I am so sorry I haven’t written recently, but have been insanely busy and barely crawling through my weeks. But, I have been thinking of you and have wanted to update you on numerous things:
- The winter residency – This was a great experience for me. I’d brought tons of stuff to show (3 scupltures, 30 print pieces, wooden board collage pieces and I even did a realtime interactive animation performance) so I think I properly embraced the “experimentation” part of my first six months. The crit sessions were by and large helpful, as we all want input to help us figure out what we’re doing or where to go next. It is an exhausting ten days, however, and I landed back in Maine with a cold and an immediate start to teaching four college courses (three of which I’ve never taught before, so a huge ongoing burden to learn and teach some new things this semester). Anyway, I came away from the residency with some pretty strong realizations or impressions, the most memorable being:
- Clarity in imagery is probably a good thing to lean towards at this point, as there are so many images created in these residencies and the question “why did you make this?” will often come up when considering a flat or nondescript image.
- Directed photography, which I had heretofore snubbed my nose at, seems to be something that can really help my work, and I’ve enjoyed the process of opening my mind to the notion and exploring it.
- Truth in photography – There are a number of sources from all areas of the media that are beginning to state the equivalent of the message “There is no truth in photography anymore”. Due to the digital age of photography and the ubiquitous use of programs like photoshop to manipulate photographic images, the world seems to be looking at photography with a mistrusting eye. That’s fine with me, as I have no desire to worry about the truthfulness of imagery, since a portion of all my work is fabricated in 3d graphics software. Nonetheless, it plays into my work as I now plan to push the limits of what can be done with digital imagery, digital photography and photo editing to enhance and clarify the images I create.
- Image appropriation – We had a big lecture on using appropriated images and de-skilling our work, and while I don’t think it was intended as a message that we must do these things it did spawn a desire to do some tests with appropriated images, which has turned into my first project.
- Meaning, message & narrative: At one point I was asked (in reference to one of my architectural images) “What are you trying to say with this image”. I was happy to reply, “Absolutely nothing!”, which is the honest truth. It is just now that I’m getting to the point where I might want to tell a story with an image, or to have it make some kind of statement or give a particular impression. As this has not been an objective of mine previously, I’m hoping I’ll come up with some interesting images.
• Project work
As I begin my project work I’m also reading a variety of books that relate in various ways to the work I’ll be doing. My core mission this semester is to develop a sense of character and narrative with my still image work. While this will have me looking into aspects of storytelling, it also involves exploring the relationship between technology and culture (which will help with any work that involves putting things like robots into photos). I’m also determined to get a better grip on some of the technical processes and tools that I use, so have been looking into matte painting, hdr photography and new editing and creation techniques with photoshop. [I also need to study basic photography as I want to do some very specfic photo work and am still a beginner with all things that relate to exposures and f-stops and the like, so I’m doing lots of camera tests to this end.]
My R&D list for trying to flesh out my tool kit is something like this:
-Matte painting and 3d camera projections
-Hdr photography and adaptive contrast enhancement
-Photoshop techniques for digital environments (clouds and lighting effects)
-3d techniques for terrain generation for landscape imagery
-Digital photo techniques for panoramas
-Photo lighting and shooting techniques
• Works in progress
Photo tests – I’ve gotten a new digital slr camera and need to find ways to get more specific control over my photographic images. I’m hoping to do both exterior work (directed scenes and panoramas) and interior setups, so practicing lighting and using the different camera modes and features is part of my self-directed education this semester.
Here’s a link to a web page with some basic camera tests, most of which use the camera raw format to get more color and dynamic range in images.
[click on the image above to open web page with camera tests]
• Digital clouds and terrains – I’ve also been looking into ways to fabricate skys and landscapes, so have done some initial tests with painting digital clouds and making digital terrain.
• Hostage Exchange – That’s the title I’ve given the image below. I made the image because it boils down the two things I’m always wanting to work on with my imagery: organic forms and mechanic or technical forms. So, I simply thought that some organic tendrils holding a cube, juxtaposed with a mechanical claw holding an organic form might make an interesting image, and when I finished I realized it gave me the impression of an exchange of captured forms, hence the title.
• Project rationale
I am going to try and approach a handful of new things this semester; paramount in this list are character development and narrative, specifically as relates to still image work. I also need to get better at digital photography, so am studying photographers and photography and doing tons of camera tests. And I’d like to somehow combine landscapes, panoramas and narrative, so will be trying a few panoramic scenes that are both photo-based and created with cg tools.
From a content and art point of view I am looking at a few different influences. As I do want to have strong, clear imagery I’m looking at directed photography and lighting to heighten the impact of my photographic elements. Gregory Crewdson is a good example, as he’ll use a Hollywood style film crew approach to lighting and prepping his scenes before he shoots, ultimately giving himself completely control over the makeup of his image. So, I will be scouting locations, getting models arranged, using props, looking at wardrobe and lighting and will hopefully get some good predictable imagery. Ultimately, the work of Charlie White is the closest to what I'm attempting, as he uses special effects and props to stick in his images to create a sense of the bizarre. I'm also looking at other photographers work (Paolo Ventura, Julie Blackmon, Teun Hocks, etc...) and paintings by a variety of artists (Rembrandt, Norman Rockwell, etc..) for image reference as I try to plot out my image projects.
• 1st Project - Human-Animal Hybrids
Humanimal gallery – This is my first finished body of work, and is basically a series of character photos created from a huge stock photo database. I have some rationale up on the web page, which include the notions of developing visual characters as well as written texts about them, and also addresses the use of image appropriation in this project.
There are two different web pages that showcase this work in slightly different ways (this is simply an exercise in presenting the work differently via projects and exercises I've developed while teaching a Web Art class at the University of Maine this semester.
Clicking on the image above will bring up a lightbox interface for viewing this project
Clicking on the image above will bring up a traditional web page gallery
• Approaching the real
I think my current influences have me wanting to create images that are mostly realistic, but somehow not quite real. With good lighting, directed scenes and 3d graphics thrown in I’m hoping it’ll be strong imagery with a sense of the photoreal, but not the sense of a straight photograph. Still don’t quite know how to put it into words but hopefully I’ll be able to do that better as I start to realize some of the images.
Lastly, I think I need to create a project website that shows the setups and objectives for some of my photo shoots. I’ll be begging for lots of free help from photographers, models, stores that can provide locations, etc.. So I think it’s a good idea to be able to send some of these people an overview of what’s involved for a given shoot, simply because there are so many resources (people, props, lights) to coordinate. Must get on that soon. Spring is coming and we’ll be able to leave our igloos soon and go out and hunt for bear.
