Photography 1: People and Place Assignment 4 (Rev)

Assignment 4: A Sense of Place (Revised)

Original version can be found at 15/01/2013

As a result of comments from received from my tutor I have revised the blog entry for assignment 4.  The revised version is given below:

For this assignment I imagined that I was on an assignment for an intelligent, thoughtful travel publication that demanded a considered, in-depth treatment.

I chose a city near to my home, St Albans in Hertfordshire.  My reason for choosing the city of St Albans was my familiarity with it, having worked there for many years.  I felt that as I know the city well, I would have a good appreciation of what its spaces and buildings mean for the people who live in and among them.  In the photographs that I took during the assignment I aimed to create a selection of a dozen images that would show the character of the place.  From these twelve images I chose to recommend 6 images that would be suitable to fill six pages.

In addition, I wanted to show the parts of the city that mean the most to me.  Although it is hard to give the viewer an in-depth appreciation of a large city in six images, I tried to include a sense of how I enjoyed having the opportunity to show off my hometown.

I have concentrated on showing the architecture of the city rather than the people living in it because I feel that it is a city's buildings that capture its character.  They also provide a narrative of the historical development of the place.

St Albans is a fairly large city, situated on a hilltop approximately 30 miles from the centre of London.  Although home to many new residents, some from overseas who travel to work in London, St Albans has a long history dating back to the days of the Roman occupation of Britain and possibly before.  Its large street market, held on Wednesdays and Saturdays was given its royal charter in medieval times and is a direct link to the city’s history.  The types of stalls in the market reflect the demands of the current population.  Artisan produce, such as speciality bread and locally produced fine cheese as well as international products are now more popular than the traditional food stalls that would have made up the market in previous times.

The city centre’s layout has been dictated by the original positions of the wooden medieval warehouses.  These warehouses had small gaps or alleyways between them linking the main thoroughfares.  These “gaps” have been retained as the buildings were built and rebuilt over the original wooden structures.  I have tried to show this feature of the city photographically.

Although St Albans is in every respect a modern city, it still has many reminders of its long history.  The cathedral was originally the parish church for an important Abbey that once dominated the city.  The roman road, Watling Street runs through the city on its journey north from London.  Thus it was an important staging post and administrative centre.  The city, although largely urban, has many trees and green spaces that give a “country feel” to some parts.

Each period in history has left its mark on St Albans and I have attempted to show this in my choice of photographs.

The choice of six photographs was very difficult for such a varied and interesting city like St Albans.  I feel that I have succeeded in giving a flavour of the place through the chosen images.  I have chosen the 6 images that work best together as a set and also provide variety in both subject matter and scale.

Had I approached the assignment by simply taking photographs with no end-result in mind I would have concentrated on the central area of the city.  However I have tried to give a flavour of the history that is held within the side streets and surrounding areas of the city.

(Image 1 - 3067) A Tudor coaching inn now used as a restaurant with Thai cuisine rather than traditional English fare.

I have substituted image 3067 for image 3058 as the building shown has a more dynamic 3-dimensional aspect.  It also demonstrates how the usage of some of the old buildings in the city has changed along with the tastes of the inhabitants.  The image shows an old coaching inn now operating as a restaurant serving Thai food instead of standard English fare.

(Image 2 - 3060) Many grand houses, built by merchants line the roads into the city.

(Image 3 - 3113) Artisan bread is sold in the market.

I have changed my choice of image from 3072 to 3113.  This is because image 3113 shows the type of produce being sold in the market now for the current inhabitants of the city.  The image also includes part of the old cobbled street of the market place.

(Image 4 - 3127) The river Ver, one of the reasons why the Roman occupiers chose this location for their city, Verulamium.  The brick tower is part of the old water mill.  The building's use has changed to a restaurant serving waffles.

The image of the cathedral, (3086) has been replaced by image 3127 of the river Ver and an old water mill.  I feel that this image, which includes the waterway on which the city was founded in Roman times and the water mill shows the past industrial history of St Albans.  The building's use has changed from a mill grinding corn from local fields to a restaurant serving waffles.  Once again this change of use demonstrates the changing demands of the local population.

(Image 5 - 3093) This low-level window lintel has been ground out by generations of school children using coins as they waited for the bus near the old county school.

I have altered the saturation and contrast of this image slightly to further bring out the grinding by the school children on the bricks of the lintel.

