Mind Map - Fourth Plinth

Ideas for fourth plinth:

• Dinosaur
• Converse
• Flower pot
• Teddy
• Glassess
• Rubik Cube
• Bus
• Chicken
• Watch
• Umbrella

Definition Post: 

The Fourth Plinth is a plinth in trafalgar square that was never completed, it was left bare due to insufficient funds. Now, artist are granted permission to build whatever they like on the fourth plinth, the idea of a fourth plinth is that you can build something that doesn't fit in that place, for example a giant blue chicken in trafalgar square. Although this is typically built in trafalgar square, the idea can be translated to many different places and you could technically do it anywhere.

Definition Post - Documentary & Don McCullin

Documentary Photography 

Documenting using photography is taking photos to chronicle something (usually historic events or everyday life) in an inventive way. War photographers like Don McCullin would be an example of Documentary photographers, I think that photography is an amazing way of documenting things and I love it.

This photograph shows a man during the war by Don McCullin, I really like that it shows a lot of emotion and that he isn't looking at the camera. I also think that it is dark to show how he feels, as in like he feels quite sad and dark because he is fighting in the war, this photo doesn't look staged and I think that it shows someone mid-action which makes it look even more realistic.

This photo is by Abir Abdullah, I quite like this photograph because it shows two people reuniting in a war environment, I think that it is very beautiful because it gives me a sense of hope. I think this photograph shows hope because they have found each other even in such a war zone, however in the background you can see lots of people who still haven't found anyone or are hurt.

This is another photo by Don McCullin, this photo is from when he visited Africa to take photos. I like this photo because it is showing three different ages in one photographs, a small child, a teenager and an adult. I also like the fact that they aren't looking at the camera, it makes them seem even further away from us, geographically and technologically.

This is also by Don McCullin, I think this a fantastic photograph, the subject is looking directly into the camera which almost seems confrontational, I also think that McCullin has framed this photo perfectly, there ins't anything missing from the photo and I think that it looks very good. The subject hasn't changed himself for the photograph which shows me that he has a lot of pride.

Definition Post - Landscape & Ansel Adams

To take landscape photographs, we need:

• A camera
• A tripod
• Zoom lens
• Wide angle lens
• Rain sleeve
• Lens cleaner
• Fliters
• Spare Batteries
• Memory Card

Definition: 

Landscape photography shows spaces within the world, they can be incredibly vast photographs or they can show only a small patch of land. Landscape photographs usually capture nature but they can also capture man made objects.

Analysis of Ansel Adams' Work:

I think Ansel Adams' work is odd, his photos look very edited and quite grainy. I think that the sky looks unedited but then the amount of bright light on the mountains instead of shadows make the rest of the photographs look very edited. Ansel Adams uses pre-visualisation to have an idea as to what the photo will look like.

This is another photograph by Ansel Adams, I like this photo more than the last because it looks more realistic and a lot less grainy. I think the colours contrast a lot more in his photographs than some other black and white photographs, this may be because the whites are a lot brighter and the blacks are a lot darker. I like this contrast even though I don't really like his photos that much in general. His photographs have a wide depth of field which I think looks really good because if he used a narrow depth of field we wouldn't be able to see detail in everything and I think that the photo needs that.

This photo by Ansel Adams is very unrealistic in my opinion, I don't like it as much as the second one because it's a lot lighter and personally I prefer darker photographs. I think that the water falling from the rocks and hitting the river surface look very fake and over edited. personally I prefer photographs that are subtly edited and don't look unrealistic.

Ansel Adams got his inspiration from Yosemite National Park and he took black and white landscape photographs of it. He was a co-founder of the group f/64, this group was made up of seven photographers in the southern California area, after the Great Depression in America, the pictures that group f/64 took were of natural objects and were sought after by the public because they were a sign of hope in a bleak time, they were seen as a sign of hope because of massive public work projects like Hoover Dam. 

Adams primarily used large format cameras because they had a higher resolution. He also created the Zone System with Fred Archer as a way to determine proper exposure and adjust the contrast of the final print.

F/64 refers to the smallest aperture on a camera, the effect that having a camera at f/64 would be that the photograph would have a very large depth of field, meaning a large amount of the photograph would be in focus, they saw the camera as a passive viewer of the world, so they didn't want to focus on any particular object and detract away from the rest of the photograph.

