Blog Prompt #20 - Constructed Realities

The book Constructed Realities: The Art of Staged Photography, edited by Michael Kohler, describes the affect of viewers haven't a shorter attention span, “We therefore consume images fleetingly and randomly. It takes very special pictures to grasp and hold our attention. We need to be seduced by images that outdo reality through excessiveness—as in advertising and movies.”

A lot of people think all these "changes" that are occurring in the world today, like colloquial language including things like "lol", and people feeling the need to check facebook every couple of hours. True, these things are new and different, and people are changing, but why is that a bad thing? Things are always changing. Things have always changed and they always will. As easily as you could argue that we're all changing, you could argue we're still the same. I think it's in human nature to prefer talking to people in person, and although many people do spend a lot of their time on social network sites, usually those relationships started face to face or, as in the case with tweet-ups, where people who follow each other on twitter can meet in person. I think people's attention span is changing, but so what? The idea of art has always evolved and changed, and the fact that our attention spans are getting shorter could produce a challenge to creating artwork that artists really enjoy. But even as I say this, I do try to have patience with not only images, but just things in general. I prefer slower takes in movies, long shots in scenes, and slower reads in artwork. But in advertising, I do want something that will capture my attention fast because I don't have time to care. Generally, it's good design that captures my attention first, which means designers have a challenge in the advertising industry. But it's a fun challenge, and I don't think we should be upset about it.

Another excerpt from the same book explain the term "infotainment" and how contemporary people react to them,

“But the term ‘Infotainment’ also implies this: with the gradual fictionalization of even the news, the old categorical oppositions of ‘documenting’ and ‘staging’, appearance and reality gradually dissolve. They are being replaced by a variety of hybrid forms for which it will be impossible, in fact pointless, to attempt to distinguish between fact and fiction. Even the accusation that ‘Infotainment’ is guilty of continuous ‘lying’ is therefore unjustified, for it is neither ‘true’ nor ‘false’. Like advertising, movies and all other genres that adhere to the laws of fiction, it works at a level beyond these oppositions—the level of ‘hyper-reality’, where reality is ‘simulated’.”

I think sensible people understand that infotainment is not reality. Of course there are some people who can't tell the difference, such as little kids who think Dan Radcliffe can actually do magic. I do believe that people often wish the "reality" they see in magazines and commercials is an "ideal" reality from which a lot of people develop a desire for. But that is not a new thing. In photography there is that aspect of "Is it real or isn't it" because things can easily be manipulated. I think these images can create something that is magical and we might think it's real, but same with the French trapeze artist, Lola, from the 19th century, who could hold herself up with her teeth. Apparently she was held up by a frame or wires. It's the same concept. People were deceived. Even if the audience knew it couldn't happen, for the sake of entertainment, they extended their belief beyond things that made sense. In Photography people do the same thing. Even if we know magic isn't real, it's fun to see a magic trick, but the trick isn't as fun once we know how it works (sometimes, anyway).

Claude Cahun

The picture above is a self-portrait by the artist Claude Cahun. I assumed from the name and from the image that the artist was a male. Not so, Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob had many different pseudonyms throughout her early life, but settles on the name Claude Cahun. She is from France, perhaps in France, the name Claude is for both men and women?
Cahun did mostly self-portraits. Her style is very theatrical, often dressing up in a mask, having strange make-up and, when she had hair, strange hair (she shaved her head and kept it cropped short for the rest of her life).
Her lifetime partner, Marcel Moore (also a pseudonym), was also an artists, and I will guess that they often worked together. But this assumption comes from the fact that when I googled Marcel Moore, many of the same pictures of Cahun came up.
Together the two artists moved to the island Jersey, which evidently shocked the avant-garde community (haha) because they left the artistically rich environment of the city. They worked isolated for the rest of their lives, secretly creating flyers protesting the war and the Germans, throwing them in cars or dressing up as German, entering German events, and placing them on chairs and tables. The two were put in jail for these acts and sentenced to death. Thankfully the sentence was never completed, but Claude died from from illnesses due to imprisonment.

The contemporary photographer, Joel Peter Witkin, has a similar process, I think, to Cahun. Although his subject matter is very different. Early on in his career, he was a war photographer, but later he began to photograph things he would set up himself, many of which are obviously composites (for example, a centaur). His subject matter ranges from dismemberment to transvestites to dwarves. His choice of subject matter comes from an incident that happened outside his house when a car accident decapitated a little girl.

