Music Photography

For the first task we were asked to chose a Music Photographer we may be interested in and analyse some their work and then present their work to the group. As a source of inspiration we also looked at what type of music the artists produce For this task I chose to look at Pennie Smith.

Pennie Smith is an English Photographer who was born in London in 1949. She is known for having photographed several rock musicians such as The Who, The Clash, U2 and most importantly The Rolling Stones.

Below are some of her images:

Pennie was famous for her black and white images which made her stand out from the rest of the music photographers.

This is an image by Pennie of Rock legends Paul Weller; Pete Townshend which were shot around 1978. A photographer for New Musical Express, Smith liked to work close to the stage, never planning a shot but acting on instinct.  She knew the performance styles of both Paul Weller, then fronting the Jam, and the Who's Pete Townshend well enough to sense what they would do.  When each made a characteristic jump, she shot.  Weller's guitar technique was inspired by Townshend -- as were his jumps.  The Jam was so influenced by the Mod-era Who that the band was often referred to as the new Who.  Weller, then twenty, broke up his band four years later to form the R &  B-tinged Style Council.  The Who, which originally formed in 1964, also announced that the 1982 tour would be the band's last, but eventually re-formed temporarily for several reunion performances.

Pennie Smith made one of the the most famous photographs in the history of rock 'n' roll - the cover image for London Calling by The Clash.

For the second task we were asked to produce a single image for an album cover.  As a group we chose to do a remake of the Jackson five Christmas Album as we where hearding towards Christmas ourselves.  This was a fantastic opportunity to see how well we would work as a group. For this task we looked at the album art throughout the develpoment of the genre and then we had to produce a meaningful album cover for their album. 

Below is the final image:

View Point Images

Today we did an entire lecture on view points and were asked to produce at least two good images which show view points.  I went out and about and I shot these two images which I decided to put up on my blog.

 

I love the image above which shows a good example of view point.  I took this image in Didsbury Village this afternoon as part of today's exercise. 

This is another perfect example of View Point, which I shot just outside college.

Task: Create a Product Advert

This is what we did in today's lesson with Rich.  We were asked to create a product which you could then go on to sell.  It was pretty challenging considering the weather was pretty miserable.

Assignment 1: Depth of Field

1). Depth of field in simple terms is how much an image is in focus and according to Langford, M et al (2007), you can reduce a number of different kinds of blur available depending on what program you are working in.  Evidence of depth of field can be found in some of the work done by professional photographers and as an example, I have chosen this picture by Dinae Arbus. As illustrated in the picture below, the portrait has an out of focus background.

This is a perfect example of Diane Arbus's work on short depth of field


2).This is one of Sally Mann's family pictures and it illustrates a perfect example of short depth of field.  I personally do not like the picture because it seems to me that the children are being exploited.  My personal opinion!

3). Below are a  few typical examples of Jan Groover's work.  In my opinion she was a fantastic photographer.  She has always taught people to trust their vision.  Her still lives of everyday objects are phenomenon.  Her bright colours are incredible.  Speechless!

 I love the idea that most of the items on the table are in focus.  Great stuff.

 This is another of my favourite image of hers to date.  It somehow reminds me of food.  Each time I look at this image, I feel hungry,,, this to me is an amazing photograph.

4). I found very little on Mr Kevin Horn

 No comment.

5).



 This is an example of Justin Windle's still life work.  This is all I can say at the moment about this guy's work as I did not spend much time researching about him.

Here is another of his images.

 

Below are a few images I took of different depths of field when we went out to the Manchester Art Gallery with college. 

I was trying my hands on Depth of field using different buttons i.e. the preview button with a Nikon D80 with a 18-105mm Kit lens. I have tried doing the following:

1. First I set my aperture to 5.6, then focused only on the word Big(see image below), I then adjusted the light meter and than pressed the DOF button.
2. Again I changed the aperture to 11 with same steps then to 22 with the same steps. Therefore only the words I took images of where actually in focus whereas the rest were blurred. 

As I was only experimenting, some of the images were too blurry and therefore decided not add them onto my blog.

Below is a diagram of what buttons I was messing around with for depth of field

If you look closely at the image, only the middle bit is in focus.  The rest is slightly blurry.