Visual Arts

There are 111 posts filed in Visual Arts (this is page 4 of 12).

What Can you do with an Old Film Camera?

oldcameraI still have my 35mm (analogue) camera from college. I began using it about 20 years ago. It was a big purchase at the time, my Mother helped me pay for it when I was starting college and needed the camera for the Photography part of Corporate Communications at Centennial College (Warden Woods campus, which is now gone).

I can remember the teacher in the class talking about the future of film and photography. Computers were still pretty new then. Most offices had them for word processing but they were many years from being used in every home. The Internet existed, but almost no one knew anything about it. I can remember thinking how great it would be to have a camera which did not need film to be developed. The camera itself had been expensive but it was the cost of developing film and buying more film which was really making it hard to keep from falling behind in the class work.

Even though I have not used that old film camera for many years, I can’t quite let it go. I still have it in the case with the Canadian flag decorated camera strap. I could re-use the old strap for my new bigger digital camera but that just seems so wrong. Like deconstructing an old friend. I did let go of my old photography text book a few years ago. But that is as far as I have gotten to leaving behind the age of film.

What can you do with an old film camera, assuming you get the point where you can let it go?

There are a few people who still use the old film cameras? You could look for them (groups of them) and see if your camera is collectible or worth saving for posterity.

You may find a charity which will take them and be able to find people who will still use them. Or, an artist who wants to work with retro or vintage cameras.

Look for ways to repurpose them. Can parts be salvaged for other projects or for use with your new digital cameras?  A repurposed camera could be an interesting steampunk project.

Curating Cuteness: Building an Affordable Camera Collection for the Analog Enthusiast

Toronto Star: A Nerd’s World reclaims beguiling visions of our lives from old cameras

Atomic Vision: The Pleasure of Collecting Old Cameras

Camera Mods –  Take a vintage film camera that no longer works and convert it to digital.

15 Ways to Look Thinner in Photographs

  1. Smile, not just a small smile. It makes you look lighter in every way.
  2. Breathe. Holding your breath is not going to help.
  3. Step away form the camera. You look bigger when you fill most of the picture.
  4. Watch your posture, stand tall with shoulders at relaxed right angles.
  5. Don’t stand with you arms pressed to the sides of your body.
  6. Turn to the side, the angle gives you some depth versus the wider head on look.
  7. Stand with one foot in front of the other.
  8. Put your tongue against the roof of your mouth.
  9. Push your jaw a bit forward or back to match up your front teeth, top and bottom. 
  10. Angle your chin up, slightly. 
  11. Camouflage your trouble spots by standing in front of something or someone or hold something in your arms. Set your laptop, purse or other bag at your feet to hide ankles.
  12. If possible have the camera angle come from above you, nothing drastic, just enough to be slightly overhead.
  13. Romantic, soft or dim lighting will help blur lines of your face and figure flaws too.
  14. Wearing black is a long recommended way to look thinner, but wearing colours will actually help brighten up your look and make you seem happier and thinner.
  15. Avoid tight clothing but don’t wear something over-sized either. Baggy clothes make you seem bulkier.

