Colour: Project – What Makes a Colour; Exercise 24 – primary and secondary colours

As a complete novice in the visual arts, but with a love of photography, it was only once  I registered on the OCA’s Art of Photography  course that I started to consider, in a structured way the world of the visual arts.  For example, while generally appreciative of the great painting masters, I had no real understanding of why they were considered great.  The first few modules of the programme dealing with design and, here in this module, colour, have given me the first few parts of a visual ‘grammar’ which can, in turn, allow a more considered understanding of the visual arts.  A good example of this is the outcome of a visit to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.  Prior to the visit (and to the awakenings of an understanding of visual grammar) I had vaguely thought that somehow Van Gogh came ‘ready baked’ to the world of painting and that his approach was some form of divine gift.  It became obvious after spending almost a full day at the Van Gogh museum,  which focused on the how of what he did rather than the what, that his art and craft was formed through rigorous practice and study of known and understood ‘rules’.  One of these was his very careful use of colour and a detailed understanding of primary and secondary colours and their relationship to each other.

This exercise (24) in the OCA’s Art of Photography  module on colour is concerned with primary (red, yellow and blue) colours and their complementary opposites (green, violet and orange).  The exercise requires the capture of images that accurately match each of these six colours in a way that allows the deve,opment of an ‘eye’ for and appreciation of the colours.  The exercise also requires that resort is not made to capturing images of ‘…a paint manufacturer’s catalogue…’ (according to the course notes , p109) – doors, walls etc.

In order to meet the latter requirement of avoiding a narrow, paint catalogue, approach to capturing images of the six colours I have deliberately chosen a range of subjects to show the six colours.  In each case, images were bracketed and the closest to the required colour was chosen.  In order; red, yellow, blue, green, violet and orange.  The subjects; a port (left hand) marker (always in red), lifeguard hut, blue sky and water in Valetta harbour, Malta, green leaves over wrought iron covered window opening, violet jewel anemones (underwater), orange dahlia anemone (underwater).

Before I started the course I didn’t think that colour was an obvious attraction to me when making images.  Undertaking this exercise and recognising the pleasure it gave to me in making the images, reviewing my image catalogue and visiting Huis Marseille in Amsterdam made me realise that, in fact, colour was an important determinant in the types of image I make.

Colour: Project – What Makes a Colour; Exercise 23 – control the strength of colour

Changing colour through the relatively simple means of changing exposure is the purpose of this exercise  in the module on Colour in the OCA’s Art of Photography course. Michael Freeman, whose notes for the course and whose book The Photographer’s Eye  (Ilex 2007), a core text for the course, deal interchangeably with the use of colour in both film and digital. For the purposes of this exercise on controlling colour by changing exposure, and the remaining exercises, I have used digital methods only. The course notes and Freeman’s book cover in some detail primary, secondary, complementary colurs and the differences between painter’s reflected primaries (red, yellow and blue) and  the three transmitted light primaries (red, green and blue) relevant to computer imaging.  Whilst the distinctions are of relevance to the digital production of images they are less relevant to these exercises and, as with the course notes, I stick to the painter’s primaries for the purposes of the exercises. The three most widely used characteristics of colour are hue, saturation and brightness.  Hue is what most people understand by colour – red, yellow, etc, saturation is the intensity of the colour while brightness determines whether the hue is light or dark. Below are five images gathered to demonstrate the effect of changing the exposure on colour; in this instance of a weatherbeaten, warehouse door. The images, excepting the final one where saturation has been increased) were captured as jpegs with no post capture manipulation.  They were all captured on a tripod to ensure direct comparability.  The image data (shutter speed and aperture) are given as captions to the images.  The first image below was made at one full stop over the indicated correct exposure and the subsequent images made by progressively closing down the shutter.

1/40th at f5.6

1/40th at f7.1

 

1/40th at f8

1/40th at f9

1/40th at f10

The first, overexposed image, shows blown highlights in the areas where the paint has peeled to reveal a light coloured undercoat. The subsequent images are successively underexposed. Of the three parameters, hue, saturation and brightness the characteristic that is changed by changing the exposure is brightness.  Obviously the hue cannot change and, while the darker images may appear to become more saturated, this effect is only generated by the underexposure.  This is demonstrated by taking the image exposed at 1/40th at f9 and increasing by 100% the saturation in Photoshop.  This new image is below and it is clearly seen that, although having the same exposure values, it is qualitatively different from the image that has not had saturation increased; colour has intensified and the image appears brighter.

