Has everyone seen the competition on the Chisholm Web Page?
This is a great opportunity to design a poster using skills you picked up in Digital Studies last year. The first prize is an iPad Mini which would be very useful for students or anyone wishing to show off their art as they travel around to prospective buyers or galleries.
I am attaching my attempt in here to give you some encouragement to have a go!
Good Luck!!
For Digital Studies to cap off the year in my Visual Arts course we were asked to follow a photographer’s idea that can be seen on the web. He went out and started taking shots of complete strangers, putting a little bit of a story about them as well on to his web site. The idea has really taken off and he now has literally hundreds of photos and his style has matured to some interesting interpretations and insights into his subjects.
We were asked to take five photos of strangers, taking this photographer’s idea as inspiration.
I am terrible at approaching strangers at the best of times, but these days people can be very suspicious of anyone coming up to them out of the blue to take their picture. I hope my compromise for this assessment task will be acceptable. I also ended up photographing six as I couldn’t leave out any of the ones that I had thought of!
For this project I decided to make a theme of semi-rural businesses and the people who work in them. I have used my town of Pearcedale and have approached some businesses that I have had some dealings with but of which I may not know all the workers very well. In the case of my farrier and his new apprentice, I have been dealing with their boss mostly and was just introduced to the apprentice on this visit.
This was such a positive and fun exercise. Everyone I approached said yes! They were all happy to have their part in my project and all agreed to be in this blog! How good is that!
I have really enjoyed working cooperatively with these business people and they even came up with ideas about how to pose for the shots. It is a chance to promote our town and businesses and to build up better networking and personal relationships with all these great people.
I am writing a little about each business to go along with each photo (note that I have done a “stylised” set of these photos which are also included). So here we go!
1. Rohan – Farrier
Finding a really good farrier that truly cares about horses is a rarer thing these days. I have had the services of several terrific farriers over the years as I am very particular about who touches my horses. Rohan apprenticed with Peter who was recommended by the farrier before him who is now an expert remedial farrier in Japan. Rohan has just spent time overseas honing his skills and as you can see by the attention he and his new apprentice are giving my old guy, they are worth every cent. Another great thing about Rohan, he texts you to let you know when he’ll be arriving if he’s a bit early or late!
2. Dayle – Ron Whitney Pharmacy
Dayle was very happy to let me photograph her in the beauty room. Ron Whitney has run his pharmacy in Pearcedale for many years now and it has grown to include a terrific beautician service. I haven’t been very often but the few times I have had the opportunity I have been truly spoiled rotten. All the ladies and indeed the pharmacists working at the shop are friendly, informative and helpful and this has been a great chance to get to know them better.
3. Adrian – Pearcedale Hardware
I usually only pop into the hardware a few times a year to buy weed spray for the property. My loss really as after talking to Adrian I discovered that there are a lot of new services in his business. We are renovating our premises so I was very interested in his accurate colour matching system for paints. There is also a great display for the covering to go on to pergolas etc. This sheeting is something we have been thinking about for the back of the house so good to see information about it available locally. Adrian was fun to photograph, he suggested the pose and worked with me really well!
4. Shane – Pearcedale Butchers
Shane has a great face for photography, although he probably wouldn’t admit it! I haven’t had the opportunity to chat with him much over the years as things just tend to get away from you sometimes. This was a chance to reacquaint myself with not only his fun-loving personality but also some of his new products (and a couple of old ones!) as I could not leave his butchers without purchasing some of the goodies in the display counter. Shane posed for me really well and even though he rarely uses this chopper to cut up meat these days he was happy to help me create the shot I was after.
5. Matthew – Mr Fix It Mobile Mechanics
I have had a lot of work done on my ageing Commodore at this mechanics based in the petrol station over the past year. I know the boss really well but not his assistant – but now I know him a bit better. When I asked if he would like to help out he said yes straight away. They already had a car on the hoist so in a couple of shots we had a great pose. The guys were their usual fun and friendly selves, making me feel like the whole thing was no imposition at all. I know they are always very busy, so am grateful to them for their time.
