Thomas Joshua Cooper Image: Assignment 5

I have selected a few prints which had been auctioned on the Artnet website to show more of Cooper's work. Please visit:

http://www.artnet.com/artist/19799/thomas-joshua-cooper.html

to see further examples of his magnificent land and seascapes.

Assignment 5: In The Style of Thomas Joshua Cooper

In keeping with the brief I have included a series of images submitted for Assignment 5. During the past 25 years Thomas Joshua Cooper has photographed all corners of the globe and these imaginative and outstanding images have been compiled and form exhibitions such as Between Dark and Dark, True, Point of No Return and Dreaming the Gokstadt.

The images I have taken represent my homage to his work and are based on the above 4 touring exhibitions and series of works. Coopers actual images are hand toned silver gelatin prints and the images made on an 1898 Agfa field camera. He makes one image per location.

These images were shot in black and white and then duo and tri toned in Photoshop to match exactly the images represented in his exhibition books.

Assignment 4: Critical Review

Following a conversation and approval from OCA, I elected to research my most beloved of imagemakers, Thomas Joshua Copoper for my Critical Review. Although, not one of the listed photographers, I personally felt the Cooper fulfilled the criteria perfectly.

Having spent considerable time on the text and image selection, I have submitted it and Assignment 5 for appraisal by Grete my tutor. I felt it only fitting to complete both works as one complements the other perfectly and during the last few months I have indulged myself in taking images in the style of TJC.

I have included above a selection of Cooper images, taken from at least 4 of his most recent exhibitions, from Between Dark and Dark, True, Dreaming The Gokstadt and Point of No Return.

A completely rewarding piece of work, the critical review gave the the opportunity to delve deeper into his life and works and look at his reasons and vision behind the works he has completed within the past 40 years.

Photography Level 3: Your Own Exhibition

During the time since my last Blog updates, I have been working feverishly on my Level 3 course of study, which I must confess has been fairly full on. Between all of my travellling, I have managed to complete an exhibition of work for JC Halliday - Citroen in conjunction with Citroen Celebrates 90 Years of Creative Technology and have had numerous trips to the UK, Southern Ireland, the Middle East and France to boot. I am now on terra firma and UK bound until the New Year.

The theoretical study for the Level 3 course has been highly rewarding and costly as my library has increased by at least 40 new titles in the past 6 months. It has become a bit of an addictions and one thread of study takes me down the path of another artist, his or her work, their friends and companions and so it goes. We are all literally connected by a thread of association.

I was absolutely thrilled when during a conversation with Dee Whitmore regarding submission dates, Dee asked for information regarding the Boundaries exhibition and indicated it would be ideal for inclusion on the OCA News Section.

So having emailed Dee the images and text, the details relating to the exhibition is now available on the OCA website.

Many thanks Dee for arranging this and for the additional info regarding the portfolio / assessment criteria.

http://joemcgilloway3.blogspot.com/

Project 42: Man-made Landscape

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The man-made landscape can and will take on may personalities, architectural arrangements and manipulation of earth and water. From the work involved in the overall course for Level 2, one of the most annoying features of landscape image making, is time spent either in the field trying to photograph around man-made structure, pylons or overhead cables or removing them in post production.

The landscape is very rarely found in an untouched state and even the remotest parts of Donegal in Ireland are laced with electric cables and triffids.

The task at hand as discussed above is to think about how many man made elements to include in an image.

Image 1 for instance was taken on a flight into Heathrow. I am uncertain of the suburb name, but I was intrigued from the air to see so many variations on an architectural theme in one image. This is truly a melange of contemporary suburban landscaping. High rise, stand amidst, leavey terraces of domestic dwellings, which co-habit beside the low lying industrial units, concealed almost from the church spire in the upper right of the frame and a serpentine road meanders river like through the image. Not to mention the colour clash of Autumn, which we missed in Ireland due to the immediate onset of winter after summer, against the concrete and the stonework.

Image 2 on the other hand is by contrast quite barren and devoid of the accepted mix that we are used to here. Obviously the architectural design of the buildings play a huge part in how they perform in up to 50 degree heat and how the buildings cope with searing heat as one year passes into another. This is truly - a case of "boxes for living" which I think was a phrase coined by Le Corbusier. Taken in Bahrain, I was amused by the "tetris" style block building and the humourous idea that they all formed part of a huge jenga toy. Colour and shape play a vital part role in comfortable living and until image 1, the landscape is devoid almost entirely of vegetation. These are domestic housing blocks and are located in quite an affluent area on the island. The architecture is almost post modern in it's simplicity and the "less is more" philosophy is very much at work in this environment.