1/40th at f9 – Saturation increased by 100%

Changing exposure (particularly underexposure) to change the character of the colour by enhancing the impression of saturation  is a widely used technique and, as Freeman shows in The Photographers Eye (p110) is particularly effective in light/dark (chiaroscuro) images. Many of Steve McCurry’s portraits use, what appears to be deliver underexposure to generate the richness.  See here, here and here for examples where light and dark image making enhances the richness of both skin tones and clothing.

Huis Marseille – Museum for Photography, Amsterdam

To coincide with the reopening of the Huis Marseille, following its expansion into a building alongside it (and an effective doubling in size), in September of 2013 an exhibition entitled ‘The Rediscovery of the World’ was conceived and mounted.   The exhibition features  artists in their mid twenties to early forties who are all ‘…looking at the world in entirely new ways…’ according to the brochure for the exhibition.  The artists, again according to the brochure, are asking what is real and of real value in the world.

The fourteen artists exhibiting are Popel Comou, Elspeth Diederix, Eddo Hartman, Scarlett Hooft Graafland, Juul Kraijer, Tanya Long, Katja Mater, Hellen van Meene, Awoiska van der Molen, Illona Plaum, Emma van de Put, Viviane Sassen, Scheltenes and Abbenes and Simon van Til.  The fourteen artists’ work is spread between the two buildings and on multiple levels requiring the viewer to work backwards and forwards and up and down the labyrinth of stairs and corridors.  The effort, at least for me, was worthwhile as amongst the fourteen artists several grabbed my attention in a variety of ways.

A full examination of each of the fourteen artists is well beyond the scope of this exhibition review however I do want to briefly note the work of  four of the photographers whose work I was taken with; in each case I will return with a more detailed consideration in further blogs.

Colour is a particular feature of all the artists in the exhibition but none more so than Scarlett Hooft Graafland.  Graafland combines site specific sculpture and photo set ups using local materials to produce images of  simplicity and clarity such as here.

Juul Kraijer’s arresting portraits involving snakes and other reptiles cannot be ignored and, like Graafland, have strong use of colour.

Popel Comou’s images evidence multiple digital workings leaving the viewer wondering is it a photograph, drawing or something in between as here.

Elspeth Diederix’s images included several from a project entitled ‘A Studio Garden’ on which she worked with the living materials in her garden as well as surreal and set up underwater images such as this one.

The Rediscovery of the World runs until the 8th December.

Review: ‘Why People Photograph’; Robert Adams

‘…art is too important to confuse with interior decoration or an investment opportunity.  Its real use… is to affirm meaning and thus “to keep intact an affection for life”‘.  Robert Adams, quoted in Why People Photograph by Robert Adams, Aperture, 1994.  If this, from the frontispiece of this book, were the only thing  read in the book then it would have been worthwhile.

In many respects the book, subtitled Selected Essays and Reviews, is a smorgasbord of bits and pieces; essays, reflections, critique.  This makes for a disjointed reading experience as Adams, a photographer and writer, explores in essay format themes under the heading ‘What can Help’, such as colleagues, humor, money and dogs, ‘Examples of Success’ such as Edward Weston, Paul Strand, Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams and ‘Working Conditions’ in the United States.  This doesn’t really matter as peppered throughout the book are simple but deeply insightful perspectives on art, life and photography.

On Colleagues – ‘If I like many photographers, and I do, I account for this by noting a quality they share – animation.  They may or may not make a living by photography, but they are alive by it.’

On Writing – ‘The main reason that artists don’t willingly describe or explain what they produce is, however, that the minute they do so they’ve admitted failure.  Words are proof that the vision they had is not, in the opinion of some at least, fully there in the picture.  Characterising in words what they thought they’d shown is an acknowledgement that the photograph is unclear – that is not art.’

On Teaching – ‘… academics enjoy disassembling things in order to understand how they work, artists enjoy taking scattered pieces and assembling things from them that do work.’

On Paul Strand’s ‘Mr Bennett’  – ‘…we continue to speculate, as we do with all great art, because the picture is clearer than life and in this consoling.’  A particularly powerful insight follows this observation on ‘Mr Bennett’.  ‘Photographs as exceptional as Strand’s originate, I think, in personal need, in an urgency to find what the artist has to have to be at peace (the mediocrity of much assigned work results from this lack of compulsion).  The necessity builds, sometimes from wholly private, individual factors, but often the way these relate to the social context, until the artist is forced to take the risk of making something untried’. (Emphasis mine).

Post Script

I wondered as I made my way through this book why photographers always have a first name; Edward, Ansel, Diane but painters rarely; Van Gogh, Constable, Bacon.

