Reflection

 Over this term, I created a project that incorporated both digital and traditional skills.  I met my objectives for the project and developed skills in using decal and digital design.  I created this final design ..

I have to say that I do not really like it that much even though the geometry of the triangles really works with the photography and it met my criteria.  I just do not feel it had enough to it in terms of depth and it needed more work to really develop this further.  I would be inclined not to use my own face next time and explore the idea of identity in another way here.  If I was going to do this again I would use objects rather than my face and I would not add the names of the elements here - they would be underlying elements embedded into the image. Overall I definitely will not be adding this to my portfolio as this does not meet my own standards of what I was trying to achieve conceptually.  

Peer Review

 Today we were peer-reviewing each other's websites so I picked Angy Ebrahim's site from my class which can be found here: https://angybayoumy20.wixsite.com/website-1

What do you think of the homepage?

Good clean homepage is well designed and easy to understand. 

Is the navigation bar clear and easy to use? 

Very clear and easy to navigate 

What did you think of the galleries/portfolio pages? Consider the design, ease of use, and how well the work is presented? 

Portfolio pages are easy to click into.  The featured article I think I would have preferred to see the title for this or you could have a front image for all your projects and then a button that clicks into these so that this is more visually interesting 

What do you think of the biography?  Is it well written? Are there any spelling or grammatical errors?  Does it give you a good impression of the person?

The biography is well written and clear.  You may wish to update this as you have moved forward in life.  It does give a good impression and I think it represents you well as a person.  I would also update the image making you look more professional 

Is there a contact page? Is this well presented and easy to find?

Yes - clear and easy to find and well presented 

Do all social media links work?

No social media links and think that this needs to be corrected you should have a social media presence of some kind. 

Any other comments?

Good website that with a few adjustments could be excellent

Updating Website & Testing

 I have not updated my site for a while so I am going to do this now to really improve on being found on the internet and trying to gain more connection to my site.  I am going to begin by updating the SEO on my site

This makes the site easier to find and to share on social media.  

I then realised as I had been showing students things on the site many things did not actually belong there!  So I removed all extraneous items and changed the homepage buttons to reflect the correct pages.

I check my copyright was up to date and then checked all my social media links 

These all worked well and everything was up to date.  I then went to my Bio page as I prefered a bio I had used elsewhere so I changed it to this version 

After each of these actions, I republished to ensure that the site was updated live!

I then began checking the mobile view as I had made other changes this could have been affected 

The contact page was fine, but the portfolio pages the writing and buttons appeared in the wrong places so I fixed this in the editor. 

I checked all the pages and then previewed and when I was satisfied I published again

I will admit that I had neglected this site a little and as I had used it for teaching purposes it had got int a bit of a mess!  So I have now given it a bit of love and care and I can now consider how I can further improve this for the future - I think more connections with other social media and work online would bring together my work online and cross-connections will hopefully lead more people to my site. 

Process: Creating the Canvas and Developing on Photoshop

 So now I have the images I have the difficult job of picking the four that will really work together for this magical altarpiece.  So the element should go as follows:

Earth: Lower Left Corner

Air: Upper Right Corner

Fire: Lower Right Corner

Water: Upper Left Corner 

So I began by creating an A3 Canvas as this is the size I will be printing on the decal.  I then started to choose the images and add to the canvas - the images here areas shot in-camera no editing or adjustments made. I used here the resize image and ensured that all images were 300ppi

So here is the four shots together I am not sure if I like this yet but this is the base layer for the work..

Now I am going to add elements to these to see if this will work...these are the copyright free symbols I will be using

I then added these as new layers over the correct image 

This is the final result:

I will now print this onto the Decal paper and add to the wooden board - please see my next post for this process.

References:

The Buena Vida (07/11/18) Four elements to building a sacred altar [Online] Available from: https://www.thebuenavida.net/psilocybin-blog/2018/11/7/four-elements-to-building-a-sacred-altar (Accessed 23/08/20)

Regardie I (1989)The Golden Dawn 6th Edition, Llewellyn Publications, Minnesota.

Process: Taking the Shots

 So the shots I wanted to take seemed initially to be fairly simple.  I wanted four headshots that I could then add the four elements for the final piece.  I realised quickly that four headshots had to be interesting in some way to convey what I wanted in the final images and so I began with some really simple test shots to see if I could discover what I was after as I did not have an exact picture of how this would work. I used my Olympus E3 with a remote shutter release and a tripod. 

So I took the shots using natural light, in my flat, I had the ISO quite high as I wanted to slightly overexpose them so they had ethereal look in the final piece.  I created the contact sheets on Photoshop (File - Automate - Contact Sheet).  I took around 200 images so that I could experiment with the shot. While the contact sheets were processing I had a quick look at a couple of the shots:

ISO 500, F4, FL 15mm, 1/50

Edited on Picasa using Holga-ish filter. 

This is kind of the look I was after to try to get the feeling of transcendence.  The piece itself will be like the casting of a spell using ritual symbols.

ISO 500, F4, FL15mm, 1/40

Cinemascope on Picasa

This one I just wanted to see from a different perspective so I added the cinemascope to have a look!  My contacts are still processing...and finally seven contact sheets so I will just go through these here:

These first shots are just test shots to decide the angle and the light I tried them in different places in the house and looked at composition.  They were shot in black and white here you can see I also shot in RAW.