(Image 6 - 3120) The layout of the city centre has been dictated by the original positions of the wooden medieval warehouses.  These warehouses had small gaps or alleyways between them linking the main thoroughfares.  These "gaps" have been retained as the buildings were built and rebuilt over the original wooden structures.

Additional images produced are shown below:

(3062) Ryder Seed Hall, originally used for sorting seeds, now a restaurant serving French cuisine.

(3066) Clock tower in the city centre.

(3086) St Albans Cathedral.  Once the parish church for the Abbey that dominated the city before the reformation.

I have edited this image to exclude the wall on the left side of the frame as it was distracting.  I have also straightened the verticals and lightened the shadows slightly.  These edits have improved the balance of the image and corrected the unintended converging verticals.

(3131) Jogger in the St Michaels area of the city.

(3058) A Tudor inn situated on a main route into the city centre.

In this image I have corrected the unintended sloping horizontals and verticals of the building to make it closer to the building that I observed.

(3072) The twice weekly market, although consisting of stalls selling the produce demanded by a modern, more sophisticated population dates back to medieval times and provides a direct link to the city's history.

Photography 1: People and Place, Assignment 4

Assignment 4: A Sense of Place

For this assignment I imagined that I was on an assignment for an intelligent, thoughtful travel publication that demanded a considered, in-depth treatment.

I chose a city near to my home, St Albans in Hertfordshire.  My reason for choosing the city of St Albans was my familiarity with it, having worked there for many years.  I felt that as I know the city well, I would have a good appreciation of what its spaces and buildings mean for the people who live in and among them.  In the photographs that I took during the assignment I aimed to create a selection of a dozen images that would show the character of the place and the people who live there.  From these twelve images I chose 6 final images that would be suitable to fill six pages.

In addition, I wanted to show the parts of the city that mean the most to me.  Although it is hard to give the viewer an in-depth appreciation of a large city in six images, I tried to include a sense of how I enjoyed having the opportunity to show off my hometown.

St Albans is a fairly large city, situated on a hilltop approximately 30 miles from the centre of London.  Although home to many new residents, some from overseas who travel to work in London, St Albans has a long history dating back to the days of the Roman occupation of Britain and possibly before.  Its large street market, held on Wednesdays and Saturdays was given its royal charter in medieval times and is a direct link to the city’s history.  The types of stalls in the market reflect the demands of the current population.  Artisan produce, such as speciality bread and locally produced fine cheese as well as international products are now more popular than the traditional food stalls that would have made up the market in previous times.

The city centre’s layout has been dictated by the original positions of the wooden medieval warehouses.  These warehouses had small gaps or alleyways between them linking the main thoroughfares.  These “gaps” have been retained as the buildings were built and rebuilt over the original wooden structures.  I have tried to show this feature of the city photographically.

Although St Albans is in every respect a modern city, it still has many reminders of its long history.  The cathedral was originally the parish church for an important Abbey that once dominated the city.  The roman road, Watling Street runs through the city on its journey north from London.  Thus it was an important staging post and administrative centre.  The city, although largely urban, has many trees and green spaces that give a “country feel” to some parts.

Each period in history has left its mark on St Albans and I have attempted to show this in my choice of photographs.

The choice of six photographs was very difficult for such a varied and interesting city like St Albans.  I feel that I have succeeded in giving a flavour of the place through the chosen images.  I have chosen the 6 images that work best together as a set and also provide variety in both subject matter and scale.

It was difficult to get clear uninterrupted photographs of the cathedral without cars, vans and buildings in the way.  It would have been easier on a quieter day but the life of the cathedral is very busy with many functions being held there during the week.

Had I approached the assignment by simply taking photographs with no end-result in mind I would have concentrated on the central area of the city.  However I have tried to give a flavour of the history that is held within the side streets and surrounding areas of the city.

(Image 1 - 3058) A Tudor Inn situated on a main route into the city centre.

(Image 2 - 3060) Many grand houses, built by merchants line the roads into the city.

(Image 3 - 3072) The twice weekly market, although consisting of stalls selling the produce demanded by a modern, more sophisticated population dates back to medieval times and provides a direct link to the city's history.

(Image 4 - 3086) St Albans Cathedral.  Once the parish church for the Abbey that dominated the city before the reformation.  The slightly obscured couple on the bench in the foreground are of Chinese origin and show the more diverse make up of the city's current population.

(Image 5 - 3093) This low level window lintel has been ground out by generations of school children using coins as they waited for the bus near the old county school.

(Image 6 - 3120) The layout of the city centre has been dictated by the original positions of the wooden medieval warehouses.  These warehouses had small gaps or alleyways between them linking the main thoroughfares.  These "gaps" have been retained as the buildings were built and rebuilt over the original wooden structures.

Not Selected Images

Other images produced but not chosen for the final 6 images are shown below:

(3062) Ryder Seed Hall, originally used for sorting seeds, now a restaurant.

(3066) Clock Tower in the city centre.

(3067) Tudor coaching inn, now used as a Thai restaurant.

(3113) Artisan bread stall in the twice weekly market.

(3127) The St Michaels area of the city.  Waffle restaurant in an old water mill.

(3131) Jogger in the St Michaels area of the city.

A revised version can be found at 15/01/2013

Personal Project: Rider on the beach

Rider on the beach

I saw this person riding their horse through the surf at Whitesands Bay in Pembrokeshire at the end of December.  I wanted to create an image that portrayed the feeling of freedom that riding a horse through the surf must give to the rider.  My first attempt is shown below:

213202A

I will attempt to create other images from the shots taken that day.

Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012

I visited the National Portrait Gallery recently to see the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait prize.  The standard was excellent once again with some outstanding entries.

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012 offers a unique opportunity to see sixty portraits by some of the most exciting contemporary photographers from around the world.

The images are drawn from editorial, advertising and fine art.  They explore a range of themes, styles and approaches to the contemporary photographic portrait, from formal commissioned portraits of famous faces to more spontaneous and intimate moments capturing friends and family.

The competition is open to amateurs, students and established professionals.

A selection of the photographs are shown below:

"Mark Rylance" by Spencer Murphy

This portrait is of Mark Rylance, an actor.  Actors make good subjects for portraiture as there is no awkwardness or discomfort in front of the camera.  The purple background in this portrait contrasts well with the subject's green eyes.

"Margarita Teichroeb" by Jordi Ruiz Cirera

The subject of this portrait, Margarita is a Mennonite from a colony in Bolivia.  Photography is forbidden for Mennonites, which explains her awkward expression.  The light from the window provides excellent illumination of the subject.

"Lynne, Brighton" by Jennifer Pattison

The subject of this portrait is a friend of the photographer.  The green background contrasts well with the reddish colouring of the subject.  This is an excellent portrait that captures the subject in a straightforward pose, bare and undaunted, looking straight down the lens and beyond.  The fact that the subject is not wearing any clothes is almost incidental.  The thing that really stands out is the chipped mug.  It catches your eye like the punctum in a photograph described by Roland Barthes.

"The Nine Lives of Ai Weiwei" by Matthew Niederhauser

This portrait is in a way a contextual portrait as the artist is posing outside his studio with one of the many cats that live there.  The blue of Weiwei's shirt blends well with the doors of his studio, with the ginger cat's fur providing a good contrast from the opposite side of the colour wheel.  The portrait was taken while Ai Weiwei was held under virtual house arrest and forbidden to leave China.  The cat has a symbolic presence due to its reputed nine lives echoing Ai Weiwei's many scrapes with the state in China.

Bronze Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts

I recently visited the Bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.  The exhibition was an exploration of bronze sculpture's achievements over more than five thousand years and its richness and diversity - historical, geographical and also stylistic.

Bronze is an alloy consisting mainly of copper with lesser amounts of tin.  Unalloyed copper is difficult to cast but the tin content reduces its hardness as well as affecting its colour.  From as early as 3000 BCE copper was also alloyed with lead to facilitate casting by making the molten metal more fluid.  Many brass artworks commonly described as bronze are in fact copper-zinc alloys.

Bronze is uniquely suited to the rendering of varied textures and finishes and to capturing the fall of light.  The material's strength and ductility also permit extraordinary compositional boldness.

The human figure, in action or at rest, nude or draped, is probably the single most popular subject for bronze sculpture, whether monumental statuary or small-scale statuettes.  Examples of small-scale statuary are shown below:

"Buddha Shakyamuni in Abhaya-Mudra", India, Late 6th-century. 68.6cm tall.

"St John the Baptist Preaching to a Levite and a Pharasee" by Giovani Francesco Rustici, 1506-11. 262cm tall.

