Freya Shi

DART1130 works & other Photography works

[freyashi]

Assignment 2

There are two sections, the first section is the photo of my neighborhood and the garden statues of my homestay family. My homestay mother is half Greek. She is consequently very much culturally attached to the classical style. These are more intimate representations of identity (maybe culture background).

The second section are photos of the buildings in Sydney city, near the NSW Art Gallery and the statue outside the Art Gallery. These are more public representatives compare to the first section. They are more like the representation of the public cityscapes of Sydney.

These are some meanings I made, and can be tell by words.

[freyashi]

Some reflection on working on assignment 2

1. Organisation. when I select the photos, I always make a mess and sometimes I even lost small photos. Although I know it must be some where in my room, I should be more organised during working.

2. Organisation again. When I doing testing in the darkroom, I record the time of exposure, but I always forgot to characterise the tested film. Consequently I messed up the films and wasted a lot of time.

Organisation is the most important value with I am lack of, hope I can change the bad habit in the future.

[freyashi]

Week 11 Research - 2 Statues

URL: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?q=Photography+status+

Works matching “Photography status ” :: The Collection :: Art Gallery NSW

Works matching “Photography status ” :: The Collection :: Art Gallery NSW

I have shoot some photos of the garden statues of my homestay garden and the status in city. The statues in the garden are very classical, like Greek Arts, the statues in city is a little bit different. I took the photo of the dancing pig in The World Square and also some statues in and outside the NSW Art Gallery.

The work of garden statue of David Potts can be a research on it, I think the special element of the garden statue is that the statue is with the plants. However, the statues in my garden don’t surrounded by the greens a lot, consequently the subject of the photo is still the statue, there are only some grasp of the plants (what a pity).

I also took the photo of the statue outside the NSW Art Gallery (the right one, if you are facing the front door of the Gallery), it is a like the work of Boris Ignatovich and Max Dupain. I was interested in shoot the statue and the cloud together, but unluckily that day, that moment, there are no clouds on the sky.

About the statues in the Gallery, they are all wonderful classical artworks, while the Gallery doesn’t allowed me to bring in the tripod so I asked my friend to bent down and be my tripod and it is a little bit dark inside. Because the image is highly likely to blur if the shutter speed is longer than 1/60, I used the biggest f stop (f 3.5 for Nikon fm 10) and a longer shutter speed (but no more than 1 second), they looks well in negative films, one of them can be print very well, but the others are still appear blur. I still haven’t decide to use them or not because there are people walking around in the film...

[freyashi]

Week 11 Research - 1 Cityscapes

My assignment 2 is mainly about statues and cityscapes. The compare and contrast of classic statues and modern (some of them are still have a sense of classic) cityscapes creates a charming feeling of this city we are living in.

Sydney as one of the most busy metropolis has the feature of multiculturalism, it also displays a a mixture of classic and modern. As my assignment 2 is a series of classic and modern (statues and cityscapes), this book have impressed me a lot. In the films I shoot, I have practiced the technique in the picture. Although not all of them are selected as the work of assignment 2, the practice values a lot.

P.S. Because I forgot to put my photos out of the sink as soon as they are ready to be dry, they're still on the drying racks. Otherwise I can make a detailed analysis of the technique I learned from this book.

[freyashi]

Week 11 process

This week I borrowed the Nikon fm10 to shoot my second roll because I want to make a double exposure. However, when I done what the video said, the number of films still changed, so I finally give up (I had a look after I developed the film, the first five films which I tried to practice double exposure is a mess. It is lucky that I didn’t insist trying, otherwise the entire roll might be ruined).

I spend the rest of days in the darkroom and tried to do double exposure using the enlarger. However, I found it is also very difficult to do because the two rolls of films are nearly normal exposure so when they overlap each other the exposure time of the enlarger cannot even be test. I can create a double exposure photo if I have enough time, but I finally gave up because the assignment will due on Monday, I do not have much time doing so much testing.

Therefore, I continued my idea of the status and the city suburb. I actually noticed that the status I shoot is a little bit blur so most of them cannot be used (some of them can be used). Consequently, the status and the city scene will not be half-half in my work.

Because I give up on doing double exposure but I still want to display the content as much as possible, there will be more photos included in the series.

By the way thanks to Xue to help me select good pictures!

[freyashi]

Week 10

I borrowed the PENT MZM 2 camera on Friday and start to shoot photos. I'm planning to do with the double (maybe triple) exposure but this camera doesn't allow me to do it in a simple way, I have to take all the film and reload it. However, this camera will automatically rewind the film when all the film is took. So I cannot reload it because the edge is already in the roll.

I tried to pull out the edge but I failed to do so.

(I will never ever use these kind of auto-rewind camera again🙃)

[freyashi]

Week 9 - Research

Researching on Zoe Leonard, I fond that she is a very unique and creative artist. We have watched a interview video of Leonard in the tutorial once, I wasn’t really get her idea. However after I have do some research on her work, I found that she is very impressive. I especially like the photo called mirror (no.2).

There is a introduction of Zoe Leonard from Whitney Museum of American Art: https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/ZoeLeonard

Zoe Leonard: Survey

Zoe Leonard: Survey

“Zoe Leonard: Survey is the first large-scale overview of the artist’s work in an American museum. The exhibition looks across Leonard’s career to highlight her engagement with a range of themes, including the history of photography, gender and sexuality, loss and mourning, migration, displacement, and the urban landscape. More than it focuses on any particular subject, however, Leonard’s work slowly and reflectively calibrates vision and form. Using repetition, subtle changes of perspective, and shifts of scale, Leonard draws viewers into an awareness of the meanings behind otherwise familiar images or objects. A counter-example to the speed and disposability of image culture today, Leonard’s photographs, sculptures and installations ask the viewer to reengage with how we see.”

[freyashi]

Record

The amazing exhibition in the NSW Art Gallery

[freyashi]

Week 9 - working process

(Almost) All the pictures looks nice under the enlarger, but shows different on the RC paper. Have to be careful~

[freyashi]

Week 9 - working process

F8, 12sec

It is very vague and I don’t know why. It is a little bit unclear and I guess it might be lose focus. However, it shows pretty clear under the enlarger. I may make some change when I’m going take another tape, to do some research so I can work better on the focus of the photo.

I borrowed the multigrade filter 3 and tried again but it didn’t went well, I guess I just didn’t really focused when I took it by the camera, there’s nothing wrong with the enlarger nor the printing process.

[freyashi]

Week 8 research

Street photography & photographing buildings and cityscapes \

[freyashi]

Work of today~

64cm / f8 / 5sec, 10sec, 15sec, 25sec

[freyashi]

Shadows

[freyashi]

Research - part 1

Incredible and unique - Zoe Leonard

[freyashi]

Assessment 1 and some change of the luminogram

Because the paper is very sensitive to light, it will continuous changing under lights. Also, I accidentally washed the paper so now it displays an unexpected figure.

[freyashi]

Start preparing for assignment 2! 💆🏻‍♀️

[freyashi]