Assignment 5: More research

I am in the process of preparing for Assignment 5. I took the photos late last year and am just commencing processing and bringing them together as a set. I was browsing blogs tonight and came across Keith Greenough's set of beach huts from Miami. Wow, they look great all together! My set of Queenslanders won't be nearly as distincive, but I like that I'm thinking along the same lines of someone so much further on in the Photographic study as me! Perhaps I will get there...

He has chosen a consistent viewpoint and angle, filling the lower middle of the frame with the hut, and allowing more sky in at the top. How does he do this using a large-format camera? It must be incredibly difficult to remember exactly where he placed the other huts within the frame and fill them to almost exactly the same space. I found this hard with my houses when I was photographing them. He also has quite consistent weather - he has shot at the same time of day and the weather looks fairly constant between each shot. I also took the time to shoot with the sun roughly directed constantly on the houses, and even chose houses on one side of the street and not the other for that reason. I also almost always shot on sunny, blue sky days (we get a lot of those in Queensland!)

I  like the way he presents them as a grid (like I want to do with mine) and the lovely soft colours are great. Not bad given he only spent 45mins a day doing photography on his holiday... (more than I managed on my recent holiday, but I don't think he had a 3year old and 8mth old with him!). Below is my version of a beach hut, taken at 90 Mile Beach, Lakes Entrance (Victoria) which I took in February as we were driving from Brisbane to Adelaide.

Beach hut, Lakes Entrance, 90 Mile beach

References:
Greenough, K photo-graph. Online, available at: http://photo-graph.org/2013/04/26/8-lifeguard-stations-south-beach-miami-usa/ [accessed 22/05/13]

Bob Carey Photographer

Aline Smithson has a blog called L E N S C R A T C H which I follow, and this recent post stood out to me. In short, it's a personal project that started as just that, but has become a fundraising project for breast cancer research. It's an example of charitable photography but with interesting, quirky images.

The photographer, Bob Carey, obviously knows his stuff, from looking at his website. His portraits look casual but I suspect are perfectly planned. I wonder if they are mostly opportunistic (out wandering, targeting people he spies), as the situations look fairly natural. I really like the use of mixed eye contact in the pair portraits. It adds an air of question to the image.  The 'Tutu Project' is unusual and eye-catching, as well as making interesting viewing. All-in-all, an inspired photographer I am glad to have spied.

This image below, for example, is bold, colourful, and simple but yet also making a gently humorous statement at the same time.  The photographer is concerned with social issues, but wants to make them approachable for everyone - he doesn't mind having a laugh at himself which might be a useful skill!

Taken from Lenscratch website for personal study purposes

References:

Carey, B (2012) Bob Carey. Online, available at: http://www.bobcarey.com/ [Accessed 19 March 2012]

Smithson, A (2012) Lenscratch. Online, available at: http://www.lenscratch.com/2012/03/bob-carey-and-tutu-project.html [Accessed 19 March 2012]

 

photo-graph blog

I have been greatly inspired by Keith Greenough's blog, which I discovered via the OCA blog. He is a level 3 student, so obviously much more advanced than me, so it's great to see where OCA students get to beyond the level 1 and 2 courses, and how much more self-directed the study is at that level. I have had a good read of his blog (some notes below) and am continuing to follow his studies and projects with interest. I like the way he displays his work in different styles, sometimes just one image, framed in white with text below, other times a small collage of images, and recently, a slideshow of fabulous B&W images taken in Museums in the London area.

I also like the setup of his blog (I think it is through Wordpress), which has snippets of his recent posts on the left, with recent images on the right. He seems to post fairly regularly and this keeps the blog interesting and relevant. What I don't like about his blog (and others I have seen) is the ads underneath the bottom of the post. Not for me thankyou...

He obviously has a number of projects on the go at once, using a couple of formats of cameras (he experiments with film and digital) and doesn't always appear to have a plan as to how he will attack a project, sometimes just 'seeing what happens'. I like this spontaneity, but I also like that other projects he works on are obviously large, long term and require a lot of planning. There is a lot of depth in his photographic work.

Notebook

References:

Greenough, K (2012) Keith Greenough Blog. Online, available at: http://photo-graph.org/ [accessed 13 March 2012]

Various authors (2012) OCA Blog. Online, available at: http://www.weareoca.com/ [accessed 13 March 2012]