Blacks, White and Everything Between + Aurelia Carbone

The developing process for the assessment pieces has really taught me about black, white and clear edges.  Before this topic I would not have paid much to any attention at all to these details, but now there's no going back!

Having a bunch of photos to decide from is hard because more often than not, I am not nailing all of these important aspects in just one photo they are spread across the bunch...

(Girl who missed the subway - NYC - William Darhy)

And if there is a perfect photo with lovely blacks, clear defined whites/light greys and well highlighted frame edges, there's probably going to be a chamois mark or piece of hair in the final print. 

Nevertheless I am on the road to lovely photos. 

Also in class the other week we had a guest Adelaide artist, Aurelia Carbone.  

She does a lot of Diorama work (which many people mistake for VFX imagery) as well as other related optical illusion photography as well.  

Some things I really enjoyed that she had to say was that she couldn't get passed a credit throughout her studies.  Something I sympathise with her.  She also duly notes that she likes to be very open about her work rather than secretive and self obsessed like a lot of other photographer/artists are or can be. 

She likes to call her characters in her dioramas puppets rather than dolls because puppets tell a story.  

Here is an example of her optical illusion work.  

Although I am not so much interested in her style of work, I found it a very valuable experience talking about her work and the direction she has traveled in her artistic journeys. 

I wish her the best of luck in the future as she definitely deserves it!

You go girl!

Chemigram - A What A What?

I thought chemicals are what you develop your photos in.  I was wrong..  Well I am right but the chemicals used in photographic development (I have learned) can be used for so much more!

It's called a Chemigram.  It's sort of like painting with chemicals.  Almost doesn't resemble photography at all.  However the lines can blurr.  

Here's one by New Zealand artist Polly Marriner.  Beautiful isn't it, looks almost like a landscape!

The lines can blur further as photography and chemography such as in this photo by Flickr user Ania Pajada:

It combines the use of different negative/positive images with different kinds of chemistry usage to form a beautiful image.  

Here's a version of mine:

In this photo, I ws printing it for my final assessment work but it didn't turn out the way I wanted to.  So I reacted it to some light outside the dark room and played around with getting it to respond out of order with the chemicals.

Not quite as good as the other ones I've mentioned but still pretty cool, I must admit!