NADAV KANDER HALF LIFE
Some words about Nadav Kander:
Nadav Kander is an Israeli photographer born in 1961. His relationship with photography started when he was 13 years old when he bought his first camera. He devoted tow years taking aerial pictures during his national service in the air force. In 1985, he moved to London and made his own exhibition in 1994 and then a long career in photography began and many exhibitions of him, all over the world took place. As he states through his work he wants to reveal the beauty, true nature and nakedness of being a human. His work is also an expression of his self and of human history. In most of his work he tries to depict the smallness of man versus the large scale of their ideas and surroundings, and to success that he was deeply inspired from 19th century Romantics.
One of his most characteristic work is the series '' Chernobyl '' which he shot in 2004, on the 20th anniversary of the incident. The city named Pripyat was abandoned by 40,000 residents. The city used to be a model Soviet City full of life and now everywhere are abandoned buildings and ruined houses. As he says through his work he is very interested in the affection of man on his surroundings and also on what is left behind usually tell us more about the people who used to live there. For that marvellous work, he won the Yangtze award.
Nadav Kander is an Israeli photographer born in 1961. His relationship with photography started when he was 13 years old when he bought his first camera. He devoted tow years taking aerial pictures during his national service in the air force. In 1985, he moved to London and made his own exhibition in 1994 and then a long career in photography began and many exhibitions of him, all over the world took place. As he states through his work he wants to reveal the beauty, true nature and nakedness of being a human. His work is also an expression of his self and of human history. In most of his work he tries to depict the smallness of man versus the large scale of their ideas and surroundings, and to success that he was deeply inspired from 19th century Romantics.
One of his most characteristic work is the series '' Chernobyl '' which he shot in 2004, on the 20th anniversary of the incident. The city named Pripyat was abandoned by 40,000 residents. The city used to be a model Soviet City full of life and now everywhere are abandoned buildings and ruined houses. As he says through his work he is very interested in the affection of man on his surroundings and also on what is left behind usually tell us more about the people who used to live there. For that marvellous work, he won the Yangtze award.
Analyse Three Pictures Of Nadav Kander
THE DERELICT POOL
For this task we visited with our teacher the pool that the school has that used to be open but now for about 20 years it is shut down.
We had to take pictures of the pool and the space around and make work similar to Nadav Kander, pictures that compose a moment of stillness and abandonment. My target is to focus on details and also consider the seven formal elements of photography that is : line, tone, contrast, form, shape, colour and texture. Below there are two contact sheets i made, one with a film camera and the other one with my digital camera and after that is a slideshow with the best of my pictures.
We had to take pictures of the pool and the space around and make work similar to Nadav Kander, pictures that compose a moment of stillness and abandonment. My target is to focus on details and also consider the seven formal elements of photography that is : line, tone, contrast, form, shape, colour and texture. Below there are two contact sheets i made, one with a film camera and the other one with my digital camera and after that is a slideshow with the best of my pictures.
Below there is a slideshow I made with the pictures I liked most. I tried to focus on objects and interesting thing I found in the are of the pool. I also paid much attention to Nadav Kander's approach trying to compose a moment of stillness and give the sense of dereliction and of something that is left behind and that over the years it has been damaged and forgotten. In this pool about ten years ago there used to play children with their parents and have some great times and now after all these years as the times keep getting older so is the pool. Although through years the pool and the area around it have been torn and damaged we can clearly see the most significant and detailed things. We can also still see some things that have been left behind, some toys and others.
Another day we went back to the pool to take some extra photos with the film camera and then develop the film. Through this process we do not only learn how to take shots with our film cameras but also how to process the film in every stage. I have introduced the method and the instructions of processing a film in Portaiture Section. The day i took the pictures there were many clouds and there was not much light so I used a low shutter speed around 1/20 and also a low apperture. My picture is not so bright and that's what I like about it. Through the darkness of the picture and the stilless of the landscape I try to compose a work similar to Nadav Kander's.
THE SEVEN FORMAL ELEMENTS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
This task is about the seven formal elements of photography. These are : line, tone, contrast, form, shape, colour and texture. The formal elements are very important for a perfect shot and they also give a more artistic view to the image. We discussed about them in the classroom, wrote them down and the grabbed our cameras and went around the Tether down building and took pictures of objects and spaces considering the formal elements. Below are my contact sheets.
EUGENE RICHARDS : BLUE ROOM
Eugene Richards is a photographer, writer and filmmaker. He was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1944. He graduated from Northeastern University with a degree in English and after that he studied photography in MIT with professor and famous photographer Minor White. Throughout his life he received many awards and exhibitions of his work take place all around the world.
