OCA: September 2012

Sunday 23 September 2012

Photography 1 - Light Project The intensity of light Exercise Higher and Lower sensitivity

Leeds railway station

All images captured at the largest aperture available of f4.5

iso 800 - 125th sec

iso 100 - 2.5 secs

iso 1000 - 20th sec

iso 800 - 20th sec

iso 800 - 30th sec

iso 1600 - 60th sec

iso 1000 - 60th sec

iso 100 - half sec

iso HI -1 - 125th

iso 100 - 25th sec

iso HI-1 - 100th sec

iso 800 - 20th sec

iso 800 - 25th sec

iso 100 - 3rd sec

iso 1600 - 50th sec

iso 100 - half sec

iso 200 - third sec

iso 400 - third sec

The use of a range of iso sensitivities were required to freeze motion in these images of the railway station late in the day. Examination of the images reveals higher granularity at higher iso speeds. This would have been easier to see if I had used a tripod to ensure crispness in detail at the slower shutter speeds.

Tuesday 4 September 2012

What makes great photography

Nan and Brian in bed, Nan Goldin 1983

My reading - this is a self portrait carefully composed to explore the relationship between men and women. Nan looks upset as she looks at Brian enjoying a cigarette after having sex. She looks dissatisfied whilst he seems relaxed in the world.

Val Williams - almost as above...

What makes great photography

Cafe Lemitz, Anders Petersen 1978

My reading - This is part of a series of photographs telling the story of the lives of working class people in Sweden (?). The woman is one of only two in the bar and she stands defiantly aware that she is in an unusual place for a woman. She is tolerated by the male clientele who are also aware of that her presence is unexpected.

Val Williams - the Hamburg bar provided an enclosed space to portray the intimacy of the relationships. More of a family album.

What makes great photography

Untitled film still, no 3, Cindy Sherman 1977

My reading - Again I know something about the work of Sherman. Here she has created a fictional still from a non existent movie. In this image she is playing the part.of a house wife washing the dishes or cooking the dinner whilst surreptitiously observing activity behind her.

Val Williams - a social comment on Womens place in a consumerist society (?)

What make great photography

Migrant Family, Dorothea Lange

My reading - I know something about this photograph. It is one of a series of photographs created by a small team of photographers commissioned by the Agriculture agency in the USA to capture the plight of migrants leaving the Dust Bowl states for a new life in California. Lange produced a number of images of this family but it is this one that has become iconic. It has become emblematic of the condition of migrants worldwide. Close cropping of the image and the turned faces of her children clearly focussed attention on the careworn face of the mother facing an uncertain future.

Val Williams - a child either side has a powerful symmetry - a Madonna flanked by Cherubs bedraggled by poverty (too MUCH!)

What makes great photography

Circus, Budapest, Andre Kertész 1920

My reading - This is a photograph taken of a married couple too poor to pay to visit the circus. There are strong horizontal and vertical lines in the image that give it a good balance.

Val Williams - closeness of the characters and the textural differences of the hat scarf and wood grain.

What makes great photography

Tic Tac Men at Ascot Races, Bill Brandt 1935

My reading - The Bookies are pictures signalling the odds for races. Communication is going in all directions and with an urgency that is necessary just before a race.

Val Williams - statues like preachers. Arrested movement and stilled time. Siloueted, locked a mysterious brotherhood. Identical suits, characters in a chorus. Cassandras forecasting the future.
Nope. Didn't get any of that...

Bijou au Bar de la Lune Montmartre, Brassai

Girl about to do a handstand, Roger Mayne

What makes great photography

Steerage, Alfred Siegletz 1907

My reading - This photograph shows passengers of 3Rd class emigrating to the USA. Conditions are cramped and uncomfortable. This image show the degree of discomfort that emigrants are prepared to tolerate to seek out a better life.

Val Williams - Two distinct sections covered by the bridge introducing dynamism and force (?). A move from pictorialism to modernism - I don't understand this at ALL!!!!

