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.

Photo of the week! (17)

During the last few weeks me and my friend Anette have been making a paper dress for a project. During a project like that you always take pictures to document the work process and then I took the one above. I´ve chosen this one as the photo of the week because it´s really eye-catching and elegant. I´ve played a little with it in photoshop using the filter called "watercolors".
Camera - Cellphone Nokia E71

Photo of the week! (16)

This is a updated photo of my kitten. Technically spoken this isn´t the best photo, but if you look at the lucky shot and not the technical, it´s really good. Spiff´s just chilling in the shadow when the sun finally came out one day.
Camera - Cellphone Nokia E71

Drypoint

For the last couple of weeks we´ve been working on something called drypoint. It´s a printing technique where you carve the chosen image into a plate with a needle, like shown on the picture above.


The idea behind my picture is sort of spitted up. First of all we were allowed to draw anything we liked mostly, which is really rare in a school assignment, so I wanted something a little unrealistic, but also real. Therefor I created a tiny fantasy picture where I made sizes matter and unreal elements play their part. I like pictures where there are a lot going on, so I tried my best.


In front there´s a tiny tree, and right behind/beside it, there´s a huge butterfly (size matters!). I also have birds and stars all around to create life in it. I desided to frame the whole thing by carving out the ends.

Drypoint is also in the intaglio family. When you carve into the plate and roll it with thick black ink, it will sink into the carved lines with some help from warmth. After that you wipe of all the ink to get a smooth surface before you print it on a piece of paper that´s been lying in water. You can use this link to see how it´s done.

I´m pretty sure that a lot of artists use this technique for their art, but the one I always remember best is Rembrandt. He was one of the first ones to make prints like this. His drypoint prints was often very detailed and he mostly used black ink. You can read about Rembrandt here. Drypoint was invented by the Housebook master. 

Personally I liked this assignment. I´d never tried it before, but it turned out pretty good in my opinion. If you have the right directions and equipment, you should go for it. Printing is always exciting cause you never know exactly how it´s gonna turn out before you´ve actually printed it. You can also create different expressions by just changing the color of either the ink or the paper. 

Through the last weeks I´ve learned a lot about drypoint in the best way possible - actually making one. It´s possible to learn something by reading about it, but there´s nothing that´s more fun and educational as to actually do it. I´ve also learned more about what an intaglio print is. (it´s when the ink lies in the carved out lines and copies on to the paper when you print it.)

Photo of the week! (15)

I took this picture the day I managed to lock my keys inside my car without having an extra one (not even at home). I stood there waiting for my dad to come rescue me and I saw the reflections of a tree on my car. I edited it dark in photoshop to show my panic and dark thoughts at that moment.

Camera - cellphone E71

Photo of the week! (14)

Nature mixed with materials and huge details.
Camera - Nikon D40

Photo of the week! (13)

Fairytale reflections!
Camera - Nikon D40

Photo of the week! (12)

Easter´s coming!
Camera - cellphone Nokia E71

Photo of the week! (11)

This ended up being my photo of this week. After I had a little fun with the filter called Fresco in photoshop it looked like this. It´s actually a picture of a hand with soap bubbles wrapped around it. 

Camera - Cellphone Nokia E71

Linocut

On Tuesday we got an assignment. This was´t a photoassignment, but one inside the printing category. We did linocut last year, but this time we used the computer to make the photos easier instead of our hands. We used a filter from photoshop called "cutout". This year we had to use a picture we´d taken ourselves and the linocut was only 6x6 cm.

My linocut looks really abstract, but it´s actually a picture o a cloth and parts of a cake. I took 5 prints of it and ended up choosing the blue one.

Photo of the week! (10)

This photo is taken in old Stavanger. On Wednesday we had an exhibition there where we focused on the architecture. In the street with all the white houses I managed to take this photo.
I have done a couple of things with it in photoshop though. First I made a copy, then I made it black and white and erased the grey from the sky. In my eyes it got a lot prettier and the blue sky really stands out now. The black and white effect works great to when you think about how old these houses actually are.


Camera - Cellphone Nokia E71

Photo of the week! (9)

 

I was looking through some old pictures and I found this one. I took it this summer in Paris. The Eiffel Tower. The chose this one as the photo of the week is that I miss summer. And I miss traveling. Besides that I´ve always liked this picture, I like the angle and the colors, I have experimented a little with it in photoshop but the quality still isn´t the best.

Camera - Cellphone Sony Ericsson

Layout

It´s the first Tuesday after the winter vacation and we started with a bang. We all brought layouts from either the internet or a magazine and our assignment was to copy it, sort of. The difference was that we had to use our own pictures.

The one above is my layout. I´ve used two of the pictures I´ve used as photo of the week and combined them i a copy of another layout. I used InDesign which was a long time ago and I needed some time before my memory of it got back to me, but after that, it all got better.

First of all I learned to notice the tiny things that makes a layout great and I also got a refreshment in InDesign.

Photo of the week! (8)

Winter wonderland!
Camera - Nikon D40

Photo of the week! (7)

This is a picture taken of a tree in my garden. It has a frog perspective and I loved the colors. I have used this tree in another picture on my blog as well, but this one has greater colors. I aslo love the composition. 

