A shadow of my former selves

Some images manipulated in photoshop from photographs shot earlier this year.

Art School: Landscape assignment

This week I’ve been preparing to submit an assignment in my photography unit.

Part one of the submission is six landscape photos. I’m having a hard time choosing my top six from this selection.

Photography Exercises – Landscape, Still Life and Portraiture

I am at art school this year, doing part-time studies in drawing, painting and digital photography.

As part of my training I am slowly learning how to use Lightroom and Photoshop, as well as manipulating shutter speed and aperture settings on my DSLR camera.

It’s only been a few weeks, but I think my skill levels are improving.

Here’s a couple of galleries of images I’ve taken for the first photography assignment. We have to submit six landscapes, six still life images and six portraits.

I haven’t selected my final images yet, but these are some of the practice shots in my expanding portfolio.

LANDSCAPES

 

I am interested in dawn views and the early morning light. I also find reflections interesting and the intrusion of the urban/industrial into nature.

The second series is more traditional landscapes.

 

STILL LIFE

I am still getting my head around the idea of photographic still life, but here’s a few that I shot over the weekend. I am interested in light and depth of field. I like to find and focus on detail in the composition and to add incongruous elements.

 

PORTRAITURE

I understand that portraiture is difficult, though perhaps photography is a bit easier than trying to render a likeness in paint or pastels. So far I’ve only managed to capture my cat Calliope Cutlass, but she is a very worthy subject.

 

Iconic “falling soldier” staged – Yeah we know

The Capa "falling soldier" image - real or not?

Well, the controversy around Robert Capa’s “falling soldier” image from the Spanish civil war is not settled yet. A Spanish newspaper is now saying that the image was staged. AFP is now running the story globally.

A similar piece appeared in The Guardian a few weeks ago, but didn’t generate the same interest.

Regular readers of Ethical Martini will be aware that I have long been arguing that the photograph was staged. So I’m not really surprised that this is running again.

I said recently that we would have to wait to see what fresh evidence might emerge from the Mexican suitcase before it can be finally resolved.

In May this year the New York International Center for Photography, which houses the Capa archives, reported it could not find the negative for this image in the  Mexican suitcase which did contain many Spanish civil war photographs.

One interesting note from the AFP story:

El Periodico said it based its study on an exhibition–launched in New York in 2007 and now in Barcelona –of 150 Capa photos taken in conflicts during the 1930s and 1940s.

I saw this exhibition at the Barbican Centre  in London last year and I  wrote extensively on the series that includes “falling man” #1 and “falling man” #2.

I first wrote about the Capa image  in 2007. I’ve always had doubts.

En Francais, Andre Gunthert: “Capa vs Google Earth”

En Espanol, farodevigo.es: La mítica fotografía del miliciano de Capa puede ser falsa

For photojournalism students, if you want to see a reasonably interesting discussion about the ethics of the image, click on over to A Photo Editor.