Larry Blackwood

Larry Blackwood is an American photographer who has spent forty years “exploring self-expression through photography”. Though he spent most of his adult life working in other professional fields, he lately has switched back to spending all of his time working on his photography. He has been featured in numerous photography collections and magazines, including Lenswork in 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015.

           His Lenswork collection in 2008 called Elevation, and is a series of photographs featuring farm buildings and silos. What was interesting about this collection was the texture and contrast that created interest in what could have been boring and featureless pictures. Silos and farm buildings are usually generic, varying very little from silo to silo. Despite this apparent obstacle in originality, Blackwood was able to emphasize these minor difference and highlight them to create a wide variety of pictures. He did this by mostly focusing on lines and curves, but particularly shadows. Buildings and architecture that might have otherwise been overlooked are transformed to become stunning. Another interesting feature of the buildings that he highlights is the contrast of curves and straight lines. Usually the curves come from the silos, and the straight lines and angles come from the barns. This combination causes the eye to travel across the photograph smoothly in some parts and more rigidly in others. Another interesting feature are the shadows. In many pictures, half of the interest and fascination that this collection creates is made by the shadows. Some of the shadows come from the buildings themselves, and some from additions to them, like rickety old staircases. The stark contrast of the shadows and the harsh lights are sharp divisions between light and dark.

I was inspired by Blackwood to pursue architecture photography, not only for an assignment, but also for my personal project. I hope to apply his skills of control and texture in my own photographs. Beyond the simple subject of silos, Larry Blackwood captures a stunning contrast of light and dark, new and old, the best of times and the worst of times.  

http://larryblackwood.com/

Architecture

       Coming back to school from winter break, we were loaded with three assignments due in quick succession. First, microphotography. Second, the first installment of our personal project. Third, architecture and landscape. Going into this, I didn’t really have an idea of what constituted as ‘architecture’, because all the collections of professional architectural photographs I’d seen were so different from one another. In addition, I was pretty sure I wanted to do architecture for my personal project, so I knew I had to get used to taking these kind of pictures quickly. 

       I went out on a Saturday morning with my father to take pictures. We went first to the Royal Chulan hotel, which is near my house. I quickly realized that I wasn’t getting the kind of pictures I wanted there, so we took the second roll of film to some old, abandoned buildings near the KL Tower. The buildings were old and dilapidated, and overrun by trees and plants on the insides. However, they were being cleared out by a construction crew, which created some interesting photographs. In one house, there were walls covered in graffiti, which also created interest. Compared to my first roll of film, I was very happy with many of the photographs I finished with. 

       The biggest challenge when printing these pictures was bringing out the details in the shadows. One photograph had a massive and nearly black shadow on it. Really by accident, I dodged the shadow, and ended up with quite a bit of detail brought out, but luckily without it being unnatural looking. Another picture had two dark windows. After dodging them a little bit, some detail was brought out. However, had I dodged them more, they would have looked grey and unnatural. 

Microphotography

       Our first assignment for the semester was microphotography, which is the same as we did last year. Different than last year, however, was that we did this project in pairs. My partner was Tara Goel. An interesting and challenging aspect of this assignment was collaborating with another person when they have a different photographic style then yourself. Tara preferred to focus on the pattern and detail on large leaves, while I preferred to see an entire flower or bulb in detail. When two people have different artistic choices, it can be difficult to compromise, but we worked through it. 

       In regard to the photographs themselves, a challenge was getting the contrast correct. In some of the pictures, there were very dark areas and very light areas, which made it difficult to print at times. I wanted to keep that contrast without having it distract from the overall detail and pattern of the leaves themselves. An interesting aspect of the leaves pictures was the lines that drew the eye across the photograph, leading them indifferent directions. The texture was also incredible.

Personal Project: St. Joseph's Cathedral

         Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to travel to Hanoi, Vietnam with my basketball team. Though the flight is only three and a half hours long, the differences between Kuala Lumpur and Hanoi are dramatic. First and foremost, it was extremely cold, ranging from 12 °C-6 °C! Coming from a city that was averaging around 35 °C at the time, it was a welcome change. Another difference between Vietnam and Kuala Lumpur was the architecture, layout, and development of the city itself. From my experience, Kuala Lumpur is striving to make itself a thoroughly modern metropolis, replacing old buildings with towering skyscrapers. While that may not necessarily be a bad thing, it does lessen the easy access to culture and authentic street-life. In Hanoi, they have preserved this way of life, though purposefully or through necessity I am not sure. 