Contrast Image 3 with 4 and this photograph tells a completely different story. Taken at about 8,000 feet above the Kingdom of Bahrain, it is evident that the landmass, is not big enough to accommodate the 800,000 inhabitants and the reclamation of land from the sea is vital for the expansion of the small island in the Gulf. Using ingenious draining techniques, an area is sectioned off, drained, back filled and so the construction of man made island off the coastline continues. This is only one of maybe a dozen, land reclamation site currently under water / construction in the region and some are outstanding. A search on Google Earth of Bahrain will show the current expansion programs.

Image 4, I have included as it depicts my home city. Built on the banks of the River Foyle, Derry / Londonderry has expanded outside of the Walls and conforms to the constraints of the bend in the river. There has been no ingress into the water course, although it has been discussed for future tourist and retail developments. This is a man made landscape existing within the natural one and the curvature of the River from this elevated location is quite peaceful and almost pastoral.

I decided for this project to look slightly outside and above the box and to include images that show the extent of our unadulterated ingress into the natural landscape that surrounds us.

Text and images added on 25 November 2009

Project 41: Grain

As explained in my earlier post for Project 38 - Burning in a Sky, I had spent probably too many hours in a darkroom processing images. One of the joys of having this personal hands on production method was that I was always in control. The film used of course had a lot to do with it and for my larger images and exhibition prints I adored shooting in ISO400 black and white Ilford film.

At the time a lot of the work I had created was based on dolmens, cairns and standing stones. I spent may days combing The Burren and lived in Aran Island of Galway Bay to create a series of images for one of my clients - that was in 1989.

The grain in those large format images was outstanding. It added to the imagery and added texture and a sensual aspect to the prints. A lot of these images had been shot on high ISO 400 film what on occasions had been shot at 800. That said not every image needs to be grainy but some work better than others and fine art prints or long exposure imagery of Jazz musician images all lend themselves to that moody look.

The days are long gone since I last printed my own shots. They were a series of images in a foundry in Belfast that was closing down. The Scirocco Works along the Lagan was the last location I shot black and white photos in at ISO400 and above and then hand printed.

Now with the advancement of digital software, Photoshop is my digital darkroom and I can create the same textures and grainy effects on screen with the addition of a layer, gaussian blur etc.

Great fun and highly rewarding, I deliberately increased the grain effect to a higher percentage on the new layer to replicate the grain resulting from shooting at a higher ISO.

I am a huge fan of my Sony Alpha A350 and am delighted with the quality of the images, for grain however I prefer to add that post production and shoot at ISO100 or ISO200. At ISO800 upwards the results in camera have more noise than I would like, so I prefer to start with a good quality image and play with it.

Project 40: Coloured Filters with Black and White Film

As explained elsewhere in my Blog, my love affair and subsequent dependency on coloured filters especially, orange and red started when I received my first 35mm SLR. I had completed my full set of Cokin P filters, yellow, orange, red, green and blue before finally adding a fog filter and a tobacco sunset filter.

Most of the work I was undertaking then was landscape work and with the addition of my tripod and cable release soon valued the importance of trying to get the images as near perfect as possible before I hit the darkroom. Time spent burning in skies and dodging areas could and was a real pain if time did not permit such activities.

The red filter to me was a marvel and was used for most of my landscape work. Depending on the type of image and severity of sky I needed I would have used the orange. Yellow, green and blue were seldom used but I had to have the full set.

Not only did the filters have an effect on the strength and tonal values of my skies, the foreground and foliage were also effected. Bearing in mind, that in 1986 I did not have access to Photoshop, never mind a Mac so post production was darkroom time.

I used the red filter primarily because it turned blue skies into deeper tones which could be printed almost black and it increased contrast in sunlight vistas, where light was strong and shadows deep. It was particularly great for defining sandstone in buildings against a strong sky. I had always been a bit of a fascination with infrared images and the ghostly effect created, the blackened skies and light white foliage and although I was not a fan of U2, in 1984 their “Unforgettable Fire” album cover had a superb infrared image of a castle on the cover. This was absolutely incredible.

So I set about trying to get my hands on infrared film and was quite successful using a few contacts through the chemistry department in school.

As I had mentioned I favoured orange and red filters for my landscape work and a tripod was always essential when using a red filter unless 400ASA film was being used. Orange filters, had a similar effect on my images as the red only lessened. I did feel it sharpened distant objects and depending on the type of foliage included in a landscape it also darkened it.

As for the yellow and green filters, their effects did not have the drama I received from using the others. Yellow did however lighten foliage and slightly darkened skies but not really enough to merit me using one often. The green filter had a similar effect but had an added benefit of reducing maze. My early SLR was always fitted with a UV filter which may have helped combat UV glare as well as protecting the glass of the lens.

Time marches on and now most black and white images are touched at some point by the hand of Photoshop. With an outstanding array of tools available, the need for coloured filters when shooting black and white has been reduced completely. Careful use of levels, curves, channel mixer will have a similar effect at the touch of a mouse.