Practice with lights photographs

I tried to experiment with fairy lights because I love them so much I didn't take them off after Christmas and I wanted to see how the pictures would turn up.

Photographers I admire - Part 2: Martin Parr

• Martin Parr (born 23 May 1952) 
• British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. 
• Parr has been a member of Magnum Photos since 1994

“The fundamental thing I'm exploring constantly is the difference between the mythology of the place and the reality of it... Remember I make serious photographs disguised as entertainment. That's part of my mantra. I make the pictures acceptable in order to find the audience but deep down there is actually a lot going on that's not sharply written in your face. If you want to read it you can read it” - Martin Parr

Aesthetic:

• Close-up - through use of a macro lens 
• Employing saturated colour - a result of either the type of film and/or use of a ring flash. 
• This allows him to put his subjects "under the microscope" in their own environment, giving them space to expose their lives and values in ways that often involve inadvertent humour
• His technique has been said to leave viewers with ambiguous emotional reactions, unsure whether to laugh or cry

Portraits exercise

I will post weekly pictures of the people I love the most and that have a strong impact in my life. Here are some of them.

Alfred Stieglitz

Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1864, and schooled as an engineer in Germany, Alfred Stieglitz returned to New York in 1890 determined to prove that photography was a medium as capable of artistic expression as painting or sculpture.

Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secession in New York (formed 1902) mounted international salons and exhibitions, published portfolios and journals, and developed an influential aesthetic discourse about photography. The movement waned around the dawn of World War I—the Linked Ring disbanded in 1910, and Stieglitz, gravitating toward straight photography, published the last issue of his journal Camera Work in 1917—although smaller societies kept Pictorialist ideas alive through the 1930s.

My inspiration - Part 1 - Hiroshi Sugimonto

• Sugimoto was born in Tokyo, in 1948, and now splits his time between there and New York. 
• His main preoccupation as an artist is with time, and how best to capture its meaning. 
• His tool is the camera, and he self-deprecatingly likes to say that he applied to study photography because it was the easiest discipline to be accepted in at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, where he received his BFA in Fine Arts. 
• But given the last century’s long debate about the value and place of photography in fine art, Sugimoto’s body of work is proof that the medium belongs firmly alongside sculpture and painting. If a photograph is a record of what we see, then Sugimoto is obsessed with how we see. 
• One of his earliest and most impressive series is the ongoing Dioramas series, which he began in the mid 1970s, in which he photographed prehistoric scenes of life on display at the American Museum of Natural History.

Sugimoto is a master of the long exposure and the large-format camera; the scenes are static and preserved, but in the true black and white tones of his gelatin silver prints, they are not entirely lifeless, either.
Sugimoto’s ability to trick the eye – even in just an instant – juxtaposed with his open acknowledgement of the scene’s artificiality, demonstrates both his playful curiosity and also his rigorous technique.
‘The stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake,’ Sugimoto has said before of the Dioramas photographs. ‘Yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.’

Sugimoto has inspired me completely because he gave me the idea on which to focus.
The passing of time. The fact that human movement in long exposure doesn't exist.
All that's left is the nature, the movement of the sea, the sky and so on.

Project Proposal

My project is focused on Long exposure photography. My inspiration comes from Hiroshi Sugimoto and his Seascapes. I am also interested in night photography.

Because I can't decide between long exposure and astrophotography I decided to focus on Pictorialisms.

In my project I want to illustrate the passing of time. What we can't see because of the blinking of the eyes. And that the camera is similar to a brush, but it's colours are the light itself.

I inspired from this pictures:

Landscape - first try

This will be a weekly section of the blog like the "People that I love" with pictures I took of places that I love and are part of me.

Kit that I use - Part 1

Hi guys, as I decided that my project is gonna be on Long Exposure I realised that I need a kit to be able to take long exposure pictures during day light. This is why I bought some Neutral Density filters along with cpl filter and a remote for the shutter.

I bought them from amazon you can see them here:

I had to buy an individual neutral density filter of 10 stops because I couldn't find it in any pack and this one is the most important one.

Now, if you don't know what filters are exactly and what to do I found a nice example. Also, I think the simplest definition of them is that they are like sunglasses for your lenses. 

For example, one might wish to photograph a waterfall at a slow shutter speed to create a deliberate motion-blur effect. The photographer might determine that to obtain the desired effect, a shutter speed of ten seconds was needed. On a very bright day, there might be so much light that even at minimal film speed and a minimal aperture, the ten-second shutter speed would let in too much light, and the photo would be overexposed. In this situation, applying an appropriate neutral-density filter is the equivalent of stopping down one or more additional stops, allowing the slower shutter speed and the desired motion-blur effect.

Long exposure tutorials

This tutorials helped me for my shootings.

My pictures after I watched the tutorials: