15.03.2012.

TAOP

Visit to Tate at Margate-Turner and the Elements.

Since Assignment Three is about colour I thought a visit to the Turner Exhibition was in order.  

As it states in the exhibition handbook, “...the appearance of objects in the landscape depends on light....”.

Turner’s use of colour is such that all the criteria for Assignment Three could be easily fulfilled  by using his studies. 

The colour harmony in, “The Chain Pier, Brighton”, is in stark contrast to the clash of colours in, “The Scarlet Sunset”.  Bought a selection of post cards to give me inspiration.  

Hamish Fulton.

Also on show was a small part of the Hamish Fulton exhibition, “Walk”.  A milestone may by important on the walk but a photograph of it on the wall of an art centre it looks pretty dull.  Perhaps I missed the point or need to see more than the very few pictures featured.

Two of his other pictures were far more interesting.  One was of a snow capped mountain top in Tibet, a pilgrimage for Buddhists that took many days to reach.  The photograph was taken from a newly built super highway smashed through the high plateau by the Chinese.

The second was of an elderly Buddhist monk in a Tibetan monastery clutching a hand bell.  The story was not in the man himself but in his surroundings.  The building looked almost derelict,  rubbish was strewn about the courtyard,   the prayer flags looked old and tatty and there was no sign of there being other monks.  It was a picture not of the monk but of the end of a way of life.

The photographs are not brilliant but the story they tell is very powerful.  A case of the scene and the seen.

14.03.2012

TAOP 

Part Three: Colour.

Project: Black and White.

Exercise: Manipulating with colour channels.

I took a number of pictures of the beach scene at Kingsdown.  The pictures included bare wood and painted beach huts, and some small boats.  

I picked out the two with most potential for my purposes and set to work on them.  The idea was to give some dramatic effect to what are pretty ordinary pictures.  

The best I could manage for the huts picture was to turn down all the colours bar the red and leave the red alone.  This had the effect of increasing the contrast without going to soot and whitewash.

The second picture featured a lot of grass so my approach had to be very different.  After much play I found that by turning up the green and yellow,  leaving a little cyan and turning the rest right down I got an almost infrared feel to the picture.

10.03.2012

TAOP Level 4.

Part Three: Colour.

Project: Colour Relationships.

Exercise: Colour Relationships.

Part 1.

Red/Green.

Orange/Blue.

Yellow/Violet.

Part 2. All pictures taken from my records.

The bright warm colour of the amaryllis lifts it out from the dark blue background.  This was achieved by having colour opposed to each other on the colour wheel.

This is a field of linseed flowers.  The picture is meant to mirror the blue of the flowers against the blue of the sky.  Having so much green allows the flowers to lift out from their background.  Normally blue would not stand out against green as they are next to each other in the colour circle but here it is the lightness of the blue flowers that gives the contrast.

Back to Nice for this one.  The florescent colours doing what they are designed to do; stand out.  The lime green, in particular, clashes with the colours either side of it.     

In this orchid picture the softness of the pinks and greens have a calming effect.  The exact opposite of the one above.  Everything about it is soft, from the texture and colour to the lighting.  Being opposites on the colour wheel the flowers are lift out from the leaves.

09.03.2012

TAOP Level 4.

Part Three: Colour.

Exercise: Control the Strength of a Colour.

Equipment: Canon G12 in raw.  Blue bucket. Digital colour meter on my Mac.

As with many cameras this camera works in 1/3 stops and not 1/2 stops so I had to adjust the exercise accordingly.  Thus I ended up with seven pictures each spaced 1/3 stop apart. 

The standard middle setting was f7.1 @ 1/15sec.

Readings from light to dark in 1/3 stops.

      R         G         B

1.   43       115      247  By moving the cursor I obtained a B255 reading at one point.
2.   32        99       230
3.   24        88       214
4.   15        73       194
5.   9         59       172
6.   6         48       152
7.   4         40       133

The bucket, although a rich blue, had a number of imperfections which made for variable readings.  

To the eye the hue of the blue stayed a similar quality but the brightness clearly changed.  The above chart shows that the ratio in the RGB channels changes as the light changes but I was unable to judge this with by eye.

PS.  I am slightly red/green colour impaired. 

06.03.2012

TAOP Level 4.

Part Two: Elements of Design.

Assignment Two: Elements of Design.

For this assignment I chose landscape but limited myself to what could be seen from the sea front at Deal.  I have captioned the pictures with the effects I believe they cover.

SINGLE POINT DOMINATING THE COMPOSITION.

