Modern Renaissance

 

Renaissance Write Up

Jacopo Tintoretto (real name Jacopo Comin) was an Italian painter known for his famous Renaissance pictures. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed II Furioso. His work is characterized by its muscular figures, dramatic gestures, and bold use of perspective in the Mannerist style. Tintoretto was born in Venice in 1518 as the eldest of 21 children! His father was a dyer, or tintore; hence the nickname of Tintoretto, little dyer. Only a child, Jacopo would draw on his fathers walls. One day his father took him to the studio of Titian where he practised drawing. Titian told Jacopo that he would never be able to be a painter, so Jacopo stopped going. However, he continued to paint on walls and was eventually painting on the walls and ceilings for churches, becoming better known. Tintoretto also did portrait paintings, quickly getting a reputation for his darker lit, formal portraits. Tintoretto has many famous, well known paintings to date, including his version of The Last Supper, which was painted with oil paint on canvas as were the majority of his paintings. Oil was newly discovered and made it so that it was not a big deal if mistakes were made, it also gave a different texture and effect, Tintoretto strived with this. He died in 1594, living a very long life (during that time) of 75 years.

The painting I chose is one of Tintoretto's earlier work, it has a simple title of "Portrait of a man". Like many of Tintoretto's portraits, this is dark with a serious looking man as the focus. It looks as though this was painted with oil paint, again like many of Tintoretto's portraits.

The main characteristics of the renaissance were painting and sculpting and the elements of paintings were colour, shape, space, texture, tone and value. On a side note, some of the key inventions during the renaissance time include the golf ball (a very popular game during the time), muzzle loaded rifles, the first known copyright granted, dry-point engravings, the first parachute, created by Leonardo DaVinci as well as the theory of flying machines, bell chimes, and the first map globe. Many key things that we still use today were thought up and invented during the renaissance time and it obviously changed painting forever.

Studio Lighting

        The three photographs above are all those of the studio lighting assignment. I had to chose a subject as a model and take three portraits of him using different lighting techniques. Going into this I was not looking forward to it. I didn't think the experimental portion would be very much fun. Not to say that I ended up loving taking these photos, but it wasn't so bad either. I liked experimenting with the different lighting techniques and seeing how many different results I could get from very minor changes. I think the pictures turned out decently and I was able to cover some main lighting techniques. And taking these photos took not but 20 minuted which is always nice. I ran into no problems doing studio lighting, I think it is difficult to run into problems with this specific assignment as all of the lighting is experimental, there is no right or wrong. The picture to the top left is one where I took one studio light, lowered it, and aimed it straight up at my subject, lighting him up along with a nice circle of light on the background. It also created a cool shadow of my subject. The picture to the top right included moving my subject forward, lowering a studio light and aiming it at the basckground without hitting my subject. This caused my subject to be dark and my background to be light. The photo at the bottom is simply a studio light at medium height aiming at my subject from the side. I also decided to use the disc to reflect a gold-ish light to the side of my subject's face. I like how my subject's face is split right down the middle, half light and half dark. The shadow effect is nice too. Overall I underestimated the fact that doing studio can be fun and I ran into no problems and am very happy with the results.

Painting with Light

 

The photos above are ones of the painting with light assignment. These have been my favourite pictures to shoot thus far as I can be very experimental and it's really exciting seeing how they turn out. I ran into a block when my original pictures got deleted, but these ones are better in my opinion so it worked out fine. Through trial and error I was able to come up with some results that I'm happy with and enjoyed trying out new things. I used an f22 aperture and a shutter speed of 15 seconds.

Mixing Light

The three photographs above are those which include a subject with natural light and placed light. All three pictures were taken in the school theatre as it has some cool lights that you can control and it was not in use at the time. It only took me one period to take these picture. They were fun to take for I was able to experiment and try something I've never done before. I used a flashlight on my subjects face due to the fact that a flash light is nice and mobile as well as all of the portable studio lights were being used at the time. I like the top picture the best, the light in the background reflects on to the walls and my subject is nice and centered giving a cool effect. I enjoyed taking these photos and trying out new things to see the different outcomes. The pictures below are what I was supposed to do, whoops. These picutres include the mixing of sunlight and a flashlight. I interpreted natural light as in lights within the school so I re-shot and took a couple of the proper ones. These were tricky as the camera hardly picked up the flashlight with the strong sun, however after some camera adjusting I was able to make it work a little better and am happy with the outcome. My subject is in rather dark areas with some sunlight creeping in a flashlight to illuminate his face.

Name Banner

I found this to be a doable, yet challenging project. Probably because I screwed up multiple times, but that's ok. This particular project consisted of searching for letters of inaminate objects throughout the school and attempting to spell out your name after some editing on photoshop. Going into it I thought we were allowed to take pictures of actual letters throughout the school, after looking around I discovered that that would be just too easy (but kind of nice). Letters actually do show up within the school which was cool to discover becasue it's not like you're actually looking out for those things even though they're right in front of your eyes every day. I probably ended up moving the photos onto my computer three of four times, each time realizing I was missing some letters and had to do some more shooting. Perhaps I would have benifited with some better organization. Once I finally got all my pictures taken I started making my banner on photoshop, only I thought we actually needed to make three banners, not just one. It turned out we just needed three options for each letter, not three banners. My bad. But I am finally done and despite all my self-inflicted errors, I was able to complete this project and appreciate looking at the school in a different way and exercising my creative eyes.

Nicholas Samaras

One of my favorite photographers is Nicholas Samaras. I'm able to appreciate his photography because the majority of it is taken underwater - not exactly an easy thing to do. There are few famous photographers who do underwater photography because it's not an easy thing to do. He's diving deep into oceans regularly taking pictures of creatures that the majority of the world has never seen, which is what I really like about him, it's rare to see a picture of something that you have never even seen before. Frankly, underwater creature kind of scare the crap out of me, but I think that might make me like his pictures more. Some of the fish look like creepy glow in the dark aliens, but they're cool and they're unique and probably takes a pretty special camera to be able to dive that deep and take such cool pictures like his. Here is one of the many cool pictures Samaras has shot:

Samaras Photography

Overall, I just like how much work Samaras puts into his photography considering that for him to take pictures he has to have some sort of special camera, take a boat out to the middle of the sea, have diving gear and/or a sub, dive deep underwater, and finally have to wait around for some interesting creature to come along and take a picture of it. He has no control of his subject, can't instruct it on what to do, in fact, he has to search or wait for it. I just think his photography takes a lot of effort and it comes out worth it because we as veiwer's get to see some pretty cool photography that we otherwise would never be able to see.