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[nickgiles]

[nickgiles]

Week 5 -> Positioning Statement

In today’s day and age, photo manipulation is rampant throughout social media; in Gen Z culture, we feel pressured to take photos, or else it never happened, and when we do, they’re likely edited or staged purposefully to present ourselves in the best way. Even though we know they're staged, we still take them for authentic credibility. This semester has been really interesting to learn and pick up Adobe Photoshop to its fullest, I have used Photoshop previously but not at a scale or magnitude like this, usually to mask an item before transferring it over to Illustrator. Methods I used to help create my compositions included taking inspiration from artists such as Geoff Lowe and David Hockney, I plan on researching more artists in the next semester. Additionally, with this inspiration, I looked into our imagery banks and started processing ideas via paper, this helped to communicate possible ideas I had. David Hockney — an amazing artist and photographer with his unique style is something that really captured me; however, due to the limitations of the brief, I unfortunately couldn’t follow through as a possible idea. Over this semester, I feel as though I have had some hit-and-misses in terms of outcomes that I’ve produced; as with everything, I’m still learning the ropes and improving my skills with the software we are primarily using to create these compositions.

[nickgiles]

Week 5 -> Second Composition

Playing purely with what's available within the repository this time — photoshop decided to get really finicky with me and I was losing patience, so the outcome wasn't entirely what I wanted but the vision was there in my opinion.

I was trying to go off of this idea of "curiosity kills the cat", and the tree is like a symbol of climate change... you get the idea.

I think what's not working here is the fact that the tree has simply too many branches and little spots between the branches that are really hard to get into to get rid of the previous background. I also think that the different lighting seen on the tree and the several different cats doesn't help make the image cohesive.

I think I definitely was overshooting in my capabilities with this one, which is fine, and I'm excited to see what I'll do for my final.

[nickgiles]

Week 4 -> Process on Paper

Looking through the available photos in the respitory and thinking of possible ideas and what I could do for my next composition.

I decided to show some of my inner workings that I did on paper, as I found it quite overwhelming thinking of ideas in my head that I needed them out on paper.

[nickgiles]

Week 4 -> Research — Geoff Lowe

Geoff Lowe is a newly emerging photographer who utilises the art form to convey his creativity. He will photograph anything but is well known for his manipulative photos from sporting events.

I think the use of repetition and combining people into one image makes for some really interesting layouts, and it would be really fun to try to recreate for myself.

The photos are quite eye-catching, as you want to look closer to see what exactly is going on.

[nickgiles]

Week 3 -> First Composition

This here is my first composition using David Hockney's method of placing imagery over each other to 'rebuild' the image. I really liked this method and would love to go further with it, however, this method wouldn't pass the assessment due to the lack of other people's imagery (two at least) but I could add other elements of other people's photos, but the brief calls for ONE image of mine, whereas this is multiple...

I took these photos during sunset, and I was only there for maybe 30 minutes? Just snapping photos, but it's so cool to see how the skies changed colour within that timeframe; when I was converting the images to tiffs from Raws, the ship on the right-hand side got discoloured, which is unfortunate. Really interesting to see the lighting fleeting that quickly during the golden hour.

I also like how its so obviously manipulated, I think there's some fun in making manipulation obvious over trying to make things seem realistic.

[nickgiles]

Week 3 -> Photos

This is parts of the house on the wharf at the ferry terminal in Downtown Auckland.

The reason for the separate photos of the house and different heights, sides and angles is that I want to use this, inspired by my research with David Hockney, to make a collage.

[nickgiles]

WEEK 3 -> Research — David Hockney

An unnamed collage, 1982 and Walking in the Zen Garden at the Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto, Feb. 1983

David Hockney, an artist by trade discovered in the 1960s that photographers were using wide-angle lenses in their photographs — a popular trend at the time. He hated this trend as he thought the image turned out more distorted.

At his home in Los Angeles, he realised that upon putting together polaroids on his wall, he created a composition, that told a story. He was so moved by this newfound media that, at one point, he stopped painting to exclusively pursue this new style of photography.

Something that I really enjoy is looking deeper into each photo and examining the difference in lighting and where exactly its composition lies. Unlike other forms of manipulation, this style of photography is rather straightforward and easy to decipher what's happening.

