Extra pictures from stage fort

Near and Far

I went to Stage Fort Park since it was the only place I could think of close enough that had scenery worthy of a landscape. I didn't want to go alone in that bitter cold, so I asked my mom to tag along and we managed to find some interesting subject matter.

Eugene Atget and his Style

Eugene Atget was very unique in that he used practices, techniques, and a camera that were outdated by his time. This didn't stop him from both documenting history and capturing the world (particularly Paris) in the time period before the buildings were demolished or remodeled during urbanization and modernization. He used a large-format view camera, which was cumbersome to carry around, but he used it to take pictures of Paris as it was; gardens, streets, storefronts...
Although he wasn't a mover or shaker in the photography world (preferring to be called an "author-producer"), he produced photographs for the visual quality and aesthetic of the image.
Bernice Abbot saved his images from washing away into history, as she found his negatives just before his death and printed them. She and Man Ray used him as inspiration.

(Info from http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=176
http://www.atgetphotography.com/The-Photographers/Eugene-Atget.html )
(Image http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=229 )

Eugene Atget

Apparently there isn't much to know about this photographer, and what can be told of him are just "recollections and legends". A facts could be said though; he was born in Libourne, France in 1857 and worked as a sailor. Once he finished that, he moved onto become an actor, but didn't find much success in that. He tried painting, didn't like it, and moved onto photography around age 40.

The Old School of Medicine, taken in Paris in 1898.

Tree Roots, taken in Saint-Cloud, negative 1906

The Facade of Saint Julien le Pauvre, taken in Paris 1898

 

(Info from http://www.atgetphotography.com/The-Photographers/Eugene-Atget.html )
(Images http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1763 )

Pre Assignment Near and Far

For the next assignment we must consider the style of Ansel Adams. We must take pictures of landscapes where everything is in focus. To do this, the camera must be set to the second highest Aperture setting with Aperture priority. You have to focus on the middle of the picture and take the photo.

My plan is to go to Stage Fort Park and see what it can offer.

I've already written previously about Ansel Adams here:
http://ohmanphotos.blogspot.com/2013/10/it-seems-i-did-way-too-man.html

20 Books

The Americans Robert Frank by Jack Kerovac published by the National Gallery of Art
"Funeral"
"Navy Recruiting Station, Post Office"
"Rooming House- Bunker Hill, LA"
"Rodeo- NYC"

An Autobiography by Richard Avedon published by Random House New York

Diane Arbus Magazine Work published by Aperture

Eyewitness by Richard Lacayo and George Russel published by Time Books
"Returning Prisoner of War" Ernest Haas 1945
"Commuters on a train to Stamford, CN" Carl Mydans 1963
"Lt. Col. Robert Stirm returns home" Sal Veder, 1973

In Real Life - Six Women Photographers by Leslie Sills, published by Holiday House New York

The Legacy of Josiah Johnson Hawes 19th Century Photos of Boston by Rachel Johnston Hammer published by Barre Publishers

Margaret Burke White Photograher by Sean Callahan published by Little, Brown, and Company

Masters of Photography - Alfred Stieglitz published by Aperture
"Dorothy Norman"
"Spring Showers, New York, 1902"
"Evening, New York from the Shelton, 1931"

Masters of Photography - Andre Kertesz published by Aperture

Masters of Photography - August Sander published by Aperture

Masters of Photography - Barbara Morgan published by Aperture

Masters of Photography - Berenice Abbot published by Aperture
"Trinity Church, New York, 1934"

Masters of Photography - Eikoh Hosoe published by Aperture

Masters of Photography - Eugene Atget published by Aperture

"Bar de Cabaret"

Masters of Photography - Paul Strand published by Aperture

Masters of Photography - Tina Madotti published by Aperture

Men at Work Photographis Studies of Modern Men and Machines by Lewis W. Hine, published by Dover Publications

Photography Speaks 150 Photographers on their art by Brooks Johnson published by Aperture
"St. Petersburg Courthouse, VA, April 3 1865" Thomas Roche
"Omen, San Fransisco 1934" John Guttman
"Tempo of the City 5th Ave. and 42nd Manhattan Sept 6 1938" Berenice Abbott

Robert Capa/Photographs published by Aperture

"Barcelona, August, 1936"
"Near Barcelona Aug-Sept 1936"
"Near Triona Sicily, Aug 1943"
"Agrigento, Sicily July 1943"
"Notre-Dame-de-Cenilly, Normandy, July 28, 1944"
"Granville, Normandy July 31, 1944"

Timation - Jonathan Shaw, Eadweard Muybridge, Harold Edgerton published by Dewi Lewis Publishing

Michael Carroll and Romania

http://www.sxu.edu/student-life/ministry/crpd/sweeney/hand_held_film_general/bio_michael_carroll.asp

This past week in photography we watched a film titled Hand Held that revolved around Michael Carroll and his work with Romanian orphanages, and how his photography impacted and helped his work.


