Tag: conceptual

Thursday Throwback -15

In 2008, I explored Conceptual Photography, enjoying the course despite my instructor’s criticism of my predictable work. Here I share a sample…

As in last week’s episode, we’re back in the year 2008. At the time, I decided to take a course in Conceptual Photography to stretch my visual thinking a bit. While I enjoyed the course very much, the instructor was not impressed with my work. He found my submissions to be a bit obvious and predictable (he was right). However, there were a couple of images that I created during that class that I still enjoy.

Here’s one of them…

Solitude of Age

This was a bit of a fun shoot, as I wanted to get this rather pinpoint light source to get this shadow. After some experimenting, I lit this scene with a single candle. Using a long exposure and keeping the air pretty still gave me the result that I wanted.

The imagery is obvious with the bent back of age and the bright years behind, but I still enjoy looking at this composition.

And, in case you wonder how I got the fork to stand still… I used continuous paper to get the background and put a very small hole in it. Through that hole I threaded a stand made from a paperclip that I hot-glued to the back of the fork.

Silent Sunday

Against the forces of the wind…

Going through my back catalog…an image from 2008 for a photography class…

Solitude

This image is inspired by one of the early works by Piet Mondrian that I saw in a museum in Den Haag many years ago. It featured trees bent by the wind and immediately gave me a sense of the eternal battle with solitude.

I created the shot by building a stand from a paperclip and hot gluing it to the bent for. The paperclip was fed through a hole in the continuous paper and I lit it with a single 60 watt lightbulb to cast the specific shadow.

A Tree Grows

Conceptual attempts

The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge provides the theme of Growth.

In this third post in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge, I thought to go into a completely different direction to an image that I put together just over ten years ago.

At the time, I was taking a class in Conceptual Photography, working on how to bring forth ideas through images, with these ideas being more than what is shown in the image.  This course was a lot of fun, as it allowed me to express some things in my mind through photographic challenges, as well as stretch me both mentally and technically.

The instructor kept us very challenged through each assignment and his critiques were on point and very constructive. Some of my images got quite a bit of praise from him, but the one that I am sharing here did not.  Despite the fact that I agree with his reasoning, I still like this image…

A_Tree_Grows_2162
A Tree Grows

My idea here was to contrast the organic against the rather sterile, futuristic background that is reminiscent of architectural fronts of buildings.  The image is a composite with a artificial background (the reason for the criticism) and a bunch of grapes picked clean, except for a single grape.

Hope you enjoy and have a wonderful day!