The Blue Room is a very old project assessed by Life Magazine, highly personal as he describes 'transient nature of things' . The pictures were taken in abandoned and forgotten houses of western America in areas such as the plains of Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska and the Dakotas. The photos of Eugene Richards inspire us to imagine the lives of the former occupants " and make a quiet statement on the inevitability of the circle of life and death, and the vulnerability of man in the face of shifting economic opportunities and the climate".
The Blue Room is a very old project assessed by Life Magazine, highly personal as he describes 'transient nature of things' . The pictures were taken in abandoned and forgotten houses of western America in areas such as the plains of Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska and the Dakotas. The photos of Eugene Richards inspire us to imagine the lives of the former occupants " and make a quiet statement on the inevitability of the circle of life and death, and the vulnerability of man in the face of shifting economic opportunities and the climate".
Analyse Three Images Of Eugene Richards
Alexandra Palace
For this assessment we visited with our teacher Alexandra Palace a palace built especially for the public. It was never meant to serve royal familes aimed only to be a centre or recreation, education and entertainment. It was originally opened to the public in 1873 and rebuilt in 1875 after a great fire that detroyed most of the palace. I had been to Alexandra Palace many times but i never had the opportunity to take pictures of the inside of the palace. Below you can see a contact sheet i made and a slide show with my photos.
THE FORGOTTEN SPACE
Although it was really fun to have a tour in the Alexandra Palace our main purpose was to visit the old Victorian Theatre inside the palace. Our classroom with our teacher and the tour guide went to the theatre and took some nice pictures, although we had only ten minutes because the was a film taking place at the moment.
The theatre is one of the most architecturally significant part of the Alexandra Place. It was desinged by John Johnson and bulit in 1875 two years after the official opening of the Palace. It has characteristics of a victorian theatre and its very significant example of victorian style theatres. It's capacity of 2,500 seats is enough to be encoutered as a big theatre. Most of it's parts are made of timber. Our purpose was to focus on the architecture and structure of the theatre and very importanlty give a sense of abandodness and the effects of ravage of time. Below there are my pictures that i prossed them in photoshop to make them more clear and to reduce the noise.
The theatre is one of the most architecturally significant part of the Alexandra Place. It was desinged by John Johnson and bulit in 1875 two years after the official opening of the Palace. It has characteristics of a victorian theatre and its very significant example of victorian style theatres. It's capacity of 2,500 seats is enough to be encoutered as a big theatre. Most of it's parts are made of timber. Our purpose was to focus on the architecture and structure of the theatre and very importanlty give a sense of abandodness and the effects of ravage of time. Below there are my pictures that i prossed them in photoshop to make them more clear and to reduce the noise.
As you can see this is the stage. It is a victorian style with some dark colours and the whole scenery gives the idea of derelict. The lights inside the theatre were only a few so my pictures are a bit blurry and cause of the lack of a tripod. I used a low shutter speed around 1/30 so my picture to be bright enough, an aperture of f4.5 and a relatively high ISO around 800. My pictures are a bit dark but I think that this quite helpful with the idea of abandonedness and the decay through time. At the end, I experimented with the image using photoshop to make it a bit darker, to reduce the noise and make it clearer and to use gamma radiation to fix the image.
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This picture is taken at the theatre's box office. As you can see the walls are really damaged and the colour has eroded so much that you can even see the previous colour. For this picture is used a shutter speed of 1/70 cause there was already enough light in the room and an aperture of f5 and had already set the ISO in 800. The picture is pretty clear although the colours are not so toned and alive. I took the picture from a different angle as the one next to this one trying to give a more artistic and architectural perspective. I then processed my photo in photoshop only a bit just to fix the brightness and to remove the noise.
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I actually like the pictures i took because i focused on detail. Most of them are a bit blurred because inside the theatre it was too dark and there was not much natural light. I used a low shutter speed of around 1/15 so my pictures are bright and also a low aperture and that is why my pictures are noisy and blurred. What i could improve is maybe the time of expose, maybe use a smaller shutter speed with the condition that i have a tripod and take some more panoramic view pictures of the theatre and the stage.
THE ALLOTMENT
For this task, we went our second trip with the photography class led by our teacher to the Muswell Hill Allotment. This land was given before years ago to people to work the land and earn money from it. We had to consider Burnham's work ''The Allotment'' and try and conjure images of traditional values since very long in history, and express the agricultural nirvana and everyday life of the people who work in there. I used a film camera for that task. The sky was cloudy and the day not so sunny so I used a low shutter speed of around 1/40 and also a low aperture. As you will see the outcome is nice I would say. I made a contact sheet with all of my films and then I printed the best of them. After that, I scanned them and processed then in Adobe Photoshop changing the exposure, curves, brightness, contrast, saturation and fixing them with gamma correction. In one of them, I also inserted some faded green colour to make it more artistic.