Review: ‘The Photograph’ – Graham Clarke

The Photograph is a core text for the Open College of the Arts Art of Photography module.  The book, written by Graham Clarke and published in the Oxford History of Art series in 1997, is, like another core text The Photograph as Contemporary Art , organised on the basis of themes.  In the case of this book the themes are more accessible and amenable to novices to study in the Art of Photography.

The book consists of 11 chapters organised as follows; What is  a Photograph, How do we Read a Photograph, Photography and the Nineteenth Century, Landscape in Photography, The City in Photography, The Portrait in Photography, The Body in Photography, Documentary Photography, The Photograph as Fine Art, The Photograph Manipulated and the Cabinet of Infinet Curiosities.

Each chapter is packed with insights.  From the beginning the book asks us questions and provides perspectives about photography as an artistic medium; ‘…those photographs deemed to have the most value are the least functional, and vice versa.’; ‘..the photographer, like the poet, ‘sees into the life of things’.’ Simple analyses of Matthew Brady’s portraiture of the American Civil War combine with distinctions between Roger Fenton’s images of an English rural idyll and Timothy’ O’Sullivan’s images of American frontier life and experience.

Perhaps the chapter that impacted most, although it is a genre that I struggle with in my own practise, is the city images.  Weegee, Lewis Hine, Stieglitz, Walker Evans are all treated to Clarke’s analysis and the end result is a much deeper understanding on the part of the reader of how and why this genre has become so important.

Whereas The Photograph as Contemporary Art  will need to be revisited because it has come  too early in my studies, this book will need to be revisited because there is so much to glean from it that it cannot be accommodated in one sitting.

Assignment Two – Elements of Design

This second assignment on the OCA’s Art of Photography course is concerned with elements of design.  Michael Freeman in The Photographer’s Eye (Ilex, 2007), a core text on the course emphasises the role that points, lines and shape play in an image.  He compares (p65) the role of graphic design in classic design theory  as it applies to painting and illustration with photography.  In doing so he notes that while in the former it is not difficult to isolate these marks and forms from real subjects in photography the elements often depend on we choose to consider an image.   Freeman notes that points are the simplest elements of design that tend to draw attention.  Lines are valuable in directing and creating vectors whole shapes have the role of organising the elements of an image and bringing structure.

The project briefing notes require that a set of photographs directed towards one type of subject are assembled that incorporate the insights gained in the exercises on the elements of design.

I have chosen details gathered from Dublin’s Docklands area for the images.   In particular, I have selected a small area around the river Liffey that incorporates very new developments such as the Daniel Liebskind designed Bord Gais Energy Theatre in the Grand Canal/Hanover Quay area through to the very old Ringsend village area.  The choice of this urban/docklands area was deliberate insofar as this type of imagery is not a feature of my image making and I wished to stretch my perspectives in this regard.  The area has a mixture of very new apartment blocks and offices, cafe areas, harbour and canal basins and older buildings, some still used and some boarded up.

Eleven photographs that use a variety of design elements are included in the exercise and each of these, where I felt necessary, is preceded by a short commentary.

Single Point Dominating the Composition

Two Points Dominating the Composition

The image is of Ringsend Church at night.  The highlights of the clocks have been deliberately blown to a) emphasise the two single points in the image b) allow some of the detail of the church itself to be captured and c) to create the sinister effect that I had pre-visualised.

 

Several Points in a Deliberate Shape

A Combination of Vertical and Horizontal Lines

Diagonals

In both this image and the following one, dominated by the curve, I was taken with the combination of the old, in the form of the industrial chimneys, and the new of the modern office blocks.  I have, in both images, tried to use the chimneys to ‘anchor’ the dynamism of the diagonals and the curves,  See also the exercise on triangles in which one of the chimneys has been used to create a triangle through perspective.

Curves

Distinct, Even if Irregular, Shapes

Two Kinds of Implied Triangle

Rhythm

In order to capture the detail in the building the highlights have been deliberately blown. The plaque at the bottom right hand corner notes the date of the original building on the site and offers a break from the rhythm.

Pattern

Assessment Criteria and Reflection

At Level 4 of the OCA programmes the emphasis is on the acquisition of skills and good working habits including the keeping of learning logs .  Additionally, Level 4 students should be informing themselves about others’ work by reading and viewing exhibitions.  The learning logs associated with this assignment, which is itself being submitted as a blog, are all found at ‘adivinglifeblog.wordpress.com’.  There are four types of blog; exercises associated with projects, reflections, book reviews and exhibition reviews.  In general terms, therefore, the requirements of the programme are  being met.  The specific assessment criteria for Level 4 programmes, together with my reflection of how this assignment measures against them, are given below.

The Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills – materials, techniques,observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills. 

The images captured for these exercises have involved a range of locations, lighting conditions and subjects that, in turn, have required the use of the full range of camera settings and techniques including slow and fast shutter speeds, narrow and wide apertures, changes in ISO and the use of a tripod.   Additionally, post image processing has involved conversion from RAW, cropping, perspective correction and levels adjustments.   The work to date therefore has demonstrated a wide range of technical skills.

In contrast to Assignment One, where I struggled to reflect on the visual skills component of the learning outcomes required, in this assignment, and the underpinning exercises, I am much more confident about demonstration of visual skills in this assignment.  For this asssignment and underpinning exercises I deliberately chose to make images that I would not normally make.  In this instance, deatils of a docklands area.  In doing so I have surprised myself with how engaged I became with the process.  In order to complete the assignment I visited the central location (Grand Canal/Hanover Quay) on four separate occasions to make, repeat and refine the images I was collecting.  Each time I went I saw new images and new ways of using the design elements to structure the images.

The Quality of Outcome; content, application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas.

Each of the exercises has addressed the particular task and frequently contained reflections within the exercise as well as post exercise reflections to ensure that learning was embedded.  The work has been structured appropriately and narrated to ensure that lines of thought within the work are clear.

The Demonstration of Creativity; imagination, invention, development of a personal voice.

For this assignment and the underpinning exercises, I deliberately chose to make images that would not be abundant in my portfolio.  As I have noted above, urban/dockland details would not normally feature in my image making. Although images of individual buildings or details of buildings occur in my work, the exercises and assignment have shown clearly to me that my composition of these images needs to be improved; something worked upon for these exercises and this assignment.

As will be noted below,  visits to galleries outside of Ireland and the feedback from Assignment One has enabled me to start to start to think about why rather than how I am making images – the first step towards identifying my personal voice.  A good example of this is the image of Ringsend Church at night towards the beginning of this assignment.  My thinking here was very simple.  I wanted to meet the requirement to use two points in the design and create an image that was sinister or ominous in intent.

A separate reflection on the exercises underpinning this assignment has been undertaken and is here.

Context; reflection, research, critical thinking (learning log).

Because I have a research background I am used to the need for reflection and critical thinking and am happy that the blogs in which the exercises, book reviews, exhibition reviews and reflections are covered are providing me with the appropriate learning opportunities.  In a reflection on the previous assignment I noted that a general lack of exhibitions in Ireland  would be addressed by occasional visits outside of Ireland.  A recent trip afforded the opportunity to visit FOAM and the HUIS Marseille in Amsterdam.   A blog on my visit to the FOAM gallery is here and a blog on the HUIS gallery will follow in coming weeks.

FOAM – Amsterdam

Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam, better known as FOAM, is currently (the time of the visit was late October 2013) hosting four exhibitions.

‘Framed in Print’ celebrates 40 years of Dutch magazine photography and is arranged thematically rather than by photograher.  As might be expected of a magazine retrospective fashion, sport, reportage, cuisine, documentary, beauty and portrait images dominate the exhibition which is laid out magazine style.  I was particularly drawn to the culinary images and in turn to the images of Bart Nieuwenhuijs.  I am not sure why his images are categorised as culinary as the only connection they have with cuisine is as raw food products – chickens, fish – and here fish and beans.

Cristina de Middel’s Afronauts exhibition has been widely acclaimed.  Cristina works as a photojournalist and documentary photographer but the Afronauts has been a more personal project for her. The work documents an abortive attempt by Zambia to join the space race.  The collection of posed images and original documentary material makes for a gentle and humorous take on the ill fated venture by Zambia.

Four rooms of FOAM are devoted to Lee Friedlander’s ‘America by Car’.  This is the record of a trip but framed through car windows and windscreens.  Billboard details, signage and store symbols add layers to the work.  Interestingly, his Route 9W New York, 1969, one of his iconic images, was not on display although his equally iconic Albuquerque image was part of the exhibition.

The fourth photographer was Peter Puklus and I am afraid that I did not get this mix of still life, streetscapes and installation type images.

Review: ‘The Photograph as Contemporary Art’ – Charlotte Cotton

The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton (Thames and Hudson, 2009, 248pp) is a core text for the Art of Photography course in the open College of the Arts.  While Level 4 of the OCA Photography degree is primary aimed at developing a high level of skills in the art of photography both this text and The Photograph , reviewed elsewhere, challenge those new to the study of photography, like this author, to think about the art beyond the technical level.