"Portrait of King Seuthes III" Thracian, 4th-century BCE. 39cm tall.

"Danaide" by Constantin Brancusi, 1918. 28 cm tall.

Man's relationship with the animal kingdom has been a theme for bronze sculpture since ancient times, such as the fantastical stylisation of the Chimaera of Arezzo, shown below.

"Chimaera of Arezzo", Etruscan, c. 400 BCE. 129 cm long.

Animal forms in bronze appear not only as statues in their own right but also as decorative elements such as the menacing insects of Louise Bourgeois.  An example is Spider IV below:

"Spider IV" by Louise Bourgeois, 1996. 203.2 cm across.

Ancient groups of castings such as the Chariot of the Sun, dating from 14th-century BCE and created from bronze and gold leaf demonstrate the sophisticated casting technologies available to early cultures.

"Chariot of the Sun", Trundholm, Seeland, 14th-century BCE. 60 cm long.

Richard Hamilton "The Late Works" at The National Gallery

I recently visited The National Gallery to see an exhibition of Richard Hamilton's paintings and photographs.  The exhibition was entitled "The Late Works".

Richard Hamilton was a leading British artist with a major international following.  He was among the most conceptually rigorous and technically sophisticated of modern painters.

The exhibition looked at works produced primarily in the last decade of his life.  Certain master themes recur.  They include depictions of interiors, often of enormous visual complexity, and the use of linear perspective in their construction; the female nude; allusions to Old Master painting; and Hamilton's ongoing meditation on the art of Marcel Duchamp.  His technical innovations with computer programming inform many of the works.

My favourite images from the exhibition are shown below:

"The Saensbury Wing" (1999-2000) by Richard Hamilton

The picture was painted in 2000 for the exhibition Encounters: New Art from Old.  In a variation on a painting of a church interior by the Dutch 17th-century master Pieter Saenredam, he depicted a female nude wandering alone through the Sainsbury Wing of The National Gallery.

"The Passage of the Angel to the Virgin" (2007) by Richard Hamilton

This is a modern day Annunciation evoking a Renaissance painting Hamilton had copied at The National Gallery more than 60 years before.

Among artists, Hamilton was an early and influential exponent of computers and digital printers.  The mastery that sophisticated digital programs gave Hamilton in the mathematically precise rendering of coherent space and an increasingly subtle and controlled application of colour opened up new possibilities for aesthetic experimentation.  He worked with computer technicians to enter information into a 3D-modelling program.

In recent years traditional designations of media like "oil on canvas" disappeared from his vocabulary to be replaced by such terms as "oil on Fuji/Oce LightJet on canvas".  Nonetheless, Hamilton always referred to his practice as painting.

"Hotel du Rhone" (2005) by Richard Hamilton

Hotel du Rhone shows a lobby being cleaned by a (naked) chambermaid.  Hanging on the wall behind her is one of his earlier paintings, "Lobby".  Hamilton was fascinated with how Renaissance artists of the 15th-century used the laws of one-point linear perspective to construct the illusion of three-dimensional space on two-dimensional canvases.

"Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) by Marcel Duchamp

The presence of Marcel Duchamp is often apparent in Hamilton's late paintings as in "Descending Nude" below, which evokes Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) above.  Duchamp's painting portrays continuous movement through a chain of overlapping cubistic figures.

"Descending Nude" (2006) by Richard Hamilton

Photography 1: P & P, Proj 23: Selective Processing & Prominence

Project 23: Selective processing and prominence

In this project I took an image that I had used in project 19.  The image is of a small figure in a red coat set against dramatic sea cliffs.  The figure is just visible in the photograph.

In this project I processed the original image into two new images.  In the first image I sought to make the figure lest prominent so that it recedes into the setting.  In the second the objective was to do the opposite and make the figure stand out more.

The original image and the two new versions are shown below:

Original image.

Figure less prominent.

In order to make the figure less prominent in this image, I selected the red parts and the face of the figure and desaturated them.  The lack of colour in these parts of the figure has resulted in it receding into the setting.

Figure more prominent.

In order to make the figure stand out more in this image, I selected everything except for the figure.  I then desaturate the selected area.  This left the figure as the only coloured part of the photograph.  This technique is a form of "colour popping", which is sometimes used to create impact in a photograph, (although to be really effective the coloured area would need to be alot larger in relationship to the setting).