My Mentor

Harry Callahan

Born in Detroit, Michigan on October of 1912 was an American photographer who is considered to be one of the greatest innovators of modern American photography and one of the most influential  and unique photographers of the twentieth century. Harry Callahan helped bring photography into the art world and helped to make it mainstream. Callahan was one of the few photographers who worked excellent in colour as he did in black and white.

Harry Callahan grew up in the suburb of Royal Oak, where he went to public school and graduated. His parents were farmers who moved to Detroit so they could find work in the auto industry while Callahan attended Michigan State College for three semesters and studied engineering. He left school in 1933 and got a job as a shipping clerk with Chrysler Parts Corporation. The same year, Harry Callahan met Eleanor Knapp, his future wife. They actually met on a blind date and married three years later. He considered this one of the two great events that has ever happened to him in his whole life; the other being the purchase of his first camera in 1983. When he dentist showed him a movie camera, he wanted to buy one but they were too expensive so he bought a Rolleicord still camera instead.

Callahan joined the company’s camera club and, by 1938, Callahan had begun to teach himself about photography. He began taking pictures as a hobby and he later joined the Detroit Photo Guild. He had no formal training as a photographer except for a few workshops. According to his own writings, Callahan was a terrifically naïve person which he considered to be his great strength. He thought that because he didn’t have any training on photography that he had “fresh eyes”.  Callahan’s first photographs were very small, often the size of a postcard.

During this time, Callahan became friends with another future photographer, Todd Webb. Callahan’s method of photography was very technical and precise. Every day he would wake up and walk in the city where he lived and took photographs. After his long mornings of taking photographs he would look over his negatives in the afternoon and choose the best ones to make prints. He wrote that photography was an adventure just like his life was an adventure. When Ansel Adams, another beautiful photographer, gave Callahan a workshop in 1941 at the Detroit Photo Guild, he was really impressed with the examples of his work that he shared. Although Callahan liked all of Adam’s work, he was mostly interested in the close-ups of plants and the ground. This was a turning point in Callahan’s life, he believe that he was an artist with a camera. He left the Detroit Photo Guild shortly after this turning point in his life, believing that photography clubs were too limiting. Just like Ansel Adams, Callahan began using a huge view camera loaded with 8-by 10 inch negatives that he could print by laying them directly on photosensitive paper and exposing them to light. He was totally self-motivated, extremely curious about technique, and continually willing to try new approaches. He worked with extreme contrast, collage, multiple and time exposures, camera motion, and unique lighting which made his photos extremely beautiful.

Callahan realized that his urban background influenced the subjects he chose. He chose small things like tree branches and set them against big cityscapes. He met Alfred Stieglitz in 1942, but did not want to show Alfred any of his own work. After viewing Stieglitz photographs of his wife, Callahan began taking many intimate pictures of his wife Eleanor. During this period, he took some of his most enduring pictures, held his first exhibit, and saw that his photographs were on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. By this time Callahan had left his position with General Motors and needed a job to support his family. Laszlo Moholy-Nag, an abstractionist, saw Callahan's portfolio and hired him to teach at the Institute of Design in Chicago in 1946, which became part of the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1949 where he remained until 1961.

In 1950, his daughter, Barbara, was born. Even prior to her birth, Callahan photographed Eleanor pregnant with their future child. The family found an apartment in the ballroom of an old mansion in Chicago on the north. In his new apartment, he set up a darkroom and began printing in the kitchen sink. His first prints sold for five dollars each. The Institute of Design was considered to be somewhat unorthodox. It was one of the few colleges that included photography as an academic discipline. Photographers concentrated on personal themes, nature studies, and abstractions. An analysis of Callahan's style in Contemporary Photographers concluded that "...his photographs can be viewed as a lifelong challenge to the camera's eye, a series of never ending questions on the nature of the medium itself."

Subjects from his everyday life were Callahan’s choice throughout most of his career. From 1948 to 1952, Eleanor, and sometimes Barbara, were shown out in the landscape as a tiny part of the photograph compared to a large area of parks, skyline or water even in the streets, scenes and buildings of cities where he lived. Even though they are small parts of the photo and may seem insignificant, they still dominate the viewer’s perception. His work showed a strong sense of line and form, and light and darkness. He photographed Eleanor everywhere; alone, with their daughter, in black and white and in colour, nude and clothed, distant and close. His wife was ESSENTIAL to his photography. Callahan was married to the same woman all of his adult life and was devoted to his family.