6. Lisa – Pearcedale Nursery
I wish I could get in to this business more often! I usually do business with the guys here, and they are all very knowledgeable and so polite to ladies with lots of plants to carry! This nursery has to have the most reliable plants I have every bought, I lose very few after planting. The prices are fantastic and I have sent several friends to do business with them. Lisa is one of the owners and she made taking her photo really easy. She is a lovely person and we had a chat about all sorts of things as I worked out where I wanted her to stand. She was taking care of a customer as I took the shot, which was just what I was after. Thanks Lisa!
Personal Note:
I want to thank every one who posed for me in Pearcedale today and yesterday. We are so very lucky to have such wonderful people working in such well run businesses in our semi-rural community. That is why I love living here and why I am so dedicated to supporting and promoting all our local businesses. You are all champions!
Over the space of a couple of weeks we were asked to go out and do some photography in preparation for some images to be created in Photoshop. The filters and tools in this program allow for some amazing merging and changing of not only colours, but combining images together, distorting, and heaps of other things – the list too long to go into.
I have used Photoshop since version 1 and there are multiple ways of doing nearly any task in it. It is changed and added to with every version so keeping up with what it can do is a job in itself. Given this, I have had the opportunity to keep fairly up to date with version 5 on my personal Mac in the office and even with a cheap camera was able to come up with some mages that I am fairly happy with.
I am putting them in here for all to see what can be achieved in less than three hours in front of your Mac with Photoshop. Enjoy the view!
Digital Studies Class 16th May
Tutor: Troy (Sessional Trainer in Digital Studies)
I had a very relaxing and fun morning today in Digital Studies. We were doing similar to what I used to do during my lunch break at various jobs to try to give myself a creative break from the “sausage factory” that can be display advertising and graphic art for the print industry.
The theme was “Pop Art” similar to that of Roy Lichtenstein who was very famous for his prints and collages of pop art style art from the 1960s to the 1990s and that of Andy Warhol whose work has become iconic around the world.
I have a lot of years experience using Photoshop and the Mac so it was fun and relaxing. As it is with Photoshop though, there are a multitude of ways to do things and there is always something else you can learn. Everyone “won” today. I learned a few new tricks, I was able to help a few people who were struggling and take the pressure of the tutor who helped someone who was really feeling out of their depth – and it was fun. It was also a bit of experience for me as a tutor since I have my Certificate IV in Training and Assessment!
Methods used to produce my images include: create layers, colour adjustment (saturation, replace colour, alter colour), adjust layers (transparency, make a darken layer etc), name layers, emboss, bevel, patterns, clone, create mask, add noise, posterise, crop file size for A4, save file as PSD, save file as JPG – amongst others – sorry I got excited and didn’t write them all down.
Have a look below, I have included the three images I produced today. I have done two variations on the third design to show how the colour changes change the look of the art.
As it is just for study and NOT for sale I chose a famous face to do my first work and did 2 variations of the same photo for the next couple of designs. As I said these are purely for study purposes and not for sale or anything to do with my art business so I hope viewers will take this into consideration.
David Hockney Collages
I know we haven’t been calling them collages, but David does on his web site and I keep forgetting the other name! So here are my two attempts for Semester 1, 2012!
Number 1 is a walk through the campus to the courtyard outside C Block.
Number 2 is my husband watching the DVD of Transformers. He is usually so animated during movies I wanted to capture it!
Method
Both these documents were built using similar techniques.
1. Photographs were taken over a time period from ten minutes to one and a half hours.
2. Photographs were loaded on to the computer in iPhoto and sorted
3. Photographs were then saved into a folder in my training directory on my Mac for Digital Art Classes
4. Photographs were opened in Photoshop and a new document was saved to the size and dpi requirements for printing
5. Photographs were copied into layers and spread through the documents in a timeline fashion.
6.Various photos were treated with filters such as: Deep Etch, Art filters – Pastel Effects, Poster Edges, Watercolour. Layers were given transparency and drop shadows, a text layer was created. Some features were cut from pics and filters applied, and they were spread down the page to help with the “flow” from top to bottom.
7. Colour correction and lightening was applied to some layers
8. The file was exported as a PDF for inclusion into the blog.
Janice Mills 