The result of my final Assessment.

512659 Shaun Mullins PH4CAN Results Letter

512659 Shaun Mullins PH4CAN Marksheet

I have received my marks and confirmation that I have passed!  Which is great!

I am however, a little disappointed at the marks I got as I did my very best and read as many books as I could lay my hands on to fully understand the theory and concepts behind this course and put them in to practical practice.

I found my photographic assignments very challenging, and I spent a great deal of time reading for research and brainstorming for ideas which my blogs illustrate with my handwritten notes, sketched ideas.  I was disappointed that as a result of all that my images are criticized as being ‘stock-photography’.  It is also very ironic because at one point when I really couldn’t come up with any ideas I tried looking for stock-photos for inspiration but found nothing of any use.  So clearly their is a great stock-photography web-site I don’t know about, or maybe I’m just not good at asking the right questions to find them.  Anyway, these images came out of my head not anyone else’s but as I keep reading in every book OCA lists, “There is no such thing as a new idea” (unless you are an Assessor of cause)  Maybe, my ideas were cliche; I don’t know, I haven’t seen enough photos like mine to know, but I guess the assessors have.  I bow to their experience.  My images were considered too obvious,  hopefully in time my experience will teach my imagination to be more sophisticated and in turn more subtle.  My new course is also helping with ideas of motifs and the rule-of-three which I can use in photo essays to be able to put over an idea in subtler ways as they do in Hollywood.  Art like science works best with cross-fertilization of ideas, theories and practices.  For example, Geologist and Paleontologists have a better understanding of their work by being aware of the others sciences.

With regards to my essay, I was congratulated on producing a good essay.  I was criticized for reading too diverse range of books and authors; but at this stage of my course I am still trying to learn as much as I can whilst looking for something that can inspire me enough to confidently specialize in.  I prefer portraiture work and the Film-Noir images I did with Nikon really gave me a buzz; so I think that style of work is my forte.  I love using all kinds of lighting to create interesting / stunning images and just using natural-light I find boring.  This is where I think I will start drilling.

Anyway, I passed and I now need 40 points to reach my 120 which I hope I can achieve for my next course which was a new challenge, film-making.

If anyone other than myself bothers to read this, please wish me luck!

Dodge and Burn

Further to comments made by my Tutor, I have used the Burn feature in photoshop to reduce the highlight area to the left of the picture that my Tutor suggests pulls the eye.

Before.

After:

My skills with Photoshop are still very basic and a thorough scrutinisation of the brick work will quickly reveal the work I have done with the ‘Healing Brush’.  Although I hope that no one is going to look too closely at the brick work.

Alternative images as per my Tutor’s comments.

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This is my new alternative presentation from my original work for assignment 2 based upon my Tutors comments.

My Tutor commented on two images that he felt should have been composed in landscape to be consistent with my other images and he felt that the last image was weak in comparison the the rest.  I have therefor re-shot to offer better alternatives.

The first was referring to my dog and this was the original portrait version.

D-800e, 24-120mm f/4 @ 120mm, 1/20 sec, f/8, ISO-320, daylight W.B.  Adjustments made in Lightroom to convert to black-and-white and then image tinted in Photoshop, Hue 257, Saturation 3.

This new version composed in landscape photographed in RAW and converted to black-and-white in Lightroom and tinted in Photoshop.

This next image Clive felt was weak.

Clive’s two objections were that again it has in portrait and he felt the colour was at odds with the black-and-white theme of the other images.

I  can not re-do this picture to landscape as time has moved on and this bud has since flowered and gone.  Furthermore, I was never one-hundred percent happy with it anyway, as I had struggled to come up with a better idea for an image.  However, I have recently had a new idea that I like….

As you can see I have sketched out my idea of an image of myself suited and booted shaking hands with another suited and booted person whilst discreetly crossing my fingers.  I want this image to denote a business meeting or interview and connoting a message of hope and optimism for the future.  I set the camera up on a tripod, used one speedlight in a soft-box controlled remotely by Pocket wizards.  The camera was set to manual and manual focus and tethered to my lap-top for picture control, I also used a separate Sekonic lightmeter to meter the flash.

D-800e, 24-120mm f/4 @ 120mm, 1/125 sec, f/6.3, ISO-125, flash used, daylight WB.  Adjustments in Lightroom to black-and-white and colour tint adjustments made in Photoshop, Hue 257, Saturation 3.  On reflection of this picture, I now consider that a second light would have been in order, set in front of me and to the left to help separate my right arm from the background.  I could mess about in Photoshop to get better separation; but for this exercise I wont.

