Discussion 5: Photography

In week 5 we looked at photographers such as Jeff Wall and Gregory Crewdson. Both photographs get a lot of their sensibilities from the movies and the way they are shot. Jeff Wall sets up his digital montage pictures in a planned way rather than capturing a spontaneous moment. His picture A Sudden Gust of Wind is a digital montage and contemporary update of a classic Japanese woodblock print by Katsushia Hokusai.

Here is the Japanese print

Gregory Crewdson creates photographs that are planned down to painstaking detail. Often he uses dramatic light as an element that give his pictures a dramatic feel. His pictures even feel like they are part of a narrative and have been captured in the middle of the most interesting part.

I mostly use photography these days in order to capture any sort of reference for a later project that requires painting or drawing. I also take a lot of pictures of my cat. I did take a digital photography class at FAU, which you can see examples of in below posts on this blog. Usually my reference photos often involve trees or some sort of natural setting. That stuff is difficult to draw without a reference sometimes.

-Jason