He inspired me to look into rural photography more, and he also inspired me to experiment with slower shutter speeds and using a tripod, I definitely want to use my tripod more because I think it gives me the option to get steadier photographs

Definition Post - Portraiture

Definition Post - Portraiture

Definition: A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and expression are predominant. The intent is to display the likeliness, personality and even the mood of the person.

 Source

This portrait by Alec Soth is of a man called Joshua in Angola State Prison, it is a portrait from Alec Soth's 'Sleeping by the Mississippi' project, I love this photo because I think you can see how the subject feels, the photographer has caught him before he could pose which creates more authentic emotion, rather than someone just putting on a face for the camera.

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 This is a photograph by Thomas Ruff, he takes photographs of people in a deadpan position, this means  that devoid of any emotion. These portraits are showing us that although it seems like we are looking at someone that we can connect and understand, it is impossible to represent someones emotions photographically. The people he took photos of were completely normal and they are a canvas that we can portray our emotions onto, although we can't know how they actually feel.

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This is a photograph of a man called Robert Rauschenburg by Chuck Close, Chuck Close does photography and hyper-realistic paintings. I like his art style because it captures people mid-action, this means we see more of their personality and how they act. It isn't just deadpan and emotionless, which can look good but it is nice to see some emotion. I also like how this is lighted, the background is black as well as his shirt and then his face and hair is very bright which obviously attracts your eye to that. 

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This is a photo by David LaChapelle for his 'Shut In' collection, I think this is a lovely photograph because it shows so much happiness, this lady is doing what she loves in the photograph (drawing patterns), we can tell she loves doing it because the background of the photograph is completely covered in them.

Definition Post - Joiners

Joiners

A joiner is a photographic technique in which one picture is assembled from several overlapping photographs. It can be created from prints or created digitally on a computer. A panograph is distinct because overlapping edges of photographs aren't removed.

A joiner is a photographic technique in which one picture is assembled from several overlapping photographs. It can be created from prints or created digitally on a computer.

A panograph is distinct because overlapping edges of photographs aren't removed.

This is an example of joiners, it was made by taking lots of photos from different angles and different positions and then merging them together to create one photo, it is quite odd because the boys face has moved a lot.

This photograph is another example of a joiner,  however it doesn't have as much movement as the other joiners,  really like this because it is quite simple, there isn't a lot going on but David Hockney made it look very busy.

Definition Post - Depth Of Field

Definition Post - Depth of Field

Depth of field is the front-to-back zone of a photograph where the image is sharp, when an object is out of this range it begins to lose focus. Shallow DOF is when the zone where it focuses is very small, a couple of inches or maybe a foot, deep DOF is when the included range is much larger, it can be the entire picture or a few feet.

The closer the subject to the camera, the more shallow the DOF.

This is quite a shallow DOF because only one of the people in the photo are very well focused, the others are getting out of focus.

This is also quite a shallow DOF, it is only focused on the one ball and the rest of the photo is very unfocused.

This is an example of wide DOF, it doesn't have any unfocused parts which works really well in this photograph, the photographer may have done this by making the aperture a high f-stop number like f22.

This is an example of shallow DOF as it is only a few inches long to fit the dragonfly.

Definition Post - Motion

Definition Post

Motion in a photograph is capturing the movement of someone or something by changing the shutter speed and sometimes aperture. The slower the shutter speed the more movement you will catch in a photo, however this can cause mistakes if the shutter speed is slow and the object is fast, it may become invisible or very hard to see.

This is an example of motion, it shows the child on the roundabout in good focus, whilst the rest of the photograph is blurred, this shows us that the roundabout is spinning round so it looks like the rest of the world is moving from that perspective.

This is a photo of someone running, it shows motion because we can see where his arms and legs have moved, the ground is also showing movement a bit which looks cool.

This photograph shows a lot of movement, almost all of the characters in the photo show movement and I think the photographer probably didn't use a tripod because the ground is also showing movement which shouldn't happen unless they are moving as well.

This photo shows a lot of movement by using long exposure, the shutter speed was probably very slow for this photograph, meaning that a lot of movement was captured. you can tell this person used a tripod because the lights in the background aren't moving as well.

