Applied Arts - Day 1 and 2

I have paired the firs two days of applied arts together because on the first day other than theory we mainly went through health and safety. Our first task for the theory was to research one Artist from a list and put it in our sketch book.

On the second day we began to make our cube blocks, we did this by creating different tester pieces from the techniques we had been taught in the health and safety walk through on the first day. My favourite machine in the workshop would probably be the fly press, I really liked making indentations in the metal and creating interesting patterns.

^ This is my favourite side on the block, the tester I created out of steel came out the best out of them all I think. I twisted some wire into some random patterns and placed it on to the metal then used the fly press to press the pattern on to the steel. Then I burnt the metal to create interesting colours on it, it reminded me of reptiles skin.

Photography - Day 2

In the second day of photography we were told we would be looking at observational photography. We were told to look for a few different things such as colour and juxtaposition and make sure we always considered composition as we weren't aloud to crop our images in the editing process. We were given some digital cameras and sent out for most of the day in to chesterfield to take photographs, I took some on my iPhone and my partner on the camera so we got a bigger range of photographs, here's a slideshow of our best 15 images.

Photography - Day 1

In the introduction to photography we were given a list of 50 photographers and had to pick 3 each day and a photo we liked by them and why, I chose:

Steven Klein

Diane Arbus

Gregory Crewdson

Sandy Skoglund

Annie Leibovitz

Paolo Roversi

After that we were introduced to the project we would be doing that day which  was to recreate a famous shoot that featured kate moss and her facial expressions during an interview.

In groups of 4 we took 9 photographs each and each all asked the model photographs whilst the photographer was taking photos, this was our set up.

In the darkroom we developed a test strip from which we made a contact sheet of our images.

Our next task was to create photograms from random objects using the enlargers in the darkroom. 

Here are some of mine:

Steven Klein

Love the layers of content in this image all building up to its purpose of selling the product which is the bag. Sky - mountains - forest - pool/male model - female model - bag, its a feast for the eyes and a lot of thought has gone in to the composition. The slight tilt of the models leg leads the eyes towards the bag in the foreground making the image great for an ad campaign. 

Diane Arbus

An outstanding documentary photographer who's work I happened to get a chance to look at in an exibition at the Nottingham Contemporary. Her work is at a first glance absolutely hilarious but has an underlying seriousness to it. She looks at American culture both urban and suburban. She photographs the weird and wonderful such as drag queens and dwarfs.  Her work is a good way to educate people of the large diversity of people in America and raise awareness for them to stop discrimination. That's only for some images though not all, like the one above which is one of my favourites more down to a comical factor. The facial expressions on the senior citizens faces are hilariously glum despite the fact they have just won king and queen of the ball. It relates back to prom and the fact that to be prom king and queen to most teenagers in America is one of the most important things in their lives, where as to an OAP its extremely trivial how ironic.  

Gregory Crewdson

An interesting photographer who's work I like for the attention to detail and the effort he goes in to creating a scene. Like in the photograph above of a woman seemingly gardening in the middle of her house, very surreal and very interesting.The bright colours of the flowers stand out against the drabness of the kitchen/dinning room area creating a foreground and a background. His images would work extremely well within the world of fashion photography and this is why I have taken such an interest to him.

Sandy Skoglund

I had never heard of Skoglund until now and I find her work fantastic. This particular image caught my eye because it made me think of my childhood dreams, and waking up still half asleep. It's almost as if the children in this photograph are waking up to an underwater version of their own bedroom complete with their very own army of goldfish. I think its down to the colours that give the image its impact as they are so bold and un-natural making the image seem like a still from a cartoon or something.