monday #7: post process

Shortly.

A session before our last meeting this season was dedicated to post process. That means how we (digitally or not) edit the pictures before publishing them.

And the homework for next Monday is to make a "handicapped auto-portrait". Make a portrait of yourself missing one of the senses. You can express it by content or form. We will explain no more, let your imagination work for you.

REQUEST: help us experiment

We need to borrow one of Canon cameras from following list: http://mighty-hoernsche.de/

We would use it for an experiment. We want to make it fly and take photos from bird perspective.

Somebody?

today's monday cancelled

We are sorry to inform you that today's group photo therapy is cancelled.
Next time, we meet next Monday (June 14, 5pm) at Gustaf, Pekarna.

Have a shinny mood!

monday #5: minimal

5th session of group photo therapy was dedicated to minimalism.

Following following rules, we walked through the town with eyes wide open to catch catchy minimalistic images that grabbed our eyes and lenses.

rules of minimalism in photography:
_more is less / less is more
_the eye is a menace to clear sight
_spare, stripped to its essentials
_only the outline
_repetition and iteration
_limited number of colors
_simple geometric design
_immediate visual impact

Here are results of our quest..
(click the photos to see slideshows)

by Grega


by Mitja

by Dušan


by Paul



And here is how our session looked in messy "reality".


Better later than never, so the homework for today session is Pick your color. Choose one colour that you adore, hate, that is your favourite or whatever else and make series of 12 photos.

monday #4: lensless

Ok. Today was a big experimenting day. It was all about getting back to basics. Exploring fundamental principles of optics and photography. About connecting analog and digital.

Two weeks ago, we told our task would be construction of pinhole fotoaparat. Here is Alexander's fancy fotkič built for films.

He can't show us the results how it functions but Katja can. First photos from her first pinhole:

Dušan was a bit lazy to use his portable camera obscura made of shoebox but he spent few hours in a provisory dark room in his bathroom - to see if the red light constructed by himself really works. It did and he made several raw photograms by placing objects from all around bathroom and his pockets directly on the photopaper.

(scans soon)

And what we did today was constructing "lensless lens" for the digital fotoaparat. In practice, we wanted to see how this camera obscura works also on digital DSLR machine. We put away the lens and we made a pinhole instead. There are many possibilities of used material. We sticked mainly to good old ducktape and beer cans - both as construction material but as body for the lens itself, as well.
First, we tried just basic pinhole. After several attempts, we saw that the smaller pinhole is, the sharper picture you can get.




Then, we saw that we can also make more than one pinhole. Every new hole adds all the objects on the picture one more time. So, if you have three pinholes, you can see everything three times on the photo. Very nice.


After, we started to think about the focal length. "Lens" that we constructed was something like 50mm lens on crop factor 1,6x. We wanted to try something longer.
So we took a beer can (Laško!) and we made tele beer pinhole lens. And guess what... it worked! But we noticed there are some light reflections because the inner wall of the can is aluminium, so we have to try also with black-painted can. The reflections should dissapear. Or you can adjust them by squeezing the can in different directions.




The last and most developed lens we made today - Laško zoom pinhole. You just cut your freshly constructed objective and you put those two "optical elements" together and hence - you have zoom! Kako lepo in preprosto.

all the photos here:

> process

> results

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mitja & dušan = great team!

Fotografski sejem in foto delavnica portret

V soboto 15. maja ob 09.00 uri, Muzej narodne osvoboditve Maribor, Ulica heroja Tomšiča 5, v sodelovanju s Fotoklubom Maribor pireja sejem fotografije. Na sejmu boste lahko prodali ali kupili rabljen fotografski aparat, dobili koristen napotek od svetovalca fotografske opreme, se udeležili fotografske delavnice na temo portret. Na delavnici se boste preizkusili s fotografiranjem v opremljenem fotografskem studiu, naredili posnetek, portretirali bodo vas in vi njih in to le za 5 EUR. Delavnica bo trajala od 9.45 do 13 ure. Prijavite se zbirajo deset minut pred začetkom delavnice.

