Sam Cornwell

Sam Cornwell is a British photographer who visited our college earlier this year to do a presentation, he showed us how older cameras work (wet plate collodion) which I found quite interesting. He also showed us some examples of wet plate collodion printed on metal, which were of portraits. I found looking at his work interesting as well, his photography changed a lot in his work over time and he did not just work in only one branch of photography.

 I decided to write about one of his earlier photographs because I liked how he had created and planned it. The photograph is this one, of which he has included many images (paintings and photographs) in a street and made one large photograph altogether, it took him hours to get right and I can see why. He had to get the colour right and too check that the image looked in the right order, so he could correctly get the smaller pictures into the focus. I don’t know how he decided on how this would work. I like this image from its use of colours which work well together. I also liked how he used large and small images to build this up the photograph. The subject matter of the pictures within in the photograph are all form different subjects and topics, so this makes the viewer look closely. There is no centre where the eye leads as there are so many colours and topics to focus on just one.

I learnt a lot from Sam Cornwall's talk, I learnt how as a photographer, it was not just about taking pictures but also coming up with ideas.

Marbling books

This Persian or Turkish ebru, 19th century books, It is also known as marbling.
One of the ideas I am going to use for paper making is to use marbling in books just as how books used to feature in the 19th Century.
I really like them, as it adds a bit of colour to the book often when they are very simple. 
I did try this and I think it has worked .
This style has gone out of fashion.
I am going to try this in my own work when I make my paper books.

Book Binding was quite easy depending upon which one I created. The zig zag binding was harder to create however. When creating the final one it will have to be very neat.

Here are some more examples.
I also found some examples where paintings were used instead.

Invite Card

When I started my invite card, I had no idea what I was going to do but my current idea has come from a idea of the board, I read the word Miniatures of the board and then I researched them online, I was very impressed by the detail and skill that went into these painting and how personal they were. Miniature Portraits were very popular in history but were very popular in the 18th century and 19th century before photography. The paintings are very tradional as they are usually similar to photographs.
I decided that I would use this idea for my invite card because I felt that it would make the invite card more personal and would relate it to art as it had to be painted.
I next had to decide what I would do this on,
I also needed to decide who these portraits would be off.
I first thought of the all the students in the classes but the idea was not popular. I then decided I would try an example, so I used Grayson Perry's portrait of the wall and then copied it and then looked at another photo of him to finish. I then decided that I would paint artists that people had heard of.
Tracey emin was the next artist I decided to paint, she too was on the wall of the class. So I decided I would paint her but I felt that one I did of her was much better than my first. The Minitures I did were on post it notes as I thought that for my final peice I could make an invite card that could be taken apart and parts of it kept.

I thought that if the text was on the other post it note it could be kept as a reminder of the date. I also thought that underneith the post it notes could be a pattern that looked at art and graphic design, I have looked at stained glass as a idea.

In the process of making this design I thought it would be hard to recreate the portraits but I liked the idea because I felt it made it more than just an invite card. I like the idea that something was made by an art student and painted.
I think the post it note works as they can be swapped to the artist you prefer and can be changed about and taken off. One problem with this however is if they lose their stick and just fall off. another fault is if you put it in a bag the post it notes may bend; they were not made to last forver, so I may need to rethink the stick option
I think this gives post it notes a good usage as they are often just thrown in the bin after leaving a reminder but are also personal if left with a compliment on them.

Some of the other portraits are above. I found oil paint worked best for these minitures. I used water colour on the bottom one which was meant to be picasso in black and white.
I think my best one was of Frida Kahlo I used a round shape and blue for the back ground which is often used in miniatures.

David Hockney

David Hockney, is a photographer and artist who I have decided to look at as one of the photographers for location photography. His work is different to most other photographers as his photographs are built up of many small photographs that built up to a larger photomontage. I like his works as he is creative with his choice of subject matter and he sometimes gives an almost a panoramic view. I did try this myself and it is much harder than it seems to be. The small images are often of different textures such as the blue of the sky or wood of the floor. Most of his photographs are buil up with many tiny images, he does not just take a small amount and it must take a long time to take so many photographs of each small details. I like his photography where he looks closely at people and how they move, there is one with a older man with a ciggerette and you can see how the face moves and how his expressions change. He doesn't use many styles but photomontage as in many other photographers will often look to get the perfect scene, I like how he photographs everyday scenes.

O. Winston Link

O. Winston Link

One of the Photographers I looked at was O. Winston Link, an American photographer. He worked mostly in the late 1950s for which most of his photographs are known; he worked at the end of the steam railway age. He worked only in black and white. The use of black and white in his work adds age to work and makes it easier to known when they were taken, his use of technology such as trains also add a romantic age to them. In one photograph the Hotshot Eastbound he uses three forms of transport, the cars, the plane and the train. This is very good as he has been able to get them all on at the same time almost unrealistic. In one of the cars is a couple watching a movie (foreground), the cars are heading off the photograph with the eye being lead that way, but the plane leads the eye to the left on the movie screen which points to the train also going of the image. This photograph looks very complicated to get right; it looks like it is staged. The photograph is very well done and must have taken a lot of planning to get right. I like this photograph as it looks almost unreal and is focused on a man-made subject matter. There is chilling feeling to this photograph; the usage of the train feels out of date with its steam which really make the picture interesting took at.

Final Major Project

For this unit, I need to create my own brief, its unsual as I am used to be given the ask, I feel like I am overthinking ideas or even trying to force ideas. I am unsure on what I want this piece to be but the point of the brief being open is to come up with ideas and also being able to change direction if needed. I quite like the idea of using graphics, because I enjoyed this in my view point unit and also in the mermaid unit. For the idea, I thought about two things anxiety, which is quite personal to me and is something I have death with over the last few years. The other idea is based on an idea similar idea to my location photography, which I used the inteior and exteior idea of protraying the inside and outside of my house, so in a way it was quite personal, I thought the focus of this idea could be on an enviroment that can't be controled, or because the mind of the person doesn't feel they can be organised or are deserving. I want to know why some people have an ideal but others are very much stuck in there own poverty and ideas. For this I can create a supture using both graphics and photograpghy. The sculpture can be of a house and it can include an inside.

Some books for Narrative Image Making