Camera - Nikon D40

Photo of the week! (6)

This is my photo that represents week 6 in the year 2010. It´s actually possible to read this picture in different ways, either it could be playing in the snow, or kicking it cause it´s been here too long! I love the contrast though. The nice and harmony-like environment and the snow that storms in and interrupts it. It could be a symbol of the problems that hits our harmonic lives every day as well, but that might be going a step to deep into it!
Camera - Nikon D40

Photoshop creativity!

This Tuesday we kept on experimenting in photoshop. Some of my fellow students even showed some stuff they knew. I chose to experiment with layers and erasers. 

As you can see, this is a super unnatural picture. It´s built up by 5 different pictures and the fact that they´re different sizes is because I didn´t use a easel for the camera so they´re taken in different distances. But since this experiment was unnatural from the start I didn´t really mind that much.

If you wanna make a picture like this one, you should use a easel, and all you have to do is drag them into photoshop and erase the stuff that´s in the way!

Photo of the week! (5)

I chose this photo as the photo of the week. The sunset makes the winter landscape so much prettier than it already is. I thought it was a nice way to show how this snowy weather can be pretty even though most of us are starting to get sick of it.
Camera - Nikon D40

My best photo

Creativity is a very important thing in my life, and since this picture was one of the most creative ones, I chose it as my best photo. I think it´s a "girly" photo, but also kind of "special". The part I like most about it, except the shiny parts, is that I made the camera focus on the colored finger and make the other ones blurry. All in all, I´m happy with it.

5 categories

We had a fast start to the year 2010 by having our usual assignment with 5 new categories. This year it was:


- Winter
- Architecture 
- Stripes
- Portraits 
- A series of pictures


These 5 categories was going to set their marks on our work and here is my outline:


Winter:

This photo is taken by the river called "Figgjo elva". It has been completely frozen and last week some of it melted, but not all of it as you can see in the background. When I took the photo, using my Nikon D4o, I didn´t focus on the background. I tried that as well, but the trees just made it blurry then. Still, I really liked the expression I got in this photo. It´s so cold, but still a little warm. It´s definitely one of my favorites. 

This is a clearer photo of the river. I thought it was so pretty, seeing how the weather is taking over all the nature. I also liked the composition in this one, which is also taken with my Nikon D40. I took a lot of photos when I managed to get these two, and I´ve learned that winter is really a difficult season to take pictures of. They have a tendency of getting too white, but I´m happy with these two.


Architecture:

This old building´s been standing by the river as long as I can remember, but it wasn´t until I got it in the right light that I saw the beauty in it. The paint is falling off and most of the windows are broken but in this picture I think I managed to capture a certain charm to it. All to ones taste of course. I took it before the dark came with my Nikon D40, as well.


Stripes:


Stripes became the most popular category in my assignment and I had a lot of fun with it.

I was ones told to be creative, and when this assignment showed up I took the chance to try it out a little more than usual. This is a picture of my hand, a little twisted, laying on a mirror with powder eyeshadow on it with one finger and parts of the hand covered in different sorts of eyeliners. The idea came when I was walking around with my camera, searching for stripes. I managed to get a few good ones (lower down), but not exactly what I wanted. So I thought that if I couldn´t find the right stripes, I´d make my own, which I did. I´m very fond of the results.

When I look at this photo, I think it´s pretty. It´s a part of a mask from Italy. It has glitter, it´s shining and the stripes (as I call them) have a nice turn in them which makes the composition good in my eyes. I also love the colors. I wondered if I should crop away the blue diamond in the corner, but I decided not to cause it was so good to the other colors. I mostly learned that a lot of things can be fun up close. 
Nikon D40

In the first "stripe-photo", I mentioned that my hand was lying on a mirror. This mirror was my first experiment with the creative striped and I got a picture of it right here. The stripes are very organic and not so hard as many people imagine when they think of stripes, which goes for the two pictures above as well, but I like the expressions in organic pictures better than in mechanic ones. 
Nikon D40

I was a bit insecure about this one, but seeing that three categories sort of works with it, I´ve grown to like it. First the stripes, they´re both different sizes and different colors (caused by the light), which makes it more natural. And second, it´s easy to see the winter wonderland who has taken over the street outside. Third and last we have architecture, which involves the houses. 
Nikon D40




Portraits:

This is a portrait of my brother, Erlend, taken in front of my huge Paris picture, that´s why I made it in black and white, to make it fit better. The black and white also works with the expression and style. This picture was actually not my idea though, my brother wanted some new photos and this was actually not a pose, he was still moving. By doing this for him, and obviously myself, I´ve learned how it´s important to take a lot of pictures, even if it´s of the same thing, you never know which one´s gonna turn out to be the best one.
Nikon D40 

I have posted this one before, but I still wanted it to be one of my top ten photos. As a said then, I really like the model-like expression and how it works with the black and white colors.
Nikon D40


A series of pictures:

This series of pictures I would like to call "Boys". There was not idea or agenda behind it, but it tells a story, which to me is funny and maybe interesting or disturbing to others. The people on it is two friends and my boyfriend, obviously enjoying the snow and attention from the camera. That is a thing I find really important, that the camera can show joy it the way it does, even people who´s never seen these guys before will probably think it´s funny. A camera brings joy!
Nikon D40