Artist Study: Keld Helmer Petersen

The photographer that I chose for my artist study is Keld Helmer Petersen, who uses a lot of bright backgrounds and dark silhouettes to create shapes and contrast in his photos. This makes the viewers focus on the way the shapes interact with one another instead of their textures or any other such details in the photograph. A lot of his images are related to architecture or other similar human-made structures, with lots of straight edges and sharp angles instead of flowy lines and organic shapes. I chose this artist because this style of abstract photography is very similar to my red selection set, and it conveys a sense of abstraction and emptiness that I want my red selection to convey. Some of Peterson’s work also has more neutral grey tones as well, which matches the first set of my green selection photographs.

This image is interesting to me because of the ways the different lines interact and intersect across the white background. The dark silhouettes of the light posts are throughout the image in a way that they don’t appear too cluttered, while still breaking up the negative space. They make a bold statement and provide a place for the viewer’s eyes to rest, as well as support the many lines from the electricity wires. Speaking of the wires, I find the way they move to be very interesting. Although they are non-organic in nature, the way they are almost messily positioned across the image makes them feel a lot more lively and real compared to if they were all perfectly straight and in line with one another. They create flow and movement throughout the image and break up the negative space lightly in a way that the solid silhouettes of the light poles cannot.

Yellow Selection:

Intro To Digital Photography Abstraction Contact Sheet 798

These are my yellow selection photographs. These images range from a greyscale, dreary atmosphere to being warm and colorful and full of life and vibrance, which is something that I find very intriguing. These images are an exploration of how a gloomy day can still hold a plethora of pleasant surprises, and how there is something special to be found in these moments in a drab grey world. Some of these images were taken outdoors, under the pale light from the sky, which gave them their faded colors and soft shadows. In comparison, the indoor images are more colorful, vibrant, and deep in their shadows, and the two types of images together create an interesting contrast. However, it would be good to reorder these images in the contact sheet to create some sort of gradient, as right now the images are all scattered around the contact sheet, creating a sense of discord and chaos. Putting similar images together would achieve some visual harmony, which would help the themes of the images stand out more.

Green Selection:

In my green selection, I will be using three sets of images to tell a story. A story of metal giants dominating the skies, of warmth caged away behind interlocking chains, of life eventually blossoming into light. Although these images could stand alone as individual sets, I feel that they are more compelling when united together for this narrative, which is why I chose them for my green selection instead of my red selection.

Metal Giants

I chose this set of images for my green selection because of its sharp contrast and its dark, serious mood. These images feature various metal structures, with the editing focusing on accentuating their shadows and the silhouettes they make. The buildings take up almost all the space in the images, blocking out the sky and looming over the viewer, creating a dark, heavy, and almost oppressive atmosphere – hence the name, “Metal Giants”.  I want the viewer to feel the somber power of the metal giants, the way they stand sharp and steely (pun unintended) against the blinding sky. The lack of color helps accentuate this point, as it removes distractions and turns the shadows and shapes of the metal giants into the main focus of the piece. It also helps add to the atmosphere and emotion, as saturation and vibrance are usually associated with life and light, while these metal giants are completely devoid of it.

Caged

I chose this set of images almost as a follow-up to the Metal Giants, because I felt that the theme of these images will have a heavier impact after witnessing the heavy weight of the giants. The repeating interlocking element of the chains creates a sense of being trapped – caged, if you will (*ba-dum tss*) – and has a very similar vibe to the oppressive atmosphere of the metal giants. Like the giants, they fill up the entirety of the photographs, filling the view with gray, gray, gray. They are the first things that the viewers see when they look at these photographs; they are separating the viewer from the objects behind the chains. Moving on to these objects, the warm orange colors of the light and the leaf create an interesting contrast against the gloominess of the chains and the previous Metal Giants set, but instead of reinforcing the stark shadowy existence of the Metal Giants, these images add a dash of color and hope into an otherwise dreary world. This could also be seen in the way that although the chains are restricting the warmth and life, they are looping and curving, flowy in their rigidness in a way that the metal giants do not exhibit. These are chains you can bend and climb, chains that allow you to see through to the other side – which brings us to the next installment in this narrative:

Light

I chose these images as a follow-up to Caged, as the hopeful warmth from Caged bleeds out from the darkness of the Metal Giants, and eventually blooms into Light. These images are warm and saturated, full of organic subjects like flowers and wood. The metal and the chains are gone, replaced by these vibrant subjects. The order of these images has meaning too – the flowers are first, full of sunlight and life, to create a striking impact from the bleak but hopeful mood of Caged. They are an explosion of color, almost blinding in their radiance, the flood that finally broke through the dam in a torrential downpour. The brightness of the flowers contrasts against its shadows, overpowering it – and in fact, the shadows actually help accentuate it. Without the dark, the light will be pale in comparison and will not hold as much power and impact as it does here. The next two images are less organic in comparison, but they both possess their own unique sense of life. You can see the light reflecting off the liquid in the second image (is it ink? an image of a freshly-printed book? The page is full of words, words about celebrations, about life. Words come from language, and language comes from life), and the third image purely focuses on the soft glow of the ceiling lights. The final image is rather pale, of a wooden stump full of cracks. The lines and grain of the wood guide the eyes of the viewers throughout the image, creating a vague flow of movement. And despite the tree itself being dead, cut away by a dull world and surrounded by concrete, there are still resilient bits of life clinging to the tree – the fungus and the grass on its sides, accentuated by the soft splash of warm brown that stands out against the rest of the image. And with this final photo of the tree stump concludes the story of this world, where life will soon thrive under the light once more, free from the shadows of metal giants and their cages.

Red Selection:

Sky

I wanted this image to invoke a feeling of bleakness and emptiness in the viewer – the dark silhouettes create a stark contrast against the bright sky, and there is very little tone variation, creating a heavier impact. The lines of the silhouette are very sharp, and there are very few soft objects or outlines in the photo. It is all very, very sharp. There is also a lot of negative space, which helps convey the sense of terrifying emptiness that I want the viewers to feel, and also emphasizes the silhouettes of the birds. The sky is wide open, larger than we might be able to comprehend. If you had total freedom to go wherever you wanted in a vast, empty world, would you? Or will you lose your tether to the earthbound land below amongst the winds, never to return? The camera looks up to the infinite sky and the birds flying above, free to soar in a way that we cannot be. They do not fear the skies, for they have their nests and their flocks grounding them to the earth. And so they fly. There aren’t a lot of significant improvements that may be needed for this photo – I like how the branches and leaves on the trees create a bunch of complex, interweaving, and messy shapes, combined with the different textures of the walls contrasts with the simplicity of the sky and the birds, and helps show that they are very different in nature. Overall, I am quite proud of this photo.

This image is similar to the last one – a bright sky, contrasting against the silhouettes of the structures on the ground. However, unlike the first photo, this image has less sky and more ground. There is a stronger, wider silhouette in this image compared to the frail and thin branches of the tree in the previous image, which helps the photo feel more grounded. It also contrasts against the sky in an almost defiant way, the branches reaching out and encroaching into the bright light. All the branches and the lines in this image are pointing towards the empty negative space in the top left corner, directing the viewers’ eyes. Under these reaching branches, a bird flies below. This image is more about returning to earth, leaving the vast embrace of the skies. Ideally, the silhouette of the bird would not intersect as much with the silhouettes of the trees – some strong lighting would be able to create an outline that separates the shapes – but considering how hard it its to photograph birds in flight, I think I did quite well.

This is an image of home. The birds have returned to their nests, and now the sky is back to being bright and empty. The contrast isn’t as high in this image as in the other images, with a lot more middle tones instead of being completely dark or completely light. This image is the most grounded, with the strong shape and silhouette of the house providing a stable base to the photograph in a way that the other images don’t have. The tree in this image is also sturdier, with thicker branches – it reaches out towards the sky, but is much more like a place to roost and rest. The tree and the house also collectively break up the negative space in the image, so that the sky no longer looks so empty and terrifyingly infinite. The diagonal lines of the house also help direct the viewer’s attention around the photograph, and the different textures make for an interesting image to look at. For further improvements, there would ideally be some birds roosting on the house or the tree to keep with the theme of the set, and I also wonder what would happen if this photo was taken with the same perspective as the others (as although this image is still looking up, the upwards slant isn’t as intense as the other images), which could potentially change the mood.

Yellow Selection:

abstract set 1

I chose these photos for my yellow selection because of the ways they play with color, reflections, and contrast. Some of these images are from the photo studio, with the differently colored lights interacting with the objects in interesting ways. Some of these images were from the outdoors, under the high exposure and sunlight, creating many bright spaces and contrasting with the pops of color. More importantly, these images are all taken in ordinary locations of ordinary things – a simple set of DnD dice, a piece of paper on a table, a snapshot of a hallway or a leaf on the sidewalk – that have gained new life and vibrance under a set of different lens that was willing to take the time to capture their beauty.

Green Selection:

I chose this image because of its vivid colors, and it was an interesting experiment in how I could use them in editing to shape my images.

This image was taken with a high exposure from the sunlight outside, and the brightness helps bring out a hard sort of clarity in the colors, and the entire image feels cold.

This image has a lot of interesting colors and contrast between the bright and the dark, and there is also a sort of gradient from red to blue and draws the attention of the viewer.

This image and the editing helps bring out colors in a place where we normally would not expect there to be any, and these colors are very pretty too! Editing this was like opening a mysterious box, because you never know what secrets could be hiding inside such a normal object.

