Taking and assessing pictures for assignment 2

For assignment 2 I have chosen street photography.
I am enjoying this assignment and have taken a few trips out to resorts along the coast to find some picture opportunities, I have I started to find difficulties  in completing this set of pictures as I am  living in a small seaside resort and it is easy to get distracted away from my street theme.
1 minute you are in a street and the next surrounded by sea, I am hoping to take a trip out to a more built up area maybe Norwich to complete the pictures for this assignment

exercise 21 Rhythms and patterns

The last exercise before assignment 2.
For this exercise I need to produce photographs of rhythm and pattern, in a few of my pictures. After looking at them over and over and changing my mid a few times, this is what I have come up with.

First rhythm

This is the top of a stone wall and the curves of cement give a strong movement that carries you through the picture

There are lots of semi circles in this picture which is of a different wall. These give flow to the picture but I think that if I had of  photographed it straight on and performed a tighter crop it could have been a pattern as well.

Pattern

This is the pattern on a foot stall that I have cropped  fairly tightly

I love the diamond pattern on these steps, there was about 3 or 4 steps but I have cropped in tightly

After posting the last picture I started to wonder if the top line of cement distracted from the pattern
and have decided to crop it further to stop this from happening.

André Kertész

André Kertész is the third artist whose work I have been looking at  he was born in Budapest, Hungary.1894-1985. He taught himself how to use a camera and had his first photos published while in the army in world war 1. Even early on he had a very distinctive and mature style and used unorthodox camera angles in his photographs that had haunting compositions.
Kertész moved to Paris in 1925, where he changed his name to Andor and became acquainted with members of the Dada movement. One of them dubbed him “Brother Seeing Eye”, an allusion to a medieval monastery where all the monks were blind except one.
In Paris he found critical and commercial success and in 1927 he was the first photographer in the world ever to have a one-man exhibition. He mentored many famous names in photography; Henri Cartier-Bresson said, “We all owe something to Kertész”.
In 1936 Kertész and his wife moved to the United States to escape the increasing tension that was leading to World War II. He signed to a deal with the Condé Nast Publishing empire photographing for homes and garden magazine, however his personal photographic style did not go down well with what was expected by the american public.
He carried on exhibiting his work as best he could but became disillusioned as his reputation faded, his work did not appear in Steichens famous, The family man show at the museum of modern art, but Later Kert'esz had a solo exhibition at the museum. This relaunched his career and reputation.

"The moment always dictates in my work…Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see… I see a situation and I know that it's right." -- André Kertész

I have found it really interesting looking back at these 3 famous photographers work and will definitely continue to research more photographers work , at first I was not sure that I would like Kertész work as much as the others.
My first findings of his were the oddly angled women's body shapes, however the more that I viewed these pictures with there lines and angles to them the more fascinating I found them.
And then I started to recognise some of his other work which I had enjoyed viewing in the past and wish that I had taken the time to look at who's work it was.
Here are some of my favourites.

This picture shows the reflection of the effel  tower and is 1 of my favourites, I love the textures in the picture, the tones and the reflections

I found this photo really interesting it is a really good example of what I have been trying to achieve in the exercise on, and shows this really well

There are some lovely reflections and framing by the ornate metal at the top of this high view image

This black and white image shows so much tone and detail to it

When I first saw these next 2 photos I was not sure if I liked this type of image with the odd shapes and angles but the more that I have seen them the more I have got to appreciate these strong images and this style of photography with its lines curves and unusual angles

The next 2 photos are examples of work by Kertész after his wife died he use to photo some of her personal possessions on his windowsill and one day found this bust liking the shape of the head he shot pictures of it and then purchased another shown in the picture below

Here the 2 busts work really well together with lovely lighting on them

Exercise 20 Real and implied triangles

For this exercise I need to produce 6 photos of real and implied triangles

Here is the first picture of a subject that is itself, triangular

This picture shows 2 similar houses both with a strong triangular shape to them

The second picture is a triangle  converging towards the top of the frame
to demonstrate this I have used an old fashioned street lamp

The third picture is an inverted triangle  converging towards the bottom of the frame

for this I have chosen this picture of a paraglider  

The second part of this exercise is to make a still life arrangement using 6 objects to

produce a triangle with the apex at the top   

                                                                                       

I used 6 carrots for this though it took a while to balance them

The next photo needs to be another still life but this time with the triangle inverted

with the apex at the bottom

To get the shape I arranged 6 various sized bottles starting with the smallest and building 

the shape

The final part of this exercise requires me to take a group photo using 3 people to create a triangle

I could only find 2 people for this so used the dog as the third though she needed a lot of bribing to stay still