He was one of the first photographers to earn a successful living in the profession. Callahan was considered to be an excellent teacher. The Institute of Design was one of only two schools granting degrees in photography when Callahan began teaching. Many of his students took university jobs throughout the United States, spreading to others how influential their teacher was. He also worked with multiple exposures and his work was a deep personal response to his own life. It was also personally oriented. Many of his pictures artistically interpret his family relationships. His early work experimented with abstract landscapes, body form, etc and his later work in colour included additional subject matter which is stated earlier in this paragraph. He tried every technical experiment- double and triple exposure, blurs, large camera and small.  

Callahan received the National Medal of Arts in 1996 then he died of cancer in Atlanta, Georgia on March, 1999. He left behind a HUGE body or work. The Callahan archive is located at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona. It contains approximately 20000 print, 5000 slides and 100000 negatives.

The photo I took of my friend, a girl, (photo below) mimics one of Callahan’s photos somewhat because of its simplicity, elegance and detail. I believe that the simplicity of this photo is what makes it so beautiful, so strong and elegant, it leaves many thoughts and feelings when looked at which is what Harry Callahan’s photos did for me. The simplicity and preciseness of every single one of his photographs and the clarity made them so beautiful. The photo taken by me to mimic Callahan is similar to his work because it has a women's hands in it and Callahan photographed mainly his wife, and sometimes his daughter. The bare skin of his wife was a big part of his art too so I decided that photographing a naked arm and making it simple would reflect Callahan’s work greatly. Before I took the photo I thought of the way Callahan uses his techniques in his photos. Since his photos shows a strong sense of light and darkness I made the photo be very dark but light at the same time.

Hands

Multiple Exposure Assignment

I was always amazed by multiple exposure and wanted to know how to do it. At the beginning of the photo semester we were meant to find our favourite photographer and mine happened to be Jerry Uelsmann who is the GOD of multiple exposure and when I first saw his work I wanted to the things he was doing. His images were so beautiful and he is such a talented man that I wanted to follow in his footsteps. Later on in the semester we were suppose to do a multiple exposure but in Photoshop  I knew it was my chance to see how well I was able to make multiple exposures and it turned out to look awesome. Jerry Uelsmann worked with up to 8 different enlargers when he created his masterpieces and I worked with 3 different ones when creating my multiple exposure. It doesn't really look like I used 3 different photos but at the bottom where the trees are is one photo, the top where the clouds are is a different photo, and the eye, obviously is a different photo. I really like using eyes in my photos because I feel like eyes express the most emotion no matter what. If someone is truly happy or just pretending to be happy their eyes will tell the truth. They are also all so different and unique and beautiful and the way the eye works and looks is unbelievable. I really enjoyed doing this project because it was really fun and I finally got to see how this stuff actually works. I love my multiple exposure because although it was a tough process and sometimes annoying it was worth it for the result I got.   

Acrylic Gel Assignment

side + front + back

back

front

These three photos are of the same picture just different ways to view it. For this assignment I decided to do, I used a photo that i took when I went skiing in Vermont. I really liked this picture because I took it on the last day I was spending there and it turned out to be the most beautiful day I spent there. The sun was shinning, it had just finished snowing and the scenery was just beautiful and picture perfect. My favourite thing about this photo is the sun, if the sun wasn't there then I think the photo would look dull and wouldn't be so beautiful.

I was really looking forward to doing this project because when we got it demonstrated to us, it looked really cool and fun and I really liked the outcome of the whole process. I knew that this was one of the options I was going to do and I think that I will do this type of art more often and maybe even at home considering that you need simple materials.

Breaking the Rules

This photo above breaks the rules because of what the main focus is suppose to be. It also breaks the rule of having balance because all the attention is focused on the right side of the photo where the frog and the hands are while the other side of the photo has nothing. In this photo I was meant to take a picture of the frog because everyone was getting excited over it and wanting to hold the little frog because it was so tiny and cute. Instead of taking a photo of the frog and making him/her the main focus, i decided to make the hands in focus. I felt like it was a much better photo because it captures the excitement in the children that wanted to hold the frog. You see all those hands reaching to grab the frog while the frog is just there, like a little toy that everyone can play with and throw around. By making the focal point the hands, you get a feel of how much these children wanted to hold the frog and it kind of looks like they are fighting for it. I actually really really really like this photo and i'm glad that I took it this way because I think that if i had made the frog in focus that it wouldn't be as good as it is now and it would look too ordinary.