[nickgiles]

WEEK 2 -> How Photographs Can Tell Lies.

I didn't do this last week, so I sat down to have a complete watch-through and wrote notes accordingly; this was mainly as a way for me to memorise but also for later when I look back at this class.

It is amazing to me that, throughout time, its gotten easier and easier to manipulate the outcome photos. Many great examples are given through the video, such as Diane Airbus's and Lewis Hine's "America at Work" factory series.

[nickgiles]

WEEK 2 -> Brief History on Photography

In a post-truth era of photography, the article reconciles with past viewpoints on the art form — that is images having an authentic and factual truth to them. But in fact, that is entirely untrue. 

Imagery is so important in this day and age, that they’re used in legal, political and personal matters, photos are everywhere. In the summer of 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests that were sweeping across America and the globe, Fox News was accused, and rightfully so, of manipulating the imagery surrounding the protests, including that of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ.) The photos manipulated by the news giant were misrepresentative, unethical, and failed to comply with the truth-telling expected and required out of documentative photography. People saw this as a step in the wrong direction morally, additionally, this has led more and more people to question the practices of the media form. 

As someone who is taking journalism as a minor, and is learning about ethics and law, I think it was such a misstep for Fox News, as one of the only right-wing news outlets, to alter photos to create a false narrative to promote it to the public and further devalue their genuineness as a news agency. Personally, I think Fox News shouldn’t even be credited as a news agency and more so a propaganda organization, as they falsely report and are biased towards the republican party. News agencies should work for the public, and report with the public in mind.

Photos have been touched and altered since its inception, but really took off in the 1990s when Photoshop was invented. ‘Photoshopping’ has become so embedded into our modern and contemporary ways yet images are still defined as a way to validate ourselves, a great saying said in the article, “pics or it didn’t happen.”

As someone who is chronically online and deeply into pop culture, and is up-to-date on current world affairs. I cross a line where I think manipulated imagery can be really funny, in the right context, but I am fully aware of the manipulation at hand. A great example of this recently is the ‘BRAT Summer’ and Kamala Harris’s presidency, or what has now been deemed the ‘Coconut BRAT Summer’ by chronically online people like myself. BRAT is an electro-pop club album produced by British singer-songwriter Charli XCX, who went on X (formerly Twitter) to endorse Kamala Harris’s democrat nomination and with all things spawning from that platform (also a place that spreads misinformation and disinformation), X went into overdrive and funny videos of Kamala dancing to songs on the BRAT Album. This has partly contributed to Harris’s popularity within Gen Z.

[nickgiles]

WEEK 2 -> In-Class Workshop

Thank you, David, for teaching us some neat Photoshop skills; there were commands I did not know about, like cmd + j! I will be adding this to my repertoire.

[nickgiles]

WEEK 2 -> Photos

This week I tried something I've never done before, and that was photographing fruit. In the photos, I used a crimson pear. I cut it in half and took photos of its insides. I also took bites out of the apple, which I initially did because I was hungry, but also maybe to create a message that someone can use. I used flash to get the texture of the apple's insides.

some of the categories I was considering when taking these photos were;

Fruit

[nickgiles]

WEEK 1 -> Photos

In this week's photos I looked to the bird sculpture seen in Hobsonville, it is almost tradition now for me to come back and take photos of this sculpture (as I've done it for the past three semesters.)

It was really interesting trying to take photos that weren't just for my personal use.

some of the categories I was considering when taking these photos were;

Human-made Object -> the sculpture,

Day scene -> the time of day,

Something far away -> the view of the Waitematā Harbour,

Above & Below -> taking photos underneath and from up inside the sculpture.

[nickgiles]

WEEK 1 -> In-Class Activity PART 2

These photos were part of the second in-class activity where we were getting to grips with what the assignment was about — photography-wise.

Categories I considered for this;

Human-made Object

Light Scene

Transport

Vanishing Point

[nickgiles]

WEEK 1 -> In-Class Activity PART 1

What is the role of a 21st Century Photographer? By Grant Scott.

This was a super insightful piece to learn about, especially considering that one of the jobs I'm considering in the future is Photojournalism.

[nickgiles]

WEEK 1 -> Sem 2 Brief

[nickgiles]

2024 SEM 1 ↓

Interpreted Image