Resubmit "Steve Mann-type Eye Piece Flash image"

Description: Brightly light shot with detailed urban background

Intentions: Documenting local destruction while attempting a self portrait

Good/Bad: My head tilt is too extreme- not natural or relaxed. Although my expression and the flash-fill lends itself nicely to this image, as I just barely stand-out from the wooden frame behind me.

Evaluation: I find this image to be more pleasing and less eccentric than the last flash fill excercise with Emily and the eye apendage.

Resubmit for "Easter snow sticking around"

Intentions: To mimick Andre Dubois' technique although I used a digital camera that won't go wider than 18mm although that's 27mm in SLR language so I can't totally achieve his effect. I really wanted to explore the passage of time aswell by showing both day and night of a space which has been documented many times over the past three decades with many types of technology.

Description: I had to use a series of three shots whereas Dubois uses only two- due to his wide angle pin-hole camera. My images curve outward whereas the Dubois shots curve inward toward the viewer enveloping them. My shots repel the viewer to the extreme depth of the city street right off the frame.

Good/Bad: The exposure for the night shots could have shown more detail in the shadows and some of the highlights of store signs are blown. I really enjoy the concept of passage of time and/or seasons- even if it puts into a category of elderly photographers I'll be happy to join them on this boat!!

Evaluation: In the day images I showed the sky and cityline of buildings whereas in the night shots I focused on getting the action taking place on the street and didn't think about the skyline. This is 'my' little corner of Montreal and I adore the gritty-urbanscape!

fooled ya-more posts to come...

Andre Dubois a prominant Montreal Pin Hole photographer and past developer of prints for commercial photographer's in 70's to 90's at St.Catherine Apt where I now reside.

I had the good fortune to meet Andre and his wife Barbara while they visited my apartment (their old apt.) around St.Patrick's Day to take an image from his usual locale through his studio window (now a bedroom) towards St.Catherine St. He was generous to leave images he developed in the old dark room that he took with a pin-hole camera of the apartment and surrounding area's in the 80's. These are some of the images Dubois has donated to the apartment:
Intentions: To capture a full city block

Description: The beautiful aesthic of pin hole comes through with a slight vingetting around the edges and the shadows created by the trees give texture to the flat cement. The slight distortion of the wide angle lens creates two sides to the image and a pyramid type shape created by the skyscrappers and apartment buildings increases feeling of depth.

Good/Bad: The repition of the cars and windows of the buildings are impressionistic. Especialy with the high contrast between the sky and deep shadows created by natures canopy on the road. Surrealism is encorporated by combining two wide angled images into 1 picture gives the viewer a sense they are looking at something they'd never be able to see with their own eyes. I'd want a bit more detail in the shadows of the builgings and I'd like to see some human life mixed in with the architectural and commercial aspects of the urbanscape.

Evaluation: I'm more than impressed with his work and I'll be visiting his exhibit before jetting off on a 25 hour journey to Indonesia (Bali and Lambok) and I suggest all in class go to this:

Polarscanography

I attempted to use polaroid (600) film in a camera that took a larger format image and then I tried putting 600 film into my Joycam that takes 500 and both ways didn't turn out an image. The way I put the film into the camera could have been the issue or possibly it's just not the right type of film.
In a dark room I opened the cartridges of 20 polaroids and placed one at a time into the camera, since the cartridges weren't the same size, and only the polaroid on the bottom left of the scanned image actually showed up traces of light all the other 19 images didn't register any photons!

Getting away from what didn't work... I decided to use a camera-less image for my last post encorporating many tools and mediums used in photography. I also encorporated some found objects by adding the half glasses frame and the 50 cent piece. The money might seem out-of-place although I was thinking about the $30 I spent on the polaroid images that are now yellow-green framed squares that I'll have to encorporate into I mixed media painting so that they don't go to waste. The glasses are 3D which reflect our experiments with David at the beginning of the semester and the slide images are of my Visual Communication classes with Claude Martel in 2004!

Feminism needs a new charge

Linny's image of a friend during a 'crazy' and so-called 'pathetic' shoot to achieve the most down-trodden women possible. The large glasses really help to reflect idea's of self-loathing and an anti-aesthetic.I believe more women should adopt an anti-aesthetic instead of pleasing the men in society by being a piece of meat to gaze at. She looks away from the camera as if she has limited self-esteem and would rather not look at us, although she seems to be used to be stared at as her body posture is resigned and slumped towards the camera. The distortion of having a wide angled lens pointed towards the face at an angle creates tappered distortion so her legs are minature compared to her body which also helps to create that anti-aesthetic that really is intriguing.

Mustafa Ünsal's photo of Julia shows a different aesthetic achieved even though the view point and subject matter are almost identical. Julia confronts the camera in a classic style of fashion photography and her pose shows deliberate contortions as she holds her body in place to achieve that flirty "look at me" character. I really enjoy the graphic out-of-focus floor tiles which creates texture within a shot that's mostly smooth lines in the chair and skin.

Alex as Andy

Alex (Group 1) Shot this image with a film camera, inverted in PS, and played with in layers. The repeated patterns of squares of the window frame and negative spaces amoung the background windows are reminescient of Pop Art and Andy Warhol's reproduction style. I like the strong colours and can see this image as a postcard advertising Montreal modern abstract architecture. The only aspect that could be changed is the darkness in the hues, I'd like to see more white/light coming through the windows. Graphic-ing Fun!

35mm Pentax K1000

I've finally experimented with my film camera again here's a few of the recent shots. The eye poster being my favorite because of the illustration. The funky smoker by the flowers was a roll gone wrong and after I scanned the negative, inversed and played with adjustment layers in photoshop I came out with a photo I don't remember taking at all!


This last image is more flash experiments that I did with my Pentax and Vivitar where I tilted the flash at an angle to feather it's strength towards the right hand side of the frame which accents the earth rising in the background.

Note: I keep looking at the back of my film camera to see the non-existent LCD screen and feel foolish each time I do it- am I alone in being trained to look at the back's of camera's as if they hold the answers!