Assignment 3: Place

For my forest photographs, I approached them all similarly as far as composition. I liked when the shadows were coming toward the camera and the sun is in the shot. I liked that the sunlight hitting the leaves would leave a nice outline, or highlight, and create this really crisp look to the photographs. For my other landscape shot, when I was there i was thinking the same thing, putting the sun in the back, but this one shot I was looking to the right of the sun, so there wasn't much compositional thought behind it besides capturing the texture of the field, but balancing it out with a third of the top dedicated to the sky. For The photo where I'm holding the old photograph of the same room, I really wanted all the doors and pieces of the old and new photographs to match up, but it never worked out because the dimensions are the same, so to match them up, I would either have to back up a lot and have a whole person in the picture, which I thought would be distracting. But the room didn't allow me to back up anymore, so it was pretty much impossible. Therefore, I just put the print in the middle of the shot and you can still tell it's the same room, but much updated.
I think my landscapes show a subtle dramatic side of nature. Nature is not always peaceful. The image with the guy, the concept was pretty much: climb on that limb. Of my friends, he was the only one who would do it. I wanted it to look somewhat like a shoot of a celebrity, where the person is the main focus. Same with the one where I have pussywillow coming out of my head and sleeves, I wanted the figure to be the main focus. Originally I wanted the background to be a forest, (which is why I have many pictures of trees), but the pussywillow completely disappeared with that background, so I changed it to this neutral flat background instead. The image where I'm holding the old photograph, the concept was just to point out the past and present and how things have changed so much.
The photograph that required the most work was the composite of me with the pussywillow coming out of my head and sleeves. It was not actually too difficult, I simply masked out the braches, shaded where I thought required shading, and played with the colors a little so there was a unified color and white balance. The one where I'm holding the photograph, I happened to be home one weekend and took that picture because I thought worded great for the assignment. The other images, I traveled to those location specifically for those photos.

My goal for creating the composite image was to create a realistic figure made of plants. I'm not sure how successful it came across. I love the legs, but not the hands and head as much. I don't think it is believable. For the in-camera collage photograph, my goal was to get that "my, how time has flown" feeling of the old photo within the new photo and the updated living room. The other photographs I simply wanted to create stunning fall-inspired landscape photos.

My in-camera collage photo reminds me of a few photographers who hold up old pictures of building and take new pictures of the streets those buildings were on and composite them together to show how time has changed. It is a very similar idea that have done with my living room. Here is an example of a photographer who does this sort of thing: http://www.sweet-station.com/blog/?p=11341.

Memory Composite

I made a panorama of a field, the hard and arguably more fun way (when you have time time, of course), and photoshopped an image of myself into it. It is inspired by a memory I have of running through a field at night time. I wasn't alone. I was with about twenty other people, but I didn't feel they needed to be included in the image.

I think I really want to start making landscapes. Not just to have landscapes, but to put people into them for posters. The background is just as important as the subject in the foreground.

As the image is so wide, when I uploaded it, it reduced the size. Therefore, I thought it would be nice to provide a detail, below.

Digital Collage Exercises

I did these a while ago to practice different methods of collaging images together in photoshop. The image in front of the Hogwarts castle I changed my head, but (hopefully) it's hard to tell it was photoshopped, therefore I have provided the oringial (which is shown second).

I also recently changed the way I select the outline of a person. I've always used the lasso tools, but in my photography class I've learned about masking and selecting through the pen tool. Although I feel comfortable using the lasso tools, I do think masking is actually a better way, because the image is still there, you can bring back what you cut out. Here's my example of that:

And then I played around with making part of the image illlustrated, which I think it very well executed in this poster:

But a lot less effective in my own:

Blog Prompt #19

I think there are plenty of things that should not be photographed. I think privacy is incredibly important and often times people forget the privacy wishes of others. Paparazzi is an excellent example. I think the paparazzi can come up with an excellent reason to photograph celebrities, and these days it pretty much comes with the territory, so I will not say celebrities should not be photographed while walking their dog. But I do think that that celebrity has the right to not have his or her children photographed.
Of course there are also very vulgar things that I don't think should be photographed, such as rape and murder, and torture (except perhaps for investigatory purposes).

We can photograph a person in pain, or in love, and we can feel the emotion through the expression of the person in the photograph, but we can't actually photograph emotions, and how our body reacts to being angry (heart beating faster), being embarrassed (face getting warm), or lonliness (a seriously empty clenching in the chest). We could photograph the actual muscles, but the muscles wouldn't convey the emotion, and especially not in a still photograph.

There are plenty of things I do not want to photograph. I'm not particularly interested in photographing unborn babies, or pictures of distant galaxies. These photos are used for different purposes than what I want out of my photos. I'm more interested in the art aspect of photography rather than the scientific aspect. Although I'm sure if I am ever pregnant, a picture of an unborn baby will mean something a great deal more than it does to me now.