30 Fun Things to do with a Digital Camera

  • Create a wish list. Make a catalogue of things you would like for your next birthday, Christmas or other event.
  • Take a photo of important information like a list of phone numbers, your Christmas card list, something you need to remember later and so on. Take a photo of your shopping list so you can send it to yourself if you forget the list at home.
  • Keep an idea file with photos of things you have seen and would like to make yourself. Or a hairstyle you would like next time you are getting a trim.
  • Photograph collections of things. An especially effective way to deal with clutter from collecting too many things. Choose which you really want to keep and photograph the collection before you disperse the rest. 
  • Play scavenger hunt with friends or family. Photograph something specific in your home or town and challenge others to find the item or place you photographed.
  • Turn a photo into a jigsaw puzzle instead of the more traditional greeting card sent for events, holidays and such occasions.
  • Become a photojournalist and collect all your photos to tell a story.
  • Use your photos for digital scrapbooking and keeping an art journal.
  • Choose something interesting or unique and take a photo of a day, create a series. See if you can take a photo a day for a full month, even a full year.
  • Take photos in black and white and see how different people, places and things look in shades of grey.
  • Photograph collections of things by colour. Display items of all sorts, but all of them are red, for instance.
  • Photograph the same place at sunset and again at sunrise, make sure you have the camera positioned in the same spot for both photographs.
  • Practice portrait photography using dolls, stuffed animals and other inanimate toys with faces. Pose them and sort them in patterns and try different light and shadows too.
  • Photograph reflections in windows, water and anything else creative. Mirrors don’t really count, too easy.
  • Try night photography. Make the most of available light or explore the flash features (avoid washed out photos from flash).
  • Take selfie photos. Explore new ways to take quick self portraits.
  • Photograph people with different facial expressions. Start a collection.
  • Create a household inventory. Useful for insurance but a good way to go through what you have and sort it out.
  • Take a photo of old photos and other things which will fade with time. A digital photo can keep them fresh, preserved.
  • Photograph your luggage when you travel. If anything goes missing you can show just what you had when you started out.
  • Play with macro and close up photos. Insects are a good challenge, interesting and not hard to find out in the garden. Flowers and plants are popular for up close pictures too.
  • Photograph anything you would like to sell and post the photo to online forums where people are buying.
  • Try street photography. If you’re too shy find a good place to people watch and pretend you’re checking your camera while you take the photos.
  • Try food photography. Learn how to display fruit, vegetables and home baked goodies for taking great images.
  • Take photos by candlelight. Make them romantic or spooky.
  • Try urban exploration, taking a photo of something forgotten or derelict in your area.
  • Play with focus. Focus on items near and then try the same photo with the focus on something in the background.
  • Try catching a water drop and the ripples they create in the standing water.
  • Go abstract, looking for interesting shapes, textures and colours to turn into unique images.
  • Take a drive and get into landscape and nature photography. Or, find a great spot where you can take a photo of the cityscape for your town/ city.

Photocopy Art

From an original post on Suite101 by Jo Murphy. The post and Jo Murphy’s bio link are gone since Suite101 revamped the site.

Copy Art Pioneered in Canada
Centre Copie-Art Opened in Montreal in 1982 by Jacques Charbonneau

Although it was an international art movement, Canada is recognised for its major contribution to the art form called Copy Art.

According to the Encyclopaedia of Twentieth Century Photography, Copy Art or Xerography was pioneered in Canada, where it is still popular today. Copy Art, uses the photocopier to create artworks by reproducing and multiplying images. The artists play with the process of transformation of graphic images. They experiment with the metamorphosis brought about by the alchemy of light at the heart of the reproduction technology.

Origins of Copy ArtThe electrography process was developed in the USA and Germany in 1938. But this technology became freely available by the year 1960. Copy Art began to appear as an art form by about 1970, and the first exhibition of this kind of art called "Rochester" was held in 1979. Other exhibitions of this type were held in Canada in the same year.

After making its first appearance in France in 1975, copy art became more accepted. By 1983, an exhibition called "Electra" was held in the Musee d’Art de la Ville de Paris. The gallery devoted considerable space to the art form.

Copy Artist Pati HillArtist Pati Hill exhibited in the "Electra" exhibition, working with shadows, grains, and contrasts of black and white as well as textures and micro textures. To create this work, Hill created imagery from feathers, flowers fabrics and plants, says de Meridieu. In a chapter about innovative pioneers in the book called Digital and Video Art, de Mèredieu goes on to talk about Hill as a contemporary experimentalist and her work as extravagant. An example of Hill’s technique, she explains, was to photograph every possible (visible, invisible, obvious and unexpected) of the Palace of Versailles.

Centre Copie-Art of Canada

Copy Art continues to thrive in Canada today. The founder of the Canadian movement was Jacques Charbonneau. After discovering the technique, when he was on holiday, he returned to Canada where he opened Centre Copie-Art in Montreal in 1982.

