Space:

Hallway.

Place:

Our ten-year-old Aloe Vera.

Our little Christmas tree.

Environment:

Messy corner in the house.

Internet-based interactions.

Stuffed animals we grew up with

Siblings unfinished painting and art area

Image One: Message.

Images two  and  three:  Abstraction

Self-portrait.

Portrait of a pumpkin.

Portrait of a star.

Proposal:

I have always thought that art is the physical representation of one’s mind. With the help of my camera, I will create images that will allow people to understand what it means to be me. I want to allow people to have a visual representation of my everyday thoughts and experiences. Having been diagnosed with depression and ADHD, my daily life is a constant struggle. With my final project, I hope to allow people to feel exactly what I am feeling, especially to those who struggle to understand mental illness. I have had trouble in the past when trying to explain my mental illness to my family and maybe a visual representation will help solidify my explanations. Conceptually, I will have to find ways to visually manifest emotions and thoughts. I will have to think about how my images make other feel and how I will accomplish my goal. Cooler tones, lower brightness, and lower exposure will be used when taking images because of how they make images darker and “unhappy” looking. Technically, I will have to be able to create these images on my own with the help of props and my Nikon D70. I will also need to access a tripod as I have some ideas that will require a steady camera. I may come across an issue using photoshop because I am not that experienced in manipulating images and images don’t always come out the way I want them to. I am, however, already planning of using the Filter section of photoshop as well as the smudge tool for one of my ideas that will be a distorted self-portrait.

Outcomes:

The practical outcome of the project is that I will be able to produce images that have a solid theme and will showcase the skills I currently have as a student photographer.

I will become more experienced using photoshop.

I will produce seven processed images that I will post to the research journal blog.

Methods and Materials

Camera: Nikon D70 with several lenses, I don’t know the specific names of them.

Lighting: Sun, flashlight, room lighting

Tripod

Props that will be used in the images

References:

Edward Honoker – photographer

Janelia Mould – photographer

Gabriel Isak – photographer

This is the edited image I created of myself. I took separate photos of my hands and cropped  them  to  the  best of my ability. I also attempted to blend both hands into my head, which in all honesty could have been done better. I am unfortunately a complete beginner using photoshop though. I also used the spot healing tool to remove stuff from behind me, some paint splatter on the wall and some blemishes on my shirt.

Hellooooo! For this task, I was asked to edit a photograph on photoshop and post the before and after.

This is a photo that I took for the Camera Task but it never made it into the cut.  

After some editing, this image is the finished product. I messed around a lot with the contrast, brightness, whiteness, blackness, vibrance and saturation. To  make  the  image  a little  more  interesting,  I replaced the shadows in the background with color  using the selection tool, paint brush tool and manipulating  the opacity. This created the  illusion  of  colored  shadows. I even  used  the selection tool on the bottom half of the image in order to adjust the vibrancy and saturation only in that selected area.

Helllooo! This is my camera task project. In this project, I messed around with my cameras settings in order to grasp how to take photographs on a DSLR camera. This task was particularly challenging for me because I had never picked up a DSLR in my life until this moment. I hope you enjoy the photographs I took! Have a great day!

Exposure Bracketing(1-3):

Correct Exposure 

ISO: 500

Shutter Speed: 1/200

Aperture: F6.3

Editing: Exposure +0.66

Under Exposure 

ISO: 500

Shutter Speed: 1/400

Aperture: F6.3

Over Exposure 

ISO: 1600

Shutter Speed: 1/500

Aperture: F6.3

Flash

Highest and Lowest ISO (4-5):

Lowest ISO

ISO: 200

Shutter Speed: 1/320

Aperture: F6.3

White Balance: Flash +2

Highest ISO

ISO: 1600

Shutter Speed: 1/320

Aperture: F6.3

White Balance: Flash +2

White Balance Setting(6-8):

White Balance: Flash +0

ISO: 200

Shutter Speed: 1/500

Aperture: F6.3

White Balance: Cloudy +0

ISO: 200

Shutter Speed: 1/500

Aperture: F6.3

White Balance:  Sunny +3

ISO: 200

Shutter Speed: 1/500

Aperture: F6.3

Fast Shutter Speed(9):

Shutter Speed: 1/50

ISO: 200

Aperture: F1.8

Slow Shutter Speed (10):

Shutter Speed: 1.3

ISO: 250

Aperture: F5.6

Wide Aperture(11):

Aperture: F3.5

ISO: 1600

White  Balance: Auto -3

Shutter Speed: 1/25

Narrow Aperture (12):

Aperture: F6.3

ISO: 200

White  Balance: Auto -3

Shutter Speed: 1/25

Editing: Saturation, cropped

Angles (13-15):

ISO: 200

White  Balance: Auto 

Shutter Speed: 1/60

Editing: Healing tool, Sharpness

ISO: 200

White  Balance: Auto 

Shutter Speed: 1/60

Editing: Healing tool 

ISO: 200

White  Balance: Auto 

Shutter Speed: 1/60

Editing: Healing tool 

To see the Google Drive version of Beksinski’s artwork click here.

To see the Google Slides version of Beksinski’s artwork and sources for this presentation click here.

A couple of days ago, I discovered an amazing artist named Zdzisław Beksiński (1929-2005).

In 1952, Beksinski graduated from Cracow University of Technology after studying architecture. He  spent his time after college building up a career in construction – which Beksinski said “[he] really didn’t enjoy” – while maintaining photography, sculpting and painting as hobbies which relaxed him.  Beksinski said “[he] didn’t know [he] could make living painting pictures”  until a successful exhibition in Warsaw in 1964 which allowed him to realize his hobbies could become a  career.

His artwork followed the abstract, surrealism and magic realism art movements while depicting macabre figures and otherworldly architecture and spaces. To put simply, Beksinski’s artwork is unsettling to look at. One of his only named pieces, “Sadist Corset”(1957) exhibits Beksinski’s wife’s body wrapped in black string.

This photograph is far from the traditional nude photography from the late 1950s  and illustrates Beksinski’s desire to distort and disfigure reality which follows through in his artwork until his death.

Beksinski’s passion of experimenting with the abstract possibilities of photography made him a controversial figure in the Polish photography scene.  In 1958, Beksinski published an essay in the “Photography” magazine titled “The Crisis in Photography and the Perspective to Overcome It.” This essay detailed Beksinski’s criticisms of traditional vanilla photography. He expressed that photography, like other mediums, should be experimented with – it should be more abstract.  A year later, Beksinski organized an exhibition in Gliwice which became known as “The Anti-Photography.” Beksinski wanted to let art critics know that he did not want to be associated with the traditional “pure photography” that other Polish photographers followed.

Unfortunately, during the late nineties, photography didn’t offer the creativity and freedom Beksinski wanted, and he dove deeper into painting. Painting allowed Beksinski to alter, distort and disfigure reality.  This untitled piece illustrates a  giant Gothic cathedral-like building built out of bones.

This painting, like many others, sets an eerie atmosphere for the speculator. From  my point of view, the painting is commentary on the dark side of organized religion. Influential political figures have abused organized religion in order to greedily get what they desire. In the name of God, people have enslaved, invaded, converted, and killed others in order to build  and gain power. The bones in this piece demonstrates the lives that have been taken and destroyed in order to build up power through the use of organized religion.

Beksinski’s art is fascinating to say the least. His art conveys the unbearable truth of our reality – it is ugly, disfigured and unbearable. With over 700 pieces in museums in Poland and Japan, Beksinski continues to impact the way we view reality even a decade after his death. Through the creation of his art, Beksinski undoubtedly left a legacy on the modern art of Poland and the rest of the world.