The Photograph as Contemporary Art is divided into eight chapters; If This is Art, Once Upon a Time, Deadpan, Something and Nothing, Intimate Life, Moments in History, Revived and Remade and Physical and Material.  Cotton notes in the introduction to the book that it is not meant to be a checklist of all the photographers who merit a mention in a discussion on contemporary art but ‘…to give a sense of the spectrum of motivations and expressions that currently exist in the field.’  The chapters group photographers who share a common ground in terms of ‘…their motivations and working practices’.

As someone new to the study of photography the opening chapter ‘If This is Art’ was most accessible dealing as it does with how photographers devise strategies, performances and happenings especially for the camera.  Of particular interest to me was the analysis of the way in which photography moved from a medium in which the photographer was responding to events to a medium in which the photographer could pre conceive events and so change the way we think about the physical and social world.

The third chapter ‘Deadpan’ resonated with me insofar as it dwelt on the types of images that feature regularly in my image making.  A major issue for me, however, is that whereas I make these types of images to satisfy a need to portray formality, the authors whose work and approaches is considered by Cotton use deadpan approaches as a way of forcing the viewer to think beyond the motives of the photographer to consider more widely the forces that govern the man-made and natural world.

If I am being honest, I think this book has come a little too early me as a new entrant to the study of the photographic medium.  While some insights have been gleaned, as noted above, this is a text that will repay further consideration a little later on my photographic journey.

Elements of Design; Project – Shapes; Exercise 21 Real and Implied Triangles

Triangles, real and implied, are the focus of Exercise 21 of the OCA’s Art of Photography Elements of Design module.  Michael Freeman in Art of Photography, a core text for the programme, notes the usefulness of triangles in composition because they are simple to construct or imply.  Additionally, if they have a level base they aid the stability of the composition.  The formation of triangles may be on the basis of reality or by implication.  In the case of implied triangles the implication arises because of the juxtaposition or positioning of three points.

This exercise calls for the making of images of real triangles (one by perspective, one inverted by perspective and one of faces) and three still life triangles; normal, inverted and made up of three faces.

The first three images below are, in order, a real triangle, normal by perspective and inverted by perspective.  The making of these images required a significant step outside my image making comfort zone as I would not normally spend time making images in urban settings.  The final image of these three took some time to figure out how to make it work and, notwithstanding the feedback from Assignment One in which a key reflection was the need to consider why rather than how an image was being made, the making of this image gave considerable technical satisfaction.

The following three images are concerned, in turn, with a normal, still life triangle, an inverted, still life triangle and a triangle made of three faces.  My image making has not included still life and the generation of ideas for still life images has proven to be very challenging.  In the first few attempts I defaulted to secure areas such as geology and scuba diving.  However, these prove to be unrewarding and the images below represent first attempts to step outside of comfort zones.  The first two images speak for themselves.  In respect of the third I was attempting to create the mood of a photograph in a locket by capturing the family group by reflection in an oval mirror.

Elements of Design; Project – Rhythm and pattern; Exercise 22 Rhythms and Patterns

The final exercise in the OCA’s Art of Photography module on Elements of Design has been the least satisfying for me as I struggled first, to find optical rhythms and patterns at all, and second, ones that were not boring.  This I think was a reflection of the fact that, in contrast to points and lines, which are frequent occurrences in my images, patterns and rhythms are rare to the point of absence.  For that reason alone completing the exercise has been worthwhile.

I offer the following two images in the realisation that I am not at all fully satisfied with them as images other than they have helped me to understand these two elements of design.

The requirement for the exercise is to produce two images with one showing rhythm and the other pattern.  In the image with rhythm there should be a sequence in the picture so that the eye will follow a direction and a beat (p97 of the OCA notes) and in the pattern the main point is to ensure the pattern is accurately framed.

Both images are from Amsterdam.  The first shows rhythm with four double windows separated from each other by intricate stone work.

The second image is of a steel framed window in which the pattern is very exact and framed accordingly. In an attempt to introduce some interest I have ensured that the refection in the underlying window is somewhat visible.

The trouble I have with these images is that whilst the elements of design are very clear and unless there is some interest other than the pattern or rhythm itself then, for me, the images become boring.   Scarlatt Hooft Graaflland’s image of three green corrugated iron pitched roofs draws on rhythm to form the basic structure but the visual interest is heightened dramatically with the naked body lying over the centre roof.