Renee Taylor Photography ART10275: Visual Diary and Critique

Visual Diary for photography 2011

Looking at what inspires me in contemporary photography:

http://www.bushturkeystudio.com/ (7/4/2011)

Bush Turkey have some awesome pictures of portraits, an idea I had was to take photos of what I love which is my children, the natural spontaneous shot when you have to quickly catch them in the moment.

They've done some great portrait work and series of a narrative them with Hobie Porter, and old student of SCU and now an established artist.

http://ealandeth.blogspot.com/search/label/16mm%20fisheye

Nikon D3, 24-70mm & 16mm fisheye

JAMMING 2.

Cabarita Beach, Australia - 'Loren'

http://jackiecooperphotography.com.au/other/ (13/4/2011)

13/4/2011

13/4/201

I am captured as a viewer by images with warm and atmospheric light also movement, anything that grabs my emotion. To create atmosphere is my aim and draw the engage the viewer.

My most loved subject matter is of course my kids, Mia my daughter nearly two is challenging to grab her and catch her when she isn't moving so fast. Indi is too old and wants to pose very unnatural and capturing that special moment will be a key. As well as thinking in time of my aperture and shutter speed and light. But hey its all starts with practice.

I really enjoyed today's lab class, recreating of other photos. I learnt a lot more about the camera and composition. When it all gets into my head will be great to just play and have fun. I want to try a few more of those sheets and do them at home.

http://jackiecooperphotography.com.au/other/ (13/4/2011)

The most practice I have had with any camera is watching children looking for that natural Kodak moment. I would like to attempt recreating this above image with my girls, I have a yellow tutu and I could use Photoshop to change the color. It probably wouldn't be for my project but just an exercise I would like to do. I love this wall behind and how it goes with the couch. Her foot pushing towards the foreground is so gorgeous and the expression on her face is priceless.

This would be fun to try, I could get Marie (my French au pair) to spin them and try the tracking exercise!

My nanny is French and she is amazing with her flexibility. She enjoys doing photography and so I will take advantage of some her gymnastic skills and do some action shots. I've been trying to get inspired and though this photographer/artist uses a lot of Photoshop he does create moving and emotional images.

Alberto Sanchez

http://www.retrospectgalleries.com/artist-profile/alberto-sanchez/186/4(13/4/2011)

They remind me of a painting and a photo together amazing colours.

I Love this image and I thought of trying to setup this position with Marie at the beach and some gymnastics. I have a trampoline at home and living in a great location near the beach would be ideal.

This images has a painting quality about them perhaps too much Photoshop for this project but I do love the mood created in the colours.

Perran Costi

http://www.retrospectgalleries.com/artist-profile/perran-costi/274/1 (13/4/2011)

"small sky boxes', great installation and idea.

18/4/2011 Sunday

Today was my first attempt of using the camera from Uni and playing, I looked at aperture and shutter speed especially as I wanted to play with movement and my fav location the beach. So Marie my friend and French nanny did dome gymnastics today but only a few as it was rain on the way my husband helped with an umbrella then it just poured down but I got a few quick ones just before it came and the sky looked amazing, the light behind me was still a little sunny and the dark clouds were coming over.

When I finished looking at these images I went into the levels to bring out some highlights and tone but I really don't have that much experience with Photoshop so I didn't use a lot at all. I found the more I played with it it was over doing it and not as good as the original was not as good as . Black and white looked nice but the original was better and I think the black outfit Marie was wearing worked well. I wanted to represent the body as form and rather than a personal one of the model. I was disappointed today with the amount of images I got. But the few I have I am happy with them.

These are a couple of the more successful

I love the light in this the sky and the sand, and the fact that I didn't use Photoshop at all.

This image is Marie's favourite, I did crop this to adjust the composition and it was a quick one before the rain so I didn't give it as much thought. I put this into Photoshop and found the less adjusting the better just some work in levels and I think brightness / contrast I used.

Yes I like this better, my Photoshop one, I used the hue/saturation.

this one I adjusted the levels and colour/balance. I also tried it in black and white

This image I call the leaning Eiffel tower (Its French and so is Marie and he body reminds me of this shape, leaning as in leaning tower of Pisa but it has to be French rather than Italian) I looked at this image again in Photoshop and cropped it to bring the figure closer into the foreground I think this works better as it gives more suggestion of the placement of her on the ground.

This is better for the figure but both are good, as I like the amount of sky in the first one.

18/4/2011

Then after the rain we thought mmm lets go to Brunswick and go fishing, and then this led to the girls falling asleep in the car and Marie even nodded off with her feet out the window and when the rain had a break I would pull out the camera and take whatever location I felt inspired me, so some of Adam fishing which was nice and then the flora around me and the rain drops that hindered my expedition. This was fun cos I wasn't in a rush against time and thought well just play with settings and try and remember what I already learned. Not much interesting composition came to view but some little close ups of detail worked nice.

I really like this compostition and the lighting worked well.

This image was really underexposed, the wrong aperture setting, but retrievable in the levels panel through Iphoto, I really like again this composition and image.

Not really any Photoshop this was fun using the aperture to get a shallow depth of field, and it was tricky getting the camera to find the focus on the foreground rather than the background information.

This image below is I used Photoshop to make this image interesting, therefore a lot of use of colour balance and the levels to add contrast. This colour gives more mood and interesting image with the raindrops in and out of focus.

Brightness/contrast and colour balance was used to give this image a lift.

15/5/2011

Last week I saw some of the other students work and was quite amazed, I can't remember her name but I loved the concept of using photos and then taking photos of them and her narrative of her daughter on a record player riding her skateboard and standing an old book was quite engaging for me. I am actually doing books and the imagery of library books and steps for my print site-specific project. I found I actually was concerned in my project to practice using the camera, I did some shots at home of my children with some unusual lighting using the manual mode. Some were really great but not sure if I can use them in my project or theme. So I will keep my idea now with Marie as time is running out and I got her to jump on the trampoline while I did some quick running shots one after another. I couldn't get the unit camera so I've been using now a pentax with the sport mode and it allows another mode to do fast animation sequence shots. I wanted to use the idea from Eadweard Muybridge 1878, horses sequence.

Meet the Art - Eadweard Muybridge Photographs of Motion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYKZif9ooxs (18/5/2011)

I also like the simplicity of the black and white of Max Dupain, the soft background and sharp object/ figure in the foreground.

The Sunbaker 1937

http://www.photoartgallery.com/about-us/media-centre/aps-article/ (18/5/2011)

Poor Marie fell off in the event quiet badly she has big bump on her head and I was so sure she may of needed to be checked over by a doctor that she wasn't going to get concussion! I do have a good model that is willing to go that extra mile.

Rosemary Laing's work is amazing and her figures airborne with the wedding dress were an inspiration for me, shame I didn't have a wedding dress to put Marie into. I love her work; she is a great example of Conceptual photography. I wanted Marie to do some position in the air, I tried to shoot with no background in. I only wanted sky to make her body appear airborne like this.