Thompson Truong
Professor Michals
Gra2330
Faking it: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop
On my visit to the Metropolitan museum I’ve witnessed a lot of great works by some of the best photographers and artists around the world. One of the exhibits that caught my attention was the Faking it exhibits. I thought that this exhibit was great and it definitely shows the evolution of photography and retouching.
The Faking it exhibit consists of before and after pictures have been retouched. The most interesting part about this exhibit was how the photos were retouched. Before we had the technology we have today people did everything by hand. Just like the pictures that were in this exhibit. A photo that has definitely caught my attention was a photo by Jim Shaw. He used created illustrations of ordinary people and turned them into bizarre like creatures by retouching them. It is a Gelatin silver print and the photo was created in 1978. The way the before picture was laid out the theme was definitely interesting. The man in the photograph was symmetrical and was looking directly into the camera. The surrounding of that portrait was like a dark tone. While near his body there is sort of a light glow around him. It was surely an intricate photograph. The positioning, the tone, contrast and darkness of the picture captivated my attention and I think that Shaw wanted to capture the audience’s attention like that.
The exhibit showed a lot of great work by different artists and photographer’s retouching photographs. When I walked into the exhibit the first thing I thought to myself was how different the retouching and photography would be in today’s standards. With the technology we have today it is not a surprise that I would compare how a retouched photograph would be done with the programs we have now, such as Photoshop. The picture that I can describe about would be the retouched photo by Jim Shaw. This is the picture that he turned humans into reptile looking creatures. All of this is done by hand and it was done in 1978. I wondered how much time it took him to finish the retouching. The retouched photo showed exactly why the exhibit was called faking it. The head of the human was cropped off and a reptilian like creatures head was put in as a replacement. Every little detail had to be done by hand and I was amazed how things were done back then.
The whole theme of faking it impressed me the most. How we can take a flawed photo to retouch it and make it into a whole new photo. Retouching photos by hand every single detail was fixed by hand and there were no such things as an undo button so if they messed up they would have to redo the work again. The audience they aim for are designers, artists, photographers etc. In terms of a general audience I believe that different pictures would captivate different people’s attention unless you are an artist, designer etc. This is definitely an exhibit to visit for anyone because it shows how much work designer’s put in to get a piece finished and their work should be admired and appreciated.
Author Archives: Tom
Museum Faking It Exhibit
Filed under exhibit review, Uncategorized
Learning Log 4 (Brooklyn Historical Society and Greenwood Cemetery)
In the Brooklyn Historical Society we learned about Greenwood cemetery prior visiting there. We learned that Greenwood is a place where people are laid to rest we also got to see maps of Greenwood. We also learned about the Daguerreotype images and how they were created. We got to see the origin of Greenwood with old photos and maps when it was first created. Upon visiting Greenwood I found a lot of interesting things. I took this photo in Greenwood, I think that this is a good place for the people who are laid to rest.
Filed under Uncategorized
Daguerreotype and Ditigal Photos
On our visit to the Brooklyn Historical Society we had a look at the Daguerreotype images. They were created by being engraved into a copper plate. When I observed the Daguerreotype it looked pretty amazing. It had almost like a 3D view when you look at it. The Daguerreotype was cased inside a wooden frame. It was highly detailed and you can tell the work that was put in to make the Daguerreotype.
Photography today is completely different from back then. Back in the days only the rich would be able to take photos. Today everyone can take their own photos and own a digital camera. It was hard and took a lot of work in order to produce an image back then, but now it is so easy with the help of technology. Modern day photography is really cheap. People can now take pictures and save it in their computers without the need to develop them. With digital camera’s we can now adjust it to the way we want to take our photo unlike back then when the cameras were limited to its settings. Today it is also easy to produce large amounts of photographs without hassle.
Filed under Photography Formats
Botanic Garden Best Photo
I personally really like this photo. The shadows that you can see, the lightening and the depth of field you can see between each trees. The most I like about this photo is how the photo leads you right in with leading lines.
Filed under Learning Log 3 (Botanic Garden)
Thompson Truong Hw 1
Thompson Truong
September 5, 2012
GRA 2330 Digital Photography
Flat iron building 2011 Jeff Liao
1. It is a scenery type of photograph.
2. The photographer may be trying to tell us about the everyday life of people. Showing the amount of boats moving back and forth tells us about the work people put in every day.
3. From the overhead view you can see low key has been used so the overall picture has a darker setting.
4. Technical matter does help the picture. From the overhead view the deep space of this photo can be seen and overall it shows the busy theme the photographer is trying to show you.
5. Yes it is. Perspective is important, when I look at the picture I look at the center of the picture first being that the picture is focused on the water. The deep space of the picture made me look from one ship to another and thinking about the photographer’s intentions.
6. At first when I look at the picture I thought it was just a photo of the scenery but as I looked closer I can see ships moving back and forth which made me think that the theme of the picture is the busy lives that people live through every day.
7. The photograph displays a busy type of theme such as the busy lives of people every day.
8. This photograph and his other photographs in the same series are alike because they mostly focus on the scenery of cities. It also shows a busy type of theme as well.
Thompson Truong
For the rule of thirds I didn’t understand the way it worked, when taking a photograph you do not shoot the object in the center. Picture a square and 4 corners, within those four corners the photo you take should be in the range of those four corners and not the center. Today we took a picture of a chair and the way it was set up is that we placed it on the right side so after we took the picture it was aligned right. I hope to learn more about the rule of thirds because I want to understand it clearly.
Filed under learning log 1