I continued to experiment with quite 'straight' shots but realised I wanted more movement in them to give them more impact 

I started to move my head a little more but realised it need more violence and spontaneity 

I started to get the look I was after and the images started to really move within the frame - sort of pain contained in the frame!

This is a long post and I think I look like pure evil in the last shot!  The best images here are the ones where my face is obscured or there is movement so now I will choose the four shots I want to represent fire, earth, air and water on the final canvas. 

Target Market: Photographic Art

 

Fighting Pure Madness by P. Urbanek

Trying to pin down your target market, the audience who would be interested in your work can be tricky.  The art market is particularly challenging as much of what art is worth is based on what people essentially think it is worth.  But who is buying art and where are they buying it is what I will explore here in this post.  

Art conscious state the following: 

'Active online buyers purchasing more and on higher prices. In 2018, the share of online art buyers paying an average price in excess of US$5,000 per fine art object increased to 25%, up from 21% in 2017. Confidence of buying online increases among people. Surveys show that 52% of those who bought online last year will buy more art in the upcoming year, 38% will buy the same this year as they did last year, 28% of those who have not bought art online in the past year, say they are ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ to do so this year.' (Artconscious: 2020) 

So from these statistics, we can see that that online purchases of art have been increasing and that buyers will buy art year upon year, this is all very promising however this was written prior to the pandemic so how has this affected the art market?  Although art is still being bought with the financial times stating that; 'Earlier this month, the hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin was reported to have bought a Basquiat painting privately for north of $100m.' (Gerlis M. 13/06/20) this is certainly not representative of the whole market.  Gerlis further states that it is the two extreme ends of the market that are hit hardest, the very expensive work (over 1 million) collectors will not buy unseen online and the lowest end of the scale with new and emerging artists as people are less willing to take the risk on emerging artists.  The middle ground where established contemporary artists are selling and responding to the times are still in demand.  So tough times for artists and finding a buyer for their work.  

However not to be too downhearted as Art Business points point out the art market is particularly difficult to quantify and assess as art is being sold everywhere: 'on social media, artist websites, gallery websites, websites where artists or galleries pay fees to display their art, fixed-price secondary market and resale websites, classified ad sites, online auction sites, art galleries, art fairs, art walks, open studios, flea markets, estate sales, bricks & mortar auctions, museum sales and rental galleries, "Nothing Over $39.95" sales, local country auctions, directly out of artists' homes and studios, street fairs, wine bars, antique collectives, framing stores, on the street, interior design showrooms, coffee shops, condo lobbies, cruise ships, county fairs, and on and on and on. Obviously, assembling any kind of meaningful data on overall art market transactions is not possible.'  (Art Business 1998-2019)

So art can be found in many places online during the pandemic and some believe that sales although lower will stabilise CNBC states; 'Still, the recovery in the art market in the coming months is likely to be highly uneven, especially for nonmasterpiece works that aren’t already well known. Bank of America said in a new report that sellers are likely to stay on the sidelines over the summer, constraining the supply of works for sale. It said supply could “spike sharply” in the fall, leading to lower prices, and then stabilize, with prices 10% to 15% lower,  depending on the course of the virus. ' (Frank R. 29.06.20) So perhaps the answer here is that artists need to lower their prices until the art market picks up, do special offers and really work on improving their social media profile as this will help to direct art lovers to their work.  

Creative people now need to get even more creative to reach their audience and to make a living - so going forward and considering this in terms of my own work is very important - I will consider how I would share my website to those interested in photography, consider my online presence and really overhaul this at this time. 

References

Artconscious (2020) Art Market Statistics [online] Available from:  https://www.artconscious.co.uk/page/art-market-statistics (Accessed 19.08.20) 

Gerlis M. (13/06/20) Who's Buying What Art Online? [Online] Available from: https://www.ft.com/content/58c1b2c6-a9a4-11ea-abfc-5d8dc4dd86f9 (Accessed 19.08.20) 

Art Business (1998-2019) Domestic and International Art Market Sales Statistics [Online] Available from: https://www.artbusiness.com/marketdata.html (Accessed 19.08.20) 

Frank R (29/06/20) How a $60 million painting may mark the biggest test for the art market during coronavirus crisis [Online] Available from https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/25/60-million-painting-marks-biggest-test-for-art-market-during-pandemic.html (Accessed 19.08.20)

Developing Ideas: Student Card to Work of Art

 I have a great love of old photography books and manuals and so here I wanted to look at Dixon's 'The Way to Professional Photography'  (1984) I took some quick shots this morning of a few pages:

I will reshoot these but I wanted to add just to show you this morning in class.  So this book aims to improve your photography through various techniques and here it begins with the double exposure - so what I will do is create the same effect as a further experiment in how to produce the images I would like on the wooden panels I wanted to create.  Obviously, this method is prior to Photoshop but I will essentially do the same with two images ...

So I took my student card image from 1997 

I then cropped the photo on Photoshop so I had just my face.  I then found some images from a macro class of roses.  I changed this to black and white by going to Image, Adjustments, black and white.  Then I adjusted the size and resolution of both images so they were 10 x 8 cm, 300ppi.

This means that I could then simply put the flower over my face and then lower the opacity to around 35% essentially making the image see-through 

I then adjusted the flower around my face until I felt that it made a good double exposure.  Then I simply flattened the images together and cropped to create this final image...

I actually considered that this image worked quite well, it looks as if I am wearing a head covering and this changes the original meaning and look to the image - original purpose student identity - end result - a work of art!