A visit to the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts, Gateshead.

The Sage,Gateshead
The Millenium Bridge

Tyne Bridges

The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts.

The Sage, Gateshead with Tyne Bridge.

The Millenium Bridge, Gateshead.

The Millenium Bridge, Gateshead.

The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts

The Millenium Bridge, Gateshead.

The Baltic Centre for Contemprorary Arts.

The Millenium Bridge.

The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts from the Gateshead Millenium Bridge.

The Sage, Gateshead from the Millenium Bridge.

The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts through the Millenium Bridge.

Reflections on People and Place

I have enjoyed the course People and Place and at times have found it challenging. I have however learned a great deal. I am now more comfortable with using fill-in flash and I hope that I look at backgrounds more carefully. I have learned a great deal from my tutor but am not sure about trying to achieve eye contact when photographing people. I regularly look at the work of other photographers both current and from the past and even in formal portraits the subject is often looking away from the camera. I feel that there is a place for both styles.
I think that I have done well at some aspects of the course, especially when photographing people unaware. I wonder if I enjoy this type of photography because I do well at it or do I do well because I enjoy it. Despite my less than good performance in Assignment 3 Buildings in Use, I do actually like architecture and enjoy photographing buildings. I do think that I fall into the trap of becoming bogged down in the wording of the assignment and try to fulfill the brief with poor photographs rather than concentrating on taking good shots. I also think I need to work on my editing skills.
One area that I would like to concentrate on in the future is the use of artificial light and controlling backgrounds both in still life and portraiture.
I find the subject of people interacting with place interesting. I can see that in certain instances including a figure would improve and help to resolve an image for example in my pictures of the greenhouse in assignment 4. Most landscape photographers go out of their way to avoid people in their images. However, people interacting in landscape shots are usually featured in magazine articles such as Trail magazine.

London - Buildings and People, 24.9.10 - 26.9.10

I was lucky to be able to spend a recent weekend in London and took the opportunity to take some photographs of people and especially buildings and include a selection here.

This first image is the entrance to Apple Market in Covent Garden. Despite being a dull day I was taken with the bright colours. I used a slow shutter speed to give some movement blur in order to convey the bustle of the market.

The next two pictures were taken in Fleet Street and I enjoyed playing in photoshop making a black and white conversion but leaving the iconic telephone box and London bus coloured. In this shot I waited until there was a distant figure in the frame.

This photo is taken in the Turbine House in Tate Modern. I was inspired by the pattern created by the window.

Rather than photograph St Paul's itself I found this reflection in a nearby building.

I liked this reflection in a building on Shaftesbury Avenue as we were going to see a performance of Les Miserables.

I took the next series of pictures in Kew Gardens concentrating on the various green houses.

I decided to do a black and white conversion on the shot of The Palm House taken through the trees.

I took some images of the whole of the Palm House but preferred the ones that only showed part of it. I had to wait quite a while to get some sun on it but I also like that it has lit up the dark clouds in a pleasing way.

Another shot of the Palm House.

Inside the Palm House here. I liked this spiral staircase and waited to get some people climbing it.

The Princess of Wales Conservatory.

This is also the Princess of Wales Conservatory. I like this shot taken from outside of the two ladies looking at an exhibit.

I loved the shape of The Davies Alpine House.

The next section focuses on the people and buildings taken on the river trip to and from Kew.

I like the reflections here.

One of the derelict power stations along the river.

I was struck by the shape of this block of flats.

Another reflection - almost an abstract.

One of the many rowers out on the river. I liked his sunglasses.

I was fascinated by this building with it's huge green sails which presumably open and close to let in light or keep out the sun. They remind me of the blades that control the aperture in a camera. I also like the dark sunlit sky behind.

Another building with a pleasing shape.

Intriguing shapes in this block of flats.

