a. r - sfu.ca - simon fraser university€¦ · · 2011-02-10marines. after being discovered by...

Tanya Ho 301081195 CMNS 325_Image-Making Ecology

A. Richard Avedon

was born in New York on May 12, 1923 of

Russian –Jewish immigrant parents. He started his career

in 1944 as an advertising photographer for Merchant

Marines. After being discovered by Alexey Brodovitch,

the art director of Harper’s Bazaar, Avedon began taking photographs for the

magazine in 1947. What makes his fashion photography different from other

photographers is that he showed the models with emotions, laughing and sometimes

in action.

Although he first earned his reputation as a fashion photographer, his greatest

achievement was his reinvention of the genre of photographic portraiture; his ability

to capture and express the essence of his subject. The portraits are often well lit and in

front of white backdrops, with no props to show the essential specificity of face, gaze,

dress and gesture. When printed, the images always contain the dark contour of the

film in which the images were framed. Apart from framing the great and the

celebrities, Avedon reminds the world with the photographs of miners, unemployed

people, drifters, farmers, cowboys, and convicts in In the American West (1985).

Avedon shows the harshness of their everyday lives, their struggle for survival

through his camera (“Richard Avedon”, n.d.).

When looking into his work, I think he indeed shows the characteristics of the

subjects in his mind but not what the subject trying to reveal in front of the camera. It

is hard to demonstrate Avedon ‘s photography through Photoshop. Nevertheless, I


choose to use my friend’s portrait without any props because I believe the picture

capture his real character with his well-known gaze amongst friends and as well as his

self-confident. I used photoshop to stand out the light contrast.

Photoshop tools used:

• Hue Saturation • Shadow/ Highlight

Robert Doisneau

was a French photographer born on the 14 April,

1912. He was one of France’s most popular and prolific

reportage photographers. He was known for his modest,

playful, and ironic images of amusing juxtapositions,

mingling social classes depicting the life in Paris. He takes photos of common people

in common situation. His most famous photograph Kiss by the Hotel de Ville (1950)

gives a good example of how he likes to practice photography with intuition. Many of

his photos taken from the end of World War II through the 1950’s have been turned

into calendars and postcards and have become icons of French life. Doisneau has been

the subject of major retrospective at the Bibliotecque Nationale in Paris, the Art

Institute of Chicago, George Eastman Hose and the Witkin Gallery, New York City

(“Robert Doisneau”, n.d.).

Since Doisneau loves to capture the unique moment he ever encounters in life.

I believe there is always a story behind the photos he took. Therefore I picked the

photos I took when I was in Whistler wandering. The little boy just learned how to


walk can not resist the temptation of photochips. Again I do not think Doisneau’s

work can be mimic through Photoshop because his work is all about feeling and

intuition. Personally I do not think photoshop can do a great job in creating such

sensational photos without a good original film. The only thing they could do is to

embellish the subject and add effects to make the photos look nicer and strength the

form of pictures.


• Trim • Selection Tools (Elliptical Marquee) • Feather 100px • Inverse • Surface blur layer (background)

B. Impressionism (late 1860s – late 1890s)

was an movement in French painting began as

a reaction against the restriction and convention of

the dominant Academic art that depict historical subjects, religious themes, portraits

with conservative and somber color. The movement’s name was derived from

Monet’s early work, Impression: Sunrise (1872). Impressionist artists shared a set of

related approaches and techniques. The characteristic of Impressionism was to

accurately and objectively record visual experience in term of transient light and

color, to focus the movement on appearance of objects, and to create the unique visual

angles. Small, thin, but visible brush strokes are employed in these paintings. The


principal Impressionist painters were Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir and

Alfred Sisley…(“Impressionism”, n.d.)

I photoshoped my photo to make the color of the tree and the sky more

standout and with the focus on light, the sharpness of tree stand out more. In addition,

in order to mimic the characteristic of small, thin, yet visible brush strokes. I filtered it

with the Brush Stoke tool.


• Filter • Stoke length • Sharpness • Color balance

Pop Art

Was an art movement that first emerged in the

mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the

United States. Pop Art challenges traditional artwork by asserting that the usage of

mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture (advertising, comic books,

mass media…) is similar to the perspective of fine art. Pop art neglects the material

from its context they used in the work, and combine it with other objects. Usually

sharp and dramatic color is used like in comic books. The concept of pop art refer on

the attitude in doing it rather than the art itself. One of the famous artwork is Andy

Warhol’s Campbell’s Tomato Juice Box (1964). Nowadays, it style is widely used for

advertising, iphone’s camera apps, Photoshop technique.


I chose the photo of culture commodity Lomo camera to demonstrate the style

of pop art. The camera itself is a mass-produced product, and the dramatic use of

color also represent the unique style of pop art. The idea of using Photoshop allows

this finalized photos easily to be massively produced, yet a distinct artwork. I

duplicated 4 copy of my photos and tuned the saturation and color tone of each

pictures.


• Duplicate layer • Hue/Saturation • Brightness/ Contrast

C. Landscape photography

is a genre intended to show different

spaces around the globe, sometimes vast and unending, while sometimes microscopic.

Both professional and amateurs practice this style, the subject matter is always the

presence of nature and is free of man-made obstruction. There is no human activity

involoved in order to attain the pure, unsullied landscapes. These photographs always

show the photographers’ appreciation towards the scenery (“Landscape

Photography”, n.d.).

Since landscape photography does not require a lot of post-editing. It captures

the man-made free landscape. Therefore I chose the photos I took in Banff National

Park showing the nature. Just slightly tuned the Hue/Saturation and the

Brightness/Contrast to stand out the scenery I am amused by at that moment. But I


think photoshop this genre of photograph would distort the original intention of taking

the picture because the light would no longer be the ambient light, and the color is not

actual color of the scene even though the photos looks decent afterwards. On the other

hand, some people might think photoshop does a great job to collage people onto a

picture they have never been.


• Hue/Saturation • Contrast/ Brightness

Illustration

is a displayed visualization from presented as a

drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that is

created to elucidate or dictate sensual information by

providing a visual representation graphically. The earliest form of illustration was

cave painting. During the early to mid 19th century. Illustration is contributed to

satirical and straight-fiction magazine, the demand was for character-drawing that

encapsulated or caricatured types and classes (“Illustration”, n.d.).

Today there is an increasing number of illustration books with mainly

illustration and little words especially in Asia, and also a growing interest in

collecting and admiring original artwork that was once used in books, magazines,

posters, etc. From time to time, there are museum exhibitions, art galleries have


devoted space to the illustrators of the past. Nevertheless, the emergence of photoshop

obsolesce the spirit of hand-draw illustration, the meaning of illustration becomes

different when it is produce digitally. At the same time, once an artwork can be

reproduced, the value of the initial artwork might decrease. I used photoshop to create

a mushroom house illustration that is lightly to appear in children books with bright

colors.


• Pen tool • Type tool • Rounded rectangle tool • Ellipse tool

Reference

Illustration. (n.d.). Retrieved Feb 7, 2011, from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illustration

Impressionism. (n.d.). Retrieved Feb 7, 2011, from

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/history/impressionism.html

Landscape Photography. (n.d.). Retrieved Feb 7, 2011 from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_photography

Richard Avedon. (n.d.). Retrieved Feb 7, 2011, from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Avedon

Robert Doisneau. (n.d.). Retrieved Feb 7, 2011, from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Doisneau

a. r - sfu.ca - simon fraser university€¦ · · 2011-02-10marines. after being discovered by...

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