second stage in my process for this unit

I thought that once I had started the research I would have a clear path on where I wanted to go.
It turns out it is quite hard to come up with a new religion. The hardest part is trying to come up with something that people will believe and want to follow. Also something that is not already out there. I think the best way is to come up with something that is totally out there/ off the rails. For this type of project the research could go on for weeks and weeks because there is so many ways you can go. The piece of the brief I am struggling with the most is that it is to be attractive and engaging for a 21st century audience. It needs to appeal to the generation of today. I have found a lot of places that say people are to busy with day to day life now to have time for a religion. Is the key to making a new appealing religion making it easy to access, easy to live by, and gives busy people of today faith/ some sort of meaning for life. I am going to continue on with my research and do some mind maps on life in this current time, like day to day life. Then hopefully begin to generate some ideas to go forward with.       

Interpretation of the brief 

designing a new religion & brand it! 

I have begun by reading the brief a couple times, and highlighting the key points in the brief.
stuff like;
it is a set of beliefs
spiritual experience
involving devotional and ritual observances
a figurehead
usually a backing story
a book of moral tales
usually wear some kind of uniform
has a place of worship

This is by far the hardest brief I think I have ever had. Trying to get my head around exactly what had to be achieved is difficult. It is such a broad subject and can go anywhere. There are so many questions to be answered, so many problems to be solved. What is the first task is creating the new religion. I think the first point of action for me. Will be to have a look at what religions are already out there and what there beliefs are. Why certain religions have become so popular! also have a look at different more obscure religions that are out there already. Is a religion worshiping a certain thing? an object? a being?or a greater power?. Is it following a book of rules? can people have faith in anything? does a religion have to predominantly be about the creation of living things? or can people worship a creation like the the car, the plane, electricity?. I think one of the biggest reasons for people looking to religion is to find the meaning of life. I think after I have researched current religions my path may become clearer.

This is my first step in the process of design, taking all my thoughts and questions on the brief and just dumping them on a page. I think this works well and helps me begin to figure out where I am going to go.

Phillipe Halsmann & Gjon Mili

The two photographers that I have mainly been looking in to are Phillipe Halsmann and Gjon Mili. I have looked at a few of each of their photos and I fell in love with them straight away. I love that they both involve movement in their photos but both portray it in different ways. Halsmanns photos have still movement like people jumping and the image is captured while they are in mid-air like this bellow.

Halsmann would of captured this photo using a fast shutter speed where as Mili used a slow shutter speed.

Where as Mili caught movement with blurred snap shots, which look amazing, they are like nothing I have ever seen before. Mili managed to portray a sequence of human movement in a single photo. Mili used a technique called stroboscopic photography. This is a method that mixes an electronic flash unit with prolonged exposure time. To create images like this 

  I really like Halsmann’s photographs. They are very technical and are very well thought out, everything has to be well rehearsed so that the photo goes exactly the way he wants it to which interests me. Although I like Halsmann’s work a lot I am a lot fonder of Mili’s I think this is because Mili’s photographs are so different and are also very interesting I have never seen movement portrayed like this in a picture until I looked at his work.

Mili also took pictures of people drawing with light, mainly Picasso drawing with light I really like this and would like to do something like this in my photography 

 the light drawing is another way of portraying movement

over all I think these two photographers are in my top three favorite photographers and I think there work is brilliant      

Recently I have been looking at the photographer Gjon Mili. I have been looking at the light drawing photos he took of Pablo Picasso which look like this. 

I really really liked the look of these photos so I decided to try to do some my self.








I had read online that the way to catch them is to have the shutter speed very slow. also to mess around with the ISO to see what produces the best images.

for my photos I had the ISO set at 100, the aperture at f/3.4 and the shutter speed I changed through out the photos that I took

Here is on of the first photos that I took I

actually think it has went quite well   
I really like the bright green colour against the black background. I really like the shapes that the light creates.  

after this attempt I decided I would try and draw a picture with the light and this is what came out, for this one I changed the the shutter speed time to 15 which was very very long but I think it works just as well.
 Hopefully you can tell what I was trying to draw.

  After this I decided to try and write my name but it was pretty hard because I had to join up all the writing but also try and not over lap letters which was very hard.











 
I then decide I would take a photo of the light going horizontally cross the picture like the one on the left. 

Then i would take a photo of the light going vertically up and down on the picture like the one on the left. 










After I took both the photos I put them on Photoshop and put them both together which i think works quite well.

I also on this one with parallel diagonal lines in both corners which I think also works quite well. I really don't know why I like it maybe its just the colour.  












Here is an other picture i used a different setting on the light and i think it looks great. It looks really furry and i love the bright colours in it.

Erik Johansson

Erik Johansson

I have been looking at artists on the internet and have found this guy. his stuff is literally unreal. The images that he creates are very surreal. here is an example of his work -> 

  

below i have posted a video this video shows exactly how he makes his work and how difficult it is 

Messing With Photos on Photoshop

 Last Wednesday I went out taking photos. While I was out I saw an electrical pylon. I really like the shapes that the metal bars created when they crossed over each other. I also liked the colour of the clouds in the back ground of the photo because they contrast well with the colour of the metal bars.    

After I had messed around with the photo on Iphoto for a while I decided to mess around with it on Photoshop. I wanted to make it colourful. So I decided I would make the bars black and the random  shapes different colours..
 I think this idea has worked well and has created a really abstract piece of photography.

After that I took a picture of me, Hope and Martin on the Mac's webcam.

I then put it on Photoshop and created this improvement of us all.
I used the liquify tool on Photoshop to distort the faces, which makes it very scary and also very surreal. I really like it the i have made the smiles look very creepy.

 I then decided to further edit it and turn my self into a zombie, which actually went a lot better than I thought it would have. I mostly used the paint tool to do the mouth, eyes and shadows in the face. I then used the liquify tool to distort the t-shirt and make it look like there were tares in it which I think worked really well. After that i realized that the image still looked bare so decided I would add gun and make it look like it was shooting at me. To make the gun I drew it out on to a piece of paper then I scanned it into the computer then coloured and edited it.

I got the picture of the bullet of the internet which I then pasted onto the picture.    
 After this I decided to add some lettering into it.
Firstly i made it a light gray colour. I didn't really like the look of it plain so I painted with a dark red blood colour in places whitch i think works really well.

over all i think that messing around with these photos on Photoshop has helped me a lot, not just with my photography unit but also with my narrative image making. It has helped me increase my Photoshop skills. 

Chris Wells

Last Wednesday we went to Edinburgh to the Royal Scottish Academy and the Scottish national gallery.
I really like this piece of work called "referendum in wonderland".
this piece of work is an ink drawing.
The piece must of been very recent because it involves subjects like the Scottish referendum. It also involves the ice bucket challenge which was a social and charity event.
 I really really like how detailed it is and how much he has crammed into it.

I also like the fact that it is right here right now. like the narrative of the picture is what is happening in the world around us. I also like how comical it is because of things like the door with  Picasso lived here. The only thing I don't like about it was that I couldn't get a good photo of it.

I then had a look online and found more stuff by him. It turns out he also has a blogger account.

   
I found this one which was not in the gallery. I really like his style of work. The amount if info that is crammed into the pieces are great.

I feel that the trip to the gallery as a whole was great, I found out about new artists like Chris wells that I had never heard of or seen any of his work.
another reason really enjoyed it was it was amazing seeing a van Gogh, Rembrandt and Gauguin in the flesh.