creating your own world

tracings

visible and invisible light

©liza 2011

"The picture… is but a succession or variety of stronger lights thrown upon one part of the paper, and of deeper shadows on another. Now Light, where it exists, can exert an action". 

  William Henry Fox Talbot, 1000 Photo Icons by Anthony Bannon, George Eastman House , ISBN: 3822820970 , Page: 96

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Drawing and Light

NS's blurb: "I drafted my visual thoughts on paper then scanned it and then I drew it in Photoshop. I always illustrate... that's just how I like to express my thoughts and ideas. It's like when you visualize what a camera could do for you. A  camera shapes up any environment and brings value to it whether in a form of a document, advert, portrait, fashion shoot, etc." 
  

I asked Nhlanthla Shezi [NS], who is currently in 3rd year to share these images of his. I am excited by the way his digitally constructed image is built and based on his drawing framework. I think that this is such an inspiring example of the close connections one CAN make with photography and drawing (using a one Reflective Journal) and how Photoshop can merge the two. These images (the drawn and photographic composite image) also reveal how important it is to have a strong concept, where one draws from ones own surroundings (see NS's T-shirt: made in Ntuzuma) , and articulates these in an individualistic manner...* (scream's 3A's).   

 NS's blurb: "The image was for a crit submission of one of my two specialist which is Digital Manipulation. My inspiration came by looking at the life style of the people living in shacks, and in spite of their living conditions they do not give up ... they strive for success.  Before DUT I studied at Vega doing graphic design for two years and have one year of working experience at an ad. agency (African Mediums).  What I love with Photoshop is that I am able to create the world of my own.

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Drawing with Light

When I started to do this post I kept thinking about how closely connected Photography and drawing are. I was reminded about the how the word Photography means "painting with Light" and about  William Fox Talbot's  [WFT] photographic publication, the "Pencil of Nature", the first book to contain  images.

 WFT makes photograms_ traces of nature / camera-less photographs. He placed objects directly on light sensitive material. Where the light hit the paper it was exposed and where the object stopped the light it wasn't exposed. The exposed areas turned black once they were developed and the unexposed areas remained white - and the areas in the middle came out various shades of grey. WFT's artistic experimentation and inventiveness pioneered the "concept of the negetive" present in Photography today and made major contributions to the development of photography as an artistic medium... see his quote below.

"I then thought of trying again a method which I had tried many years before. This method was to take a camera obscura and to throw the image of the objects on a piece of paper in its focus – fairy pictures, creations of a moment, and destined as rapidly to fade away. It was during these thoughts that the idea occurred to me – how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper" William Henry Fox Talbot, Fox Talbot, photographer by Robert Lassam , Page: 10

 

© William Fox Talbot

  " One advantage of the discovery of the Photographic Art will be, that it will enable us to introduce into our pictures a multitude of minute details which add to the truth and reality of the representation, but which no artist would take the trouble to faithfully copy from nature." - William Henry Fox Talbot, Fox Talbot, photographer by Robert Lassam , Page: 18

© Nda 2009

oO~

(a mouse)