"Snag" by Wes Bell
"A skilled photographer is able to translate as idea, not only by capturing a moment in time, but by having the artistic sensibility to set up a shot that will provoke a reaction from the viewer."
- Rachel Bouchard -
COURSE WORKBOOK
1. Sustained Investigation Question Planning
Assignment; Sustained investigation Discovery Statement and Examples
Answer the following questions and include images (20 max) as visual examples. These images do not need to be edited and can be from online sources - the purpose is a visual example of your intent. Your sustained investigation does not need to be finalized but a commitment to an inquiry needs to be made.
1. Identify the question(s) that will guide your sustained investigation.
2. Describe some possibilities as how your sustained investigation will show evidence of practice, experimentation, and revision guided by your question(s). This could be artist influence/research, planned photo shoots, technical experimentation etc..
Idea Journal - Used to plan work
An idea journal should be created for every new work and/or method you are working with. The idea journal could be formatted in various ways, (notebook, sketchbook or digital) and this should link to inquiry.
What you should think about including in your idea journal:
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This is a Must - Your inquiry questions and how your idea relates to your exploration, experimentation, revision
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Idea - What question is the photo or sequence of photos answering, and/or what are you saying with the photos?
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How - How are you going to accomplish this idea?
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Where - Where are some possible locations you can go for this idea?
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When - When are you going to do this? Set a plan!
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What - What props or equipment do you need for your idea?
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Who - If applicable - Who will be there for your model or to help you out?
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Include examples or inspiration - I can print for you if your preferred format is a notebook.
Once your piece is complete - Reflect/Reflect/Reflect
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What did I figure out (about a design/technique/method etc)?
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What did worked and what did not work?
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What will I continue to PRACTICE in my next work?
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What ideas, subjects, design principles, or techniques will I continue to use?
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How will I EXPERIMENT differently (what new approach or angle will I apply)?
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What will I REVISE (What would I change or do differently next time, What do I need to figure out)?Personal Evaluation - What is the result? Did I achieve my goal? Did I answer my inquiry? How is the work successful?
Idea
Reflections
Assignments - NOTE - the following are methods ONLY, you must plan your inquiry prior to starting.
2D skills - point, line, shape, plane, layer, form, space, texture, color, value, opacity, transparency, time; unity, variety, rhythm, movement, proportion, scale, balance, emphasis, contrast, repetition, figure/ground relationship, connection, juxtaposition, hierarchy.
Dappled Light
Method: Pay attention to light in your environment and seek out a certain type of light in order to? You must know why you want to pursue this method, what is your question?
Suggested completed images - 5 amazing photos based on your inquiry
Dappled light creates some wonderful images. Go out and take images with dappled light – think light reflecting through the curtains onto the wall on a sunny afternoon, speckles of light hitting leaves in a forest, a street scene where light plays on footpaths, walls, and people. So many options and possibilities. Plan your ideas based on your sustained investigation inquiry.
Nothingness
What question is your photograph answering about "nothingness"? How does this relate to your sustained investigation or inquiry?
Method: Learn about pre-production work in planning a creative photo shoot, taking the planned photos, and editing them. Also, learn how to use layer masks in Photoshop.
Suggested completed images - 5 photos, each of which are made up of at least two photos (subject and then background).
Set up your camera on a tripod, pose your subject with an environment that will aid in your vision of Nothingness, and focus your camera on the subject. After you focus on the subject, switch the lens to manual focus. You'll take one photo of the subject, then have the subject step out of the shot, and photograph the background without changing any camera settings, ESPECIALLY the focus.
Relationship
Method: To show a relationship or connection. For example - object(s) and action.
This would be a great way to create a process piece - shoot 10 photos that show "relationship" as they connect to a variety of aspects or ways of exploring of your inquiry.
Use different techniques that you have learned to show the theme "relationship" in an interesting ways. Use your idea journal to plan the Who, What, Where, When, and How. You can include inspiration photos if you wish, if this is useful to you and your process.