This photo breaks the rules because it breaks the rule of thirds. This photo is completely centered in the middle of the photo and the photo also sort of clashes with the girl that is in the background of the photo. I really like this photo because the burning marshmallow is completely in focus while everything else is not. I also really like how it's dark out and you can see that it is dark outside because of the background but the marshmallow almost looks like it was taken in daylight and I think it's cool because it almost looks like the marshmallow on a stick just came out of nowhere. It kind of looks photo-shopped but really kinda cool at the same time. 

Painting with Light

Trapped

This part of the unit I thought was really hard because I could never figure out what to photograph. I tried so many different ideas and before I thought of doing photos with flash I used a flashlight and painted different animals and spaceships. Nothing worked. I was just getting so frustrated with everything and how I couldn't get a photo that I liked even one bit. Once I figured out that this is what I wanted to do it took me forever to get the right photo. The reason I choose to photograph Ellie standing against a wall upset is because especially during teenage years, life get so frustrating and you don't know what to do. This shows the life of an average girl that has had enough. She feels trapped and she can't get out because there is something that's holding her back and making her feel trapped. Which is why I named this photo "Trapped". After I finally got this photo I was really impressed with it and loved it. I had to crop it a little because i didn't like the background but I finally got a good final product that I was satisfied with. This unit was also really cool :)

Renaissance

The Birth of Venus

 Sandro Botticelli,  or Alessandro diMariano di Vanni Filipepi, was a very talented and distinct artist that actually become popular in the renaissance period. Born in Italy, Botticelli worked as a goldsmith. Most renaissance painters started their apprenticeships at the age of twelve or  fourteen. Sandro's career as a painter started at the relatively late age of about eighteen when Botticelli was sent to the great painter, Fra Filippo where he learned how to mix colours and clean brushes. Botticelli was greatly influenced by his teacher which encouraged him to go into art. At the age of 25, Botticelli completed one of the first paintings that he was actually paid for, a panel that would reside in a meeting room frequented by the most important men in Florence, Italy; the painting was called Fortitude. He became Florence's favourite artist and everyone loved his paintings. He had no one equal to his talent for mixing colours. He was in fact, one of the greatest colourists of all time. He was also a master of the rhythmic line, using paintbrush to outline the figures in his paintings. In doing so, he used his paintbrush in the way we would use a pencil or a pen and he believed that these lines added a feeling of fluidity and movement. Botticelli made a lot of money, up to 100 florins per picture and in our modern money, one florin is about a few hundred dollars. Botticelli did not only paint for himself, he enjoyed painting religious pictures for churches where he also helped paint the Sistine Chapel by painting three frescos (a painting done rapidly in colour on wet plaster on a wall or ceiling so that the colours penetrate the plaster and become fixed). Botticelli was famous for many paintings including his most famous one "The Birth of Venus" which is the photo above. He painted The Adoration of the Magi, The Judith, Primavera, Madonna the Magnificent and the masterly group of the Virgin Enthroned. He also painted the beautiful Mars and Venus too. Botticelli's paintings ignored realism and loved to allegorize, which means to interpret or represent symbolically. Botticelli also enjoyed his artwork to be nude. Unlike most painters, Botticelli had no use for perspective. He placed his own focus on that special kind of beauty seen through imagination; it was the beauty of fantasy and his work at times seemed sort of flat. His portayals were sometimes not seemed quite as realistic but he was a master, and his paintings were outstandingly beautiful.

  

Botticelli actually did a lot for the renaissance art. His work was so amazing that people actually started to copy it. Now, it is extremely hard to tell which ones are his masterpieces. Because Botticelli loved painting fantasy things and loved using his imagination to create beauty, some of the things that people started to copy were mythical beings and classical beauty. People especially copy his technique of outlining pictures but back when Botticelli was still alive, his linear style was out of date by the time he died but was revived in the second half of the 19th century, when his female figures were a major influence on the Pre- Raphaelites and his flowing line was an inspiration for Art Nouveau. For the men of the renaissance era, the mythology of the Greek's and Roamns represented a superior form of truth and wisdom and while Botticelli carried out the artwork, the story behind the painting would have been seen as a symbol of mystery and Botticelli depicted this in the best way possible in his painting The Birth of Venus; it reflects Humanism. Humanism was a huge part of renaissance and had a huge impact on it. Focusing on his "Birth of Venus" painting, Venus was the Roman Goddess of love. Way back when, even before the renaissance period, people had no concept of individuality, and there was no focus on mankind, only on God. Everything was considered to be a mystery that only God could understand. People had no  science or any understanding of the world back then. During the renaissance, this all changed. Humanism placed a value on humanity. Some of the best examples of humanism can be found in Shakespeares and Leonardo da Vinci's work. Some characteristics of humanism include an interest in Greek and Roman myth/art/culture focus on the worldly life, and a focus on human potential and achievement while staying away from the spiritual and eternal life. The Birth of Venus represents these ideas in several ways. The subject is a Roman myth and completely secular. Botticelli chose to portray Venus in a highly realistic way, focusing on a realistic human form. He concentrated on a way to perfect the worldly life rather than on the preparation for an eternal life. If you compare this to Medieval art, which had no concept of realism, it is a big difference. Even today, humanism is still around in artwork, not just paintings but also in novels, drawings, songs and even our daily lives.

