Project Escher

Hi there,
This is a quick half idea I've been working on, it won't make it onto my site but I thought it would be worth putting on the blog as this is the start of a project I am doing where I am trying to create photorealistic versions of the woodcuts made by M.C.Escher.



Also earlier this week I did the corridor archway shot below, this was to get me started with creating shots which have the feel and warped realism of Escher’s work. It's early days with this project but I'm hoping that with time and patience I should be able to make some real stand out images...


A

Some thoughts on photography...

Hey there,
Just been asked the question about where photography is going on a forum I am a member of(Photoforum) and came up with some thoughts which I thought might be worth dropping onto my blog also.

" It seems to me that the mystery has been taken out of photography, now cameras are so clever/affordable, well-exposed sharp images are within everyone’s reach. When I first started working in a photography studio it was all 5/4 film, with an assistant to each photographer who disappeared into a darkroom now and again, if you were a client visiting the studio you'd have know idea of the process of creating professional photographs so photography at that level almost seems like a guarded profession. But over the years digital backs have become more affordable and practical, starting with big £20,000 sinar digital sensors, but slowly it has started to make as much sense to use cameras like hasselblad’s, and now DSLR’S like the D200. If a client or non professional now was to visit the very same studios they would more or less see cameras which can be brought at any high street photography suppliers, used with computers and software much like they would have in the office.

So thinking about this it seems to me that the bottom end has come out of the industry, the very basics are achievable by the non-professional. But as anyone on this forum knows, there is much more to photography than the basics, the difference between getting it right and getting a shot looking amazing (making people give up some time in there images saturated day to look at that photo)are worlds apart and what makes the difference is years of experience and dedication or in some lucky cases god given talent. So it seems to me that to succeed in photography we need to get more creative, each photographer plough there own path, make images that are so good they leave folks baffled.

Anyways, much ramberling there, that's kind of what I have been thinking about for a bit and has been driving where I have been going with my photography. I guess it's just saying a photographer really needs to push themselves, but right now with the whole world becoming photographers it seems more important than ever... "






Ground breaking stuff huh...I don't know, just thought folks might be interested.

To keep you all entertained here's a shot I put together just after christmas. It's quite a bleak one, going back to this kind of Sci-Fi end of the world photography which I put some time into a few years back.

(Link here www.andrewbrooksphotography.com/studio-gallery-salford.htm
and here http://andrewbrooksphotography.com/unreal-gallery-umistslice.htm to check a couple of these)

Quite a lot of heavy comping together of images to create the graphic fell of this one, but where as with most of the landscapes I worked on in 2006 I tryed to make them look very illastrative, this one I wanted to keep some gritty realisum in there. I saw the Alfonso Cuarón 'Children of Men' in November, and was so blown away by that movie, and I think a really important element was how real it felt, some of the scenes where the shot was minuets long in the middle of a warzone on the streets of a version of the UK which is pretty recognisable were mind blowing, anyways, this shot was kind of an attempt to get that documantary realisum but show quite a fantastical scene.

Anyway here's the shot.

Andrew

Where I shoot my shots...

Hi Again, happy new year and all that,
Just a quick bit about some of the shots on my site. I've had this idea of dropping Google earth coordinates under the shots, link these to have a look at a couple.

Cornfield

Sliced City

if you copy and paste the informaition below the picture into the 'Fly To' box on Google earth then hit enter you should go right to, or pretty close to the spot where the shots were taken.

Also if you want to see a few images I have taken, dropped onto the spot where they are taken got to

This Page

and go to the click on this icon in the middle.


I'm going to try and add more shots to this and more coordinates to my shots, as it seems to be an interesting alteranative way to browse information on the interenet, where as usually you can find content by doing text seaches, this is a way of coming across interesting things using the geography of the earth.

Here's a shot I just finished today with it's location underneath, which to be honest in this case is kind of a lie, as the floor and the window at the end of the corridor were shot in diffoent parts of manchester. but most of it was shot at 53°28'43.11"N, 2°14'35.59"W so there.




It's just occered to me it might not be to smart to go around letter folks know where my shots were taken and other photographers can go recreate them, so don't go doing that please, atchully do it if you want, be interesting to see what other photographers come up with.

Anyways, thats it for my Blog for now, the shots above from an idea which I'm kind of starting to mess around with, I've got an idea of creating photorelistic versions of the work of M.C.Escher. The shot above is all about getting the feel of his shots and also the kind of warped neat'ness that his images have. Next step is to study the way he creates and uses optical illusuilon to create his impossible scenes, then put some time into creating the photographs. I'll post my progress on this here Blog...

Cheers

Andrew