         During our free time over the weekend, we walked throughout different districts of the city, the most interesting of which was the Old Quarter. This semester, I have chosen architecture as my personal project, mainly because of the wide variety of architectural styles that are accessible to me, as well as because I wanted to do something vasty different than my last personal project, which was street. Hanoi provided a perfect opportunity to try out architecture photography.

         This small collection of photographs was taken at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in the Old Quarter. From the information I gathered, the cathedral emphasized the trinity, which was visibly present everywhere, from its facade, to its windows, arches. it was built in 1886 by the French colonial government, and seemingly resembles its Parisian predecessor, Notre Dame. What really captured by attention was the symmetry of the building itself, the beautiful arches, as well as the distinct shape of the windows and staircases.

Personal Project: Street Photography

Over the first semester of this year, we were allowed a lot more freedom than we had been in the past to take pictures as we wanted to. Our main focus for this semester was ‘photographic seeing’, which means living in the world as if through a viewfinder, always seeing the world as the elements of a photograph. Over the semester, this skill grew and developed, and hopefully will continue to do so in the future. The principle assignment we were given was our personal project, in which we could decide the theme and subject, and over the course of the semester, take photographs of our chosen thing.

I chose street photography as my personal project. I freely admit to the frustration and difficulty of street photography, particularly in making each shot unique and memorable in a place that cannot be contained or controlled. My chosen theme helped to develop my photographic seeing because, having gone to different markets several different times, I was forced to imagine ways of capturing individual moments of real street life. My photographic seeing developed because I began to change how I approached many different subjects.

I went on two photo shoots for my personal project during the semester, but because of a series of unforeseen catastrophes (aka, my film was incorrectly developed), I was limited on the amount I was able to print. In the end, I had four photographs in total. The first photograph is from Chinatown.

The next three photographs were taken in Imbi Market, but they were very difficult to print because it was very dark inside.

Street Photography Mini Project

This shoot was the second time that I had gone to Chinatown to take pictures. Even though the area was generally unchanged, the experience was quite different. For one reason, there were a lot more people, particularly tourists, which made it harder to get clear shots of the stalls. Another thing that was different was the camera that I used. This time I used the waist-level finder. 

Though it doesn’t sound that much different, it took a while to get used to. A problem I noticed was matching up what I wanted to take as a photo to what the camera saw. The angle took some getting used to be because people walking in front of me would block the lens or get in the way. When you have a camera with a regular viewfinder, then people know you are taking a photo, but when it is with a waist-level, people don’t realize what is happening. The degree of anonymity is quite nice at times, because the subjects are caught unawares. On the other hand, it is annoying when people walk in front of your shot because they don’t know what you are doing.

The first photograph had a really light bottom third, so I had to to some considerable burning. In addition to burning the bottom, I also burned the top left corner. 

The second photograph was actually quite easy to print because I only had to up the contrast. There weren’t any parts that were far too bright or far too dark, so I didn’t need to do any burning or use the lollypop.

I think that that the fourth photograph is interesting because of the angle. I like how it is noticeably taken from lower that usual, and his lounging position thus becomes more pronounced.

For the fifth photograph had to have a high contrast, and because it was underneath a ceiling, it was quite dark. I had to lollipop the faces of the two people, particularly the woman.

Microphotography

For the first time we had a microphotography project as an assignment, which basically consisted of us walking all over the school with a spray bottle taking close up shots of newly-wet flowers and leaves. The camera body we used was the same as we have always used, but the lens was a special micro lens. Because of the lens’s specific depth of field, it was almost impossible to get a photo without selective focusing, which was really different than before. It was really interesting to see how the focusing was so different in microphotography than in other lenses, like wide angle.

The most interesting part of microphotography was seeing how the focus turned out in the final product. In some cases, I had meant to get more than one leaf or petal in focus, but only one turned out in detail, such as the following picture. The selective focus in this picture is of the leaf on the left side. When printing this picture, I had to burn the edges, especially the bottom, significantly so that they didn’t distract. Though I usually prefer not to have borders, I used them in this print because it brought out the leaves really well.

In the following image I burned the top of the print, testing several different times, making sure that it didn’t bring attention away from the flowers. The problem with burning the top was that the top right corner would get increasingly dark and distracting, so I had to make sure it stayed even. I brought up the contrast on this image because it helped to make the petals as well as the bee stand out and differentiate.

The last print I did was my favorite because of the flower itself, as well as the angle. Instead of being above the flower, I took it from the side, which made the selective focus was more obvious and interesting. The biggest challenge with printing this image was the contrast. Originally a pretty grey picture, I had to turn up the contrast a lot, making the magenta well over 100, so that the petals and the detail on them really stood out.