Graphic workshop

In Stavanger we have a graphic workshop, and this Tuesday we got to visit it. We were all shown around by a lady who worked there and after a while we got to see some of the work from artists. The graphic workshop in Stavanger works like this, if you´re an artist, you pay and take a class about how to use the stuff in the shop, and then you may work and produce your art there. I didn´t quite catch the prize, but it´s availeble for everybody.

While I was there I noticed all of the machines and all the different material, and I find these different printing methods very interesting. I wonder how people came up with it, it´s like a new way of expressing your art.

After the tour we finally got to do something practical, silk print. The woman who guided us made it all ready, she put the print into a box with ultraviolet light and then all the students took turns in making their own pink butterfly print.

Stencil

The last two weeks we´ve been working with stencils. It´s a little different from our photo tasks, but I thought it was really fun, at least when I got it right. 

I have another subject in school where we´ve been working with street art, which is an art where they use many different technics and also stencils. A friend of mine has studied a street art artist from Norway called Rita Rohdin Nyhuus. She´s very good with stencils and you can see some of her pieces right here. She is really an artist when it comes to stencils. 

I brought a white top to school. At first I had some problems with my ideas, but I ended up with a band logo that I really liked. I´m going to be a russ next year, and I really wanted In Flames´s logo on my russ pants, so that was the biggest idea behind it. I think the technic is really genius because if you´ve made the stencil you can use it over again on other objects and with other colors. 

Banksy is one of the most famous street art artists in the world and his real identity is still hidden. He works a lot with stencils and I thought this video was pretty interesting. It´s artist using stencils in the streets so you can see how the professionals does it with sprays cans. They´re inspired by Banksy, like many others. 

I´ve learned a lot by this assignment, and I really think that I can use it in the future as well. When you try to make something outstanding you use your creativity and your skills get bigger the more you practice. 

It the collage I made above you can see some pictures of my process while making my In Flames t-shirt. I placed it in the middle of the front side, and further down at the back. I could of course have made it different, but this was how I saw it being in my head. The front side has a positive stencil, while the back side has a negative one, that was a part of the assignment.

Label

At school we learned about using our photos in other things than just picture frames. So we all made a label by using a chosen photo. In my photo it was the color that made me choose it, and I made a label for apple cider. Around the edges you can see some lines, for them I used the color from the leaves, just to get a little gathered, finished touch!

My best photo - so far

I took this photo about a year ago. I got a photo mission from a friend of mine, he wanted me to be the photographer on one of his bands concerts. On this concert another band was playing as well, they´re called "Hatefuel". This is a close up on the vocalist in that band. My intention when I took the concertphotos was to capture the feeling of the music as well, and I really think I managed to do that a little bit in this photo.

5 categories

For the last few weeks, we´ve been working on a photo project. The assignment says that we have five different categories to take inspiration from.

- Autumn

- Animals

- Fruit, berries and groceries

- Composition

- Reflection

Our task was to pick out our ten best pictures, so here´s my outline:

Autumn:

These four pictures is inspired by Norwegian autumn. When I went out on a little mountain hike to take these pictures, the rain had just left it´s mark on nature. I just thought the water made it all prettier in it´s own special way, it made it shine a little bit more. That you can see on my first picture here.

My camera is a Nikon D40, and when I took this picture I took it from (almost) underneath the straws. The idea was nothing special, just to capture the raindrops in a picture frame.

On this second photo I just wanted a close up on nature. I haven´t opened this photo in photoshop or anything, so the color is absolutely gorgeous (in my opinion). The sky that day was pretty dark and grey, but the light was great.

- Original

This is my third and second last autumn photo. It´s a wet spiderweb, and I have to admit that I did make it a little better in Iphoto. But other than that I really loved the color and the clear drops of cold autumn rain.

Now this was my absolute favorite autumn capture. I took this one from underneath the straws as well, and since the sky was grey it sat the straws and the raindrops much more in focus.

Animals:

One of the other categories - animals. This is my cat, Spiff, and of course to me he´s gorgeous. In this first photo though I really think I managed to capture the colors of his fur and eyes. The picture is taken outside, on a grey day.

This is a picture of my preciousness in a profile. I think the red sofa in the background really increases the orange color of the fur. And it´s a one second shot, a lucky one. The light in this picture was some how different though. I took this one inside, but still, I took it with my Nikon D40, so it turned out great after all.

Fruit, berries and groceries/composition/reflection:

When we had our first assignment, I chose to combine the fruit pictures with composition. I took fruits and berries and put them in the freezer, and after that I sat them on a mirror out in the rain.

- Original

This picture I´ve showed you before further down on my blog, but it´s one of my ten best photos in this assignment, so I´ll just show it again. I used the same camera on this picture, and the idea was to have a close up to the berries and see how they look like when they´re frozen/wet. And the mirror reflects it which makes it kind of fascinating when with the water.

I did the same thing with this apple that I did with the berries above. The weather that day was pretty greyish, which it is most days here in Norway. But the light is great to take pictures it though.

Reflection and composition:

This is me and two of my friends down by the dock in Stavanger. We all gathered in front of a window with the sea in the background and took a picture of our reflection. Behind this one there wasn´t really any idea, more of a spontaneous picture. I haven´t put autumn in the title of this one, but the weather is clearly inspired by it.

Reflection:

This is my last and final picture for this assignment. It´s my reflections in Andreas´s car window at Hå Gamle Prestegard. As you can see the weather was beautiful that day. I get a real "summerfeeling" by looking at it because of the colors, and as the one above, it was a spontaneous picture. Sometimes those have a tendency of getting rather good, so if photographing is a hobby of yours and you have a digital camera, just snap away. You never know when you´re gonna get your lucky shot =)

Hå Gamle Prestegard

Today, 15.09.09 my part of the photoclass stepped out of our box of a classroom. We took a field trip to Hå Gamle Prestegard to see a exhibition called "Svev" by Heidi Wexelsen Goksøyr. The picture above is one of her works. We also saw another exhibition there, I can´t really remember the name of it, but it had something to do with oil and society, or something.

After all this arranged stuff, the teacher let us out into the wild. 13 students suddenly ran wild with their cameras, the nature and the ocean can inspire almost everyone.

Fruit, berries and groceries

A week ago we got a completely new task, we were supposed to take pictures of fruits, berries and groceries.

I wanted to do something special, so I tried to use the creative side of my brain and ended up freezing all the fruits and berries. The picture above is one of my results. I manage to take the photo with a lot of help from good light, a mirror and some rain.

I myself liked this task, I found it kind of exiting. It´s all about what you make of it yourself.