Romania's dictator,  Nicolae Ceausescu, up until 1989 had been brutal. He outlawed birth control and abortions, hoping to jumpstart population growth by making women have a minimum of five children. Not all of these women had AIDS, but some did and would pass it o to their children, who would be abandoned at understaffed, overcrowded orphanages. Even after the fall of Ceausescu, the orphanages remained as Romania scrambled to regain its footing. The nurses got two needles and syringes a year to inject the children with the medicine since they did not have oral medication. This is how AIDS spread in the orphanages, and rumors of this spread to Western Europe and the Americas.
Michael Carroll was contacted by The Globe to research this epidemic, and shipped off to Romania. He was shown around many orphanages by the doctors, but while he went to wander on his own, a man pulled him aside to show him the testing rooms and the morgue. This is when Carroll saw the horrors of these orphanages. Children who passed away were scattered around the floor and he immediately began to take pictures, and ran to tell his fellow colleagues.
When he returned, he met a man who was picking up his niece who had passed on. Carroll was invited to take pictures of the funeral.
When he returned to America, Carroll got together some people he knew and they started the Romanian Children Relief foundation. Once the story was published in the Globe, people immediately wanted to donate and see what they could do to help.
Later, people could adopt the children, and found that a lot of them had mental, physical, and emotional issues because of the lack of attention, nurturing, and love they received as infants.
Now Michael Carroll is working with Disney, Compaq, Malden Mills, Beth Israel Hospital, University of Massachusetts Medical Center, Boston Children's Hospital, American Express and General Motors Corp.He also runs his own photography studio and visits Romania twice a year, continuing his role as director of Romanian Children's relief.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/130114/romania-orphans-homeless

Unable to function well in today's society- weren't taught how to maintain a job or homelife. No national job or housing assistant programs.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/130114/romania-orphans-adoption
Many children are now old enough to experience a variety of mental, emotional, and physical health issues

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/429453/Anneka-Rice-returns-to-Romanian-orphanage-22-years-after-first-visiting-living-hell

It seems I did way too many photographers but still need to do Ansel Adams

Born in 1902, in San Fransisco, Adams grew up loving and appreciating nature, which is what guided him to photography and becoming an influential member of the Sierra Club. He became the club's official photographer in 1927 and helped lobby Congress for the preservation of many parks. In 1968 Adams earned the Conservation Service Award. He died in Monterey, California, in 1984.

( http://www.sierraclub.org/history/ansel-adams/ )
( http://www.biography.com/people/ansel-adams-9175697 )

( http://www.archives.gov/research/ansel-adams/ )

Edward Weston

Edward Weston is an American photographer born in California. He started his own photograph business, Little Studio in Tropico, California.He traveled to New York and Mexico as well. He used a large-format camera to get detailed black and white photos. Along with Ansel Adams, he helped pioneer a modernist style. He tried to catch the American lifestyle through nature, using nudes, still lifes, portraits, and landscapes. Him and a few other photographers- Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, and others- formed a group called Group f/64 to honor aperture priority. He got Parkinson's Disease and was forced to stop photography, and died in 1958.

( http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1677 )
( http://ccp.uair.arizona.edu/item/234 )
( photo credit: http://www.masters-of-photography.com/W/weston/weston6.html )

Elliot Erwitt

Elliot Erwitt was born in Paris, France on July 26th, 1928, and was raised in Milan. He moved around a lot, from Paris to New York to LA. He was drafted into the army in 1951 and while he was stationed in Germany and France, and soon became president of Magnum Photos, and became a leader in magazine photography. He made many movies and published many books, and is still alive today. He is knows for his sense of humor and snapping that into his pictures.

(Info credit to http://www.sudest57.com/en/elliott_erwitt_biography.html )

The one above is my favorite. How silly and clever!

Jacob Riis

Jacob Riis was born is Ribe, Denmark on May 3rd, 1849 and immigrated to the US in 1870. He became a police reporter for the New York Tribune and found his new position to try and bridge the gap between the rich and poor in New York. He used flash powder to take images at night, something that few other photographers did at the time.He made a book titled How the Other Half Lives. After publishing many more books and causing a public reaction to the images, earning the nickname "godfather of investigative journalism" he died in Barrie, Massachusetts on May 26th, 1914.



(Info and top two images belong to http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAriis.htm )
(Bottom image belongs to http://www.bartleby.com/175/11.html )

Shutter Speed Priority

We were sent out to take pictures of each other jumping, where one of us slipped and got rotten crab apple on her jeans and her hand, and I slipped and hurt my knee, of which I'm still sometimes feeling the repercussions. Hopefully they got some good shots!

Either way, I like the photos of people jumping more, but I'll throw in a running one.

 I don't like the background too much, especially the pole to the left.

 

 This one is my favorite.

I like how the designs on her dark shirt pop out.