Pixel Stretching
Suggested completed images - 5 photos.
Method: To investigate or examine the construction of a digital image.
The results of this effect highlight the nuances of a digital image and explores the action of altering photographs through non-traditional means. Pixel stretching is one way to investigate the construction of a digital image through creative means. The process involves selecting a single row or column of pixels and stretching them out over an image to create a warped, surrealistic visual effect. Think about how this idea could relate to your S.I. inquiry.
Photoshop Instructions:
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On the tool bar, select the Single Marquee Tool. You may have to click and hold down the mouse over the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee Tool until it reveals a small menu.
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Click on an area in your image that you think is interesting. A dotted line stretching across your image will appear. This outlines the row of selected pixels that line up with the point you clicked on.
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Right click on the image and select Layer Via Copy to copy the selected pixels on to a new layer.
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Click on Edit in the menu bar and select Free Transform. You can also start the Free Transform by pressing Command t on the keyboard.
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The cursor will appear as two opposing arrows when you hover over the Marquee Tool line. Click on the line where the opposing arrows appear and hold shift while slowly drag the cursor the direction you want the pixels to stretch.
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You’ll see that whole row of pixels will stretch as far as you drag the mouse. When you’ve finished stretching the selection, press enter.
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You can erase parts of the stretched pixels by adding a layer mask and painting black, or use the eraser tool, which permanently deletes the pixels.
Experiment, experiment, experiment!
https://digital-photography-school.com/pixel-stretching-photoshop/
https://create.adobe.com/2019/8/6/how_to_make_a_stretc.html
Above is are discovery and experimentation images
Glitch Art by Sabato Visconti
Creativity Exercise - Process piece - method of exploring composition
Suggested completed images - 30 photos
Method: To practice composition by using only one subject. How can you make use of this method as a way to explore your inquiry?
Pick one subject that relates to your inquiry. Then pick your spot - you will stay within a short radius of that spot for all of the photos. You can walk around the subject, move the subject higher or lower, but you cannot move to a completely different spot. Now following those rules take 30 completely different compositions of your subject.
The first 10 frames will come quickly: these are the frames that you are most familiar with making. These are your “go to” shots. After that you will most likely find a couple more and then it will become difficult.
Well don’t give up, keep going as this is where the magic happens. What you are trying to do here is get past your established notions of what “compositions” are. This is all about breaking out of your “style” and compositional habits. Remember that there is no visual rule book to follow.
Ask yourself, “What do I take for granted about my subject right now, and how do I feel required to show it?”
Through this process you will find things that you never would have considered. Some will prove to be useful to you and your work while others less so. Regardless, realize that you have opened a huge box of new and exciting visual options. When you get to that point you will find that there are limitless ways to compose a single subject even from a fixed position and angle of view.
Diptychs/Triptychs
Suggested completed images - 2 Diptychs/Triptychs that explore your inquiry.
This method leads itself to storytelling by inventively combining two pictures that are designed to be displayed together.
A diptych is a subtle pairing of two photographs either side by side or one above the other with a specific relationship between them. Through analogies, associations, repetitions or shifts of perspective, a photographer looks to enhance the viewer’s interaction, communicate ideas, share emotions. It’s also a simple way to tell a story, share a moment, or give a different perspective on a theme. What is fascinating about the diptychs, it’s their ability to create ambiguous feelings and also puzzle the audience who will seek to figure out the relationship between both pictures.
Big Idea;
How will I use this method of presentation to explore your inquiry?
What narrative do I wish the viewer to explore?
Clare He - Inquiry question
How can I visualize depression and the juxtaposition between real feelings and the ones presented? How do traditional values and society affect this disorder?
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Materials: Digital photography explored tone, blur, and texture to reveal the mood
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Processes: Use of diptych, b/w, and contrast creates a narrative about subjects isolation and helplessness
Framing - Bring attention to the edges or to create depth.
