Week of Oct. 4- Monochromatics!

Forgive me, these three photos were supposed to be put up for last week, so please count them as last week's blog post! I started messing around on Flickr looking for interesting use of monochromatic color in photos, and here are a few of my favorites. The red is called "Running from Myself" or something like that. The total redness of the picture gives it a distinct feeling of panic or eeriness that I don't think would be there were it to be beige, or blue, etc. Very interesting use of color to influence how the photo feels.

 Oh, I love this one. It's blue/teal. I almost used my old blue ocscillating fan for my monochromatic picture. The bubble is an ingenious idea. Thing is, I was going to use bubbles in a bathtub for white--I didn't think about bubbles looking blue around their edges! It's whimsical and made more attractive to look at with its single shade of sea foam.

I liked the simplicity of this white-on-white still life. I think these are golden delicious apples, so somehow they must have manipulated the color. The use of the apples on the old whitewashed board give it a country twinge, but there's also a decidedly modern feel because of the use of only white and the simple lines. Very nice!

Oct. 3, 2010- Edward J. Steichen

Edward J. Steichen was at one point in history the most famous and well-paid photographer in the world. He was a jack-of-all-trades (photographically speaking). This above photo is of a dancer's daughter at the Acropolis in Greece. Steichen would manipulate the negatives to make certain effects. I don't know what he did to this one, but she looks like a Greek goddess, her clothing made from and flowing into the sky. It's fantastical.

  This one seems unreal, dreamlike--the vibrantly white cloud contrasting impossibly with the darkness of the horizon and reflecting eerily on the rippled water.

Steichen took photos during war time and then became what was considered the world's first fashion photographer. Therefore, he was great at portraits. This one was in a collection called Juxtapositions. I like that I can't tell if it's a "civilized" gentleman with some other negatives processed over him or if it's a native man from somewhere (he took pictures documenting people in undeveloped countries, too).