Exhibition - Eadweard Muybridge, Tate Britain, 26.9.10

Eadweard Muybridge is most well known for his stop-motion images of galloping horses. He was above all a visionary photographer who advanced the technical possibilities of the medium, laying down the foundations for future developments, including that of cinema. He did not confine himself to this though and took photographs in a wide range of genres. One that most fascinated me was the work that he did in the American West in the 1860s and 70s particularly in Yosemite. One of the problems with the early photographic techniques was that the image was the same size as the plate used and many of his photographs are of a small size. In fact he capitalised on this by producing some of the first stereoscopic images. He did push the boundaries of size however by employing a huge plate camera to take his wonderful images in Yosemite. There were some who wondered if he himself had taken the images or had they been taken by someone else or even had a mentor at his side instructing him. It has since been proved that he must have taken the images himself if, for nothing else, some were taken in such inaccessible places that no other photographic contempories could have got to. Even in this genre of photography Muybridge was an inoventor. He devloped a sky shade that enabled him to hold back the exposure of the sky to show detail in clouds and also experimented with combining two plates one exposed for the sky and the other for the foreground - the forerunner of today's HDR techology. Some of his images do have 'the same' sky however!

Pigeon Point Lighthouse

THis image was taken in 1873. I love the soft sepia tones and the superb sky. The long exposure gives a sense of movement to the sea.

Yosemite

Wonderful reflections here.

Again a fabulous sky in this shot taken in the valley.

Exhibition - The International Garden Photographer of the Year, Kew 25.9.10

This exhibition was unusual in that it was outdoors at Kew, the images being especially printed and protected in plastic. There are several categories: plant protraits, Edible plants, Trees, Portfolios, Wildlife in the Garden, and Young IGPOTY.

In the plant portrait section I particularly liked Brian Haslam's Magnolia which received the 2nd prize. It has beautiful detail in the centre of the flower and the pink nicely contrasts with the white.

Stephen Studd's Agave Spines from the Jardin Majorelle also attracted me. The edge of the leaf and the spines are beautifully backlit and catch the light. It also reminded me of my visit there last year.

In the edible section I enjoyed David Hennessey's Autumn Harvest which was beautifull lit and had a real painterly feel. Another favourite was the third place Melon Modigliani by Carlo Silva. It had fabulous colour and texture and super contrasting colours.

In the trees section I liked Olegas Kurasova's Leaf Fall in a Forest Stream. Again it had beautiful soft lighting ith wonderful autumn colours. A slow shutter speed produced movement blur in the water. Jonathon Little's Autumn showed wonderful soft lighting with excellent reflections in the still water.

Only one entry in the portfolio section inspired me and that was Fruiting Bodies a portfolio of fungal fruiting bodies. These were fascinating and had been produced using a Umax PowerlockIII scanner.

In the section on people I liked the entry that came first: Victor Korchenko's Tai Chi. I was inspired by the fact that Like Cartier Bresson he had taken the image of a man practising Tai Chi in Beihai Park, Beijing whilst looking down on him. In the same vein was Johnny Jetstream's image Lawnmower Man looking down from a higher rooftop on a man mowing a rooftop garden.

Wild life. Here I enjoyed Magdalena Wasiczek's image when the day ends of beautifulk golden backlighting of a butterfly on a dead flower head. Rachael Piper's Frog Close Up has superb detail.

In the Young IGPOTY my favourite is Sam Cairn's Crested Tit which won him third place. It is slightly backlit to add interest and has a fabulous out of focus background. He has also carefully chosen the perch for the bird, a beautiful lichen covered twig, which he has shown in fabulous detail.

Images of people taken from above inspired by the work of Henri Caritier Bresson.

I was fortunate to spend the weekend of 24th - 26th September in London and visited three exhibitions: Exposed at Tate Modern, Eadweard Muybridge at Tate Britain and the International Garden Photographer of the Year at Kew Gardens. One aspect of Exposed that interested me were the photgraphs taken when the subject was unaware but taken from above. These were by Henri Cartier Bresson in particular but Andre Kertesz also took pictures of people whilst looking down on them for his work on Reading. This inspired me to try similar photographs while in Covent Garden. Some of the results are included here.

Exhibition Visit - Exposed, Tate Modern 24.9.10

I found this exhibition interesting as it had a bearing on the sunbject of this course - People and Place, especially the section People Unaware. When I was taking photographs for Exercise 15, Public Space Public Activity, my family found my photography somewhat embarassing expecting me to have some complaints.