Definition Post - Reflection

Reflection

Reflection photography is the art of using reflective surfaces like mirrors, glass or bodies of water to capture beautiful images. However mirrors aren't commonly used because they are quite difficult to work with as any streaks or blotches on the mirror can ruin the photo and filters can make the photograph look dull.

Personally I think reflection can be very tacky as a photography form, it is sometimes overused and can look terrible, however, when used correctly and subtly it can be absolutely stunning.

This is an example of good use of reflection in my opinion. I think that this shows reflection quite subtly which can sometimes look a lot better than very obvious reflection.

I love this picture because it is very simple, it isn't very clique either as I haven't the mirror idea around that much, I also like that the person is wearing all black as it means your eye is drawn to the mirror rather than them.

I quite like this photograph because I think the eye isn't necessarily being dragged to the bikes reflection rather just the bike, which happens to be a silhouette in this photo which looks better than a lot of colour would in contrast with the sky.

I love this photo, primarily because of the beautiful colours, however the reflection looks amazing as well, I love the fact that it's distorted and I think that it looks really good and although its not very original it is still very nice.

Definition - Shape

Shape

Shape can be geometrical, for example, squares, triangles and circles. Shape can also be irregular, these are shapes like the human form, or flowers, many shapes in nature are irregular although some do follow a pattern like snail shells. This follows the Fibonacci pattern which is a mathematical sequence that shows up a lot in nature.

The fibonacci sequence in nature

This is a picture of the edge of a building from an angle looking up, it looks like a triangle however it is a rectangle building. I think it's cool that you can manipulate it like this.

This is an example of shape, although it is also an example of pattern. This is a regular hexagon and it wouldn't be found in nature, this is likely a man made structure.

Definition - Tone

Tone

This refers to the darkness or lightness of something, this could be a shade or how dark or light a colour is.

Tones are created by the way light falls on a 3D object. The parts of an object on which the light is it’s strongest.

Lighter tones can be used to show femininity and innocence, whereas darker tones can be used to show masculinity and power.

This shows tone because you can see from which side the light is hitting the house from. It is quite an isolated looking photograph. It also looks quite masculine because it doesn't contain many curved, it has quite sharp edges.

I like this photograph because it has a lot of tone, there's a lot of shadows in this photograph which shows us that the light source was probably high up in the air when this was taken.

This photograph is an example of tone, I think this photograph is quite odd because I'm not sure what has happened to the floor, however I chose it because the rocks have lots of tone, they have shadows that show the shape of the object a lot better.

Definition Post - Form

Definition Post - Form

Form is a three dimensional shape, such as a cube, sphere or a cone. Sculpture and 3D design are about creating forms. In 2D artworks, tone and perspective can be used to create an illusion of form.

 Source

This example of form isn't the best, I think it could show texture better, however it does show form, I like it because the depth of field is very well done, and I think that due to the lighting angle we are able to see that it is curved and has a form.

 Source

This is an example of the human form, humans and other animals can have beautiful forms, I love this photo because of how the lighting has made it look, theres lots more shadows that create a more 3D shape than if the light was straight on, I also like that it has been edited to be darker, it means you can see the small flaws better which in this photograph looks really good.

 Source

This is another example of the human form, however this time it is a female form, I like this picture because there is a lot of negative space, and the body has a lot of shadow, the lighting is quite subtle in this photo in my opinion. I love that you can see all of the muscles and bones. I think this photo is quite interesting as you don't usually see these sort of shadows on the human body form, it's not what a back usually looks like.

Define - Pattern

Pattern

Patterns bring a sense of visual rhythm and harmony to photographs that capture the harmony. Patterns happen whenever strong graphic elements - lines, colours, shape, form - repeat themselves.

This is an example of pattern because the steps keep repeating, I think it looks really good because its very plain, there's no people in the shot which is good. I also like that it is only one colour.

I like this photo because the pattern is almost perfect, all of the cars are the same colour which looks great in my opinion. I also like that the sides of the photo have a pattern as well, with the lines adding to the pattern I think this is my favourite of the pattern photos.

This is an example of a pattern, however it is quite a messy pattern. I love the snake skins pattern repeating over and over again I think it looks really good.

I like this photo because the pattern is symmetrical, I think it looks really really lovely even though the pattern isn't perfect because zebras stripes aren't symmetrical.