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!

Your Environment - Brief Ideas

I pretty much know what I want to do with my portraiture brief.  I want to experiment with anonymously photographing people on buses.  I have been thinking about the 'Your Environment' part of the assignment.  

I feel very inspired by Duane Michals who we watched some work of in class.  I was particularly moved by his Things Are Queer series of photographs.  

I really love this set of photos as they really blow my mind in relation to time and space.  When looking from one photo to the next, not knowing what to expect, it really draws me in.  I also like it because each photograph is important and needed to help make sense of the next one. 

I would really like to possibly explore this theme in my own work of photographs for The Environment assignment.  

I am not sure as to what subject matter my photographs will contain, but I have come up with a brief sort of plan to start to work my ideas around.

It has kind of blown my mind getting my head around my own concept.  Apologies if you cannot understand and of my drawing/writing.  I scribbled it down really quickly on the bus.

My idea is basically about revealing people from behind other people.  It ends on a shot from over the shoulder of someone taking a picture of the four revealed people.  I could also if I wanted to put that in a frame hanging on someones wall of this final photograph just as an optional extra.  I however doubt that I will have the resources to do this even though it would be good and add a bit of Duane Michals style to my series. 

I will develop ideas further and report back on a further course of action later.

Ciao!