This weekend

Finally up to date.

This weekend was full of fun packed activities.
Saturday 


Setting off at the crack of lunchtime I made my way down to Chester with my parents. Stopping off  on the way at certain locations where I did some filming.
The first location was Preston Brook where Canal Boats are moored. I managed to film a boat coming up the canal and under the bridge. This is a perfect example of man interacting with nature.
The second place is an example of the destruction of nature by man. In Runcorn there is an industrial plant part of the INEOS group. It is called INEOS Chlorvinyl and it produces chlorine gas. It was recently in the paper for being high energy intensive.
The next place I filmed is another example of interaction and that was the River Dee in Chester. The river was full of boats, sightseeing boats, pedalows and rowing boats. There were a few technical problems as I was filming on a bridge and every time  someone walked across the bridge started shaking, which made the camera wobble slightly.

Sunday.

I was up early this time as it was vital that I got to Crosby beach before high tide. For one of my videos I thought it would be interesting to film Antony Gormley's Another Place. The statues were obviously static but let me tell you the wind certainly was not. I set up the shot so I had one of the statues on the left of the screen, with the sea behind and also a wind farm to the right. Then as the video plays a ship appears to the left ans sails across. The thing I had to contend with the most was the wind. Blimey it was blowing something fierce. After I hit play I had to  take a firm grip of my tripod otherwise it would have blown away. The video is still a little shaky but this was an example of nature working against me.

The final place I filmed at this weekend was at Ingleton. I trudged one and a half miles taking various picture and films on the way to Thornton, (The big one). Whilst filming my camera got wet from the spray of the fall and also from actual rain. After I packed up I had to trudge back another one and a half miles in the POURING rain back to the car where I am ashamed to say I collapsed in a heap.

Ansel Adams

In my research I did not want to just focus on painters, I wanted to broaden out and look at other mediums.

I decided to look at Ansel Adams as he was one of the best and most revered nature photographers ever. he was passionate about nature, so much so he joined the sierra club and spent most of his life dedicated to the preservation of Yosemite. It was his passion for nature that drew me to him in the hope for inspiration.

 There is one of his pictures that I really admire and that is the waterfall. This picture shows the magnificence of nature and how powerful it can be. Seeing this picture gave me the idea of possibly filming the waterfall at Ingleton. Filming the waterfall  would fit with my theme as man often interacts with the waterfall as it is possible to climb and even walk behind it. (I have done this myself).

Another thing I like about Ansel Adams is the fact that he used his photographs to help his cause to preserve Yosemite. This is something that I hope I can do in the future. Use my work to help.

Filming

Last Wednesday and my laptop broke, I had all my videos on there and my own editing software which I have come to the conclusion is crap. I spent the entire morning and early afternoon trying to fix it only to realise that it was never going to happen.
By this point it was too late to go into college so I went out filming instead.

The first place I went to was Ramsbottom where there is a wind farm with loads of wind turbines, I also went to Tottington where there are two more wind turbines. The theme is man and nature and that is quite open. The wind turbines are relevant as they are powered by wind (nature) which generate electricity which then gets pumped into homes. This is nature helping man.

The next video was of a country road surrounded by trees and fields. The film consists of cars traveling down the road, this is man interacting with nature.

The final video I filmed was of a graveyard. To me thats nature and man integrating in a final way. The bodies in the ground get over taken by nature, and nature overtakes the graves on top with grass growing and trees overshadowing and creating cover for them.

As my computer is no longer working I have put my videos onto a hard drive and I will edit them at college.

Tatton

Last Tuesday I decided to go filming at Tatton park in the Japanese garden. The garden is man made an man certainly like to interact with it. I have filmed at Tatton Park previously in the Japanese garden, but me being me realised I forgot to charge my camera battery. It was lucky that my dad lent me his camera otherwise I would have been screwed. I liked the videos I did of the garden however the quality of my dad's camera is not as good as my own so I decided that I wanted to go back and film them again with my own camera.

I thought it was best to go on a day when it is not raining. I went back when it was dry, however there was no wind, therefore there was no movement. The only time I have been to Tatton and there was no wind of any kind.
The day was pretty much a disaster and I did not get any useful footage.

Chagall

I have been researching an artist called Chagall who is famous mostly for his use of colour. He was a Jewish artist who has created many different things, like stained glass windows, theatre sets as well as paintings.

I like the fact that Chagall's work is not just limited to paintings, he has used his creative skills to make plates and tapestries. To me this shows that Chagall has great talent.

The main reason I decided to look at Chagall's work was because of his use of colour. The colours he used in all his works are bold and bright and are the main feature of his works.

