Monthly Archives: February 2015

Photographer research: Jacques Henri Lartigue

28 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Learning, Photographer research

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“I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost–that is important. If they are art objects at the same time, that’s fine with me.” –  – Jacques-Henri Lartigue

by Jacques Henri Lartigue

Jacques Henri Lartigue (1894 -1986) was born into a wealthy French family. He was noted for his sincere, often playful presentation of friends, family and also French society at play.

by Jacques Henri Lartigue

At the age of six, with his fathers help he began taking photos and sketching his neighbours and family in action in his diary. His father then continued to feed his passion and bought him cameras that became increasingly more and more sophisticated. This lead him to skillfully move into a period of sports photography which in turn lead to stunning images of early automobile races.

by Jacques Henri Lartigue

Although rarely seen, many of his early images were taken in stereo. He was an experimental artist and an avid painter-working with varying film sizes and development processes including some of the earliest autochromes.

His greatest achievement was his set of around 120 huge photograph albums, which compose the finest visual autobiography ever produced. While he sold a few photographs in his youth, mainly to sporting magazines such as La Vie au Grand Air, in middle age he concentrated on his painting, and it was only at the age of 29 that his early photographs were discovered by Charles Rado of Rapho Agency. Rado introduced Lartigue to John Szarkowski, the curator of the MOMA, New York, who then put on an exhibition of his work.

From this, there was a photo spread in Life magazine in 1963, which was in the issue which commemorated the death of John Kennedy, ensuring the widest possible audience for his pictures.

After this point, Lartigue was very often pursued by fashion magazines and international publications for his work, and he was commissioned in 1974 to shoot an official portrait of the newly elected president of France (May 27, 1974 – May 21, 1981), Valéry Giscard d’Estaing which later lead to his first French retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

His influence can be seen even following his passing, in the work of American Director Wes Anderson whose film Rushmore includes shots inspired by the artist. Lartigue’s likeness was also the basis for fellow artist Lord Mandrake’s character in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

by Jacques Henri Lartigue

For me his quote about taking photos for himself resonates true as this is my sole reason for shooting, yes I have taken photos that are for sale with Getty, yes I have shot a couple of weddings and portrait sessions for friends and friends of friends, but nothing I find better and more satisfying than just shooting what I want, when I want and how I want.

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All the above images were taken from the following websites:

– At Get Photography (Accessed 23 February 2015)

– Wikipedia (Accessed 23 February 2015)

Me, my shadow and I!

27 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by in Children, Learning, P52, Playing with Light

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“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” –  Plutarch

Shadow play

Concentration

Shadow boy 🙂

In the shadows

Until next time……………………………………………………….

5 minutes: At football

26 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by in 5 Minute Project, Children, Five minute project, Five minutes in time, Practice, Projects

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“I eat football, I sleep football, I breathe football, I am not mad, I am just passionate” – Thierry Henry

The 5 Minute Project is curated by Dana Pugh and began as a her personal project on her family blog. To participate, you simply document 5 minutes of your life. The spirit of this project is keep it unplanned and unstaged, just 5 ordinary minutes. Of course, 5 minutes can be extraordinary, too, but you can see beauty in the mundane, it is not intended to just be 5 minutes of a portrait sitting.

I thought this sounded perfect for me, my kids are getting older now and they are less and less happy (well my son anyway) to be in front of the camera, but when I limit them to 5 minutes I might just stand a chance………………I can see my son bringing out his stopwatch, setting it to the 5 mins and telling me time is up when the alarm goes.

Todays 5 minutes was taken during my sons team football match on Sunday. He is football (soccer) crazy, the quote by Thierry Henry really sums up his view so well. He has been playing for this club since he was 7 and now at 10 he plays at the weekend at least one day for a club. He trains 3 times a week, one at Chelsea Invitational, one for his club and the other is playing Futsal (as you can see he eats sleeps and breathes football). He also plays for his school when they have matches! When he is not playing football he loves managing his team on the PS4 (FIFA 15 game) and deciding on tactics with his Match Attack card collection, I am sure these activities will feature at some point in the future for my 5 minutes.