Shutter Priority Pre-Assignment

We used Eadweard Muybridge as an example for this assignment- catching moving objects as they moved. Eadweard Muybridge was born April 9th, 1830 in England. Leland Stanford hired him to take pictures of horses to settle of dispute over whether or not they lift all four legs at the same time while running. He started studying movement and wanted to find a way to try to capture it in a still image. He died on May 8th, 1908.


For this assignment we were told to set our camera on TV and to manually focus our camera onto the spot that the subject was going to be in. We were going to jump of f of things and attempt to capture each other suspended in mid air. We were then expected to run around like idiots. The goal was to get a crisp but still slightly blurry picture of the subject.

(Image and info credit: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/eadweard-muybridge )

Aperture Priority Post-Assignment

I tried to understand the concept while going out for my Paul Strand photos, and took many pictures of flowers up close. But they never translated well to black and white. I realized that I was focusing too much on the color and that I had to look at the shadows of it.
When I came in to finally take pictures of the (now dying) flowers in the room, I tried to keep track of the lights and darks, but it still turned out that I was focusing on color. After a little editing, they came out decent enough enough in black and white, but I'm still not entirely proud of them.

Aperture Priority Assignment

I'm not entirely fond of these, they're much nicer in color. I'm going to post those so you can forget about these black and white, heavily edited eyesores...

Much better. Apologies for making your eyes bleed.

Paul Strand Post-Assignment

I decided not to go take pictures of the boats because it was too long of a walk and my feet were hurting anyway from a long day at work. I instead decided to what I began to think of as "the walk down Washington" and just kind of walked down the street to see what sort of interesting things I could find. I discovered that basically every side street off of Washington, other than my own, were really quaint. The houses had cute little doors and stairs leading to them and gardens. They really gave me inspiration because everything was so cute looking and I wanted to capture everything I could with them.

Paul Strand Inspired Photos

 This was a cute little set up in a neighbor's yard. It was a challenge keeping the car, parked right to it, out of frame.

I walked quite a distance to get a picture of this bell tower so that there would be no wires in the way.

 Some nice buildings.

Walker Evans

He was born in 1903 in St. Louis, Missouri where he had an early start to the world of art. He painted a lot, and eventually went to Williams College for a year, but quit to move to New York so he could better study writing. When he picked up photography again, he tried instilling the strategies of literature into his visual art. He died April 10th, 1975 in New Haven, Connecticut, of a brain hemorrhage.

I like this one for its simplicity and contrast between the dark doors and windows under the porch, and the white outside of it. There is little shadow, since the sun is coming from behind the photographer, and it makes it much more interesting.

I like this one because its a picture of art, and it looks as though the woman's head is splitting in half because of the rip. It's his take on someone else's art.

This is another simple photograph, but there is a lot going on- the sign, the doors, the curb, the change in color on the wall, but we still somehow focus on the three men in the middle.

Imogen Cunningham

Imogen Cunningham was born in Portland, Oregon in 1883 with a very supportive father, who taught her how to read before going to school and paid for her art lessons.She studied chemistry in college and went to Germany to continue those studies and how to blend it with photography. She taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Fransisco for a while, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree by the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland. as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship to print from her early negatives.She died on June 23, 1976.

 This man just kind of reminds me of my grandfather, but anyway, I like how there's a lot of headroom on him, and how he has a nice crisp shadow behind him. His face doesn't have much value though, and is mostly the same shade, but I like everything else, especially the contrast between positive and negative space.

I like how the eye moves down and left. Her hair is very pretty and the cookie waves contrast with her smooth skin at the top.

The choice to emphasize the flower by using a static black background was very interesting, especially because the flower itself has a lot going on, and there is nothing else at all to detract from it.

Aperture Exercise and Pre-Assignment

Yesterday we were told to put our aperture to the lowest setting we had, set our iso, focus the red dot on the subject, and experiment with it. The subject came out clear and crisp, where the rest of the things in the picture were blurry. I went around school to try this.

The only worthwhile photos I was able to snap were of lockers, but hey, they're still worthwhile.

Paul Strand Pre-Assignment

Paul Strand was born in New York on October 16th, 1890. At the age of 17, he began to take photography courses. He worked with Alfred Stieglitz. He made many films after the first World War. After being blacklisted by HUAAC, he left the US to live in France, where he died on March 31st, 1976.

In what could be considered his most famous photograph, Strand captures these moving individuals, all going in the same direction, and moving your eyes from left to right across the bottom. The repetitive rectangles in the back also help that along, as well as the peoples' shadows.

Again fence along the bottom moves the eye, and the white house that stands out in the back holds your attention on the piece.

This was my favorite one. I love the big looming shadow over the little people, and how the shadow shows all the details of the architecture. These big shadows are what I want to try to capture, and I'll do that by going to where the boats are and seeing what kind of interesting designs and patterns they'll give me to work with.