Body Art and Other Offshoots of Xerography

Practitioners of body art, such as Amal Abdenour and Phillipe Boissonnet, reproduced different parts of the body using photo copiers. They were exploiting variations of colour and the effects of contrast and solarisation. Much of this work was achieved by using overlays of transparencies.

Because it so versatile, there have been many different developments and innovations that have evolved from Copy Art. According to de Mèredieu, magazines and fanzines sprang up around artist centres such as art schools and colleges. A centre recognised as famous for encouraging this type of art form was Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Dijon.

de Mèredieu points to the importance of this movement, when she mentions that Klaus Urbons founded a museum of photocopying in Mulheim an der Ruhr in Germany. Here there are displayed old machines, documentation and artist’s work. Another example of the value of the body of work, the style and the method, is the opening in 1990 of a major international museum of electrography in Cuenca in Spain.

Street Photography: Fashion Photography of the Ordinary

I see a lot of street photography when I look at photographs and sites that interest me. But, I never really felt they were interesting photos until today when I found the photos from Vivian Maier, vintage street photography.

Looking at those ordinary people from the 1950s was fascinating. I started with one photo and then clicked for another and another and another. Soon I had spent 20 minutes looking at street photography. I was surprised. Then I realized, street photography is like creating a snapshot of our lives, a time capsule that can be opened any day.

Without knowing the people I could see the character and the role they played in life. Seeing their background was more important than it seemed at first. The background shows other people, fashion, buildings, products for sale, and so on. Without seeing a date on the photograph you could guess when the photo was taken and where (in a general way).

I have new appreciation for modern street photography and street photographers now. We don’t have time machines so we have to record our own history as we live it.

 

Street photography gives us a look at ourselves, in our current time and (with vintage photos) our past.

ASCII Art is a Useful Skill for a Writer

We are told to bring something extra, unique, something people will remember to each query we sent for our freelance writing ideas. Most writers are limited in what they can show in text. I’m not. I’ve made ASCII art for more than 10 years (on and off). Just today I thought about how I could create something and send it along with a query letter. Not as something in the envelope but in the actual letter, on the same paper my query is typed into. This even works for email queries, though not as nicely as something I can actually print out.

What do you think?

14 Reasons Why Artists Keep Visual Journals

14 Reasons Why Artists Keep Visual Journals.

April 13th, 2005

By Joan Martine Murphy

Keeping a visual journal helps the artist develop a sense of self–discipline.  By drawing in your journal everyday you are developing the habit of creativity.  The drawings can be ever so simple and as time goes by you will have developed a repertoire and a visual source book.  When the time comes to design a long term drawing, a painting or sculpture you will have a wealth of ideas available and you will have developed your skills so that drawing up your design is just a matter of applying what you have learned.

The chronological nature of the journal means that you are automatically recording your personal improvement.  By recording trouble spots that need attention you are creating a path for yourself to follow.  Because the internet is such a rich source of instruction and example you should put aside time to go online to find out what the solution to your artistic problems may be.  Once you have collected a variety of examples and ideas use them to work out a personal solution by trying out all that you have seen.  This process will nurture your artistic development and help you develop a sense of direction.

A journal can become for you a ‘place’ where you can work out what themes are developing on the journey.  As issues, questions and ideas develop ‘go with them’ and let them give you direction.  Themes are good because they give you a dialogue and point of interest.  This can be a good starting point for discussions with other artists and fellow students.

It is always good when you are presenting your work to be able to fit it into a theme.  Many exhibitions are grouped in this way.  The working out of a theme also gives the artist a sense of completion when that thematic response has been followed to its logical conclusion.

Style is a process of evolution.  When you begin keeping your journal you may not even know what your preferred style is.  As you develop on a daily basis a personal style will emerge.  Dialogue with that style.  Ask your self why you have gone in this direction?  Does it make it easier?  Can you see patterns and relationships?  Do you know what is influencing you?  Write you’re self-questioning down in your journal as you go it will make interesting reading in years to come.