Troy Library storyboard

The library is closing in my town, and although there is something we can do about it, not many people are aware. I'm hoping my video might help people make educated voting decisions.

 

There are some changes I need to make (luckily this is only the storyboard. At the end of the video I still have the percentage 25%, that should be changed to 60%. Sorry

Laura Letinsky

I did some research on Laura Letinksy (or here). My color photography professor thought I would like her, and lo and behold, I guess I'm an open book. She is a professor at the University of Chicago.

Her images are usually mostly monotone, but often have bursts of color from, for example, the apples in the above image. She uses diffuse lighting to create a soft feeling to her photography, of which I am personally a fan.

She also has humor, I think, in some of her photography, like this one.

That's exactly what happens at a party. The tableclothes never ever look remotely the way they did when the party started. She says, "I am not interested though in the allure of the meal that awaits an unseen viewer’s consumption. Instead, I photograph the remains of meals and its refuse so as to investigate the relationships between ripeness and decay, delicacy and awkwardness, control and haphazardness, waste and plenitude, pleasure and sustenance."

After looking at her photographs it seems like she shoots photos that represent the aftermath of a party or gathering. Empty tables that show signs of lots of previous activity. Birthday parties but with a simple white background and no people to speak of.

She says  of her recent work of still lifes, "I began this work in 1997 as observations of forgotten details, remnants of daily subsistence and pleasure. For many years I had been intrigued with Dutch-Flemish and Italian still-life paintings whose exacting beauty documented shifting social attitudes resulting from exploration, colonization, economics, and ideas about seeing as a kind of truth." I agree to this statement. It's a modern take on still life paintings

Blog Prompt #16, #17, #18

Duane Michals said, “I think photographs should be provocative and not tell you what you already know. It takes no great powers or magic to reproduce somebody's face in a photograph. The magic is in seeing people in new ways."

I agree that the magic can be seeing people in new ways, but I don't think photography shouldn't tell you what you already know. One of the best things about photography is that it captures a moment that one can look back on for the rest of his or her life. If a photo captures a mother exactly as the son knows her, and then 50 years later when the mother has passed away and that son is showing it to his children and he gets filled with this emotion because this photograph is showing exactly what he already knows and he misses her, I think there is magic in that. But I do also agree that there is magic in seeing people in news ways within a photograph as well.

Michals is also the  the guy who originally said, "I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.”

This is definitely a statement that many people would agree with. Because we see everyday things everyday (thank you, Captain Obvious), things we don't see are new and exciting and therefore more interesting.  It doesn't mean we dislike the everyday things, but humans like lives that aren't static. Imagination is a great way to switch things up for oneself and for people viewing one's photography. It can also show people that think imagination is just for kids that it is for everyone.

Another photographer, Arnold Newman, said, "Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world."

 

I think this is entirely true. There is a saying that goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words" but the picture could be lying. A picture is one instance and although you can capture emotion and feeling in a photograph, it is usually a conscious effort to get that emotion. If the paparazzi are photographing somebody, that person being photographed could look very tired and bored, but in fact, they're just sitting reading the paper and drinking coffee. Therefore the photo is an illusion. The viewer creates a narrative within the photograph that doesn't actually exist. Therefore, photography can tell a lie as easily, or more so, than the truth.

I learned Flash in a flash!

Besides being a terrible pun, the title to this blog is completely untrue. I am learning Adobe Flash, but it's taking a while. I hope to become as comfortable in Flash as I am in Photoshop. Wow, that would be the day. I would be unstoppable!



Anyway, here are my exercises in Flash for my Time and Motion class. I don't really like the square and circle ones, but I really like the line one. I'm glad I could actually make something I like from a simple exercise!

Blog Prompt #15 - Collage

When I was younger I would pack my lunch every single day for school. Only occasionally would I buy lunch, and that was a big deal. In high school I would get so hungry that by the time I actually sat at the cafeteria table I would have eaten my entire lunch. These days I still eat many meals in class. I think it would be interesting to have a photo of me eating my lunch in high school and me eating my dinner in college. Perhaps I would be the only one to find it interesting, but the difference between what I'm wearing, where I'm sitting, how much light there is, and what I'm eating would say so many things about how I've changed, even though the subject is technically the same. If these two images were collaged together, then the differences would become more apparent and important. The viewer would be forced to look at the differences of the images, and not just the similarities.

