Images of Art

At the moment the Tate Modern has an exhibition called ‘Capturing the moment’ which looks at the relationship between painting and photography. It’s a really thought provoking exhibition which looks at how some artists changed their ways of working once photography started to be developed and painting was no longer the most accurate way of capturing the scene. But also, it looks at photographs made with the inspiration of artwork and art work inspired by photographs which really exemplifies how intertwined all the mediums of art are.

When I visited the V&A museum in London recently I took my camera and I wanted to see what captured my interest in a museum - where my normal looking at the displays was displaced by the aim of capturing the atmosphere of the displays. I started off with the golden selfie which is a composite of two exposures of different focusses which I merged in photoshop to get a cleaner look….before starting to get more creative with the in camera multiple exposure. In the first one below do you see the large head or the small heads first? Or did you not see one of the at all until you just read this? In the third one I started to use the backscreen to make in camera multiple exposures more precise and less guess work. This does mean taking my eye away from the viewfinder which makes me feel more unstable - but - I like the result so I guess practise makes perfect!

The first statue below I really like and this came from that having more control when multiply exposing (yes, it is a verb and I intend to use it!) in camera. Of course you can get the same effect out of camera and with more control over placement but it is not always as soft. The lion I wanted to show how golden he was and multiple exposure can really do this for the image. The last image here is one that one of my best friends has been on at me to try for ages - but can’t you do a multiple exposure of a face? I think it would be really cool. So here is a face, albeit a sculpture and I was surprised at how well it worked. I was expecting to see less features as a 180 degree multiple exposure usually works best when the subject is symmetrical - however I rather like the effect that has been created here. This is an out of camera multiple exposure and I think this works better as I could have more control of the placement of the individual exposures in the stack.

Back to the Tate where there was a section on images from a camera of people looking at art in galleries and I have seen many images that work really well as stand alone single images but I wanted to see if I could capture more of the atmosphere if I did in camera multiple exposure. It has a very similar effect to a long exposure but with a bit more blur around the non moving subjects - depending on how still I was able to hold the camera!

And my favourite of the series….

So next time you go to an art gallery or a museum - maybe take your camera and see what art you can create from the art!