Venus

The Birth of Venus, which is the painting I used for my assignment, was considered to be so beautiful that you would not even notice the unnatural length of her neck, the steep fall of her shoulders and the strange way her left arm is hinged to the body. This goes to show how Botticelli took something that would not be considered "beautiful" and turned it into something that seems natural and truly beautiful without the intent to be beautiful. When I typed in Botticelli's name into the Google search this painting was one of the first to come up and it caught my eye instantly and dragged my attention towards it. I loved it so much but I didn't even know why. After looking at different paintings and renaissance artists I just couldn't find another work of art that I liked more that Botticelli's Venus and I didn't know why. I guess i love the naturalness of her, the beauty of her naturalness. It's like she feels comfortable being nude and is proud to be the way she is. The length of her hair and the hairstyle Botticelli gave her really attracts me to the photo because it is an excessive length of hair to have (better seen in the first photo) which is unnatural but still beautiful. I really love everything about this photo and love how Botticelli painted her. His artwork is truly amazing.

Ellus

After I knew this was the photo I was going to do for my assignment, I had to go take photos of Ellie and try to get the proper lighting that was on the original masterpiece. I had to move lights around, turn lights on and off, change my settings around until I got a photograph with just the right amount of light on the left and right side of her face, making the left side significantly darker. It was a really big challenge trying to Photoshop Ellie’s face onto her’s because of the big difference between that skin colours and the way it was painted. Because the texture of the photo seems rough and had lines on it, it was hard to match the texture of the photo of Ellie I took, with Venus. To match the skin colours and to combine them but the hardest challenge I had in created my renaissance photo. I had to bring up the brightness, play around with the colours a little, paint on her face here and there and add noise to Ellie's face. Once I matched up the skin tone and gave Ellie's face the same lines and texture her left eye was so dark and had so much going on that it wasn't even noticeable anymore and did not even look like an eye. I had to take her eye and make only the eye brighter and with less lines on it so you could actually see that she has a second eye. Although the process was long and frustrating,  after three days, I finally got a satisfying result without wrecking the beauty of the original photo.

Mixed Lighting

F-stop: f/5.6
Exposure time: 1/1000 sec.
ISO speed: ISO-400
Focal length: 22 mm
Max aperture: 3.9
Flash mode: no flash
35mm focal length: 33

Types of lighting:
Natural light- sun
Reflector- gold side
Day White Fluorescent: A-B B2 G-M G2

During the creation of this photo I tried different lights, different effects, different angles and positions to finally get the photo I was most satisfied with. I had a lot more photos that looked kind of the same as this one but she was blocking the sun directly which gave her a glow and made her look like Jesus but the colours looked to boosted and too bright which is why I choose this photo over all the other ones I took. The photo has a sort of yellow tint to it but blue at the same time. It took me forever to find out how to even do mixed lighting photos because everyday I tried to take photos I never got a good one or even close to a decent photo because the lighting was so bad or it was just an awful photo. Finally the bad weather had went away and it was super sunny out so I decided to take my mixed lighting photo outside where the sun was shining bright and I got really good photos. It was hard to choose which one I wanted to use because they were all pretty good photos with cool effects and lighting. I really liked this photo because it gives me a cool and warm feeling. The warm feeling comes from the sun and how her hair looks really blonde and the colour of the sky gives me a cooler feeling because of the blue and how her face and hair are kind of green. Even though this angle usually makes people look weird and different I like what it did to the photo. The way the camera was angled captured the sun in a perfect position to add colour and make the photo not so plain. Overall, I really like the photo and I think I did a very good job conveying mixed lighting.