Blog Prompt #14 - Unknown vs. Familiar Space

Photography allows people to more easily compare two different things. While I studied abroad I didn't really notice how the cities I saw in Germany looked different than the cities I saw in Austria. They were both different than the U.S. But once I looked at my pictures and started describing the experience to people, I realized that Austria has a much more peaceful, soft, calming look to its cities while Germany has a more gnome-like feel.
If I were to take a picture of my home and then take a picture of someone elses home in Tokyo, I think the exteriors would look quite different, because Tokyo is a much more crowded city that where I'm from, Troy, MI. Therefore our homes probably look very different. One could point out things about the space of the windows, where the car is kept, etc. just by comparing the pictures.

Blog Prompt #13 - Human-Made Space

Pay attention to the number of ways in which you encounter humans’ interaction with nature and the physical land. Write these down. Using these as inspiration, describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might create that would be documented by a photograph. Describe an idea for a piece of “land art” that you might make in a man-made landscape that would be documented by a photograph.

Camping, climbing trees, digging holes, construction, cutting down trees, swimming, boating, hunting, hiking,

I would consider road construction a way in which humans interact with nature. The workers must dig through the land and depending on what's underneath, do different things to create the road. I'm not too familiar with road construction, but I assume the presence of clay or the amount of clay in the ground affects them. Also, if the ground is very wet, it might drastically change. Or if they find something in the dirt that could be scientifically or historically significant. I think photographing a piece made on a construction site would be interesting, because the piece would surely be taken down and would then only exist as a photo.

Memory

Blog Prompt #12 - Memory of a Photograph

There's a photograph on the fridge at my parents house of my sister and I coloring on the steps of our old house when we first moved to Michigan when I was two years old. We lived there for about a year, and I don't remember this place at all except for getting this picture taken. I have no doubt that the only reason I remember it is because I've been staring at a picture of it on the fridge probably since it was taken. I remember me and my sister following my Dad out the door carrying his camera. We were carrying coloring books and that plastic box with all the crayons in it. Dad wanted to take our picture, so we sat down on the front steps and he knelt down and snapped the picture.
I think it's needless to say that I've changed a lot since then, as I was two years old, and I'm 21 now (if you want to argue otherwise, please do so in the comments). When I look at it, I think about my Dad, who honestly hasn't changed at all. If I went home right now, I can see him calling me out on our front steps and taking a few pictures.
I've been to that place once since I've been old enough to remember it, and I didn't recognize it at all. Not because it was different, but because I was three when we moved out. But the front steps looked just like the steps in the picture, and that was pretty cool.

Blog Prompt #11 - Memory of a Place

I used to think my elementary school was quite large, but every time I visit I can't believe how tiny the hallways are. I can easily touch the ceiling in several of the hallways, and bending down to drink from the drinking fountains is quite literally a joke. I see the outside of the building occasionally because my friend lives on the border of the playground and when we're all home we sometimes go there and swing on the swing sets and take pictures. But I don't go inside very often. If I imagine myself inside, I see myself right outside the cafeteria where we would put our lunch bags at the beginning of the school day - at least, I think that's what we would put in the carts? Now I can't really remember, but for some reason there ARE carts. In a photograph, I do think it would look exactly as I remember, but with little reminders that the kids were not born in the eighties, but ten or even fifteen years later. I can't actually imagine any exact colors except an off white and blue curtains. I'm pretty sure we had a blue curtain on the stage, and blue seats in the cafeteria. For some reason I'm by myself, probably because I went a couple years ago by myself as I was riding by and I figured I may as well see what it's like. Pretty much, it was small, but the same. It even had a painting from a girl in my class still on the wall.

Blog Prompt #10 - Photos as Reminders

“All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.” ~John Berger


I don't think all photographs exist to remind us of what we forget, although perhaps this was more true when John Berger said it than now, when conceptual photography and image manipulation are both becoming more common among photographers. But I would agree that with most photographs this is the case. At least a recording of something so that we don't forget, if not to remind us of something we have already forgotten. I also agree that a painting is a record of what the painter sees or remembers. Therefore a painting tells us more about the artist than the scene. With a photograph, we see the scene and only sometimes can the photographer record him- or herself along with it.

Forgetting Oneself and Reflection

Yes! My first stop motion film is up! If you don't understand what is going on, please comment! I would really appreciate any feedback.




Forgetting Oneself from Kim Berens on Vimeo.




