HipChicklette (perenially catching up)
Pro115: Stephen Shore Emulation
Pro115: Stephen Shore Emulation
Dates: June 27th and August 8th, 2010
Assigned by: gfpeck
Mission (text and bio from gfpeck): Emulate Stephen Shore, one of the pioneers of color photography as fine art form.
I first learned of Shore while reading 'The Ongoing Moment' by Geoff Dyer (highly recommended) in which he was introduced as a cross between William Eggleston and Walker Evans. After learning about Eggleston in the first emulation go-round and being a fan of Evans, I had to look into this guy. My first impressions of Shore were a bit underwhelming, but after reviewing more of his images and reading about his approach I rapidly grew fond of his work. I also started seeing my past documented before me. Having grown up in a nondescript place with a great deal of similarity to the "unseen" places in Shore's photos I grew an instant liking to the nostalgic feeling I get from his images. The coloration, detail and dof in his images draws me deep into his work. There is so much more than first meets the eye.
Stephen Shore was exposing and printing his own photographs before he was ten years old. At fourteen he made a bold move and called the photography curator (famed Edward Steichen) at the Museum of Modern Art and asked to show the man his work. The meeting went well and Steichen bought three of Shores photographs. Three years later, at the age of 17, Shore met Andy Warhol and began to frequent Warhol's studio, the Factory, photographing Warhol and the creative people that surrounded him. In 1971, at the age of 24, Shore became the first (some sources say second) living person to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Although Shore teaches photography (he has been director of photography at Bard College since 1982) he became well known at an early age as a pioneer of color art photography. He is among the earliest fine art photographers to work almost exclusively in color. Color photography attracted Shore for its ability to record the range and intensity of hues seen in life
He then started developing an aesthetic of the commonplace, and turned his camera on what we see in our daily lives but fail to observe and pay attention to. Through color--and composition--Shore transforms the mundane into subjects of thoughtful meditation. A restaurant meal on a road trip, a billboard off a highway, and a dusty side street in a Texas town are all seemingly banal images, but upon reflection subtly imply meaning.
This was not done casually. Shore put great care in the composition of his images. This was a necessity in his use of a large tripod mounted view camera.
“My tendency is, if I see something interesting, to not take a picture of it, but to take a picture of something else and have that in it so that you can move your attention around, like this is a little world that you can examine, and for those kinds of pictures it simply makes more sense for everything to be sharp.”
“I was interested, particularly in the series American Surfaces, in taking pictures that felt natural, so they didn't look artified. It looked like looking at something. I was interested in what the world looked like. There's a phrase in Shakespeare that meant a lot to me. Hamlet is telling the meaning of acting and ends by saying it's ‘to show the very age and body of the time its form and pressure.’”
“His pictures are normally in small format, since, as he puts it, ‘when the picture is small, the viewer has to pay attention to it, a person can walk by it and not receive it. But if you do pay attention to it, a channel of communication is opened up [...] and the photograph communicates with the viewer in a subtler way…’. His pictures need to be looked and re-looked at, to grasp all the details and to be able to see the internal refernces between objects created by his almost classical composition and picture structure.”
Detailed What it Took
I thought about this assignment much more than I took pics. Had visions of finding an old set of buildings, or vintage looking place, to emulate Shore. Have been in Asheville, NC for the past several days, and saw many places in the Maggie Valley area that would have been terrific to shoot; reminded me of areas along Route 66--beautiful old motels with gorgeous mountainous backdrops. Unfortunately, one growth area for me as a photographer is to become more comfortable to just pull over and shoot in areas that have people. I'm not there yet.
This area was just south of Maggie Valley, along Route 19, heading toward the entry to the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smokey Mountain park entrance. Going up a hill, the sun was hitting the mountain just perfectly, and there were these great old roadside stores on stilts. There was a pull-off bluff, which was a terrific vantage point to take 360 degree pics into the valley, and up the mountains. Just gorgeous. This pic is the backside of the stores. One thing that struck me about Shore's work, particularly of buildings and landscapes, captured in his quote above, is that he tends to put a picture within a picture. This shot tries to emulate that--rather than focusing in on just the buildings, placing the buildings in the larger space of the mountain view; more to see than just the buildings, telephone poles, cars, etc. He also seems to use a high f, and have very clear shots, which I tried to emulate--this is f/22. I also like that he doesn't try to dress things up; they are what they are, in all their glory. In that way, he kind of seems similar to Eggleston. In both assignments, the moving out of the comfort zone, and trying on someone else's perspective and viewpoint, was cool, which I guess is the point of all of the emulation assignments.
In order to try to show something more like his older work, this pic was processed using the "vintage" preset in Aperture 3. Also added .1 contrast.
Looking forward to your feedback!
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T1i
Lens: EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM
Filter: CPL
ISO Speed: 100
Focal Length: 60mm
Exposure Value: 0
Aperture: f/22
Shutter Speed: .4 sec
Flash: Off, did not fire
Post-processing: "vintage" preset, and .1 contrast in Aperture 3
Pro115: Stephen Shore Emulation
Pro115: Stephen Shore Emulation
Dates: June 27th and August 8th, 2010
Assigned by: gfpeck
Mission (text and bio from gfpeck): Emulate Stephen Shore, one of the pioneers of color photography as fine art form.
