COMPOSITES -urban - where my ideas came from - SUMMARY

When I visited the States during the semester one of my tasks was to 'photograph a range of urban landscapes to be used in a further series of composites of my choice'. I set out photographing what appealed to me but when I got home I was stuck as to how I could turn them into a series of composites. Plonking a person in front was tried but didnt seem to fit.

I had had Gregory Crewdson at the back of my mind but my images didnt seem to fit his sytle.

So I thought I might just play around with the image to give it a three demential feel. I like squares & rectangles and make a lot of brightly coloured patchwork quilts. Also I put photos together in a patched way such as these photos I took in 2005-6:

So I set out to patch the landscapes.The idea was to give the image more movement. I sent a couple to Silvia & she suggested looking at the work of David Hockney. He did this sort of thing in the 1980s. Also she said to look at the work of Stephen Jobs. Julian suggested the work of Grant Mudford. I loved the work of Grant Mudford but I was home before I looked at his work & solving my dilemma about how to composite-ise my shots was not solved.

However the work of both David Hockney & Stephen Jobs was patchwork in a sense so I continued 'patching' some of my images.

David Hockney's :

Stephen Job's:

My urban composite images are on my blog:

http://snowstation19.blogspot.com/2011/06/final-urban-landscape-composites.html

I didnt necessarily pick the best of my shots to work with , rather ones that I thought suited this type of treatment. My set of landscapes are on two earlier blogs:

http://snowstation19.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-san-diego.html

and

http://snowstation19.blogspot.com/2011/05/urban-landscapes-usa.html

COMPOSITES (non-urban) - where the ideas came from - SUMMARY

This is a summary as there is comprehensive research in my research blog. The two photographers that I chose to emulate were: Catherine Nelson and Erik Johansson.

1. Catherine Nelson had an exhibition earlier this year at the Australian Centre of Photography in Paddington where she exhibited six (I think) globe type images such as below.

I did one of these & attempted a second. They were exceptionally time consuming initially starting out with separate leaves, then a few at a time and so on. Shadowing was difficult as I needed to fix lots of layers as there were hundreds of them. The file was enormous (at times 3.6GB) & i moved to a psb file. I was unable to liquify bits of scenery as the file was so big - had to put it into a separate file. Catherine left her image exceptionally sharp so I did the same. My image:

2. Trying to emulate Erik Johannson was also difficult. He has an amazing way with his photoshop skills & his imagination to create interesting unreal images.

I attempted to be like him in at least two of my images. My second swan one of course had an Annie Leiberwitz influence with the swan around the subject's neck -see little image floating to the ground in my image.

As well there was an input from Salvidor Dali with this image:

3. The next two images were influenced by Julia Fullerton. I researched her last year (again in my this semester blog) and I like her big people/small people images - which I understand are not composites.

These are my two images with big & small people:

4. The babies in the moon stand alone. There is fantasy in it such as those of Emilie Leger. However i feel I took on too much drawing to be successful. Should have stuck to photos only. My photo of the moon was not detailed enough to use it.

By Emily Leger:

FINAL PORTRAITS - plus explanation

San Diego –street portrait photography

While recently in San Diego California I photographed a number of people in the street – some homeless and others who I assumed had homes.

I am often asked how do I approach such people. Yes I do get nervous and I do have many knock backs but when the confidence is there I do like the results.

For the homeless people I generally say ‘may I take your photo please?’; they usually say ‘why?’ to which I reply; ‘I’m Australian and the picture of the huge number of homeless in the US is not generally known in Australia’. As long as the photos are not going into the newspaper they don’t really mind. Some ask for a payment & I give them a donation for allowing me to photograph them. I think that’s fair.

For those others who do not appear homeless, I ask: ‘May I take your photo please?’; again ‘why?’ or just ‘No thanks’. For those who said ‘why’, in the US I said I was Australian & I was collecting photos of Americans who ’looked’ American. I was never asked for payment.

I don’t photograph without permission.

I went to several areas. The first was Chicano Park built under the pylons of the lead up to a bridge in central San Diego where I photographed two local residents. These men spend a lot of time in Chicano Park. They are both descendants of mixed blood of Mexicans and Native Americans brought into the area as cheap labour. One of the men – an artist Salvador Torres was instrumental in the creation of Chicano street art in the park back in the early 1970s. He also repairs any damage or aging to the artwork. The art depicts the struggle of the Chicano people.

In the Mission Bay area I visited a park in which many homeless live. There have been estimates that over 200 homeless live in this area and another 400 only a few miles away. In the park one or several of them live under concrete picnic tables and chairs. They generally have a bicycle if they need to go anywhere which they walk beside and push with all their worldly belongings attached to it. There are two types of homeless there – those who have been homeless for many years and those who became homeless with this recent financial crisis. So most of these have been in the park for two years. They lost everything and often their families as well. Most have come from the construction industry which is almost non-existent in the States at present. Others from luxury industries which folded overnight. The long term homeless have a very weathered appearance. I understand from them that there are charity groups who bring them food & they are given bus tickets although I saw very few busses.

I also photographed at the Mission Bay Beach area where there is a continual fun fair as it is a holiday tourist area. There were many different sorts of people wondering around.

FINAL COMPOSITES (NON_URBAN)

OR:

FINAL URBAN LANDSCAPE COMPOSITES

Another urban landscape composite

BOTTOM PHOTO: Original

THIRD FROM TOP PHOTO:

I did this by selecting rectangles, adding a 2pix grey stoke & dropping a shadow to make it look three dimensional. I concentrated on the two front stands, the line along the bun and the traffic lights. I put less shadow behind other areas of the image.

TOP PHOTO:

Had an email from Julian saying that it (3rd from top photo) was all too busy & perhaps emphasise the building, not the surrounds. At first did it in all colour (2nd from top photo) but footpath too awful, so turned it to B&W. Looks better.

Another composite - construction site