Method: In camera - How can you explore framing your subject and add depth to your photo as it relates to your inquiry?
Method: Presentation - How can you physically frame your image to further explore your inquiry and push synthesis of materials, processes and idea?
Suggested completed images - 5 images - this can include your idea journal and process/exploratory pieces.
Be creative with the frames that you use. Go beyond doors and windows. What else is in your environment that works as a frame? Can you hold something in front of your camera? Also, notice that when the frame is close to the camera it adds depth to your photo. Think about how the final presentation of your piece can further push overall synthesis of the relationship between ideas and materials.
Noah Friebel
Artist Research - "Steal Like an Artist"
Method: This is an excellent way to push your inquiry and take it to the next level. It also shows evidence of experimentation and process.
Do some research and find artists that are working with a similar inquiry as yours. Explore there imagery, read there artist statements, make note of methods/ideas that inspire you. Create a visual pieces that represents the amalgamation of this new learning. Then allow this learning to fuel your next body of work.
"Transformation is flattery"
"Take the things you have stolen and turn them into your own thing"
"Take and idea - transform with your own thoughts - then put it out into the world so we can steal from you"
~Steal Like An Artist: Austin Kleon at TEDxKC
Physical Manipulation of the Photograph to Create Meaning
2D skills that could be explored - point, line, shape, plane, layer, form, space, texture, color, value, opacity, transparency, time; unity, variety, rhythm, movement, proportion, scale, balance, emphasis, contrast, repetition, figure/ground relationship, connection, juxtaposition, hierarchy
Possible Methods
- Cut up and rearrange an image
- Cut up photos and piece different images together
- Draw on a photo
- Paint over a photograph
- Burn an image
- Write on an image
- Scratch into the background
- Sew into a photograph
- Cleverly fold a photo - origami style!
- Sculpt with photographs and then photograph them
- Weave a photo
The list is endless!
Weaving
Greg Sand is an artist and photographer working out of Clarksville, Tennessee whose unique work explores themes such as memory, the passage of time, mortality, and the photograph’s role in shaping our experience of loss. Using found photographs, Sand constructs works that examine the fragmentation of memories and the temporality of life by drawing attention to the fact that photographs are only a momentary piece of a greater whole. As such, photographs help to shape which details are assigned importance and remembered as other memories fade away.
Hollie Chastain, Tennessee-based artist repurposes old narratives and images—in one piece, tuba players pop out of a library card pocket, and in another, two men tug on a string woven through a handwritten note—providing a new story for each regenerated work.
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David Samuel Stern My portraits allow their subjects to become abstracted and more complicated, which I think is more truthful than what single definitions can do. The identity of the sitters probably gets more mysterious from the viewer’s end, but I hope that this begs the question how much did we ever really know about the person pictured in a portrait by looking at that very portrait? What does looking at any kind of image ever really get us? When we look at images, I don’t think seeing the thing we’re looking at is where the truth is.
Sewing
Maria’ Aparicio Puentes - Maria’s stitching almost adds an energy to the photograph, turning something static into something new with life. Her stitches are simple – threading, chain-stitch and cross-stitch, but they add a layer of complexity to the photograph, their 3D quality making it more emotive.
Selective Burning used to create Meaning
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Renewal - re-birth
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Cathathis - tension release
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Transition/Aftermath
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Re-contraction/rebuilding
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Residue - Trace, Memory, Collective memory, scaring,
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Disassemble and reassemble New meaning, new beginnings
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Transformation
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Release - Emotional
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Action/Method tying to meaning
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Decay over time
An Excellent Way to Connect Material and Space to Inquiry
Colour Separation used to create meaning.
Possible question(s):
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The artificiality of the digital age
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The construction/deconstruction of the photograph
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Perception of reality
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Layering of CMYK - working subtractively
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The photograph as "evidence"
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Surveillance