Just by looking at pictures of his stained glass windows you can appreciate the amount of effort that goes into it. You can also imagine what the windows would look like with the light streaming in behind. The sheer magnificence of this would make even the most nonreligious person gasp in wonder.

Looking at Chagall has given me a better understanding of how I can manipulate the colours in my own videos, However this would be something I do in the editing process.

Which 'aesthetics' do you mean? Ten definitions.

I have been looking at a book about aesthetics, It is about contemporary meanings of the term 'aesthetic'  and 'aesthetics' gathered in North America, Europe and Japan from usage in conversations, in the Media and in critical literature primarily in the fields of art and design criticism, history, philosophy and anthropology. These are 'natural meanings'. That is these are the the ways people actually use the terms today.

Reading this book gave me a better understanding of what aesthetics actually are. There are many different definitions but the main idea is basically to do with appearance and beauty. Depending on what you are looking at depends on what kind of beauty the aesthetic describes.

1 Beauty of the body
2 Beauty in the terms of pureness and goodness.
3 Appearance of the way things look on the surface.

These are the ones that are the most relevant to my project as nature and landscapes evoke a sense of beauty. The only one that is not particularly useful is beautification as this is talking about people and how they appear. There will not be people specifically in my videos unless there by accident.
Another aesthetic is cognitive mode based on emotions, I would like to try and use this in my videos in the hope that they can inspire emotion in the people watching. Something like happiness or even fear that nature is being extinguished due to the fact that nature is being overtaken by man.

Whitworth Gallery, Manchester.

On the Whitworth Gallery website it says that they have a collection of Turners on display, however after having trudged through the rain from train station to train station and bus, I finally arrived at the gallery only to discover that the Turner collection was hidden away in the attic. If people had an ounce of common sense and updated their website, it would have saved my time in which I could have been doing something productive, instead of going all the way into Manchester to look at art that had no particular relevance to my project.

blogging

Blogging is quite new to me I have never done it before and sometimes I forget how important it is. However I have been keeping a journal, so to speak, of everything I have been doing. I think it is time to get it on line, so here it is all at once.

Cardiff art gallery

As I was in Wales for the Royal Wedding I thought I would go to Cardiff to the museum and art gallery. The main reason to go there was to see the impressionist paintings. The main contributer was Monet. The only painting of Monet's I have ever seen before was was my Grandad's replica that he painted himself. To see these paintings upclose and personal was quite exciting, however I was kind of disappointed as the pictures appeared to be slightly faded.  This is not unusual as they were painted many years ago and therefore may have been subjected to light along the way. I find however that my Grandad's painting inspires me more than the originals. There is no distiguishing colours to the paintings apart from maybe the blue. The main thing I like about paintings is their detail but with Monet there isn't any. There are no straight lines and edges with distingushing details. This may be to the taste of some people who have an indepth knowledge of art and Monet but for an amatuer like me these pictures have no more depth and meaning  than splodges of paint.

videos

The next series of films were filmed a lot later and with a tripod to hold the camera steady. Compared to the previous videos these already look a lot better.
I like the composition on the first few with the trees/bushes framing the picture. This gives them more depth compared to having too much water on show.
Another thing I like is the ripples in the water. They are the main feature of the video, and give it a serene, relaxing feel.  One more thing I like is the reflections in the water.

The ones of the water are nicely composed with the rocks, however one is duller than the other and this is due to the weather. I particularly admire how the sea is quite rough as it makes a change from the really calm and serene ocean on the other videos. The roughness of the sea could be interpreted as the nasty part of nature as the ocean can be the course of death for sailors who get caught in the rough weather.

videos

test videos

I took these videos in Tenby on Lydstep beach as a series of test shots for my FMP. I have decided that for my FMP I am going to do a series of moving/video paintings based on nature. To make it more interesting than just videos of the seaside I'm going to do the good side and the bad side of nature. The good side being things like flowers, water features, seaside and animals. The bad side being things like insects e.g. spiders and wasps, Natural disasters and the weather, cars damaging the atmosphere, humans killing animals e.g. Fox hunting.

What I like about these videos is the lighting. They were taken at six in the evening so the light is quite dim but bright at the same time, what I particularly like is the shadows the light creates.  I like the way the shots are quite interesting and I like the composition with the rocks framing the picture so there is more to it than just the ocean.

What I don't like is the fact that the camera was hand held so the picture is quite shakey which detracts slightly from the video.
If I were to use any of these then I would need to film them again with a tripod to hold the camera still.

test videos