The photo below was taken by Andrew from the Cuba Gallery
Photography Journal
Dimitri Baltzopoulos
In unit 3 of the photography A level I have been looking at the theme of weather
[ D i m i t r i B a l t z o p o u l o s ’ s P h o t o g r a p h i c J o u r n a l ]
In unit 3 of the photography A level I have been looking at the theme of weather and through out the unit I have used one artist much more than any other, this is a man called Andrew who owns that photography company called the cuba gallery. His work has inspired a lot of my shoots and I have taken parts of his images and used the idea behind them. What interests me about his work is how he seems to get such a good final image with the use of editing, and the lighting conditions he either get from just conducting his shoots in New Zealand or by editing in Adobe Lightroom 3 seem to be the main feature of his work that attracts me the most. I am going do analyze, discuss and pick apart step by step the Work of Andrew and another photographer called Chris Benbow, he is know as “John Nocture” and he has inspired a shoot of mine in the night, he is very specialist and only photographs under the cover of darkness. The Cuba Gallery – My first artist/photogapher is Andrew from the cuba gallery. What I love about his shots is that he seems to find so much drama in even just landscape shots. What attracted me to his work is that usually he conducts his shoots outside in the beautiful mountains and seaside locations that are in New Zealand. The genre that Andrew seems to fit most well into is natural forms because most of his shoots are outside of the countryside.
These are some images done by Andrew, they all convey a sense of drama and character, they relate to my brief of weather very well which is one reason why I enjoy looking at his photos very much. Even though these three images are all very good I have one favorite that I am going to analyze and that is the image on the next page.
In my opinion this is the photograph that has inspired my more than any other, every possible section of the image to analyze has something interesting about it. Subject matter: The subject of this shot is very motivating because the natural forms (which is the genre) has been taken on what seems to be a perfect evening with the sun slowly fading away behind the clouds but there is still beams of light making their way through the clouds, this is the main subject of the photo and the part that instantly hits you when you look at the photo. I think that the photographer is trying to achieve the sense of a warm summers evening in New Zealand. Formal elements: The composition of this shot also inspired me because I think that it genuinely has one of the best compositions I have ever seen in a photograph. The main focal or subject point of the photo is the sun beams peering through the cloud but the glimmer in the sea leads our eye down the image until we get to the lower shore line. This then takes us diagonally up the image like a romantic walk up the beach, swerving round the trees until we finally meet the horizon in which
place we are taken back horizontally across the image reaching the sun beams peering through the cloud, the starting point if you where. Processes:
This is a screen shot of the website www.cubagallery.co.nz in which Andrew is advertising his Lightroom tutorial. This is a piece of software made by Adobe to be considered the more photographic version of Photoshop. This is the programme that I would assume he uses because his tutorials are widely accredited and very much respected. It is very easy to know what processes have gone into his images because he put before editing and after editing shots up on his blog. I think that these before and after shots show to the full extent how much editing and processing goes into his images. In this shot there is very little depth of field because all of the shot is in focus, even the sand that is in the foreground to the distant trees which means he must have used a very narrow aperture probably of about F/18. Interpretation of my work – Subject matter: I feel that I achieved a very good set of shots in this shoot because the intention was to get a summery feeling shot and I think that i have achieved that very well. Formal elements: In this shot I tried to use the compositional technique of the rule of thirds, this is also what Andrew did in my inspiration shot did, I wanted to try and follow in his footsteps because I liked this shot very much, more so than most other shots from my inspiration sections. I just felt that it made the shot more appealing
because it shows that I have thought about how the composition will work with the final edited image. I like how the subject (my brother) stands out from the background or any other part of the photo because the floor is grey from the rocks but there still isn't either much blue sky, it is mostly filled with grey, but this means that my brother stand out very much and it is clear what the subject is. If I where to go out and do this shoot again I would definitely choose a brighter day because no matter how much you pay attention to the composition or the colors nothing portrays a summery day more than blue skies and harsh sunlight. Process: Not much editing has taken place between the first and final shots because this wasn’t a shoot which needed to be heavily edited or super imposed, all that needed to be done was some fiddling to the levels, the subject and its surrounding where well lit in the soft mid day sunlight. There is very little depth of field in this shot because I was shooting at F/5.6 just because this is a standard aperture for an average day. Chris Benbow – My second artist I will be analyzing is Chris Benbow or better known as John Nocture. I have chosen him because of his beautiful shots that he takes at night, the link from his work to my brief may seem quite far but in the weather theme I started photographing star trails and other forms of night photography until found Chris’s completely new take on the while night photography theme and this inspired me to use the same techniques as he did whilst photographing at night, if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have done almost any night photography or even considered it to be at all interesting so no shoots would have taken place in this unit. “My name is [Nocturne] I am known for my Noctography work and Light Painting in urban exploration. I've been a photographer for over 10 years now and have been a night photographer for 5. I exclusively shoot at night in abandoned locations around the UK. I have been regarded as one of the best Night Photographers in the world and an ambassador of Light Painting.” That was en extract taken from his website, I have chosen to study his work because I find Chris to be one of the most experimental photographers in the night photography industry which is why there is always something new to look at either on his flickr or his own website.