Gregor

camera obscura

Hey,

here is a link, i just found one, if i find more (i know i did see more interesting cameras obscuras) i'll send it to you.

http://www.abelardomorell.net/photography/cameraobsc_49/cameraobsc_49.html

Katja

monday #2: history

Our second session was dedicated to the history.

But first, we evaluated our homework from previous meeting. Our task was to capture our normal day through photography. I really liked Mitja's series which was highly conceptual. He made shots of surfaces/places that he is sitting on during his day - from early morning through busy day up to late evening. Clean, fine series.

Links to our homeworks: Mitja, Dušan, all others - please - send me links.

So back to our topic. We were talking about the history. History of photography itself, how it evolved from camera obscura through daguerreotype to first digital aparats. Historical overview of anything is usually quite boring and our case was not exception.

And making some practical "historical" task is also not easy thing to do. But inspired by many fruitful sources of the internet, we took some photos of old Maribor and we hit the town. It was not so much about history of photography but history of place where we live. You can try to do the same. Find an old photo of some place that you know, take it to your hand and with second hand, take a photo of how the environment looks nowadays. You will be able to see how our towns, streets and whole world changes.

It's not so easy as it looks. Next time, we have to be more accurate. And tips for those who want to try it. It's good to have bigger prints and wide lens (and sun in your back).

Whilte talking about the evolution of photographic techniques, we mentioned camera obscura and pinhole. These are basic principles of how photoaparat functions. It's good to know it. And that's why our new homework is to make a pinhole aparat. There are many many tutorials on the internet how to make different kinds of pinholes, so google one and try to construct your own analog fotkič. Once you have it, you need photo paper and chemicals for processing the photos in the dark room. We will try our pinholes in two weeks when we get all the necessary stuff.

You can try with us!

Or home alone - but don't forget to share your results.

See you next Monday on basics of composition.

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And I almost forgot to show you beautiful photograms that Katja made last week!

A Moment in Time

Attention: everyone with a camera, amateur or pro. Please join us on Sunday, May 2, at 15:00 (U.T.C./G.M.T.), as thousands of photographers simultaneously record “A Moment in Time.” The idea is to create an international mosaic, an astonishingly varied gallery of images that are cemented together by the common element of time.

more at http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/readers-11/

monday #1: introduction

I am very happy to announce that our skupinska foto terapija (for non-sloven speakers, it's 'group photo therapy') has begun.

Our first Monday session was short but long enough for introduction of all the people, the idea and reason why we gathered. We also had possibility to see other people's photos. The links to our online photo collections are in the right-side menu.

From talking and showing our stuff, we could feel that we are very different personalities with various backgrounds who have very different approaches to photography. We can use this diversity in useful way for all of us who are participating.

Next Monday, we will briefly go through the history of photography and maybe we will start with the composition.

We agreed that part of our learning process will be also photo homeworks. Each time, we set some topic or task to deal with our photoaparat in one week. Next time we meet, everybody shows what he did and we can discuss, analyze it and give each other feedback.

First time, also for sake of getting to know each other, our homework is to make photo series depicting how our daily life looks like. To show others what we see, feel and experience during our usual day. Try to make maximum 12 photos.

This blog is also a way how to show, what we are doing as a group, for those who can't join us physically. But you can still follow us, learn and share with us. Anybody, who is reading this blog, can do photo homeworks with us, as well. And send it to fedrafukicskowska@gmail.com

mitja

katja

mateja

daniela

dušan

kristijan

Invitation

Are you interested in photography? Do you want to improve your skills? Or you just like sharing your photo experience and point of view..? If so, attend our group photo terapy every Monday at 5pm in Pekarna, Maribor. We are starting April 26.


No age or skill limit, only requirements are English language and your own (digital) fotoaparat.

Or maybe you can just show us how to make better pictures than this one, for example. Because we also want to learn something from you.

Our motto: "first learning the rules, then breaking them"

More info at dusan@pekarna.org or 030 334 966

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This project is supported by City of Maribor, Ministry of Youth, Ministry of Culture and European program Youth in Action and Foto Tabor.