El Anatsui was born in Anyako in 1944. he is one of the world’s best sculptors as well as professors and had done outstanding work across the world. His recent project that he has been working on is his acclaimed cloth series. He has made large cloth/blanket using bottle tops and has designed many of these blankets to resemble traditional African woven blanket designs. These art pieces are representative of mosaics and are really amazing.

He uses metal bottle caps as his medium to portray that metal doesn’t have to always be rigid and hard but it can be portrayed as a soft and pliable material. This with the right manipulation can be show as something completely outstanding. El Anatsui’s art tends to be on the larger scale which only emphasizes the detail and dedication he has towards his passion.

His message to the world is to portray the ignorance and in a way blindness of the way people act and the actions that they make. To emphasize all these barriers and boundaries of society. With his help and his art we can only start to break down these walls. This is consistently shown throughout his work. His art also shows the importance of usign material from your own surrondings and that there needs to be amovement of change, and that he has taken the first step with his art.

I personally connect with not only his work but his message because I agree with it. I truly believe that we need to take a step to better the planet instead of destroy it. Which is why I not only support his message but I also want to do something about and be apart of that change. The first steps starts with my participation ROM project. I believe that art is not just something you look or do. I believe that it is something you feel and that you grasp which is why I feel that art should be emotional, mental and physical.

Above are pictures of his work and a picture of the artist himself El Anatsui.

Exhibit Of Optical Toys

I think that this site is very straight forward and to the point. I think that it explains the history and the background of a variety of optical toys. My favorite optical toy would have to be the phenakistoscope. This optical toy works by using a variety of pictures in a movement sequence that is on one slide. The other slide contains a plank disk with slots in it. When both disks spin together at the same time and viewed in a mirror it creates the illusion of a moving picture. I think that this could use a little more of an exciting layout to draw the viewers attention but other than that it was a pretty interesting site.

Pinhole Photos

Pinhole Write Up


For our cyberarts trip we went to gallery 44 to make, use and learn about pinhole photography. We learned how to make our own pinhole cameras with some simple items, such as a tin or coffee can, a piece of tin foil and some electrical tape.


Pinhole photography is a when you take a photograph of a scene/image in the negative by using photographic paper which is sensitive to sunlight and a pinhole camera. In the pinhole camera we used the hole in our tin can which was the aperture, the electrical tape was the shutter and the photographic paper was the film.

To make a pinhole camera you must first spray the inside of a tin can of some sort completely black so that it is not reflective and it is light tight. When that is done you must drill a hole into a side of the can, then cut out a circle of tin foil and carefully create a tiny hole using a pin or a tack and tape it with electrical tape in front of the hole you drilled. when this is done put a piece of electrical tape over the tiny hole you just made, making your tin light tight. The last step is to cut a piece of photographic paper that fits inside your tin can but does not block the hole, then but the lid on and you have your own pinhole camera.
We learned how to do this on our trip but when we put the piece of photographic paper in our pinhole camera we did it in a dark room so that the paper wasn't exposed to light. To take the actual photo we went outside and set up the camera to face the image we wanted to take. Then we took the electrical tape off of the small hole on the tin foil on the can (aperture) to expose the photographic paper to light, by doing this photographic paper takes a negative picture of the image you placed it to take because the photographic paper picks up the sunlight and takes the image. This process toke about one minute and thirty seconds or less depending on the size of your hole in the tin foil.
To develop the photos we went back into the dark room and placed the photos in a series of three chemicals. Then put them to dry and when they were done drying you had you own pinhole negative picture.

I really liked going on this trip because I learned something new and it was a fun experience. I thought that the most exciting part of this trip was the process of taking the pictures because it was fun to learn how the photographic picture took a negative image of the surrounding area. I really liked this trip and I would want to go on another trip like this again.

FASHION WEEK

In summary this article is a mini biography on the photographer Cyndie Burkhardt. She talks about the equipment she uses and the difficulties she faces while shooting. In this article the main topic is what the people going to fashion week are wearing. Cyndie decided to do these shots instead of shooting the actual fashion show because she wanted to use natural light and expose the people attending the fashion week.

This article is worthy of having it written about because it shows the creativity and the range of imagination that this photographer has. She thinks outside the box and is not limited to the boundaries that society sets.

My thoughts on this article are that it makes me want to become a better photographer so that there are no limits to my images. This articles shows me that you don't always have to follow the rules and that you can be spontaneous and unique in you pictures.

This article gave me ideas on future pictures that I take, and that I will always look for a different angle in photography.

LINES

I think that this image bes represents lines in photo composition because the lines on the water tower make the image look bolder. This image looks bold and strong because this image has a variety of lines in a variety of thicknesses and there all going in different directions. This image also has the characteristics of other photo compositions such as light and shadow, camera angles and linear.

DIAGONAL ' N ' RHYTHM

In my eyes I can't only choose one photo composition element because I believe that it best represents two elements, diagonal and repetition. The way it represents diagonal is that this picture was taken on top of the wall and pointed it at in an angle to give a diagonal movement across the image. It also represents repetition because it is a wall with the same kind of brick just repeatedly used. Using the same kind of brick over and over again creates rhythm throughout the image.

CAMERA ANGLE

This image is all about camera angle. It expresses the point of image by varying the way in which I held the camera. It creates a dynamic image. For this shot I had to go upside down and backwards to get the shot of this water pipe which doesn't really look like it at first glance because of the angle i choose. This image can also represent light and shadow because the scale of lights and darks vary throughout the image to express it's meaning.

MOOD

Mood, this image in my eyes best represents mood for this reason. The image itself isn't mysterious at all but the way it turned out is. This image to most people looks like a myestrious stranger walking down a lone hallway, creeping about. What this picture actually is a light bulb but the camera was shaking to create this blured affect. Creating a hole diffrent picture sceme within the picture. By doing this it creates a diffrent mood then the picture would normaly be and it adds meaning. This image has other aspects of photo composition such as linear, lines and center of intrest.

SIMPLICITY

I think that this photo best represents simplicity because I took this picture on the bases of what I wanted the viewer to see. I focused on the car wheel and not the hole car because that it was I wanted the viewer to look at and nothing else. The car wheel isn't the most exciting piece but I enhanced to add depth to the image. Overall this image is very simple and elegant.

photography lines

There are three types of lines, horizontal, vertical and diagonal, each one has a different impact among your picture. Lines are a very powerful element in the photography world, it takes a lot of practice to get the precise pattern of lines. So when an image is based on the concept of lines it is focusing on the lines within the picture, eg vertical horizontal and diagonal.