Inspirational Photography
As a designer, I have developed a minimalist style throughout the past 4 years in the design studies. My style is highly influenced by my own interest in architectures, Swiss Design (The International Typographic Style) and the understated elegance of Japanese design. I strongly believe in the classic quote “Less is More”. I have been trained to see beautiful things (so called the designer’s eyes) during the design practice. In this “sketch book”, I would like to collect a bunch of impressive photographs and research on some inspiring photographers, especially on minimalism and simplicity in photography. (I was gonna make a printed book for this, but it might be more beneficial for me to do a 1 year-collection first.. therefore, I will store everything digitally for now!)
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Week 1
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Minimalist Photography I – David Burdeny
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Japan 2006 & Antarctica/Greenland Project 2007
“Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada, David Burdeny has degrees in both Interior design and a Masters in Architecture. At the age of 12, David started to photograph the prairie landscape and make his own black and white prints in a makeshift darkroom that also served as his bedroom closet. Primarily self taught, his architecture and design background greatly influences his penchant for simple exacting photographs of sky, horizon and the marks humankind leaves behind. Influenced by notable photographers such Michael Kenna, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Fay Goodwin, David purposefully photographs in poor light and near darkness. He uses unusually long exposures to see that which our eyes can not. Moving beyond the literal, his images have been described as ominous, haunting, beautiful and meditative.”
I went speechless for a while after looking at David Burdeny’s series. His photography captures the essence of the subject matter by eliminating other elements in the scene. The subtleness makes each of his photographs so strong and breathe-taking. It’s amazing! He is the Kenya Hara in design to me. I totally LOVE it!
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Week 2
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Architectural / Landscape
I was born in Canada, but I am raised in Hong Kong. It is a highly populated international city filled with beautiful architectures, especially skyscrapers. I am very interested in architecture and I love looking up to the skyscrapers. Frank Meyl is an architectural photographer. There’s a strong contrast of colour and texture in his work.
Ted VanCleave has shoot a series at the Disney Hall designed by Frank Gehry (one of my favorite architects). This series captures the structure and form of the Disney Hall.
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Week 3
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Hand-crafted
Julien Valle is a very inspiring motion designer, his work greatly involves hand-crafted elements and look-a-like objects. He makes me think of Thomas Demand, a photographer who tends to construct scenes with paper and shoot it. Each of Thomas Demand’s photographs is one or more steps removed from reality, creating tension between the fabricated and the real. It’s pretty interesting to compare their work and find similarities.
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Week 4
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Minimalist portraits and landscapes
Harry Callahan
He focuses a lot of everyday subjects, including nature, architecture, city streets, his family and express them in simple forms. Harry Callahan was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. He purchased his first camera in 1938 and joined the camera club at Chrysler Motors, where he worked. Strongly influenced by a 1941 lecture and workshop given by Ansel Adams, Callahan traded his enlarger for an 8 x 10 view camera. In 1946 Callahan was hired by László Moholy-Nagy to teach photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago.
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Week 5
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Tilt-shift
So, a friend of mine showed me this video for her Type in Motion class. It is a stop-motion video created by Sam O’Hare, who shoot over 35,000 photos for it. At first, he used a 24mm tilt-shift lens, but he figured it will be better for him to do the effects in post-production instead. Here is the making-of: http://aerofilm.blogspot.com/2010/02/sandpit-short-film-by-aero-director-sam.html
After seeing this video, I started to research on the tilt-shift lens and techniques. I found that it’s rather expensive to buy a tilt-shift lens, but photoshop sounds more reasonable, since I have it already! I found this online tutorial very helpful.
http://www.tiltshiftphotography.net/photoshop-tutorial.php
I will definitely get out there and try taking some shots for this tilt-shift photography when it gets warmer.
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Week 6
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Minimalist Photography II – Bernhard Quade
He is impressed by the interaction between natural and people, which they both affect each other. Bernhard likes to explore how one’s life and thoughts and surrounding change one’s impression and expression. He definitely love capturing the moment of different light, colour and movement, because he strongly believe that things are constantly changing across time.
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Week 7
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Master of Street Photography
Matt Stuart
Matt Stuart’s work features opportune street scenes which reflect the absurd and fleeting nature of life. He shoots everyday and everywhere he goes. I found that his work is really fun, colourful, humorous and full of contrast.
“Born in 1974, Matt Stuart was raised in the leafy suburbs of Harrow, North West London. He admits to a less than distinguished school career, but was called upon aged 11 to play a trumpet solo in front of the Queen Mother. Her Majesty’s reaction is not recorded. A little later, in 1986, Matt discovered skateboarding after watching the film “Back to the Future”. Skating occupied his every waking moment until 1994, when he looked up from the half-pipe and noticed that girls had got a lot more interesting. He also indulged in a brief, ill-advised affair with Kung Fu. Matt’s father, keenly aware that his son would never be the next Bruce Lee, introduced him to photography, handing over books by Robert Frank & Henri Cartier-Bresson. Ever since then, photography has been Matt’s overriding passion, although he’s still quite interested in skateboards and girls. (But thankfully not Kung Fu).”
- http://www.mattstuart.com/
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Week 8
Lomography
It’s “bad” photography, yet, all the light-leeks, double-exposure and distinct colours showcase the experimental art movement and a strong sense of personal life-style. I do collect a several Lomo cameras, including Diana F+, LC-A, Fisheye No.2 and Diana Instant. I love the rawness and image quality of these cameras in general. It gives a casual and snap shot feel to the photos, which I think they reflect and document daily life in the most realistic way. My next goal is to purchase the Pinhole series (http://canada.shop.lomography.com/cameras/pinhole-lovers-bundle).
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Week 9
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IR filter
Infrared photography captures radiation wavelengths just beyond the visible spectrum. It captures scenes that cannot be seen through human eyes. IR photos often involves deep black skies, bright white foliage and sometimes bright blue skies. It can transform into extraordinary images when captured with infrared.
http://www.tutorial9.net/tutorials/photography-tutorials/infrared-photography/
http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/infrared/
http://www.dpfwiw.com/ir.htm
http://dpanswers.com/content/irphoto.php
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Week 10
iPhone Photography
Few weeks ago, John brought up the iPhone photography app called Hipstamatic. I have been using this app since last Christmas. It is a great app with a variety of lens and film choices. It gives the photographs a very vintage feel, as it is inspired by analog cameras. I didn’t really look into the background of each lens until that class. After that, I did a little bit of research and found more inspiring photographs shot with Hipstamatic.
In comparison to Hipstamatic, there’s another app called Instagram. It also has a lot of filters, kinda similar to Hipstamatic, but the “lens” are replaced by filters. The better feature is that it allows friends to see your gallery, which highly increase the interactivity between users. I really like this feature! Instagram has recently added the new tilt-shift feature to the app, which makes it even better! It’s amazing of what technology can do! As much as these apps have some similar features to Lomo cameras, but it’s a different feeling to hold on to a film camera after all.
After I finish this semester (my final semester), I am planning to shoot a series of photographs by these two iPhone apps and perhaps make a short stop-motion video based on the series. It should be a lot of fun!
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Week 11
Week 12