The gull is by far the strongest feature in this composition.  I used a narrow depth of field to throw out the posts and avoid the viewer's eye from being distracted.

TWO POINTS.

The boy and his dog make for a strong two point picture.  There is a line from the angle of the dog's back leading up to the boy which returns back down to the dog by way of the angle of the boy's head.  The long lens I used allows for an interesting but not too intrusive background although this also shows the repeat patterns of the links.

SEVERAL POINTS IN A DELIBERATE SHAPE.

A flower arrangement at the florist consisting of many coloured primroses in a sea of white.

Gulls feeding at sea as seen from the pier.  

A COMBINATION OF VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL LINES.

The, now broken, groynes are constructed of old railway track and form strong vertical and horizontal lines, even when viewed from an oblique angle.  The addition of the angled supports adds to the feeling of strength.

DIAGONALS.

The wooden exterior of the cafe at the end of the pier.  I used greyscale to emphasise pattern and the weathering of the wood.

A fire escape from the first floor of The Royal Hotel.

More groynes.

CURVES.

Despite the strength of the groynes the sea will eventually tear them down. 

Curves formed in the pebbles by the action of the waves and tide.  The figures in the background serve to give a sense of scale.

DISTINCT, EVEN IF IRREGULAR, SHAPES.

The cover over a life buoy.

TRIANGLES.

The upper floor of The Royal Hotel as seen from the end of the pier.

The irregular shapes formed by the masts at the sailing club.

IMPLIED TRIANGLES.

Three chimneys forming a triangle against the sky.

A picture full of complete and implied triangles.  Inside the obvious red triangular tent is the implied triangle of the head, flask and bag.  The two rods and the stand form about nine with the shingle and the dark groynes hinting at yet more.

I left the best till last.  I took lots of pictures of gulls flying past and found I had this when I got home.  I was going to clone out the bottom bird but decided to leave it as shot.

RHYTHM.

Deal has no harbour so the small fishing fleet is hauled up on the beach.  By the use of a long lens I compressed the fleet and tried to give the impression of the boats climbing out of the sea and on to the beach.

RHYTHM AND PATTERN.

This has elements of both rhythm and pattern.  It is almost like bars of music in its repeated loops and verticals.

PATTERN.

These cannons sit at the front of Walmer Castle and point out to sea to deter the dastardly French.  The pattern is enhanced by the red caps at the end of each barrel. 

During this exercise I have used only new material.  Is this always necessary?  

28.02.2012

TAOP Level 4.

Part Two: Elements of Design.

Project: Rhythm and Pattern.

Exercise: Rhythms and patterns.

I have selected two very different photographs to illustrate pattern.  The first is a basket of coloured wools outside a shop.  I have cropped it so that the viewer is not aware as to how many more rows or baskets there may be.  The pattern is regular, broken only by the one green skein that acts as a stop to the eye, in a similar way to the example of the sweeping man on p48 of The Photographer’s Eye.

The second is an example of an irregular pattern.  It is of Hastings Old Town and was taken from high up on East Hill.  I shot it using a telephoto lens to compress distance.  There is no focal point nor any obvious line to lead the eye around the scene.  I cropped it tightly so as to have no visual lead out of the picture.  

The three marching bands were all taken in Nice during the Flower Festival.  They all display both visual, and actual, rhythm.  As can be seen the light was dull and I was having problems with depth of field and motion blur.  Despite these technical faults the pictures give a reasonable feeling of the day.  The way the drummers feet in the first picture are thrusting to the right and the drums are leaning to the left give a feeling of dynamic motion and rhythm.  The other two are not as strong but still have a feel of random pattern and dynamic rhythm.

28.02.2012

TAOP Level 4.

Part Two. Elements of Design.

Project: Shapes.

Exercise:Real and implied triangles.

Real 1.

The gas holder, which I’ve used previously, has a set of steps that are only visible when the holder is empty.  They make a stark silhouette against the sky and consist of a number of triangles.   

Real 2.

I returned to the railway crossing for this one.  I used my 7-14 lens to achieve the widest base to the triangle.  If I counted right the rails form six separate triangles.  The very high horizon was intentional.

Real 3.

Back to Deal Pier for the last one.  I climbed under the pier and took the shot from as near as possible to the centre line.  Again I used the 7-14 lens.  Exposure was the hardest part of this shot.  

Implied 1.

Three light blue marbles places in a triangular shape amongst an otherwise random arrangement. 

Implied 2.

A simple flower arrangement where the two outer stalks form the lower part of the triangle and the blooms form the top.

Faces forming triangle.

My grandson playing on an iPad watched by parents.