I first learned of Shore while reading 'The Ongoing Moment' by Geoff Dyer (highly recommended) in which he was introduced as a cross between William Eggleston and Walker Evans. After learning about Eggleston in the first emulation go-round and being a fan of Evans, I had to look into this guy. My first impressions of Shore were a bit underwhelming, but after reviewing more of his images and reading about his approach I rapidly grew fond of his work. I also started seeing my past documented before me. Having grown up in a nondescript place with a great deal of similarity to the "unseen" places in Shore's photos I grew an instant liking to the nostalgic feeling I get from his images. The coloration, detail and dof in his images draws me deep into his work. There is so much more than first meets the eye.
Stephen Shore was exposing and printing his own photographs before he was ten years old. At fourteen he made a bold move and called the photography curator (famed Edward Steichen) at the Museum of Modern Art and asked to show the man his work. The meeting went well and Steichen bought three of Shores photographs. Three years later, at the age of 17, Shore met Andy Warhol and began to frequent Warhol's studio, the Factory, photographing Warhol and the creative people that surrounded him. In 1971, at the age of 24, Shore became the first (some sources say second) living person to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Although Shore teaches photography (he has been director of photography at Bard College since 1982) he became well known at an early age as a pioneer of color art photography. He is among the earliest fine art photographers to work almost exclusively in color. Color photography attracted Shore for its ability to record the range and intensity of hues seen in life
He then started developing an aesthetic of the commonplace, and turned his camera on what we see in our daily lives but fail to observe and pay attention to. Through color--and composition--Shore transforms the mundane into subjects of thoughtful meditation. A restaurant meal on a road trip, a billboard off a highway, and a dusty side street in a Texas town are all seemingly banal images, but upon reflection subtly imply meaning.
This was not done casually. Shore put great care in the composition of his images. This was a necessity in his use of a large tripod mounted view camera.
“My tendency is, if I see something interesting, to not take a picture of it, but to take a picture of something else and have that in it so that you can move your attention around, like this is a little world that you can examine, and for those kinds of pictures it simply makes more sense for everything to be sharp.”
“I was interested, particularly in the series American Surfaces, in taking pictures that felt natural, so they didn't look artified. It looked like looking at something. I was interested in what the world looked like. There's a phrase in Shakespeare that meant a lot to me. Hamlet is telling the meaning of acting and ends by saying it's ‘to show the very age and body of the time its form and pressure.’”
“His pictures are normally in small format, since, as he puts it, ‘when the picture is small, the viewer has to pay attention to it, a person can walk by it and not receive it. But if you do pay attention to it, a channel of communication is opened up [...] and the photograph communicates with the viewer in a subtler way…’. His pictures need to be looked and re-looked at, to grasp all the details and to be able to see the internal refernces between objects created by his almost classical composition and picture structure.”
Detailed What it Took
I thought about this assignment much more than I took pics. Had visions of finding an old set of buildings, or vintage looking place, to emulate Shore. Have been in Asheville, NC for the past several days, and saw many places in the Maggie Valley area that would have been terrific to shoot; reminded me of areas along Route 66--beautiful old motels with gorgeous mountainous backdrops. Unfortunately, one growth area for me as a photographer is to become more comfortable to just pull over and shoot in areas that have people. I'm not there yet.
This area was just south of Maggie Valley, along Route 19, heading toward the entry to the Blue Ridge Parkway and Great Smokey Mountain park entrance. Going up a hill, the sun was hitting the mountain just perfectly, and there were these great old roadside stores on stilts. There was a pull-off bluff, which was a terrific vantage point to take 360 degree pics into the valley, and up the mountains. Just gorgeous. This pic is the backside of the stores. One thing that struck me about Shore's work, particularly of buildings and landscapes, captured in his quote above, is that he tends to put a picture within a picture. This shot tries to emulate that--rather than focusing in on just the buildings, placing the buildings in the larger space of the mountain view; more to see than just the buildings, telephone poles, cars, etc. He also seems to use a high f, and have very clear shots, which I tried to emulate--this is f/22. I also like that he doesn't try to dress things up; they are what they are, in all their glory. In that way, he kind of seems similar to Eggleston. In both assignments, the moving out of the comfort zone, and trying on someone else's perspective and viewpoint, was cool, which I guess is the point of all of the emulation assignments.
In order to try to show something more like his older work, this pic was processed using the "vintage" preset in Aperture 3. Also added .1 contrast.
Looking forward to your feedback!
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T1i
Lens: EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM
Filter: CPL
ISO Speed: 100
Focal Length: 60mm
Exposure Value: 0
Aperture: f/22
Shutter Speed: .4 sec
Flash: Off, did not fire
Post-processing: "vintage" preset, and .1 contrast in Aperture 3