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.    

David Hockney

Recently I have been looking at David Hockney's photography 
I really like David Hockney's photography I really like this one on the left -> 
It is like a photo collage technique he takes lots of photos from different angles. This gives it a kind of cubist feel, like you are viewing the face from different angles.

below I have attempted to create my own David Hockney.
I think it has went okay for a first attempt. 

Fishing and Photography

 Here are two photos I took when I was fishing a few weeks ago. I think the actually look okay considering that I took them on my phone. This is the original photo on the right I like it but I think that it is to long and there is to much sky

 I decided to crop the picture so there was not as much sky in it. Which I think works well. I then put a filter on it which makes the center more focused and the edges a little out of focus. after doing this i decided to enhance the colours and try and brighten the photo a little. I think the edited version looks a lot better tan the original photo. 

This is the other photo I took that day. The reason I took this photo is because I loved the reflection of the trees and clouds in the water. Another reason I took it was I loved the different colours in the sky and also the contrast between the orange rod and the blue and greens.  

Messing with Aperture,ISO and shutter speed

last week we were given cameras and told to take pictures with different aperture.The definition of aperture is - an opening, hole, or gap. In the photography world it is pretty much the same. Aperture is how wide or how narrow the shutters is. The wider it is the more light is let into the lens like image at the at he bottom and the narrower the shutter is the less light it let into the lens like the photo at the top. Through all the photos I took I had the iso - 200 an the the aperture f/8. 

In this picture the shutter speed was set to 1/320. this is a very slow shutter speed this is why it is dark. The reason for it being as dark is that the the shutter opens and closes so fast that there is not very much light let into the camera.





In this picture I have changed the shutter speed to 1/125 which sounds like a lot but it  only lighted the picture slightly
This middle picture is my favorite I think the lighting in this one works the best.The detail on the rusty bell and also on the bricks shows up lot better in this lighting  
  

I changed the shutter speed to 1/13 which is really really slow. This has drastically changed the amount of light that is in the photography










Here is another example of shutter speed changes

 Here is an other example of a slow shutter speed. in this photo it was at 1/6. I think it works relatively okay I like how the center of the plant is very detailed and and around the edges it is blurry and out of focus.

Here is an example of a quick shutter speed - 1/100.this is why it is a lot darker. I really like how This picture has came out. I like the dark green and vibrant red.

Funny Selfies

 on Wednesday the 24th September we were shown this picture of 8 Victorians, it is a very unusual picture because of the faces they are pulling. It was not often that Victorian people were photographed in this way. they were usually photographed looking there best.

after we were shown this we were asked to take inspiration from it and create our own images like this. 

These are my inspirational creations 

photography 17/9/14

On Wednesday 17/09/14 Niall sent us out to take a few photos. I think these are some of the best ones I took. At first when we were told we were doing photography I was not really looking forward to it and didn't really have an interest in it. That was until I
 started looking at different photographers and started taking photos. These are the first few photo I took and I began to find it good fun and i liked the different  things that you could do with the camera.

The top left is the first photo  took when we went out that day. I actually really like it, which i was surprised about. I like how I can control what the viewer of the photo see's. like how they can only see the view point through the the bin and the cannot see what is happening around about it.       

Here is a picture of a park picnic table. I chose to photograph the table in this way because I liked the way the two pieces of wood take you further into the picture. I also like this picture because of how interesting the old paint and wood looks at the front of the photo. I also like the view point I took this picture because it makes you think a little because it does not look like a picnic table from this angle .  

I think this photo (on the left) is very interesting and different, I took this one from a birds eye view. I think it will make the viewer think a lot because it is hard to figure out what it is. I like the depth of this how close the right hand side looks and far away the left side looks.  




I really like this picture because it is a picture of such a simple object. I think the reason it looks as interesting as it does is because it is from an unusual angle. There is not many people would look at a cone from this angle in every day life.

I also like this picture it is from an ants view point. I really like the texture of the sand stone wall on the left hand side I also like hoe the left hand side is in focus and the right hand side isn't it makes the left hand side look as if it is sticking out.

I really really like this picture because of the way the steams of the leaf are lighting up and the edges of the leaf are really dark. I really like the colours I love how good they look together

I also really like this picture. i really like the contrast between the skin tone and the vibrant purple hair. I also like the reflection of the computer screens in the eye.

Well established and Popular art

Last Thursday at college we were shown a video of an artist called jack vettriano, who was a millionaire because of the amount of paintings he had sold but the weird think about him is that he is not considers as a well established artist because none of his work is displayed in any art exhibitions.

Why is this?

I think the reason that vettriano and other artists are not established because they sell there own art and do not hold any pieces back from the public, where as artist who are moving there work through art exhibitions and art dealers they do not release all of there paintings to the public so that there work looks more rare and also so the other pieces of art by them increase in value. I think art critics and dealers are just high end business men who want to make big money.

Where as I think vettriano and other artists like him just paint likable situations and scenarios that people can relate to and dream about themselves being the person in the romantic scene. 

Photography

 Here is two examples of photos I have took at college. In these photos I have been plying with depth of vision. In the picture on the left I have concentrated the focus on the flowers behind the fence. which I really like because it gives the picture more depth. Where as in the picture below I concentrated the focus on the fence posts in the foreground which i think also works but I do not think it works as well as the other picture. I like the colours in both  because I think the turquoise in the foreground works well with the bright and vibrant pink greens and reds in the background.

Photomontage - Hannah Höch & Raoul Housman

In exploring specialist techniques and viewpoint I have been looking at photo-montage I have looked at some photo-montage artists like 

John Heartfield
Hannah Höch
Kurt Schwitters 
Raoul Housmann

My two favourite artists from this four are Hannah Höch and Raoul Hausmann because I liked there work the most.

Hannah Höch

The piece of work I looked at by Höch was;
"Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany", 1919-1920.

I really like this piece. it is very busy, it looks very mechanically inspired because of all the buildings and all the gears  and bolts in it, I also think this photo-montage is advertising Dada and is against anti Dadaists because it is covered in the word Dada. I think it is against anti dadaists because in the top right corner there is paper cut outs which read die anti Dada.

Raoul Housmann

The piece of work I have been looking at by Housmann is this;

ABCD (Self-portrait) 1923–24

I really like this piece I like how he has put himself into the photo-montage and the different things round about him.

I decided to take this forward and this is the idea that I came up with 

I took the same sort of idea, I used photo shop to crop the picture of my head and change the colour to black and white. I then placed things about me round me, like that I really like bananas so I decided to put a banana in it I then changed the writing at the top to my second name, I basically tried to portray myself in a photo-montage.

Louise Bourgrois

On Monday we went to the Louise Bourgeois exhibition at Modern One (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art). It was very interesting and enjoyable. I enjoyed reading about and looking at some of her art work and how much thought goes into her art work and how much meaning there is to her art. I liked lots of her artwork but most of all I liked her sculptures like "give or take" which was created in 2002. My favourite piece by bourgeois that I seen at the gallery on Monday was Cell XIV (Portrait) which was made in 2000 and is made from  Steel, glass, wood, metal and red fabric.









I really like this piece because i think it looks very emotional like the three heads are screaming and trying to break away from each other, or trying to escape. It also looks very painful. 

William scott

Title - pears
Date - 1979
Medium - lithograph on paper

I don't really like this piece it is very boring because it is very dull colours and Is just a few 2D pears