Stephen Shore

Inspiration from Stephen Shore. I took these photos in the style of Stephen Shore as he took photos with a long depth of focus and would take photos of different surfaces.

A colourful life

Describe the piece of work that you have chosen. Explain why you chose it – I chose this piece of work as it shows lots of different colours and good use of long depth of focus.

Which materials and techniques has the photographer used? – Would use a film camera to show long depth of focus and short depth of focus. He would take photos of everyday things to show the culture and differences over America.

What do you think the photographer is trying to show or say in their work? – He is showing the contrast between all of the different colours and showing the day of an average American.

These are examples of short depth of focus.

Using film cameras

We used 35mm film slr cameras to take photos. We needed to match the shutter speed and apeture manually and gett the pin in the viewing lens in the middle to make sure the settings were right. We used the slr cameras to get great depth and short depth photos.

The film will be developed in the dark room and made into negatives.

Lesson 1 Contextual Photography

Jenny Saville – Talks about the female body and how she perceives women making their body’s fake. She talks about how many women want the ‘fantasy’ body and what the ‘fantasy’ body is. She pressed her nude body against glass and distorted her appearance to show how making your body fake feels. She talks about the contrast between normality and beauty. She also talks about how people presume so much about people just from their appearance.

John Coplans – Talks about how old people are seen as taboo and how no one cares about them. He got his assistant to take nude photos of him to show everyone’s male body. He said “it was me but it wasn’t me…” which shows how he had used light and different shots to alter his appearance. The photos show no identity and shows the ‘reality’ of the body which means people can easily relate and understand it. The photos show the different “states of being” and confronts what beauty really is. He changes people’s perception by using different scales and sizes to change what people really see in the photo and this shows how photography transforms.

Joel Peter-Witkin – He uses “freak show performers” in his photos to show his perspective of beauty. He uses them as it resembles himself. He uses his models to create his own personal world of beauty and shows what reality is really like. Hus photo’s show reality and what he doesn’t know. His work is inspired by death, illness and old age. He uses ‘freaks’ as he isn’t interested in conventional ‘beauty’.

‘Baby Making’

• Open 2 images and create two windows then move one of the images onto the same window as the other one but in a different layer and unlock both.
• Reduce the opaquity of the top layer to 50% then move the image’s eyes on top of the other images eyes.
• Press edit then transform then scale and move the nose and mouth of the top layers on to the bottom layer then double click.
• Move the opaquity back to 100% then press layer mask then reveal all.
• Move the brush opaquity to 40% and brush through the different layers to merge both images features together.