Using Clive’s suggested tinting I have produced new tinted versions of the rest of the black-and-white images.  The originals are on the left and the new tinted versions on the right.

  

  

  

  

  

Tutor Report for Assignment 5

shaun-mullins-512659-photography-1-context-narrative-assignment-5

I have just received my Tutor’s report for my last assignment for the Context & Narrative course and I am both pleased and relieved that my Tutor liked it and has given me a good report.

He comments that I didn’t mention if I used a tripod.  This was an oversight in my blogging, as I had used it and I listed it as the equipment used but obviously I did not make it clear that the camera was mounted to the tripod for all my shots.

When setting up for the shoot, I reasoned that by mounting the camera, it would slow me down and help control the framing of the picture and although I didn’t consider it at the time it was important in order to be able to merge more than one image through Photoshop, if required.  Which in fact was the case.

I feel that although I achieved what I set out to make, I still felt that picture wasn’t quite as good as I hoped.  I struggled with the framing as the camera was fixed; and my dog was not, which caused problems getting all the elements in the right place.  Perhaps I should have set the camera up a little further away or set the zoom to a wider angle for greater flexibility when cropping.  However, I was working at my second choice of locations due to circumstances beyond my control and time had been wasted trying to get access to my first location choice, leaving me less time to work.  All in all, I made the best out of a non-ideal situation and I am fairly happy with the final picture if not ecstatic.

 

 

Making it up as asked?

For assignment five, I have been given a fairly open brief, to create either a single image or a series of images to elaborate on the same theme.

I have chosen to create a single image.

“As the culminating assignment for the course you may wish to draw upon skills learned from Parts One to Four – issuing various forms of narrative, using yourself as subject matter, telling stories and reading images.  The only stipulation is that you produce work that has been controlled and directed by you for a specific purpose.  Remember to create a story with a specific context like the artists you’ve looked at in Part Five.  This means you need to have an artistic intention, so a good place to start would be to write down some ideas.  This could then form the basis for a 300-word introduction to the piece.  You may find it helpful to draw storyboards to help you visualize your ideas.”

I have produced an image taken from a narrative that I found through my research, I then story-boarded to find the appropriate image and I chose this intended picture in order to link it to a metaphor for today’s society.  This image has been created in context of a short story that acts as my 300-word introduction to my work.

“The aim of this assignment is to use props, costume, models, location, lighting, etc. to contribute to the overall meaning of the image.”

I have used a ‘No Pets’ sign and a pet dog as my props,  I have used two models to act out the characters in my image, The female model was dressed as a business woman and the male model as a smartly dressed man in a country suit with walking stick and hat both suitable for a smart gentleman out for a stroll and a man dressed for his funeral.  I chose to use the location of my local church that I felt suited the image.  I used speedlights, light modifiers, coloured gels and manipulated the white balance controls to achieve my desired affects.

“If the narrative is to be set in a different era then the elements of the image must reflect this.  Also consider the symbolic meaning of objects and try not to be too literal in your approach.”

My choice of costume is modern, Graham’s country suit is of a classic style and still popular today.  Ann-Marie, was wearing her normal business suit that she wears for interviews and corporate meetings.  Ann-Marie represents ‘Lucifer’ and I naturally didn’t want her in a Devil costume, holding whips, or sporting a Satanic tail; so I thought that simply dressing her in a sharp business suit and some lighting can imply a hidden layer to her true identity.

I have included snap-shots of my location and lighting set-up with sketches and notes as to how I planned and carried out the assignment.  I have written a 1000 word piece including the 300-word narrative.

Going through the criteria for this assignment, I feel that I have done everything as asked; so I just hope my Tutor likes my final work.

 

The Genius of Photography by Gerry Badger

‘The Genius of Photography, How Photography Has Changed Our Lives’ by Gerry Badger, published by Quadrille Publishing Ltd.

This book was on my recommended reading list for ‘The Art of Photography’ course but I feel that much of the reading list for that course did not echo the syllabus and I did not choose to read it at the time, preferring more relevant books that could assist me in the exercises, subject matter and assignments.  However, for this current course and for future courses this book has been more relevant and made more sense to me.

