Light & Dark
Spider Diagrams
Light & Dark Pinterest
Willy ronis
Willy Ronis is a French photographer who's work consists go photographs taken post-war in Paris. The photographs are all in black and white and are of a happy moment in someones life. I think Willy Ronis focuses on both the scene that is displayed in front of him and how much light is in his photograph. A couple of his images include shadows or light being reflected off of water. When I noticed this I felt inspired by Willy's technique of including light in an image, so much so that I would like to try and do the same in one of my future experiments. Most of the photographs include children and natural lighting. This may have been done to give off a sweet and loving vibe as children are very cheerful/innocent and sunlight gives a sense of purity. |
Horst P Horst
Horst P Horst is a German-american fashion photographer who takes quite abstract black and white photographs. This set of light and dark photographs has a very clear subject. The black and white filter on these photographs makes objects stand out which I think was purposely done by the photographer. My eyes are instantly drawn to the subject of each photograph, this is because of how each subject is placed in front a very plain backdrop. Horst decided to have a clear contrast between colours which actually interests me as a viewer. I'm attracted to his work of the old style involved in some of his photographs. The very last image on the left (bottom right) is a photograph os a young lady wearing an old fashioned white hat, gloves and suit. I really like this image because of how the very dark shadow covers the woman facial features. The shadow also adds contrast to the photograph because the entire photo includes white items and the shadow is the only dark thing in the image. The light used in his photography is very harsh which is why the shadow are so sharp. I think the photographer has done this my using a bright studio light which is set up off the frame. |
Ferdinando Scianna
Ferdinando Scianna is an Italian photographer who was once given an award for his photography. His work includes candid street photography with natural lighting. Ferdinando captures a second of a persons' life in such an unexpected way which is why I like his photographs. Looking at these photographs makes me eager to know what the people in the photos are doing or where they are going. Multiple question pop into my head because I am very interested in the complicated lives of other people, which is another why I enjoy looking at images like these. And I think this is what the photographer wanted, I think Ferdinando wanted his viewers to feel curious about who those people are and why they are doing things they are photographed to be doing. |
Janne Parviainen
Janne Parviainen is one of the most well known light painting photographers. All his photographs include an excessive amount a light painting. Almost every part of each photograph is covered in bright neon lines. I chose to study his photographs because he uses colour which my previous photographers don't and because I love how eye-catching they are and I did not think of using light painting in this component. Janne's work interests me mostly because of how much light is used in each photograph. I am very curious as to how she managed to take the photographs. I have once attempted light painting in component 1, but I never managed to get more than a couple lines in the photograph using penlights. I think Janne Parviainen wanted his viewers to be able to just stare at his photographs because go how bright and colourful he made his work. This collection of images has really inspired me to use light painting in later experiments for Light & Dark. |
Andreas Levers
Andreas Levers is a photographer who takes photographs of lonely looking sites with nothing but a couple of light sources, such as a lamppost. Andreas's photographs all only have a couple of colours in them which are a result of the source of light. Each image also seems to be very foggy which makes the light stand out even more in the photographs. I find this way of capturing light and dark very intriguing because he does not use a black and white filter to show the difference between light and dark. He takes his images, most likely, very late at night because there are no people in any of his images and the sky is completely black. This helps the viewer the see the contrast between the light and the dark in his images. I find this method of showing the difference between light and dark very admirable which is why I decided to study Andreas's work. |
Darek Grabus
Darek Grabus's photography only consists of black and white images. He plays with shadows of reflections that things like forks make. Most of his photographs are taken very close to the subject, making it hard to identify what I am looking at. I chose to look at his work because I felt inspired by him using forks and spoons to create shadows and reflections. Darek made it very simple to spot the contrast between light and dark in his images which is was initially caught my attention. I hope to take similar photographs within this component. |
First Response
For my first response to Light and Dark I tried out two things. The first thing I experimented with was comparing a light sourced at different times of the day. You can see this by looking at the first ten images below. I took a photograph of five interesting light sources at around 4:30pm, then on my way back at around 7:30pm I repeated what I did before. Once realising that only ten photographs is not enough for a first response, I continues to take photos of eye-catching right sources. I find that these images turned out how I wanted them to. I wanted the subject of the photographs to stand out to the viewer as I thought it would be appropriate to the contrasting tones, 'light and dark'. Which is why I chose to centre each subject in the photographs.
Josef Sudek
Practice Light Painting
In response to Janne Parviainen, I decided to experiment with light painting. It took an hour to work out the correct settings on the new camera but we found that ISO 100, F-STOP 8 and 10 SECONDS worked well. As you can see, the first couple of photographs did not manage to pick up any other moving light, other than the red light in the dark room. I used the flash on my phone to create the thin white lines in the images and my phone screen to create thick, faint and coloured lines. As this was purely experimental, the photographs I produced do not mirror the work of Janne Parviainen, they were taken just for fun and to see if light painting was something I wanted to continue with in this component.
Experimentation
After deciding to continue using light painting in the topic Light & Dark, I created another set of photographs which were taken in the dark room. I chose to use a different camera this time which ends up making the images turn out a lot redder than the previous photographs, but I liked this change as I like brightly coloured photographs. Another positive change in this set of images is that I managed to find a red and white penlights. This helped make the strokes of light glow a lot more which makes these images stand out. I tried to loosely replicate the work of Janne Parviainen this time by outlining object in the room, such as a chair, computer, enlarger, etc. I find that these photographs worked out very well as (in most of them) the subject of the photograph is very clear to the viewer because it has been outlined.
Man Ray
Man Ray is the founder of 'rayograms' or photograms. In his work he tends to use object you would find at home such as a pair of scissors. I have chosen to look at his work because it has opened my mind to a new technique that I could use for this component. Man Ray's work has inspired me to experiment with photograms |
MAn Ray Response
Shadow Experimentation
I decided to take a set of photographs which focused on parts of shadows to find out how clear contrast is created by shadows. For each photograph I zoomed in using a digital camera to focus on clear parts of shadows. I find that most of my photographs are successful in showing sharp and well defined shadows.