What is a selfie?
Selfies are photographs of you taken by yourself. I don't take any selfies in a week unless its with a friend or a family member because I do not see a point in taking pictures of just myself when i'm not going to do anything with them. I think that taking selfies has become popular because some people like to post themselves or 'show themselves off' when they feel like they look good, I don't think there is a downside to taking or sharing selfies unless they get shared somewhere or to someone that the person didn't want it shared to. The 'rules' or 'conventions' for taking a selfie are: good lighting, good angles, good framing- these rules are okay to be broken because they don’t guarantee that your selfie will be 'good' and you can be unique and take selfies in any way you want to. There is multiple different genres of selfies and they were presented in the videos from the England VS Italy contrast. In England, the girl said there are 3 different genres: selfies, groupies and uglies. She was very invested in selfies, the use of them, how to take a 'perfect' selfie and giving/describing the rules of taking a perfect selfie. Whereas in Italy they were more focused on group pictures and the technology of the smartphone.
The astronaut in the picture is taking the selfie of themselves. They are taking the picture on a camera in space or infront of a greenscreen. In the astronauts helmet, the 'world' and the Satalite or spaceship is being reflected. The bright object behind their head is either the sun (if they are actually in space) or a bright light.
I assume that this photograph was made by a green screen, or it has been edited with photoshop because he wouldn't be able to get that close to an explosion. The man is a photographer called Tony Blair and there is an 'explosion' behind him which he is taking a selfie with. I think that this photograph was chosen to be feautured in a exhhibition about modern art and war at a museum because in some way it can link to a war because of the fire or explosion in the background.
About Photographers
About Peter Keetman
Peter Keetman was a German photographer and was a central figure in German post-war modern photography. He was born on the 27th April 1916 and died on the 8th March 2005. Peter Keetman took photos of assembly line technology, car body parts and technical details of the Volkswagen Beetle were graphically designed photography through cropping and perspective. Keetman has made multiple famous pieces of artwork (some will be shown below). He uses car parts along side multiple other man made objects to create his images. He relocated his camera and the focus of the camera to create his abnormal photos, these images sometimes vary between piles of car parts, faces and other random objects. Keetmans photographs are interesting and people may enjoy them because of how abnormal they are- they make people want to pay more attention and look at a certain picture for longer to figure out what it is and how it was taken.
Reflection self-portraits
Part 2
Self portraits Homework
Francesca Woodman
This is the image i have chosen |
This photograph is in square format because Francesca used a medium format camera to capture the image. In this image, you can see her standing looking at the camera with her arms towards the open door infront of her and you cant see through the door, the walls around her look 'moulded' or old even- like shes in an abandoned building. She is the only person in the picture as this is a self portrait. This is a self portrait because she has set the camera up and taken the picture herself. The camera was placed on a tripod or something like a tripod and she set a timer on the camera in the middle of the room. In some way this image does make me feel uncomfortable, this is because her eyes are intense and shes staring straight into the camera; we dont know what is on the other side of the door because its pitch black and creepy.
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Francesca Woodman inspired photographs
Helene Amouzou
This is Helene Amouzou, she is a photographer who was born in Togo but now resides and works in Belgium. Above are some of Helene Amouzou's photographs, there are some aspects of these images which can infer that she was inspired by Francesca Woodmans photography. Some of these features are the movement and focus of the photographs- they are similar to Francescas because they are both very out of focus and 'ghostly' or 'ethoreal', another feature is the way the images are composed and the background. Her images are connected to her own social issues instead of everyday issues, she uses her photography to communicate her issues to her audience and show the world without using her words. In her images she uses her face and her own personal possessions, these photos can still be classed as part of a self portrait because they belong to her and some of them have her in it but very out of focus. The images that have suitcases have been said to represent as a recurrent symbol of her state of transit and flux. In Helene's photographs some may portray the statement 'heal and reveal parts of ourself' this is factual because she uses her own belongings and composes images in a way that may represent her personal life and emotions. Helenes use of 'working with chance' and her not knowing what the outcome would be is fantastic as she puts trust in herself to create amazing images and they do come out the way she wants them to be without alot of planning, she just composes the images, sets a timer and waits for the outcome and they turn out how she wanted them to be.
Movement photographs
These photographs have me and a classmate experimenting with movement and shutter speed to practice how to use different settings of a camera. The techniques used were us using different shutter speeds (1/15, 1/8, 1/6, 1/4, 1/2) were the speeds used to capture these certain images. These photographs remind me of the photographers we have looked at in previous lessons, Francesca Woodman and Helene Amouzou, because they experiment and use different processes to adjust the focus and speed settings of the camera used. The images are out of focus and in the ones where we are jumping you can tell that there is movement during the image being taken which causes them to be blurry or ethoreal.
Overall selfie images, final project
Image evaluation
Above are my Francesca Woodman and Helene Amouzou inspired photographs, the inspiration from these photographers is the blurry and ghost like features of my photographs. They were not very difficult to take as i held my camera up, faced it towards me and shook it the achieve the blurry affect on some of them. On one of them i set the camera up and set a timer and jumped to create movement in the image.