Daisuke Yokota: Darkroom Experiments
For this task, we had to experiment with our negatives that we took in the Allotment in the darkroom. We had to approach Daisuke Yokota's work and make our own response. In one of his successful series "Toransupearento", Daisuke Yokota make use of many layers and exposures and the outcome he has is remarkable. He starts with developing the film, then printing the image and rephotograph the print if necessary, until he has the pleasant outcome.
Here are some photos of his series:
Here are some photos of his series:
My Response To Daisuke Yokoto
This is my plain print that I scanned it and pricessed it in Photoshop, changing the brightness, contrast, saturation adding colour filter, I especially used a blue one around the pool to much the mood and the landscape.
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For this photo i printed it and sparyed the development on and that is why there is a spotty area around the picture. The spots around the image help with the idea of derelictness i think and works as a contrast with the silent landscape of the pool and the water. After i scanned it and put it on Photoshop where i processed it a lot because the picture was to bright and vibrant. So i changed the brightness, the saturation, I also changed the expose and the tone of my image.
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As the previous negatives I printed it, sprayed with development and also sprayed it with Potassium Ferricyanide to bleach my fixed print. Then I put it back in the fix and left for a day in there, and the next day I used Photoshop to add some colour and experiment with contrast, brightness and tone. What i could improve with this photo is that i shoud spray some more bleach to make it more artistic and maybe use sprinkle iron to give it a taste of vintaage and old and last to make the tone a bit darker.
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For this image I exposed it sequencially in the darkroom many times, then I printed it and scanned it. After i used photoshop to colorise the letters of the can not randomly but to also emphasize on a very common problem with pesticides and food poisoning. I coloured the name of the product red and and left the backround black. What i could improve about that picture is the time of the exposure maybe a bit more seconds and and also add some sprinkle iron.
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That is my plain negative I printed an dthen fixed it in Photoshop. I like this image very much because of the peacefullness and silence of the landscape. I removed the noise in Photoshop made it a bit brighter than the original cause i wanted something bright and glowing coming out of the picture.
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This is the positive photo printed in acetate and then i used an A4 paper to print it on. I then used Photoshop to fix the contrast and the brightness and then colorise it, because before that someone could not even recognise the basic shape of the little house. I would not say it is not one of my great outcomes but i find it quite artistic and surrealistic. I surely could improve the quality of the image and maybe use a darker tone and greater contrast so my print in acetate not to be so faded.
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PROJECT
For my final piece i decided to choose 'Reflection' because i really like the concept of things reflecting in different ways. I specifically chose to take pictures of things that reflect in water. It is quite interesting how many reflections we say every day in our everyday life from the reflection of a tree in a puddle to the reflection of a duck in a pond. Although the concept of reflection sounds easy it is actually difficult to capture the prefect reflection especially when it is windy and you are outside. For this project i decided to take my four developments in four different places : a pond, a cemetery, a river and a canal. After i took my images i processed the best of them in photoshop and i made a contact sheet with the rest to show my entire work.
SET 1
For my first Set i decided to go to the Highgate Cemetery and take some nice reflections either on a small pond or a small marble fountain. For the fountain pictures i focused on the inside and blurred the background removing the colour while I increased the hue saturation of the inside. I also increased the the exposure to make the pictures darker. I also added colour in the sky to make it more realistic and artistic. What I could improve I think is the number of pictures I took and in many different angles and depth of fields.
The images with the reflection in the pond were taken in a park in Highgate Cemetery. This part of the park was really dark and i had to use a low shutter speed of 1/20 and an aperture of f4. Because I did not have a tripod the pictures were a bit blurry due to the low shutter speed i then increased the exposure and contrast and removed the noise to make the picture more clear. As someone can see the first picture of reflection in the pond show both the real part and the reflected part giving a sense of symmetry. I decided to make the picture dark to make a more aesthetic perspective. In the second picture i decided to take just the reflected trees and the sky in the water. I then altered the exposure, contrast and added colour to the sky to seem more like a dream than reality.
The images with the reflection in the pond were taken in a park in Highgate Cemetery. This part of the park was really dark and i had to use a low shutter speed of 1/20 and an aperture of f4. Because I did not have a tripod the pictures were a bit blurry due to the low shutter speed i then increased the exposure and contrast and removed the noise to make the picture more clear. As someone can see the first picture of reflection in the pond show both the real part and the reflected part giving a sense of symmetry. I decided to make the picture dark to make a more aesthetic perspective. In the second picture i decided to take just the reflected trees and the sky in the water. I then altered the exposure, contrast and added colour to the sky to seem more like a dream than reality.
SET 2
Artistic Influence : Gavin Hammond - Reflection on Puddles
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Gavin Hammond is a music and film producer and singer/songwriter. He has corporated with many artists from the UK, Spain, Spain, Canada and Australia. He is an amateur photographer and he began his career in Photography when travelling the world playing his own music and creating new songs.