This book looks at the history of photography from a critical point-of-view as to it’s impact and development as an artistic practice.  How it has been influenced and influenced the art movements of the 19th, 20th and now the 21st century up to 2007.  Focusing on Photographers and examples of their work that have influenced the photographic art movement in their day from Daguerre to the unknown photographers using mobile-phone cameras for images that both informs and shocks the 21st century public.

Although much of the topics in this book have been covered in other books that I have already read, re-reading them will only re-enforce them to my memory and helps to plant ideas for future image making in to my sub-conscious.

Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition by Mary Warner Marien

Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition by Mary Warner Marien, published by Laurence King Publishing, ISBN:978-1-7806-332-5.

A good book that tells a good comprehensive history of photography from conception to present day.   This book explains the influences from art, politics and national cultures that has shaped photographic practices throughout the world from the 1830’s to present day with details on photographers / artist with examples of their work that have been of influence.  The book is made up of six parts with sections called Focus that looks at specific subjects in photography such as race and slavery of the 19th century or making an icon of revolution in the 20th century (Che Guevara) and Portraits about the works of famous photographers that influenced photography and the artistic practices from the 19th century through to the 21st.

Certainly a must read book for any photography student and I do now have a better understanding of Surrealism, Modernism, Postmodernism, etc. than I did before.

Working log for assignment 5, my initial thoughts.

9/9/16 – I am beginning my planning by going back to the start of this C&N course and re-reading the introduction and reviewing what I have learned in order to help me focus on what I need to achieve.

Up to now my assignments have been successful and my Tutor is very keen that I produce something that can top my achievements with this final assignment. So I want to produce something that is good and sophisticated enough to work well but at the same time try not to over complicate the work and try to keep the idea simple.  Well that’s the plan.  As I work out the project we will see if I can keep to this.

Keeping in mind my essay for my last assignment – I must be sure that every single element in my picture has a reason to be there and they must in some way contribute to the narrative.  The frame / choice of composition must suggest a greater context.  Lighting has also been mentioned and I am comfortable with using speedlights soft-boxes, flags etc.  I relish the opportunity to create a professional type set-up.  I thank my TAOP course and the section on lighting that I had spent extra time working on, I learned so much about both the basics and advanced photography skills on that course.

My plan is to produce one single photo; but it must suggest that it is part of a story.  All stories have a beginning, middle and end and my picture must suggest a previous moment that is leading to the next.  The picture must be readable and must have both a studium and punctum element on order for this image to really stand-out.  All the elements inside this picture must assist this process or they should not be there.  If I can meet these goals I am at least half-way there.

But the first half of the journey is to find the subject.  I intend to use my past brain-storming techniques and I have yet to do the last exercise of section five which is an interview and perhaps an idea may germinate from this.

Clive, my Tutor has recommended an author Kafka that I came across whilst reading Walter Benjamin and perhaps an idea may present itself from one of Kafka’s short-stories.

This last assignment is both exciting and a little scary; but life without a little fear is like a meal without a little herbs and seasoning, plain and dull.

One-Way Street & Other Writings by Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin, One-way Street and other Writings, (2009) London: Penguin. ISBN:978-0-141-18947-5.

On the critique of violence, (1921) is an essay considering the use of violence as a form of law enforcement and justice.  An interesting essay for studying documentary theory.

There is an essay on surrealism and an essay about a Czech writer that I had not heard of but who sounds interesting Franz Kafka. I shall look for examples of his work.

A collection of essays that include Brief History of Photography, (1931) that looks at the early development of photography and such influencing works as August Sanders.

Also included is The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, (1936) Benjamin examines how photography has made the great art classics more available to be seen by the mass public but by doing so he considers that there value has diminished in virtue of the rarity for public access.  He then goes on to look at cinema as a new art form and how this form of media is changing and influencing art both politically and culturally.

Notes of interest for, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936)