Lets just say it was rather an action packed 5 minutes, my son was all over the pitch (as he always is both attacking, defending and in this game alone he set up 5 goals!). A fantastic win of 6v4 for this his final game with this club. This game was just a friendly as his team was disbanded by the club owners at the beginning of January, so it was nice for them to go out on a high 🙂

Texture Tuesday: The Chrysanthemum trio

24 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Before and after, Editing, Learning, Texture Tuesday

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Kim Klassen’s does a feature and has for many years called Texture Tuesday, I have decided to join in to get better with my Photoshop skills.

Well what I did was as follows:

  1. Adjusted the WB slightly to add some warmth in Lightroom 3.
  2. Added a little fill light (15%) in Lightroom 3.
  3. Adjusted the clarity slightly (15%) in Lightroom 3.
  4. Increased the vibrance slightly (+50) in Lightroom 3.
  5. Increased the saturation slightly (+10) in Lightroom 3.
  6. Transfered to Photoshop CC
  7. kk_reverie, multiply @ 50% opacity
  8. kk_confusion, soft light @ 50%
  9. Flattened the image.
  10. Text layer and watermark added.

The pre straight out of camera shot is below, as you can see the exposure was not perfect, I really should have done an exposure adjustment here in camera.

I would love to know what you think and any tips to improve it I would love to hear 🙂

Photographer research: André Kertész

22 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in Learning, Photographer research

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

After seeing episode 1 of the documentary by the BBC called The Genius of Photography I decided to do a little more research on André Kertész as I loved the work that was mentioned in this programme.

by Andre Kertesz

André Kertész (1894–1985), born Kertész Andor, he was a Hungarian-born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition and photo journalism. In the early years of his career, his then-unorthodox camera angles and style stopped his work from gaining wide recognition. He though is hailed as one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century. Working intuitively, he captured the poetry of modern urban life with its quiet, often overlooked incidents and odd, occasionally comic, or even bizarre juxtapositions. Neither a surrealist, nor a strict photojournalist, he nevertheless infused his best images with strong tenets of both. “You don’t see” the things you photograph, he explained, “you feel them.”

by Andre Kertesz

He earned his Bachelor’s Degree from the Hungarian Academy of Commerce in 1912 and soon found a job working as a clerk at the Budapest Stock Exchange. He did not enjoy his work and just saw it as being a means to an end. It allowed him to buy his first camera at the age of 18 and immediately began to make intimate portraits of his family and friends, studies of the Hungarian countryside, and he brought it with him when he was drafted into the army two years later. After his military service, photography was not paying well enough to make a leaving, so he returned to the stock exchange and remained there for the next seven years. In 1925, he immigrated to France to live the life of a bohemian artist.

by Andre Kertesz

All of his family was left behind, including his fiancé Elizabeth. As with many others at the time, Paris was an inspiration for Kertész. For the next decade he photographed the streets of the French metropolis and finally marry his fiancé.

by Andre Kertesz

In 1936, the Keyston Agency in New York City lead him to cross the Atlantic. This though proved to be a mistake for his career. A year after joining the Keyston Agency, he cancelled the contract but was left with few options of what to do next. World War II was developing and made a return to Paris at that time impossible. At the same time, the US government treated him like an enemy of the state and prevented him from publishing for many years. Once the war was over, all of Kertész’s momentum was gone. It wasn’t until 1964, when Museum of Modern Art curator John Sarkowski organised a show for André, that his career finally took off again and the art world began to appreciate his work, this continued throughout the 70s and 80s and he was exhibited across the world. Towards end of his life, he would be one of the first to experiment with Polaroid’s SX-70 cameras. In 1983, the French government awarded him the Legion of Honor, he also received numerous honorary doctorates, lifetime achievement awards, a Guggenheim fellowship and the Mayor’s Award of Honor for Arts and Culture in New York.. He died at the age of 91 in New York.

by Andre Kertesz

While searching the internet for information I stumbled across this blog which is really worth a read, in this article he discusses 10 lessons that can be learnt from studying André Kertész:

  • Always have a camera with you
  • Follow your dreams
  • Take a higher perspective
  • Focus on geometry and form
  • Experiment with different equipment
  • Feel what you photograph
  • Be patient for the right moment
  • Stay an amateur
  • Be satisfied
  • Stay hungry

by Andre Kertesz

I know I will take away quite a lot from looking at Andre Kertesz’s work and also the articles I have read about him although I personally do not like his more surreal work I do find that like with Trent Parke I could look at his street work for hours dissecting the photographs to see why they work so well and hopefully become better at seeing situations because of it, I guess only time will tell!

