Larry Clark is an American film director and photographer. His stark explorations of the  seedier side of life, particularly in youth culture, has invited a great deal of controversy. 


http://museum.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/larry_clark/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Clark

Images from http://www.luhringaugustine.com/artists/larry-clark

 Belloc was a photographer who worked in New Orleans. He is known for his work recording some of the seedier side of life. In particular the prostitutes who worked in Storyville, the red light district and also local opium dens of Chinatown. He worked using 8" x 10" glass negatives. His work was rescued many years after his death by Lee Friedlander.



http://www.masters-of-photography.com/B/bellocq/bellocq.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._J._Bellocq

from Susan Sontag's introduction to   Bellocq: Photographs from Storyville, the Red-Light District of New Orleans
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/B/bellocq/bellocq_articles2.html

 Robert Mapplethorpe thought was an American photographer who worked mainly out of his New York studio. He was particularly known for his controversial photographs of nude men, often black, with homoeroticism being a feature of this work. He was also well-known for his very strong portraits, female nudes and incredibly sensuous photographs of flowers.

http://www.mapplethorpe.org/portfolios/ 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mapplethorpe

TALKING TO TODD HIDOAmerican-based photographer takes eerie photographs of empty houses and lost women in surburbia
http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/8087/1/talking-to-todd-hido

http://www.artnet.com/artwork/426021521/423818140/todd-hido-1687.html

For my panorama assignment I decided to stitch together ten portrait format images I had taken at Yangoora winery (http://www.yangooraestate.com.au/) near Lenswood in the Adelaide Hills. I also covered the same scene in 6 landscape images.

Part of the problem was there were significant exposure variations on 3 of the images. I started  by doing a basic stitch with the intention of correcting the exposure on the relevant layers in the joint image. What I discovered however was that in correcting the image for the vineyards/foreground meant the sky was noticeably different, and vice versa. Therefore I loaded the 10 images into camera raw and then corrected the 3 images against the others to obtain similar exposures. I then did the stitching process again and found the images were much more balanced. The fill worked very well just leaving a basic crop.  I then reduced the highlights, opened the shadows slightly and increased saturation and vibrancy a little. I could refine this image a little further if I had more time.

Over all I am pleased with the result. Taking the series of photographs in portrait format gave the image a little more height which I think improves the look. Another lesson is to spend more time calculating the exposure and shoot on manual. I did not and pay the penalty! A tripod would probably have helped but you can only use what you have.

And then I talked to the CJ  and thought again! I decided to crop a little from each side and excise the cars at the winery and in the distance. I also removed other evidence of buildings and increased the colour intensity, particularly in the sky in order to bring out the beauty in the clouds more.

 For my second image I stitched another 10 vertical images of the Brisbane River taken from a high vantage point. I also needed to blend in a couple of wide-angle landscape images for the horizon. With the setting sun I decided to increase the drama to give a somewhat surrealistic effect.

 It has been very interesting exploring the possibilities of panoramic photography.In my research I discovered a free program called Hugin - Hugin - Panorama photo stitcher hugin.sourceforge.net/‎  I downloaded this and experimented. It actually enables you to take an amazing number of images as if you are the centre of the globe so you overlap both vertically and horizontally from your feet to the space immediately above you (zenith to nadir). I put over 50 images into the program and it came up with quite an  usable image. There are many tutorials and controls to experiment with given time. 


One thing it did make me wonder was what would happen if I threw the same set of images into Photoshop? I was amazed to find that  it did not get indigestion and also came up with another usable image. Again, for best results you would need a tripod and to control the exposure.

Therefore, a major finding of this panorama exercise, is that you can take a number of 'rows' of images and  PS can handle it! This really opens up some creative possibilities.

Loretta Lux's images are extraordinary, not least because they appear to be so simple. She is particularly known for her images of children, almost expressionless with heads and particularly the eyes somewhat enlarged, somewhat alienated. The overall effect is very painterly which was her initial training.  Indeed, the images could easily have been paintings using a pastel pallette. The exquisitely composed images appear unsophisticated with  plain backgrounds, if any, washed of colour. The fact that she uses no shadows simply adds to the strangeness of these images.

“I use children as a metaphor for a I lost paradise" Lux

http://www.lorettalux.de

DigPhotog 5
Samstag mus - download

Lexis Sinclair
Inspiration boards - eg, Bottacelli
Prolific writing - read sheets, website,
Scouting locations - technical test
Blog entry on Bill Henson - fig leaves



Annie Leibovitz

Simon Strong
Image inside a room - green striped nude
Glowing cabbages - fantastical images open own minds
Angkor
Skin tones as burnt wood - portrait





The literal doesn't nec satisfy most photographers

Angas McBain - surreal
Magdelana bohrs - magic in ordinary settings


Kimber
Yearning for pre history - fictional landscapes

Andrew mabo
Old style - fantasies - tools allow to be achieved much easier

How to get started!

Not being a natural blogger - I will use this space for notes from the tutorials and an online gallery of photographers I have discovered. I will get back to commenting on individual photographers in time but for me the most important thing is the images. This collection, of ambiguous legality, serves to remind me of images that seem quintessential to each photographer - visual notes if you will. 

The lecture notes may seem cryptic but serve to jog my memory and in particular, note things I need to follow up on as I become less time poor  
:-))