László Moholy-Nagy

I have looked at the work of László Moholy-Nagy he was born in Hungary,  and began to study law before joining the Austro-Hungarian army at the outbreak of World War 1. Although he had already begun to draw, it was during the war that  he turned to it in a serious manner producing hundreds of sketches in 1917 he was wounded and had a long convalescence he then began thinking seriously about becoming an artist. He worked with many different techniques and media, such as painting, photography, sculpture, film and graphics and explored the relationships between light and colour  In his abstract paintings,  gaining his inspiration  from the Russian avant-garde: Constructivism, the Suprematists Malevich and Lissitzky. Moholy-Nagy became  interested in photography after meeting Lucia Schultz, a talented photographer who he later married. 
He was interested in painting with light, and the techniques used to create an image. He was one of the first artists to experiment with photograms, these were images made without using a camera. He placed every day objects between a sheet of light-sensitive paper and a light source to create abstract shadow images. He also worked with photomontage,  cutting images out of  newspapers and magazines to create a new picture. He would draw and paint  these montages, and then photograph them joining the components into an image that could be reproduced from a negative. He called these photomontages “photoplastics”* to emphasise that it is the light that shaped the image. 
Moholy-Nagy  used a portable miniature camera to explore how photography through its ability to record forms can change and renew our perception of the everyday. Lines, patterns and shapes dominate his black-and-white photographs of the world and make us perceive reality afresh. He liked to use unusual camera angles – often taking the pictures from a bird’s or a worm’s eye view – as well as shadows and negative photos – in which the photographic negative is itself presented as the photograph.He made a number of documentary films between 1930 and 1946 giving life and movement to his photography.he died i 1946  at the age of 51 

Here  is some of the work by Moholy-Nagy that I enjoyed viewing

I found this image to be very modern and minimalist  and hard to believe that it was taken so long ago

I have spent the past couple of weeks looking for lines and curves as part
of my assignment, so was fascinated to see the amount of detail in this image
with all the lines, curves and added atmosphere created by the use of light

I love the angle of view along with the angles and lines of this photo

Again this has a great use of light and shape shown in the reflection

This photogram of a hand, brush and lovely lighting effect has created an interesting abstract image

Exercise 19 Implied lines

For the start of this exercise I needed to look at 2 photographs and find the implied lines in them using an arrow to show the dominant direction

The first picture

I have used photoshop to change it to a black and white line drawing, so that the lines stand out.
With this picture of the bull and bullfighter there is a strong sense of movement the curve at the top shows the direction of this, with the movement carrying down to the bullfighters cape and the curve in the sand.

With the second photograph I felt that this also had a strong sense of movement, with the curve between the 2 horses that I have marked. There is also strong eye contact in the image between the man and horse.

For the next part of this exercise I had to find 3 photos of my own and perform the analysis on them

Here are my 3 photos

This first photo shows the eye contact from the jockey to the horse and from the horse to the fence it is about to jump

This picture shows the dogs eye line as she waits for her treat

I have shown the motion of the curve in the direction that the birds are about to take off

For the 3rd part of the exercise I have taken 2 pictures showing implied lines

This picture shows an eye line with the man on the right looking at the other man who is looking at what he is holding in his hands

This photo shows the extension of a line thats joins up into a triangle

Exercise 18 curves

This exercise requires me to take 4 photographs of curves showing movement and direction

The small river flowing through this field of wheat created a curve leading your eye to further curves in the wheat

The smooth curved top of this wall snakes along with its many curves

Pictured from above these steps have an elegant smooth flow to them with there curves

Here is a gentle curve to this round staircase

Exercise 17 Diagonals

Here are the 4 photos of diagonals that I have taken for this exercise

I have changed the pictures to black and white to put emphasis on the diagonals.
As the blue was quite vivid and eye catching in this picture. I like how this is not an obvious
diagonal but 1 created by the duck as it swims along

I like how the 2 stair bannisters are both in the picture running parallel

This picture shows 2 diagonals meeting at a point to form the apex of the roof on this house

Here is a close up of the metal structure underneath cromer pier showing lots of diagonals

Exercise 16 Multiple points

In this exercise I had to set up a still life the background had to be unfussy but not plain. I used a tripod to keep the camera in the same position and kept adding stones that I had collected from the beach, until I ended up with the final composition

This is the background that I used

I started by placing the first stone slightly in from the bottom third of the frame

I then added the second stone just below to create the start of a diagonal line

The third stone was added above to continue the diagonal but placed the other way around as to stop the flow

I then placed the fourth stone to the right of the 3rd stone forming a right angle

The 5th stone was added and this made the shape of a triangle

By adding the 6th stone to the top left of the shape this changed the straightness
of the shape to show a curve

I added the 7th stone to the top right to balance out the the right side

The 8th stone completes the composition and helps to give a more random look

I have used photoshop to change the image to a pen and ink drawing so that it was easier to mark
the lines over it. I started at the bottom left with the pink moving up to form a curve then also marked in pink the bottom right hand triangle. I changed the colour to green to stop the lines merge into one another and make it easier to see and then marked out 2 triangles at the top with the orange I marked a curve in the middle going in the other direction and then 3 more triangles I had made a note of the lines and curves but did not realise that there were so many triangles