Since its invention, the camera has been used to make images surreptitiously and satisfy the desire to see what is hidden. Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera examines photography's role in voyeuristic looking from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present day. It includes pictures taken by professional photographers and artists, but also images made without our knowledge on a daily basis through the proliferation of CCTV.
The exhibition is divided into five thematic sections: The Unseen Photographer, Celebrity and the Public Gaze, Voyeurism and Desire, Witnessing Violence, and Surveillance. In each case, the nature and character of invasive looking is evident not only in the images themselves, but also in the ways in which the viewer is implicated in acts of voyeurism. Rather than blame the camera for showing illicit or forbidden material, Exposed explores the uneasy relationship between making and viewing images that deliberately cross lines of privacy and propriety.

In Room 1 I enjoyed looking at the pictures by Philp-Lorca diCorcia's Heads which were taken on the streets of New York in 2000 without he subjects knowledge using cameras and flash hidden in a scaffold. As well as being taken surrepticiously these images were also attractive. I liked the backlighting. Interestingly legal action was taken against him. This did result in a landmark ruling giving the artist rights over the subject.

In Room 2 I found the two images by Paul Strand - Man and Woman - taken in 1916. Despite beeing taken unaware they have an intimacy and show expressions of hopelessness and resignation.

Room 3 presented work by some of the twentieth century's most important photographers. In each case they exploit the camera's ability to create images without the knowledge of their subjects. I like the work of Henri Cartier Bresson and was interested in the way that he photographed people from above to great visual effect. I especially liked his photograph of the cyclist taken in 1932. Not only was the subject unaware and taken from above it captures the moment just before he disappears and also shows appropriate movement blur. During the weekend I visited Covent Garden and enjoyed trying to take similar images from above while the subjects were dining and unaware. Andre Kertesz also took people unaware from above in his work on Reading.I liked Dorothea Lange's 1933 photo White Angel Breadline. Each photographer had his own preferred technique. In Women lost in Thought from 1950, for example, Harry Callahan preset the focus and aperture only making his exposure at the last moment. Other photographers with these lightening fast reactions included Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand and Robert Frank.

Rooms 1-3 largely feature photographs of people unaware that they are being taken. They therefore have natural expressions and often show real poverty with resigned expressions. This is portayal of everyday life. The work is either for the photographer or taken for soacila documentary reasons.

In the next section in Room 4, Celebrity and the Public Gaze, I feel that the reason for taking the images changes from the last section. Here the photographs are taken to satisfy public curiousity as with today's paparazzi. The tension between the photographer and the famous person - who desires both privacy and publicity, and whose personna depends on a kind of notoriety - is often evident in the photograph. I felt that the subjects often look angry and haunted. I enjoyed Weegee's image from the 1950s of Marylin Monroe standing over a grating with her dress blowing up. I can imagine she was less than pleased!

In Voyeurism and desire I feel that many of the images are designed to titillate and place the viewer in the role of Peeping Tom. Room 8 had a slide show by Nan Goldin The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. I thought that this engendered a feeling of tawdriness and unpleasantness. I couldn't help but comapare this work to some of that of Robert Mapplethorpe whose images are beautifully lit and composed even if not to everyone's taste. I felt that Nan Goldin's work was more snapshots - but what do I know??? I did hear a comment by another couple as they came out suggesting that it 'unglamourised sex' but maybe that was Nan Goldin's aim. If it was she certainly succeded in my opinion. I couldn't help but wonder why her sunbjects wanted to be photographed in such situations and also wondered who would want to look at them. Dis her subjects realise that the images would be made public? What does the photographer get out of this? Hate her work or love it this part of the exhibition did promote the most discussion between my wife and myself - so perhaps Nan Goldin has been successful.

Witnessing Violence. Images of violence raise numerous questions. Who should look at them? Can we justify intruding upon another's death? Can photography allow us to responsibly bear withness to a victim's suffering or does it anaesthetise us to it's horrors.