I watched Chris’s youbube how-‐to’s on how to make these patterns and it shows through in my work because I have one shoot on using wire wool to make sparks fly and another one on making orbs. Subject Matter: I think that these shots fall into the genre of surrealism and unnatural forms, an odd genre to be counted as weather but I think that this opportunity is too good to pass up. I think that the photographer is trying to achieve a feel of an image that clearly shows it has been taken in the darkness however also conveys a sense of brightness produced by the wire wool of flashguns that he uses. Formal elements: These photos never seem to contain any specific compositional technique but one thing that is always consistent is the lens that he uses, never will you see any long zoom lens in his photos, all of his shots are done with a wide-‐angle lens ranging probably between 10 and 18mm. Another common feature in his images is that there is no depth of field; to keep the exposure time as long a possible he
uses an ISO of 100 and a very high aperture (probably of around F/20-‐F/24), he does this so that he can have much time as possible to run around the shot and do the lighting of light wire wool. Processes: There isn’t anything to talk about in the processes section of Chris’s work because it specifically says on his website that the images under go absolutely no editing. Relating my work to the artists: I think that I have taken inspiration from Chris’s photos very much and it clearly shows. I have used the same techniques as him in the lighting section of the image however what separates his work from mine is that he travels the country looking for new and interesting locations which is the only way my work differs from his. However, this isn’t to say that I didn’t encounter any problems, the main one was actually lighting the wire wool, which causes the sparks to fly off, and created the pattern we see in the image. I must have bought I thicker grade wool which meant that it was harder to light and less sparks flew off it which cause the photo to look a little bit more empty than the ones done by Chris. But in general I think that this has been a very successful shoot in terms of the camera setting i used and just the general luck of getting the shoot done at that time. the idea of this shoot actually only came from some general surfing of flickr and finding the image that i used in my inspiration, I was very fortunate to find Chris’s shots because these have guided me throughout this entire conductance of this shoot, the development of an idea from almost nothing and then taking inspiration from what others have been able to do with the subject has opened my eyes to how important it is to get a great final outcome. What I was trying to achieve in this photo was to be able for it to have an impact on someone because even to someone who doesn’t do photography the patterns look very elaborate
and eye catching but some description may be needed to tell people how I did the shoot, so that they don’t get confused and think its something else. The composition of my shot is very unstructured, the only thing I have to it is add a vignette which will attract your eye to the middle because without that our eye is lead allover the image due to the lines that the flying sparks make which would convey a sense of the image being even more unstructured than it actually is. For this shoot I used an 18-‐55mm standard lens so that I could get all of the flying sparks clearly in shot. Evaluation – Are you happy with the results of the project overall? Yes I am very happy with the way that my project turned out, all of my shoots fall clearly into the category of weather. Did it turn out as you had planned? Did it fulfil your expectations? I feel that this project has turned out very well because all of my shoots clearly lead on and took inspiration from the shots and artists that I have mentioned in all of my inspiration sections so I cant do any more than that. What are the successes of the project overall? I very much like how all of the final results turned out in all of the shoots, they where very clear on what I was trying to achieve when photographing at the location. Which decisions had a major impact on the success of the piece? I think that all the artists and photographers I decided to use as my inspiration had an enormous impact on my work because depending on the photographer that I chose they completely modeled how my work was going to come out. What could you have done to further improve the project? I think if there was one way to improve my project it would be to use more images in the inspiration section whether it be more images from the same artist or use an number of different photographers Where would you go next if you had more time? To a place known as “the plane graveyard” which is where old planes that are now out of use just get thrown away, I would love to go and do a night shoot here because it looks so interesting