This image has a very unique angle, and the tilt helps set it apart from the other images by giving it some more movement.

This image was an interesting experiment in low exposure, and the darkness and the light have a nice contrast and creates some interesting shadows.

This image shows the different colors that are reflected on the planes of the dice, and the way these colors interact with each other is very different from what you expect it to be like.

This monochromatic image is intriguing and has a serious, mysterious mood, which the darkness and low exposure also contributes to.

This image is full of geometric shapes and negative space, broken up by the analogous color palette and straight lines.

This image feels dark and dull, which is a very interesting contrast compared to the rest of the photos in this set.

Red Selection:

I chose this image for the final 3 photos because of its vivid colors, which was something that I focused on accentuating during editing. This image was another one of the photos with the high exposure from the sunlight, which might have helped bring out the sharp contrast in this image between the colors and the white spaces, creating lots of interesting shapes. Combined with the colors, it is definitely one of my favorite photos out of this collection. Some room for improvement would be to tweak the settings during editing some more to take away some of the pink blotchy shapes, which breaks up the colors and contrast in the image in a strange way. Another potential improvement would be to turn down the brightness of the image just a little bit, so that it doesn’t burn your eyes as much.

I chose this image for my final 3 photos of this set because I liked the ways the colors interacted with each other without being overwhelming, and it has that “otherworldly” feeling that I was aiming for in my photos, despite depicting a bunch of rather regular dice. The limited color palette, bright colors, reflection of the dice on the flat surface, and the way the colors swirl around inside the dice all add to the overall effect. Some room for improvement or change would be potentially adding a soft (mostly unnoticeable) glow around the dice (maybe with another small light source) to add to the otherworldly feeling, but aside from that, I’m pretty happy with this photo.

I chose this image for my red selection because of its bold colors, and specifically the ways they interact with each other. The bright yellows blends nicely with the reds and pinks and purples, with the green providing a pop of color. The different colors also move in very interesting ways, making a lot of cool shapes and flowing lines in the image. For further improvements, it would be interesting to change the color or brightness of the gray areas so that they match with the rest of the image better.

There are many photographers and photographs that I would like to take inspiration from for my triptych.

One of the main ones is Jackie Ranken’s Other Realities series – I like how otherworldly and almost ghostly the images seem, and I also really like the sentiment behind the photos, which is “the finding of beauty in everyday objects.”

Some key characteristics of these images are the fact that they are all black-and-white/monochromatic, there is often a lot of bright empty space, the subject is usually in the center of the image, the images are usually rather low-contrast, and there is a slight vignette effect around the edges of the photographs.

Another inspiration would be the works of the photographer Ola Kolehmainen:

This is a particular one of his photos that I like – Kolehmainen’s photos often include vibrant colors, which is definitely something that I want to try and include in my own photographs, but what caught my attention about this photo in particular is the reflection of the tree in the glass. To me, this image appears as if it could be from a random building on a random street, when the photographer walked by and decided to capture the moment, and I think that’s a really nice sentiment. Some common characteristics of these photos are the vibrant use of color (often ranging from a variety of warm and cool tones), as well as the focus on shapes and lines formed by the objects in the photos – often in geometric shapes.

Another photographer whose works I’m inspired by is Frances Seward:

Some key characteristics of Seward’s photos that I am inspired by is the way the colors and shapes flow together to create these images that look like scenes that might exist in real life, but are so unreal and so not grounded in reality that they could also be anything else. Seward’s images often have a rather pleasing color palette, with a lot of analogous, complementary and split complementary colors, and the colors are very vibrant as well.

I chose these photographers to reference for my own photos, because of all of these characteristics that are present in their work. I want to combine the otherworldly feeling of Jackie Ranken and Frances Seward’s photos with the interesting colors from Ola Kolehmainen, and I want to capture the way these photographers all find beauty in simple, ordinary things – Jackie Ranken’s “finding beauty in everyday objects”, Ola Kolehmainen’s architecture, and Frances Seward’s glass.

Out of all the photos above, I find this one particularly interesting. I am drawn to its bright colors and the nice contrast between the vibrant orange and the calmer blues and greens near the bottom of the image, and how it uses the shapes and forms of the objects to create overlapping rectangular shapes, and the darker sections also creates clear divides between the spaces of bright colors. One of the formal elements that are the most integral to this image would, in my opinion, be shape. The dark shapes break up the image and creates divides between the warm and cool tones, and the colors themselves also form some interesting geometric shapes as well – for example, the series of repeated arch-like pointy shapes, or the series of overlapping rectangular shapes that is quite reminiscent of a bunch of highlighter strokes. This repetition of elements combined with the interesting shapes really makes a unique image and plays a large role in making this picture more abstract.