Edward Henry Weston was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers..." and "one of the masters of 20th century photography". He was best known for his carefully composed, sharply focused images of natural forms and landscapes. It is said that he developed a "quintessentially American, and specially Californian, approach to modern photography" because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. His philosophy is said to have been being extremely precise on how he framed his images, he was a 'master at composition', it was a key part of his photographing process.
Weston was born in Chicago and moved to California when he was 21. He knew he wanted to be a photographer from an early age, and initially his work was typical of the soft focus pictorialism that was popular at the time. Within a few years, however, he abandoned that style and went on to be one of the foremost champions of highly detailed photographic images. |
Edward Weston used a 2.5 by 3.5 negative Graflex camera, as shown on the left. This camera allows him to see his subject matter when he was photographing, and it was also very portable and could be handheld. To produce shutter speeds fast enough to appear to freeze rapid motion, early Graflex cameras employed a cloth shutter with a narrow slit that quickly moved across the film plane, exposing only one small strip at any given moment in its travel.
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This images depicts a piece of bark, and an old persons wrinkled face. I really like the way she has matched up the top left corners of each image, having the smoother pattern on the tree, and then strategically composing and placing the glasses on the face.
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This image compares some seemingly cracked wood, with the veins of someone's eyelids. What I really like about all of her images is the colour contrast between the human image and the nature image. The human image shows placing skin, and the nature images use more earthly brown tones.
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This image draws similarities between a fingerprint, and the intricate details of the bark of a tree. Both images depict very small, close together fine lines. These images are very successful, the use of pattern and colour is carefully constructed and planned.
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Using the schools old film cameras, I created a different kind of response to Kabis. To the right is an image of the camera I used. I loaded them with photo paper and took portraits of a model in the studio. I then developed it in the darkroom, and once finished I pulled it into photoshop and inverted. I then experiment with lowering the contrast and increasing the brightness, in the style of Kabis. Below a are my images.
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The photographer positioned the direction of light where its directly onto the subjects body. In this image we can see the projection of a city/ building landscape. The photographer positioned their viewpoint at a slight angle to the subject.
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The main focal point drawing your attention is the reflection of light on subject. The image being projected is of a warm beach day, creating a tone of joy and warmth. The selection of colours and textures in the photograph are very bright and eye catching.
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In this image we can see two people back to back, with a bright blue and white patterned neon image being projected onto them. This image creates a tone of excitement and hope due to the bright colours. The artificial light has been used effectively within this image.
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For my final piece in my abstraction project, I have decided to respond to Kate Hook's double exposure film series. SO far in my developments, I have experimented with light, projectors, shadows, contrast, structure, and double exposure. I would like my final piece to incorporate many of these skills that I have learned, and I think my response links to the theme as it depicts abstract double exposures that combine buildings with portraits, merging and contrasting to create unique abstract photos. I have decided to use film, similarly to Hook, and I have displayed the camera that I used on the right. I decided to work with film, because I think the mood of Hook's images is largely down to the type of camera she used, and I was really inspired by this. To create this response, I walked around my local area photographing different buildings and structures. I then reloaded the film in the darkroom and then re-shot on this same film and took portraits of different people, with the intention of creating a double exposure effect. I then had the film processed and scanned them in, and pulled them into photoshop. I picked my favourite few images and edited them, to fade the background slightly and enhance the focal point of the image; the double exposed portrait. I also decided to create some colour edits, and I have displayed my photoshop process in the slideshow below.
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