Of all I am most excited about this photographer, Christi Neely, her work reminds me of what I find myself wanting to do. Its always nice to see stuff that reminds you why you yourself enjoy being behind the camera. Some of her work plays a great deal on forcing the eye to see things like perspective, contrast, or sharpeness. But she also using many different techniques in her work. She also plays with not the true image itself but more of letting the viewer decide what they want it to be. I loved this train picture she had altered with color to draw your eye back into the background but also it appears the majority blurry though there is sharpness in it. It makes your eyes wander through the photo to see what you can find in it. She also had a lovely piece that is very similar to that of cars at night with a long exposure. The light she used was that of like she tried drawing with it but the source was not a car. The orange yellow tones of night light fill the frame but also is pleasantly surprising beautiful. It is not something you can say what it is but enjoyably pleasant to look at. It feels warm and playful, but also skillfully technique wise done.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Of all I am most excited about this photographer, Christi Neely, her work reminds me of what I find myself wanting to do. Its always nice to see stuff that reminds you why you yourself enjoy being behind the camera. Some of her work plays a great deal on forcing the eye to see things like perspective, contrast, or sharpeness. But she also using many different techniques in her work. She also plays with not the true image itself but more of letting the viewer decide what they want it to be. I loved this train picture she had altered with color to draw your eye back into the background but also it appears the majority blurry though there is sharpness in it. It makes your eyes wander through the photo to see what you can find in it. She also had a lovely piece that is very similar to that of cars at night with a long exposure. The light she used was that of like she tried drawing with it but the source was not a car. The orange yellow tones of night light fill the frame but also is pleasantly surprising beautiful. It is not something you can say what it is but enjoyably pleasant to look at. It feels warm and playful, but also skillfully technique wise done.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This work reminds me so much of Alix's work. The architectural lines are so strong...I love how the perspective just draws you in, much like the pix Alix does of the brick buildings. The color saturation also mindful of your work: the shades at once seem light in tone and rich in color with a warmth that feels cozy and keeps your eye on it.. I wish I could capture that same use of light...you can see where the light source comes from, but it doesn't disturb you, it just seems to add interest, even though at times the work shows the light as very shiny and central in the work.
ReplyDeleteI am most inspired in my photography by Impressionist painters. I think the painter I love the most is Monet---I like the feel of how they capture the light and color without all the hard edges, giving it a dreamy quality---I mostly like the landscapes by these artists.
ReplyDeleteI'd spoken with Mindy about capturing these qualities and one way she had seen was to photo subjects for instance after a rainstorm, so that there'd be water droplets to help capture the quality of the light.
I think tomoko-yamamoto.com capture an Impressionist feel in his work very well. Mostly, he's using that same idea of water, mainly by photographing different bodies of water or items floating in water. I think he's really captured the quality of color that marks Impressionism---it's very vivid, the color saturation seems very high, you can see the light reflected, but not so much in streaks as blurred lines that incorporate completely into the picture, making it one whole image, rather than a shot of light in the picture. The subject--using a landscape--adds to that Impressionist feel...a very lovely, inviting landscape, but not a trite image. I also like the idea that many colors are used, it is not just blues and greens in the water, but purples and pinks, yellows....and you still know what's is being photographed, it is not the typical idea that water is blue. I am also inspired by Poons [larrypoons.com], who has been described as an Expressionist Impressionist: his work is very like Pollack where the paint seems to be thrown artfully on the canvas, but actually if you look closely, each is a brush stroke when combined make the image--see La Famiglia where he showing amidst the color, shadowy figures of a family walking away, looking depressed. If you look closer still, you can see that same use of many colors where, in every brush stroke, he tries to include every color of the spectrum and yet the pictures do not seem to be 'balanced' which seems to me would be too trite. I would love to try to achieve this use of color using a camera.
I think the one photographer who has influenced me the most is Anton Intratochvil antonintratochvil.com/#/multimedia/roadworks/1
ReplyDeleteLook at Antonin Tratochvill's slideshow: it is from the point of view of an American
soldier during the war, about the accidental death of a young Iranian and the effect. His work made the impression on me how still photography can be even more powerful than movies. I think we take movies for granted because we see so many, so they don't evoke the depth of feeling. And yet, this type of exhibit shows the stills in 'moving' images, a form we're so comfortable with and it seems many people prefer to viewing stills.
The images are black and whites, which add to the gravity of the scene. The close-ups make it so much more serious...making us look at every nuance of the human expressed emotion. I love the action with the puff of smoke and evoking our sense dating back to the World Wars of the burdened soldier taking a smoke. The use of black and white really highlights the use of light in his photos.
The only narration is provided by the soldier. Visually, the slides move rather quickly, enough to feel the impact of the
image, but not too long on any shot. At times, the slides move even more quickly and are blurred, especially when the soldier talks about the height of the action when the father first realizes the son is killed. The movement and blur of the slides match the action described by the soldier. It makes me want to always make my work in this form, it has to start with powerful, well-done images, but the movement with or without narration seems to focus the attention of the viewer and make it that much more powerful.
I did find out that the close-up of the
pool of blood which is so dramatic, was an image he created---he made a pool to look like blood and added it to his movie [because there was no actual blood spilled] -- and I just love that idea that, like on a movie set, you can play with the images to direct an even more powerful story.
I want to try to continue to work in the way Impressionists captured their surroundings and found Eva Polak [evapolak.com], who calls herself an Impressionist photographer. I find her landscape pictures very soothing, I think not only because of the use of cool colors like blues and greens and her darks in a very linear way, but I love the particular way she's blurred those color lines together. I really like her "People" pictures.
ReplyDeleteThe images which she lists as Image 8 and Image 10 of her People collection
[http://www.evapolak.com/people.html] use the twinkling of reflected light, either off the water or off the umbrella. I love that play of light, which seems so natural, not too hard a light, but captures that quality of light you might enjoy at the beach or in the park, not harsh but a very sunny, bright surprise in the photo.
The colors are very saturated...not bright, which you don't realize until you really study the photos. They tend to have almost an olive green quality, very subdued in color. I think perhaps because her subjects are children, or images that might remind you of pleasant memories of childhood or the beach, playing in the rain with your umbrella, that you don't notice that her colors are actually dark. Often, her foreground image is darker than her background, a technique I would like to try.
The one photo on the face page of the woman in the big skirt twirling doesn't have that same quality of light, of bright shining specks, but you can see that light figures prominently in making her figure stand out. I like how she has captured the image--you know it's real--but it's not done in a realistic fashion,..you can't make out the features clearly, which I think makes it into this lovely, fantasy-type world and at the same time, makes it into an everyman image---it could be you or someone from your memories, so I think that's what makes her work so evocative. I've read of her work that she achieves a lot of her effect with filters over which she has smeared like Vaseline...I've tried to achieve the same idea without the filter, by using different light balances, shutter speeds and different saturation settings in the camera. I've found if I don't capture it in the frame, they're qualities you can't really photoshop in, even with the quality of the color, where I've probably had my best success.
I think this is the same Christi Neely that was a student of mine at St. Rose. Her work is thoughtful and strong in craft. I'm glad to see she is showing her work around the area.
ReplyDelete