The Winchester School of Art put on a great degree show this year. The work was done to a high standard and there was a lot of inspiration there. The work was mainly based on creating large pieces of fabrics, although there were also boots, art textiles and photographic work on display within the textiles show.
Composition is a very important part of photography. Placing things in the centre isn’t always very interesting, the rule of thirds can work well:
Over the summer I have decided to work on my photography skills. I would like to have more understanding to help me take good photographs. I am using a manual camera so that I can learn how to adjust the settings myself, my wonderful boyfriend has taken on the task of teaching me.
This was my first photo, learning to focus and adjust the light with aperture and shutter speed. A wider aperture lets more might in to the camera as does a slower shutter speed.
Close up of a wall, seeing how close I can get to it staying in focus.
It is difficult to get the light right when taking a photo of something against a bright sky with out losing the detail. Here I wanted to capture the leave so set the light right for the leaves meaning the sky is too bright.
Here I wanted the detail of the sky. When I got the light right for the sky the leaves were too dark. It is important to know what you are taking a photo of to get the detail you want to achieve.
In the woods it is dark, adjustments need to be made for this. I need much more light coming in the camera.
In the lens I was using it had a metre to tell me when I have the right amount of light for the photo I am taking. In this one the metre was not correct, when I got the light right for the metre the photo was to dark so I had to adjust the settings and decide for myself how much light I wanted. This was particularly difficult because of the bright sky behind the trees.
To focus in on something and have the background blurry I needed a narrower aperture and to use spot metering. This means I can focus on a particular area.
The light was adjusted in the dark wood to capture the bright green of the leaves above.
Again here the camera was wrong about the amount of light needed. When I set it to the camera suggestions it came out black. I set the aperture first because I wanted the focus on the post, I set as as big a hole as I could then adjusted the shutter as needed.
When taking a photo it is important to decide how much you want in focus. Here I wanted as much in focus as possible so I used the widest aperture I could. I had the post in focus and as much as the background in focus as I could get.
Barnett Newman was an american colour field artist and abstract expressionist. I saw the top two at the Tate, the paintings are much more vibrant in real life, the intense coral colour inspired my current work greatly. At the Tate they were displayed next to each other where they work as a set, the colours in the left one are present in the right. I am not sure why I like these paintings, after all they are just a few stripes. I think this is their beauty. The colour drew me to the top two and the minimal texture is intriguing in the bottom. I am also interested in these painting because of their weave qualities. My uni work is centred around weave which, I see in these paintings. Weave is rooted in verticals and horizontals.
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Ptolemy Mann is a contemporary woven textile artist. She specialises in using ikat dying techniques to achieve the blending of colours. This has been a huge inspiration for me in my current uni project, exploring use of colour. The woven pieces are stretched over canvases and are transformed into art work.
Today I went to the Warp and Weft exhibition at the Smith’s Row gallery, Bury St Edmunds. It was a very inspiring exhibition, I loved the contemporary and 3d approaches to weaving. Studying weave, I know that generally there is not much known about weaving and it was great to see and exhibition dedicated to this. It is this 3d approach to weaving that was most interesting for me, I have only briefly experimented with collapse weave and a double cloth, and something I would like to develop within my own work. I also want to do very textured weaves, it is the textures that draw have me into textiles.