Once you have begun to develop the habit of creativity you will also have begun developing an intuitive awareness.  You will see things that stimulate curiosity and provoke fresh and new ideas.  You will not be able to keep up with them.  Jot them down.  Keep your journal at hand at all times. Make sure you always keep it handy and small enough to fit into any bag or in the glove box of the car.  Draw everything that catches the eye.  Later you will be excited by all of the things you have gathered as source material that you would have forgotten about entirely if you had not recorded them in the minute.  Collect ideas by jotting them down (scribble neatness doesn’t count) come back to them at a later date when that intuition or inspiration becomes relevant to the work at hand.  If notes aren’t taken at the time…the thoughts may be lost forever.

Everybody has artistic talent and can be good at drawing. You only have to tune in to the creative, intuitive and artistic side of the brain – the right side – and you will be able to draw accurate and imaginative portraits, landscapes, still lifes.

Regard your journal as your personal safe place. A collection of experimentations. No one should be looking over your shoulder …it is your space for trying out techniques in a non-threatened way before committing to a more public form of artwork.

It is also a means of communication, a holding place for ideas to share with other artists and students who wish to learn.  So keep it with you when mingling with other artists.  If you are making preparations for submissions or to win contracts make sure you are keeping your notes in this way as it can facilitate discussion at a later date if this becomes necessary.

Your journal is your note-takers paradise … as a place where ideas can be kept in the written form as well as visually…  Keep the writing short and precise but do write down any ideas that come to your head as we often forget what stimulated our visual inspirations and the writing may be useful.  Supplement your scribbles with poems, haikus, prose, and songs what ever is helping shape your thoughts and ideas at the time is relevant and may become useful.

Keep technical notes as well make sure you are learning about mixing colours, learning theory. Writing down and recording what you learn means that you have a ready reference.  Again the internet is a great way to find our information… if you are having trouble understanding light sources for example enter that as a search term and you will be amazed at how much free information you can find.  Be patient and don’t just click on the first few sites you find.  There is a wealth of information out there for the taking if you put in that little extra effort.

Set your self-learning tasks of specified natures with a particular learning outcome anticipated. For example record atmospheres by going for a walk in the same place on a daily basis for a month but at different times of the day.  Draw or paint in watercolour exactly what you see.  Or go to a different place but at same times of the day.  Don’t just look for atmospheric or natural effects look to at the kinds of activity you can find.  One example of this might new going to the same street corner at different times throughout the day – even the expressions on the faces of the people will change as they come and go.  Try it you may be amazed.  Another way of creating a learning exercise is to look at and examine objects from all sides and views.  Keep on setting yourself small learning tasks like tis and you will be amazed at how much you improve and how your understanding of techniques increases.

Again your journal is a safe place where you can experiment with abstractions finding ways to express emotions and feelings.  You can make your artistic journey a catalyst in your personal development by recording dreams, daydreams and locating meaning in them through exploration and analysis.  Again the Internet is a great place for subscribing to discussion lists where people want to explore self-empowerment and personal development.

Above all this safe haven of personal expression can become for you if you let it a source of relaxation.   A ready breathing space in a busy way of life.  Learn to do relaxation and breathing exercises before and after you draw not only so that you tap into the more intuitive side of your brain but that so that the discipline of drawing and the artistic pathway becomes a source of great personal pleasure.  Your journal should never be a chore but something you look forward to as a little breather in the busy pace of life.

Eventually your journal will naturally evolve into your precious planning tool. It will be a place where compositions are mapped out over a period of time before any major painting is begun.  Projects will no longer be daunting, as you will have a never-ending fountain of reference ideas and information.  Above all enjoy the journey and don’t let it cause you even the slightest stress.

Journaling is best if it is done daily.  It is also easiest to remember if it is the first thing you do when you wake up of a morning.  Start the day by recording a drawing of your dreams.  Or if you haven’t dreamt throughout the night, simply draw the first thing that occurs to you when you wake up.

I copied this for myself years ago. I had kept the link with the original post but that site is no longer online. I did find Joan, still writing at Suite101 and I have given that current link to her and her writing about art and creativity.