Reflection:
I really wanted to use Photoshop for this project, so I came up with this idea where a person is invisible. Of course I needed a story around that, and our assignment was about an everyday moment. What I came up with was a person forgetting herself. I didn't think it would be that hard, but when I shot test photos, I realized how wrong I was. However, when I shot the actual photos and actually went into Photoshop, it really wasn't that bad. It helped that all the shots where she is invisible have the same exact background, so I could just use a shot sans person and just cut her skin out, add a little gray to the inside of her sleeves and collar, and voila: invisible person. It was a lot of fun, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
But the person is not the only thing I photoshopped. I also photoshopped the lamp. Either the light was (of course) too overexposed or the surrounding area was (of course) too underexposed. So I just shot the lamp underexposed and photoshopped that light into the normal images, so that you could see the detail.
What I found difficult was keeping focus when the camera and subject both moved. That's why the feet go out of focus, and even though I don't mind the blurriness because it actually looks kind of cool and if I were a cinematographer I might use that for something again, I do wish there were a way to keep the shots all in focus as the camera moves. I suppose I could just not use continuous exposure and record the pictures the old fashion way: one at a time.
I recorded my own audio, but my version of Audacity is not compatible with the campus computer's version, and although Audacity is free, I didn't think the computer would let me install something on it, so I just went with freesounds.org, which has many many useful soundbites. I had to add the new audio in only a couple of hours, so hopefully I chose well.
I really loved using Final Cut. I want more reasons to play around with it. My credits are so simple, and yet I got so excited about them!

Fake Sun, Fake Horns, and Fake Drama

My three final images for assignment #2 in my color photography class. My favorite is the last of my sister. She's being overly dramatic making pie, it's hilarious (to me).

This first picture is of my friend, Susan. This is a candid picture taken just after she bought the horns, but I thought it worked really well for the assignment. I altered the colors slighting, made them less vibrant, and gave the shadows a cyan-tinge.
When I took this picture is was simply a candid of my friend, but after I had chosen it for my project, I looked at it as a piece of art to see what it was saying. I think it literally says, "I'm trying on these horns, and I feel kinda dorky, but I'm okay with that". But if the person looking at this doesn't know it's candid, he or she might think it means, "I work for the devil, but I don't take my job seriously", which is what I imagine Susan thinking when I look at this picture. Or maybe she's thinking, "Yeah, I'm the devil, but don't judge me, there's really nothing I can do about it. I'm just trying to make a living just like everybody else," which is also funny.


The image of me sleeping on the coach was a lot of fun to work with. I shot the picture myself, so I was running from the camera to the couch over and over again. It looks like I just get to lie there and sleep, but it was actually a very active photoshoot!  I really like this one because the colors looks great (the prompt for this was complimentary, hence the red and green), and of course I love it because Hagrid makes an appearance. I thought of taking him out, but I really wanted to keep him in there. For a couple of years I have actually been kind of embarrassed about the my enthusiasm for Harry Potter, which came from someone close to me telling me that it was sad that people only read Harry Potter and never moved on the bigger and better books. What I think this person didn't realize was Harry Potter was the gateway book, which is exactly the opposite of what he thought. At least it was the gateway book for me (this is the very reason my blog is title Unembarrassed Enthusiasm, as a reminder to myself. Anyway, I know that seems off-topic, but all of that thought went into keeping Hagrid in this picture (and any picture with a Harry Potter reference), so I thought I may as well mention it.
The bright streaming sunlight thought the window is 100% completely photoshopped. Sorry to anyone who thought it wasn't.  Well, technically, the highlights on the couch, blanket, and my hair are not photoshopped, but the huge yellow glow is. I tried many different angles and intensities for the light and ultimately went with this one, feeling it looked the most natural. I am completely aware it doesn't look natural, but I like the way it looks and it creates the type of mood I wanted originally but couldn't achieve in-camera due to the actual sunlight and the angle with which is doesn't stream into my window.

This image is inspired by an image I did in my Photo 2 class that I took with a view camera. I loved the original pictures, but unfortunately for my kitchen, the film was black-and-white. The brilliant yellow of the walls, the blue of the hat, and (you can't see it here), the array of colors of the apron my sister, Beth, is wearing look too amazing to be recorded only in black-and-white. And so ever since shooting with view camera, I've wanted to reshoot in color with the exact same clothes. And we did! I also dressed up, in a big pink dress and dark red lips, and Beth took some pictures of me. So while I shot these pictures, that's what I'm wearing.
During the shoot I kept directing Beth to act like a dramatic, lonely house-wife, and I wasn't really sure why. I'm still not sure, but I knew what I wanted. I think I achieved it. Beth definitely looks like a way overly dramatic house-wife making pie (we actually made the pie during the shoot - sweet potato pie sans butter and sugar! - and ate it while looking at our shots. If you're interested in our attempts at healthy cooking, we have a blog called Fourth Broomstick).