally decided to show flowers that had come to the end of their lives, their autumn, if you like.
I guessed a bunch of dead flowers wasn't going to show what was asked for, and would not show what I wanted it to.
I realised quite quickly that there had to be something else in the image to point the viewer towards the theme of autumn. So I decided to stage the flowers (Roses in this case)with apples, autumn leaves and a conker. i figured this would give a sense of the season and possibly act as allegory for the autumn of the flowers.
The photograph itself was quite straightforward to make once I had worked out the composition. I decided to add a few jars of pickles and preserves to further show it was autumn, and took the photograph.
So I used a bit of artistic licence and decided to make the photograph look more like a late renaissance image, a time when the fascination for dead animals and rotten fruit was at its strongest.
Philip was happy with the result, so I count this exercise as a success.
Once again I have found that working outside my comfort zone has been really quite fulfilling. As I have said before I do not really see any new challenges in what I do usually, and i feel I am become stale within it. These new challenges are helping me to use my creative side in a way I would never have considered before. I like solving puzzles and solving problems, and this seems to be giving me an opportunity to do both. I know the finished image is quite amateur, but I am beginning to see how I could make my work look at least as if I might know what I am doing.
There were a number of abortive attemptsw, different lighting composition etc, and a few follow here.
Tuesday, 1 November 2016
Reflection on project proposal
My project proposal "The art of seeing, an exploration of light", seems to be firming up a bit more in my mind now. I have more of an idea of which direction I might be taking it, or is it taking me?
We see so many images on a daily basis, we ignore most of them. So we have this repository of images in our head, a dustbin full of memories we are not really aware of.
My project is about showing what is seen but unseen. It is about how some things can be visible but invisible at the same time. A simple example of this would be to ask yourself the last time you noticed a postman going about his business when you were not actually waiting for a letter, or you were just bimbling along the street. If he was there you saw him, but you didnt realise you had. He is both visible and invisible.
That is the experience of many disabled people, both blind and sighted. Visible but overlooked. My project, I hope will bring about a greater awareness of all those things we see but do not notice. I have asked some people who live locally and are registered blind to take some photographs so that I can find out if there is any subject which binds their creativity together, for instance family, food, pets, gardens etc. I might be surprised and be faced with wonderful abstraction, I just don't know.
In any case that mini project will hopefully inform my ongoing work and give it some direction.
We see so many images on a daily basis, we ignore most of them. So we have this repository of images in our head, a dustbin full of memories we are not really aware of.
My project is about showing what is seen but unseen. It is about how some things can be visible but invisible at the same time. A simple example of this would be to ask yourself the last time you noticed a postman going about his business when you were not actually waiting for a letter, or you were just bimbling along the street. If he was there you saw him, but you didnt realise you had. He is both visible and invisible.
That is the experience of many disabled people, both blind and sighted. Visible but overlooked. My project, I hope will bring about a greater awareness of all those things we see but do not notice. I have asked some people who live locally and are registered blind to take some photographs so that I can find out if there is any subject which binds their creativity together, for instance family, food, pets, gardens etc. I might be surprised and be faced with wonderful abstraction, I just don't know.
In any case that mini project will hopefully inform my ongoing work and give it some direction.
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