• Benjamin argues that recent technology has fundamentally changed the meaning of reproduction in art.
• He argues that art has always been reproducible by limited technological means since the times of Ancient Greece by means of casting and embossing for bronzes, terracottas and coins.  Then much later came printing.
• Until the development of photography and gramophone the reproduction of most art forms could retain their genuineness through provenance.
• However photography and the gramophone has fundamentally changed the meaning of reproduction of art as a whole.
• A piece of art holds its status of genuineness through provenance and provenance is beyond technological reproduction.
• Something reproduced by manual means still holds its genuineness (even when branded a forgery).
• Something reproduced by modern technological means does not.  For example a Brahms symphony reproduced in a concert hall 150 years after Brahms’ death still retains its genuineness.  However, if recorded and then played back the genuineness.  A painted copy (manual reproduction) of the Mona Lisa retains a genuineness.  However, a photograph (technological reproduction) of the Mona Lisa does not.
• With the new technological reproduction of photography and gramophone, the reproduced works of art has now a new meaning: one that can go anywhere and be enjoyed by anyone. A symphony concert can now be enjoyed in a living room or a priceless Rembrandt painting from the pages of a book.
• New methods of technological reproduction has also provided new ways in which to experience beyond the range of our normal senses for example slow motion and macro-photography.
• Although technological reproduction does not physically alter or effect the original, it does alter the original’s value.  Its here and now is devalued.
• The genuineness of a thing is the quintessence of everything about it since its creation that can be handed down, from its material duration to the historical witness duration to the historical witness that it bears. The latter (material duration and historical witness) being grounded in the former (the thing’s genuineness), what happens in the representation, where the former has been removed from human perception, is that the latter also starts to wobble. Nothing else, admittedly; however, what starts to wobble thus is the authority of the thing. (233).
• The above passage suggests that when the genuineness has been removed the material duration and its historical witness becomes questionable.
• ‘We can encapsulate what stands out here by using the term ‘aura’. We can say: what shrinks in an age where the work of art can be reproduced by technological means is its aura.’ (233)
• Reproductive technology, we might say in general terms, removes the thing reproduced from the realm of tradition.  In making many copies of the reproduction, it substitutes for its unique incidence a multiplicity of incidences.  And in allowing the reproduction to come closer to whatever situation the person apprehending it is in, it actualises what is reproduced. (233)
• Art’s meaning alters over time.
• Within major historical periods, along with changes in the overall mode of being of the human collective, there are also changes in the manner of its sense perception. (234).  ‘A classical statue of Venus, for example, occupied a different traditional context for the Greeks, who made of it an object of worship, than for medieval clerics, who saw it as a threatening idol.’ (236)
• ‘Works of art are received and adopted with different points of emphasis, two of which stand out as poles of each other. In one case the emphasis is on the work’s cultic value; in the other, on its display value.’ (237)
• Much wisdom had already been thrown away on deciding whether photography was an art (without asking the prior question: whether, with the invention of photography, the very nature of art had undergone a change), but before long the theoreticians of film were asking a similarly hasty question. (240)
• The fact that the work of art can now be reproduced by technological means alters the relationship of the mass to art.  From being very backward (faced with a Picasso, for instance), it has become highly progressive (given, say, Chaplin).  Yet this progressive response is characterised by the fact that in it the pleasure of looking and experiencing is associated, directly and profoundly with the stance of passing an expert judgement.  The link is an important social indicator.  In fact, the more the social significance of an art diminishes, the greater the extent (as clearly turning out to be the case with painting) to which the critical and pleasure-seeking stances of the public diverge. (248-249)

 

 

 

Public Information, Desire, Disaster, Document.

Earlier in this course I was asked to research an essay from this book, I was fortunate enough to find a copy on Amazon as this book is currently out-of-print.  I have just fully read the book and found it useful for both future reference and current understanding of contemporary art as practiced by the current established photographic artists.  I say photographic artist but this includes artist who have used photography to inspire their work,  for example: Andy Warhol,.Gerhard Ritcher and Cady Noland.  This book documents a large exhibition project conducted in 1995 and the linking subjects are in the title: Public Information for example questioning the media in Stan Douglas’ exhibition, Desire as presented by Nan Goldin, Disaster as illustrated by Andy Warhol, Document as famously recorded by Robert Frank’s journey across America in the late 1950’s.  This book begins with a number of essays discussing the topics that these works touch.  The first is that of the title, Public Information, Desire, Disaster, Document by Gary Garrels; Wrong by Jim Lewis; Meditations on the Document by Sandra S Phillips; Desiring Machines (Notes on Commodity, Celebrity, and Death in the Early Work of Andy Warhol) by Christopher Phillips; Inside / Out by Abigail Solomon-Godeau; Leave Proof (Media and Public Information)  by Robert R Riley.  the rest of the book covers examples of the work presented by the artist for the project with a short introduction of the artist and the work.

The participating artist were: Robert Frank, Andy Warhol, Richard Richter,Edward Ruscha, John Baldessari, Dan Graham, Martha Rosler, Larry Clark, Jeff Wall, James Coleman, Chantel Akerman, Nan Goldin, Stan Douglas, Cady Noland, Felix Gonzalez-Torres.