Monday 3 September 2012

What makes a great photograph

From the series The Table of Power, Jacqueline Hassink 1994

My reading - This is a boardroom for an American car manufacturer. Their top of the range vehicle, an iconic sportscar is the only adornment to a very austere room. In this makes place decisions are made that effect the lives of hundreds of workers employed in their manufacture. Showing the room devoid of it's users lends starkness and quiet that would be lacking if the users were included.

Val Williams - quiet and solid, the room waits for powerful men and women to occupy it.

Meeting of the Board of Directors Villa-Hugel, Essen, Rene Burri

Inside the Masonic Lodge, Martin Parr

What makes a great photograph

Gold Mines of Serra Paladin, Sebastiao Salgado 1986

My Reading - Dressed in rags like the other miners the subject tests against a post exhausted from his labours. He is one of many hundreds making a bare living from manual extraction of rock that contains gold. In long lines the miners carry their loads from the ground for processing. The mining company need not invest in equipment when there is a plentiful supply of cheap labour. Showing the men working like ants in desperate conditions, the author seeks to alert the authorities to their plight and bring about change.

Val Williams - this image uses form texture and mass to create a sense of drama. The central figure is an individual, graceful and enigmatic.I read the theme correctly but overlooked the method employed to project it's message.

The great chartist meeting W.E Wilburn

Breaker Boys in a coal mine, Lewis Hine

Construction site of the Fergana Grand Canal, Max Alpert

Sunday 2 September 2012

What makes great photography

Bricklayer, August Sander 1928

Best of 2011: Visual Art

My Reading - This image is part of a series shooing working people at their trade. The bricklayer carries his load of bricks with seeming ease and with the most basic of equipment. He uses one hand and a rag to balance his hod, keeping the other hand free for climbing. The subject faces the camera with a confident air, his eyes challenging the viewer not to judge his job as lowly.

Val Williams - From people of the 1020's. Photographer aware of importance pose composition and lighting. An important example of descriptive portraiture.

Delivering Coal, Horace Nicholls

Couldn't resist the Lego version....

What makes great photography

Wall Street, Paul Strand 1915

My reading - This image shows workers heading to or from work. Some carry their tools. The Olga shadows show that it is either late or very early. The people are made tiny in their environment by the size of the rectangular recesses. This shows the degree to which humans are minimised in an environment where buildings and businesses rule.

Val Williams - Photography as a social educator. Image explores a society in flux confronting and embracing modernity. Black rectangles recesses impart a sense of foreboding.

5 years after its capture in 1920 the location of the picture was the site of a bombing by Italian anarchists prompting the question as to whether the forbidding feel of the image drove the bombers to choose it as a target.

The City - William Willard Dyke

San Paolo, Brazil Rene Burri

What makes great photography - 80 masterpieces explained - Val Williams

On a free afternoon whilst visiting the London Paralypics, Rachael dropped into The Photographers Gallery. Explaining my Art predicament he recommended she picked up a copy of this book. I have decided to work through it and give my reading of the images before I read the supporting text.

For each of the images there are some other similar photographs which I will also look up.

The first is Textile Mill, USA by Lewis Hine.

My reading - This is a photograph of a young girl working at a loom in the 1920's. She is small and rather dwarfed by the massive weaving equipment. There are no safety guards or protective clothing and it makes me feel nervous that she is working with loose clothes and hair near dangerous equipment. She appears to be working alone except for the woman in the background who might be her supervisor. This image I think was taken to show the conditions under which children work.

Val Williams - This image is a part of a series intended to to highlight to the public the working conditions of children with a view to bringing about change regarding child labour. I missed the sense of scale imparted by the camera position relative to the subject. By making her deliberately a small portion of the image her scale compared to the machinery is emphasised. The height of the camera cleverly aligns the girls head with the top of the machinery.

Additional recommended images

Clearly there are child labour is alive and kicking.

Earing money for basics was alive and kicking in the the 40's too. See my fathers book describing how he made money as a child collecting glass jars from amongst the horses heads at Bristol rubbish dumps.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Penny-a-Jar-ebook/dp/B005J86KNO

Textile factory, Moscow, Soviet Union, by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1954