Category: Contextual Photography

A colourful life

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5

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.

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’.

Exposure + Camera Controls

Shutter Speed – Time the light hits the film or sensor.

Apeture – The hole that lets the light into the camera and onto the sensor or film.

I.S.O – Tells us how sensitive the film or sensor is to light.

3200 = Very sensitive to light – low light – can give ‘grainy’ effect

200 = Not very sensitive to light – bright light – Smoother image quality

sIs: 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, 1/25, 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000

Apeture: f1.8, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22

Depth of focus

For a great depth of field you need a small apeture such as f22 and a slower shutter speed such as 1/15

For a short depth of field you need a larger apeture such as f2.8 and a faster shutter speed such as 1/1000

With a great depth of field you can get everything in the image in focus and sharp whereas with short depth the camera focuses on one key point and blurs the rest of the image.