InDesign

In hour almost last hour with photo and print class, we worked with InDesign. The assignment was very free, all it had to contain was a heading, a photo (that you´d taken yourself) and a subheading. I chose to make a cd cover for the band Bring me the Horizon. And the picture above is my results.

Summary

Photo:

We´ve worked a lot with the photo part of the subject this last year. It´s been really fun and I can honestly say that it has really expanded my creativity. We´ve had projects and assignments every week and we are all living proof that if you practice and do something often you´ll get much better at it. The fact that we´ve also learned photoshop and other programs a lot better also helps. If you take a good picture there´s absolutely nothing wrong with making it even better on your computer. Personally I favor all the freedom we´ve gotten. It´s hard to be creative and use your imagination if you have a really strict assignment to stick to. I´m sure many of the people in this class have been taking pictures for many years, but we´ve never gotten to do it at school We´ve also had a little theory. We´ve learned how to use our cameras and how to set up a photo studio so you get the right light and expression you want in your pictures. All in all this part of the subject really turned out great. 


Print:

The printing part of this subject wasn´t as new as the photo part. We actually made a self-portrait with linocut in second grade. This year we have expanded these experiences though. We´ve gotten to try out around three different printing types (linocut, stencil and drypoint) and we´ve also been to an workshop in Stavanger where we got to see how real artists does it. We also got to try silk print there. Printing is very practical work, and the fact that we also got a lot of freedom here made it really fun and I learned a lot. We even got to use proper material. During the theory part, we´ve learned about different printing techniques and the difference between them. 

Blogging: 

Throughout the whole year, each student has kept a blog (nicely updated all the time). It has been a new experience to blog. It´s a good casual way to turn in assignments and to show the teacher and the rest of the world all the stuff you´ve learned and that you´re actually paying attention. I think that the most fun part with blogging is the fact that you have everything you´ve done gathered and you can also see what all your classmates´ve done. The scary part about blogging is the fact that the entire world who wants to see it, can see it. And also the fact that it´s a digital blog that can "click" at anytime. And you need internets. At first it was easy to forget about the blog. But after doing it for a year I can see what a good solution it is for this subject. 

Working methods:

I think we´ve used a lot of different working methods in this subject, but some more than others. For example this blog. After that we´ve mostly been using our camera as the number one tool. Learning how to use it and how to be creative with it. We´ve also been printing as I mentioned earlier. Other than that we´ve been using exhibitions as sort of a work method, at least we learned a lot from them. I would say that in this subject digital tools have been the most important ones. Camera, photoshop, Iphoto ect. 

The fact that we haven´t used too many work methods have given me good routines and I definitely remember a lot from the whole year. I´ve been doing something in this subject every week and I honestly think it´s one of the best ones we have this year.

Photo of the week! (19)

Magical river with beautiful colors!

Photo of the week! (18)

This is my photo of the week. It´s ment to show how the weather is fooling us.

My best photo

This is my choice for best photo this spring. My reason is the expression and harmony it has. The composition in the picture is almost perfect for the eye and my sisters face seems calm, yet mysterious. If you want to read more about this photo you can look further down.

5 categories

This has been the last assignment involving 5 categories this year. This time our categories were:

- Travel
- Age 
- Spring
- Expression
- Own choice


I tried to let these categories inspire me, and here´s what I came up with:


Travel:

When I got this assignment I figured that I could use some of my older pictures as well. I took the one above last summer when I was in Paris. It´s the roof of the old famous nightspot "Moulin Rouge". Personally I think it´s beautiful, at least when I cut away all the cars driving below. I´ve now learned how much good cropping means.
Camera - Canon IXUS 870IS

I didn´t exactly travel far away to take the photo above, I took it at Kongeparken landstreff 2010, but many people did. And Ferris wheels always reminds me of traveling and vacations. I thought this picture got sort of a magical and colorful look and even though it´s dark, it makes you happy to look at.
Camera - Cellphone Nokia E71


Age:

I´ve chosen to put the first two pictures together. This is my sister Mette. She´s very pregnant and the more I thought about it, the more I figured out what a special age she´s in at the moment. It´s gonna change her whole life. Other than that it´s also a beautiful and natural picture. I wanted her out in the nature and I´ve also fixed it a little bit in photoshop using different layers and black and white.
Camera - Nikon D40

This was definitely my favorite "age" picture. It´s in pure black and white with a wall background so she´s in the focus. I`ve also put in a little green color in her eyes to make her expression clearer and more interesting. When I took these photos of my sister I found out that it´s really hard to work with nature as your photo studio. You have to find the right angles and the right light and background, so suddenly you have a lot more to work with.
Camera - Nikon D40

This is my last "age" photo, and also one of my favorites because of her expression. It reminds me of models expressions in magazines, in a good way. During this photo shoot I´ve also gotten to work a lot with portraits which we learned a lot about earlier this year. 
Camera - Nikon D40


Spring:

This was the first picture I took through the whole assignment process. It´s taken down with a water calles "Edlandsvatnet" on Ålgård. It was a sunny day for the first time this year (almost). The reason I chose this as one of my top ten photos is because of the colors and the details the tree makes. 
Camera - Nikon D40



































Everytime we´ve gotten 5 new categories I´ve tried to be creative. The picture above is the results of the same. I took a bowl of water, put it on a mirror and filled it with wild flowers. The weather that day wasn´t exactly spring, so I decided to make my own spring. I´m pretty pleased with the results.
Camera - Canon IXUS 870IS

The picture above is sort of an illusion, there´s twice as many flowers because I put a mirror behind them. It´s of course up to each and every person to find out if they like it or not, but I thought it turned out pretty cool. I also love the colors.
Camera - Canon IXUS 870IS




Expressions:


This time I did not take pictures of any expressions cause I already had to many pictures I wanted to use in the other categories.


Own choice:

I know I´ve taken pictures of my cat several times, but he´s starting to become quite the model. The one above wasn´t planned though. While I was doing one of my creative stunts, he came and started to drink and play with the water in my bowl. So I took this photo and loved the perspective (big head and tiny paws) and Spiff´s expression. That´s why this one was one of my own choices. 
Camera - IXUS 870IS

In the photo above I´ve experimented with black and white and layers like in the first "age" pictures. I thought it was cool cause the mirror sort of separates the picture in two, making two very different expressions in one picture.
Camera - IXUS 870IS

Helsinki10

Tuesday 27.04.10 me and my photo class took the trip to Stavanger to visit Rogaland kunstmuseum. There was an exhibition called Helsinki10 there. It was photos picked out from 10 artists from Finland. The guide told us about most of the pictures and they all had really different expressions, I´m pretty sure when I say that almost everyone could find a picture they liked there. 

After the exhibition, our teacher told us to look at how you can use a picture. You can use it for art, documentary and reports for example. From the pictures at the exhibition, we learned that sometimes it´s hard to tell the difference between the three. To use a picture for art is easy to know what is. It could be to decorate or just for the arts. Pictures used for documentary could be to explain for example a process and a picture used in reports can be used to inform, perhaps in an article or something similar. 

The picture above is a little manipulated, it´s two pictures put together. All the bright colors make a different impression according to where you´re standing.

This was the picture that caught most of my attention. It´s taken by Ilkka Halso in 2004. The message from it is about nature and how we´re destroying it by trying to control it. I think.. But this picture is also an example of a picture used to report. Maybe it´s a suggestion of how the future´s gonna look like?

The picture underneath is a part of a picture taken by Susanna Majuri. Her pictures was very interesting cause she worked with water. Most of these pictures were taken in a pool and almost all of them had strong female characters in them. This might be a message she wants show us.