By Andre-Kertesz

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All the above images were taken from the following websites:

– Wikipedia (Accessed 21 February 2015)

–Erik Kim Street Photography Blog (Accessed 21 February 2015)

– At Get Photography (Accessed 22 February 2015)

– Photographers Gallery (Accessed 22 February 2015)

The Genius of Photography

21 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Learning, Video Research

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Image by Andre Kertesz

I decided to Google for some photography-related podcasts and Youtube videos to listen to in the car and to watch at home.  I was most interested in podcasts about photographers – so I could look for inspiration and expand my horizons in terms of understanding what I like, why and what I don’t like. I now have quite a few to listen to and will post about them with my views as I watch or listen to them.

I started by watching a BBC series that first viewed in 2007. I cannot remember seeing it the first time round, but thought it sounded like an interesting one to watch. I found a link to it here. I do not tend to look on Youtube and other video sites so was amazed at the wealth of videos that are available especially on Youtube (boy am I behind the times!).

The first episode was entitled “Fixing the Shadows” and covered the history of photography from Ancient Rome to The Great War (1914), although I thoroughly enjoyed this episode, I did find it skipped backwards and forwards a little. It highlighted that often the challenge facing the photography pioneers, was not in fact how to capture an image, but how to stop it from over-developing, or to “fix the shadows”. I found the types of photos very interesting, I had come across the term daguerreotype processing previously as another of my hobbies is family history and when searching for photographs of relatives from that period of time this came up. It was nice though to learn more about it 🙂

I now have a couple of photographers that I really like their style of work that was shown in the programme and want to look into them a bit more, namely André Kertész and Jacques Henri Lartigue, once I have finished watching this series that is!

Image by Andre Kertesz

Image by Jacques-Henri Lartigue

Image by Jacques-Henri Lartigue

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All the above images were taken from the following websites:

A Get Photography (Accessed 21 February 2015)

Jackson Fine Art (Accessed 21 February 2015)

Photographer research: Trent Parke

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Learning, Photographer research

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“I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical.” Trent Parke

I decided to google photographers that are famous for capturing light and shadows and stumbled across Trent Parke’s work.

He was born in Newcastle, Australia in 1971 and now lives in Adelaide. He has won many photography awards and his work has been widely exhibited, including solo exhibitions in New York, London and Germany. “Minutes To Midnight” was shown at The Australian Centre for Photography in January/February 2005, in conjunction with the Sydney Festival, and became the most highly-attended show in the recorded history of the ACP.

According to the many profiles written about Trent Parke he is the only Australian photographer who has been able to join the Magnum group. This group pride themselves on being photographers who have “powerful individual vision”.

In his street work Trent has said that he uses harsh shadows to eliminate visual clutter such as modern advertising, which gives the images he creates a timeless feeling. The effect of this is to simplify the overall image and it also creates some unusual compositions that you simply don’t see day-to-day. They seem to have quite a dark mood as the harsh light in Australia creates such sharp contrasts, the blacks deep, so the pockets of sunlight add both tension and drama.

Trent has stated that by getting rid of the “crap” it can help you to make sense of the scene. Looking at Trent’s work has really made me question how I feel about the use of light in my work, the image below is the sort of exposure that many people would advise against, but Trent has used this narrow beam of light to create a very powerful shot. He obviously exposed for the shadows and with perfect timing captured the person wearing white (or a very light colour) walking through the beam of light, which blew the highlights, giving this person a quite angelic and surreal feeling.

Trent has commented on how quite often he’ll look back on a piece of work and wonder how on Earth it came about. The camera can capture images which just aren’t visible to the human eye.

I found that I was quite mesmerised by some of his black and white street photography work and really admire the work that he does with light and shadow and I find many of his images to be awe-inspiring and it makes me want to try street photography again.

After looking into his work I found the quote at the start of my post by Trent Parke aptly describes some of his work which does seem to verge on the surreal often giving it that magical feeling that he describes.

While researching Trent I stumbled across this video on him and his partner Narelle Autio which is worth watching it is so inspiring.

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All the above images and quotes were taken from the following websites:

 –   Magnum Photographers (accessed 18 February 2015)

 –   In Public (accessed 18 February 2015)

–    Stills website (accessed 18 February 2015)

–    Wikipedia (accessed 18 February 2015)