Roderick Field

These are some design work by the artist Roderick Field. I came across this work in an article he wrote in the English Black and White Photography magazine while i was over seas.
I really like these works as they are quite quirky but make an excellent point that these where once the tools of the trade, that if you wanted to be a photographer you couldnt possibly live without them- let alone not even know what they are! But how times have changed, all one needs to become a photographer now is a digital camera or even a mobile phone.
I believe that there is still hope out there as i still use the majority of these photography appliances!
I just really like the work, check out more of Fields stuff HERE

Leah Macdonald

I came across Leah Macdonald in the October issue of Black and White. I was immediately struck by the colours and textures that are present in her work and as i read the article i was happy to find out that these effects had not been created in Photoshop but by the artists own hand in the darkroom. Macdonald creates new worlds for her models in her photographs by layering her prints with beeswax, paint and drawings.

I find that the colours that are present in her work are very womanly and beautiful. I am a big fan of texture and i would love to see one of these prints in real life as i believe they would be even more beautiful when you could see this texture in front of you.

I love artists that work in a way where taking the photograph is only the start of the work. After the photograph is captured the artists continue to work with and add to the image until they have achieved what they where originally looking for when they released the shutter.

Maybe that is just me but that is what i think of when i look at these images and that is how I create my own photographs. When taking a photograph i believe that there is a unique feeling present that urges you to capture this particular moment in time. The initial image that is created does not necessarily represent this unique feeling straight away- i see it as been hidden inside the image and you as the artist needs to use the right process and techniques to be able to pull it out from its hiding spot withing the photograph. The hardest part is knowing when to stop working on the image and remembering what it is that you where originally looking for within the work. When you can get all of this right i believe that those are the best kind of photographs. This series of work by Macdonalds feels to me like she has achieved this.

In the article it also states that Macdonald is legally blind in her right eye. There is something to think about. What a champ.

Article is written by Susan Burnstine
Look at Macdonalds web site here

Heronimus Bosch

Today I visited the Heronimus Bosch Art Center in Hertogenbosh in Holland. I hadn't heard of the artist before but when i saw some of his characters i recognized the work. He was a well know painter in the 1500's. His work is so unique and imaginative that i can hardly believe that it was created so many years ago in a small town in Holland. All of the work refers to religious stories or meaning- his most famous being about the garden of earthly delights,i believe. Many depicting heaven and hell but in the most twisted way i have ever experienced.

My favourite painting was of the earth on the (second?) day of creation ( the last image shown above) called - the creation of the world. It shows the world both round and flat at the same time and with out any animals or humans, just the land. God can be seen in the top left corner. I think I am drawn to it as it is much simpler than his other works and was painted using black and white only. As I am very much inspired by the landscape I enjoyed seeing this painting of the world pre-humans, and the landscape is clearly based on the European landscape.

I liked some of his other works also as they where more than just painting for the sake of something beautiful, as some of them had meanings and lessons to teach the viewers- not to be a fool etc.

Overall it was some of the most memorable work that I have come across in the past few weeks.

How it relates to my work? I am not sure.

But i recently came across this quote

"your greatest assets are your weaknesses"

Its something to think about.


( i really am not sure of the spelling of his name..)

D. Darian- Smith

D. Darian-Smith was a South Australian photographer (1900-1984). From what i can gather, he was very very good at what he did. I came across him in my research of the Capri Theatre in Adelaide, Smith was the first photographer to document the theatre and the only one to do it well! The top four images above are of the Capri in 1941 when it first opened(bottom two- Theatre at Glenelg and a aerial shot of Adelaide), my favorite shot is the inside of the cinema, showing the screen and the seats. Every shot is bathed in beautiful light, which is very hard to achieve in the pokey theatre, he was clearly very skilled and precise in his work.

Darian-Smith's life collection is owned by Atkins Technicolour-1000s of negatives, glass plate and all- and they have made a web site where the images can be brought in different sizes, all money going towards the upkeep of the collection. The web site is very disappointing as the images are only shown quite small and when viewed larger there is a giant copyright C across them, and the quality isn't very good at all. These where the only 6 good quality images i could find on the internet of his work.

Darian-Smith photographed everything, from cinemas to proposed air field sites to images for home and garden magazines and (my favorite) he also did aerial photography. From what i can see his aerial shots are amazing, in their composition as well as the way they were taken. Darian-Smith would stand on the wing of the airplane and set up his camera (LARGE FORMAT GLASS PLATE CAMERA, THAT IS), with a leather strap around his waist he wouls set up and take his photographs, whilst giving hand signals to the pilot . It is amazing he got anything at all in focus and didn't DIE at the same time!

I have so much respect for this man as he has done so many things that i want to do myself. Id love to use glass plate, do aerial photography, document theatres and do it all with such beauty! i love that he worked and lived in South Australia, i want to find out more about local Australian photographers, rather than European and American ones all the time. I recently ventured to a small town in the Kimberly (Derby) and went to their library and looked through their collection of photographs. There were amazing images of Indigenous people going about their everyday life before the town was built, as well as documentation of the town over the years. It was really amazing to see these photographs and i would have like to have known who the photographers were. I think there is a real art from that comes from documentary photography, especially when it is documenting really mundane things, like the construction of a road or a building.

D. Darian-Smith seems to be a very interesting person and a superb photographer. I would really love to go down to Atkins and get my hand on the original glass plate negatives that he took...
I want to find more local photographers..I want to be just as good as them all..i wish i could stand on the wing of an airplane and take pictures on my box brownie..I wish i could have met Douglas and got some tips from him..he is a big Enemy of mine.