This project took Hammond about two months and he was taking images of puddles around London everyday during the wet season. As he says the process of taking these wonderful images was painful and hard as he had to take images in the cold and get shouted from people in the streets because he would stop wherever he found a puddle with a nice reflection. Gavin Hammond inspired by the stereotype that it always rain in Britain he decided to make a photographic project capturing London's landmarks and busy streets in puddles and wet pavements. Puddles for Hammond become the artistic mean and reflection his artistic piece, as he says "puddles are like a vision from another world, a view of a parallel universe". Gavin used a Lomo LC-A+ camera. He also took the images from a specific angle to have the desired outcome of reflection and afters that he turned many of his pictures upside down to give a more realistic taste. Gavin's website : http://www.gavinhammond.com/index.html |
My Interpretation
For this development i decided to develop my previous idea with reflection in a pond doing reflection in small puddles in the South Bank. I tried to find as many puddles as i could and photograph them from a specific angle so there can be a reflection of a building, a statue or passenger. I focused specifically on the reflection of the puddle and not the puddle itself. I used a relatively low shutter speed of 1/100 because the day was not so bright and sunny and an aperture of f5. Although after that I darkened them because i wanted it to be more sharp and clear the content of the puddle. I also adjusted the contrast to make more clear the reflection and more easily recognised. In some of them I maximised the saturation to give the image enrich the colours in the image and making the sky more like a panting. For this task I was inspired by photos I found in the internet for reflection but especially one artist matched my work and has done a very good and extended project in Reflection in Puddles in London.
Below I would like to compare one of my images with one of Gavin's images.
Below I would like to compare one of my images with one of Gavin's images.
My Image
This is an image of a passenger in Southbank during a rainy day that helped me find enough puddles for my project. I took the image parallel to the passenger from the other side of the puddle to be able to capture it. I focused especially on the reflection of the puddle ignoring the surrounding environment. I used a shutter speed of 1/100 because there was enough light to take my picture without the need of a tripod and a low shutter speed. I also set my camera to an aperture of f5. Through my image and my other images, I intended to show the everyday life of London through a puddle. The idea is that in a common puddle in a common spot there is a reflection of the life in that place. I took the picture with a passenger walking and not standing because I wanted to give the idea of movement but also of stillness at the same time. After I experimented with my image in Photoshop fixing the brightness, the contrast to maximise the hue saturation to give some colour and tone in the image. |
Gavin's Hammond Image
This picture was shot in Embankment Tube Station by Gavin Hammond.He used a high angle to take the picture and he focused especially on the puddles as I did. As someone can see Gavin's image is black and white in comparison I added more colour to the puddle to give it a more artistic taste.The image shows pedestrians and movement as my own picture do provide idea of the everyday life in such a crowded place like Embankment. Gavin also turned the image upside down whereas I did not. I think that the dark colours he used in addition to the dark sky and the rainy day give the idea of a dark side of London. Both pictures have a really dark tone. |
In that set, I think I did really well and succeed to express the idea behind my set. I think I improved my images since the task 1. I think used my camera wisely to provide the desired outcome. What I could improve is the field of depth and the use of Photoshop. In the next set, I am planning I am planning to take shots in River Thames showing some reflection of objects and things that someone can find on the beach and make a better use of Photoshop adjustments.
SET 3
For this task, I went to River Thame on the shore and tried to find some reflection to capture of things anyone could find there. These objects varied from a rock reflected nicely on the relaxed water till the reflection a big can. The images are pretty good although they could have been better if the water was more relaxed and there were not so much wind.
SET 4
Artistic Influence - Mariya Luiza - Reflection through glass of wine
This is actually one of my favourite sets because I find really interesting the concept of the image reflection through a glass of water and the background blurred. For this set, I went to Camden Town on the Camden Canal. The Idea of reflection, though, through a glass of water was not actually mine but a female photographer named Steven. After I finished my worked I searched on the internet and found her work. She does not have many pictures of reflection but under I would like to compare a picture of hers with one of mine. The day was rainy and the sky was dark and you can see that from the dark background. Although the images were a bit dark I indeed did not make the brighter instead I darkened them more give the idea of silence and stillness in my pictures.I went to different spots in the canal capturing the area and the life of the canal. For the pictures, i used a low shutter speed because it was really dark and also an aperture of f5 although in photoshop I darkened them a bit. With the help of a friend holding the glass I took a picture of a part of the glass focusing on what I saw inside the glass and blurred the background. For each good picture, I took six more till I have the desired outcome. I think the pictures are interesting with a nice touch of silence and stillness, although I could better. What I could improve for sure is the position of the glass, maybe set it straight and taking many pictures with different depths of field and that is what I am planning to do in the next development.
Final Piece
Look :
Jan Dibbets
Ben Watts - Big Up
Dan Eldon
Jan Dibbets
Ben Watts - Big Up
Dan Eldon