Amy Patterson

Okay so this is a local Adelaide woman's work- Amy Patterson. I have come across her work a few times now in exhibitions around Adelaide. Her newer work (the top 4 images) are very interesting, I haven't been able to find much information on it, I am not 100% but i believe they maybe images Patterson has come across on the internet and has then put them through Photoshop to give them the washed out- oil painted look to them. When i first saw the work i thought that they where actually hand painted, then when i realised that they had been worked in Photoshop I began to not like them. But I have time to think about it now and i believe that they are amazing unique pieces of work. I like that they are unconventional.
They each tell their own story that doesn't really connect with any of the other stories, but they all work well together.
What i like most about them is what has been left out of the image. I bet if i came across one of the original photographs i wouldn't even recognise it as Patterson has changed them and made them her own. What she leaves out of the image by darkening or fogging the image helps lead your eye to the important parts of the image and helps create the story.
The mood is a little creepy and seems to always be from a on-lookers point of view, that isn't involved with the action at all.

But what I am most interested in, is Patterson's earlier work,I have seen it before at the Samstage (last year?) and LOVED it. As i just love clouds- and guess what this work is called? 1001 clouds. I believe originally they were Polaroids which have been scanned and re printed slightly larger and then all 1001 placed together to create a Monster cloud extravaganza!!

I came a cross a great quote that Patterson stated, not sure who originally said it:

"how to describe a world that evades us, not because it is un-graspable but, on the contrary, because there is too much to grasp"

this is how i feel sometimes, (not trying to sound heaps arty-farty-emotional) but it is often a thought of how am i going to portray a certain landscape or tree through my work, when in reality, it is already so beautiful. When there are just too many things around me that i want to capture with my lens.

There are so many things i like about this work, The size, the intimacy, the documentation of the sky, the list goes on. I think it is just nice to finally find someone that is as interested and intrigued by the sky as i am.

Nancy Spencer

Nancy Spencer. Wooh. She is pretty good at what she does. The first two images are taken on a diana camera, the second two are taken with a Zone Plate at the Museum of mummies in Mexico.( a Zone plate is to be the 'cousin' of the pinhole, as instead of using a small hole it has a plate with a series of clear and opaque concentric circles that look like a target. this creates softer images-very interesting) And the last two are taken on a digital camera with a zone plate attached instead of a lens.

Spencer is one of the founding members of the Pinhole Resorce web site which is a site i visted alot when working on my own pinhole camera.

I really like the variety in Spencer's work and how she really explores alternative ways of photographing, especially with a digital camera. I think most of her work is very haunting but beautiful at the same time. Maybe what i like most, and what i would like to achieve in my work, is the fact that all her series's are quite different and use different techqniues, yet, all manage to contain a similar mood and feeling to them.

Check this lady out at:
http://nancyspencerphoto.com

Charles Jones

Charels Jones was a closet photographer. He was a normal guy, a family man, a very talented and passionate gardener and a little bit of a sneaky British fellow. Jones was born in England in 1866 and died at 92 in 1959. He was a wonderful gardener and managed various gardens as a job throughout his life. He documented his gardening achievements by taking these exquisite glass plate negatives of his vegetables and flowers. Jones' skill was not recognised until after his death when a box full of his (gold toned) silver gelatin prints where found randomly. All the original glass plates where destroyed as Jones used them, in his later life, to protect the young plants in his garden from the sun.

Now it is clear that Jones was a very talented man, in both his gardening and his ablity to capture life in still photographs. His images are simply composed with plain black or white backgrounds behind his subjects that are either just picked fresh from the ground or still attached to the plant. It is clear that Jones cared about his vegetables and thought about they best way to show off each of their individual features.

What i like about this work is the fact that Jones lets the subject speak for themselves. He sets them up in the simplest way and then lets the fruit, vegetables and flowers show their unique and natural beauty off to the camera. He was smart enough to realise that there was something special growing in his garden. But there is also a gritty, dirty feel to them which i like.

Textures, forms and beauty in nature.
Got to love it.

Karl Blossfeldt

Karl Blossfeldt studied industrial arts in Rome in 1890. Blossfeldt photographed natural plant matter up close and personal. The way he photographed the plants was in a very straight, documentary, specimen kind-of-way, yet at the same time he captured such beauty in the unique shapes, patterns and textures in each plant. This combination creates these amazing photographs that present nature in such a unique way.

The strange thing was that Blossfeldt wasn't exactly a photographer to begin with but was more focused on industrial design, using photography to compliment his work. It is stated that Blossfeldt, "used his plant photographs to demonstrate to students that the best solutions for industrial design had already been anticipated in nature" but this was not taken on board by many students.

Blossfedlt made a book titled, "Art Forms In Nature" and printed all the images with the Photogravue process. He died in 1933.

This work inspires me as my work revolved a lot around various art forms in nature, especially the forms in the sky. When I take a photograph I am usually looking for some unique formation of trees or buildings or both together, that will create an interesting composition against the sky.
I am inspired by the forms that trees take as they grow and die. I always find myself taking out my cameras to photograph different trees in parks near my house. I think of it a a portrait of the tree, as each one has its own way that it has grown which creates its personality.

Art Forms in Nature. Its just a really good way of putting it-thanks Karl Blossfeldt.

Bill Henson

Bill Henson's work is quite beautiful, poetic and intimate. He is able to capture a moment, with either models or with nature, that has a feeling that you are witnessing something special. I believe his work is based around recalling the feelings from his memories of times past and i think that is clear in these shots shown above.
I am a fan of all Bill Henson's work. I think he has 'the eye'.