GREGORY CREWDSON - 'CATHEDRAL OF THE PINES'
In 2011, fine-art photographer Gregory Crewdson left New York to live in a solitary church in the Berkshires. Coping with a difficult divorce, he found renewal in daily open-water swims and cross-country skiing on the wooded paths of the Appalachian Trail. There, he stumbled upon a trail called Cathedral of the Pines, which inspired new images. The 31-image series is on display at the Photographers Gallery. Ultimately titled Cathedral of the Pines, the cinematic leitmotifs are quintessential Crewdson. Forest clearings, anonymous townscapes and nondescript interiors become elaborately staged, suspenseful images that explore the recesses of the American psyche and the disquieting dramas of American daily life.
His movie-like productions have seen months of advance planning, with Crewdson verifying the placement of each tiny detail, from a wet sponge left on a countertop to a crumpled fleece blanket discarded beside a couch. Shot with large-format cameras, filming requires more than 40 crew members familiar with motion-picture-film equipment and techniques. But Crewdson says Cathedral of the Pines presented new challenges. "We worked in total isolation," he says. "We had a small crew that worked on all three productions, dealing with unpredictable weather and extreme cold." |
Crewdson describes this project as ‘his most personal’, venturing to retrieve in the remote setting of the forest, a reminiscence of his childhood. The images in Cathedral of the Pines, located in the dystopian landscape of the anxious American imagination, create atmospheric scenes, many featuring local residents, and for the first time in Crewdson’s work, friends and family. In Woman at Sink, a woman pauses from her domestic chores, lost in thought. In Pickup Truck, Crewdson shows a nude couple in the flatbed of a truck in a dense forest, the woman seated, the man turned away in repose. Crewdson situates his disconsolate subjects in familiar settings, yet their cryptic actions, standing still in the snow, or nude on a riverbank, hint at invisible challenges. Precisely what these challenges are, and what fate away.
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From these images you can see how the exposure ruined the photographs. i tried to dim the exposure and increase the black point of the images in some of them as shown bellow. As the area i visited to take pictures i was unable to create the effect of a singular person frozen within the moving people however i cropped some images from parts of a whole photograph to show specific detail of one person. i found this was effective as the flux and the colours of the images are eye catching.
For my next response i will make sure i change the aperture and focus on capturing still frames within the movement of people in a busy area.
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I think that these images each have their own meaning. They each have different people representing different thoughts and a whole range of ethnicity and social class. This idea also links to the movement through society and brings the viewer back to see the major changes the world has gone through.
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To achieve the same content and idea as willis rugde i decided that using a go pro whilst moving would create similar shots and frames. Being a gymnast myself i decided to fix the camera to different parts of my body and do tricks whilst filming. This creates a similar effect as some of willis still photographs as it makes the audience feel part of the movement. here are some example videos:
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IMG_0434 from Noemi Seminara on Vimeo. |
IMG_0435 from Noemi Seminara on Vimeo. |
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I then simply pressed (cmd T) to adjust the sizing and positioning of the silhouette.
redo these 5 steps for all your shots and then move onto to steps 6-10 |
To create the gif go to file - load file into stack.
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After loading the images into a stack open the timeline from window and select create frame layers. then as shown above click on make frames form layers.
once you have done that rearrange the images into the correct order and select the correct timing for you gif to move. save the gif from web legacy. |
I created 10 frames for my giff below. Each frame had been edited in photoshop and double layered. I reversed the colour of the second layer to try and duplicate Jean Lemoine's work, and create a more interesting visual with more colours. I then opened al 10 frames to scripts on photoshop and loaded images into stack. Then after clicking create frame animation i made frames from layers and sorted out the order of each image so that there was a smooth transition. |
Movement breakdown...
I started my project by looking at the work of Alexy Titeranko who inspired me to capture long shutter speed photographs, i then developed this idea and made sure there was a still subject in each photograph which allowed the photograph to develop a more meaning full background as the audience was able to focus on one persons story. |
I then moved on from shooting movement and blurred photographs outside, to working in the studio with different lights, backgrounds and specific models. After looking at the work of Paul Maria Schneggenburger i experimented with very long shutter speeds in complete darkness to create a more ghostly mood to the images. This also made the photographs look more abstract which i liked. This led me to working with strobe lights and looking at Harold Egerton's work.
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After focusing on Movement in the studio and creating abstract long exposure photographs i decided to look at the more physical movement factor of photography, and used Willis Rudges work to inspire me to focus on the experience of the audience when looking at my work. After responding to this artist this idea developed and gifs became a simpler form of showing the audience how a human body can move in a silhouette. I decided to include various light images in my gifs which then developed into the work or Jean-Yves Lemoigne because he uses memorable colours and his images are vibrant and eye catching.
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FASHION
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TRAVEL
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I find their work fascinating as each cinema graph they make fits underneath three different head titles, Fashion, Lifestyle and Travel. The image above is quite obviously focused on fashion, however it explores fashion in a deeper way It looks at the industry as a whole, rather than focusing on models and the outfits themselves. The interior fashion is also looked at as at the top of the image we can see a beautiful hanging chandelier which gives the cinema graph a more sophisticated and expensive look. The clothing and seriousness of the image also creates a more down to earth and eerie environment. I think the way this cinema graph is shot is very clever and interesting. The moving subject is not what the title is about, and instead decides to focus on one of the designers or fans of the clothing. Her bright red hair is effective as it stands out, which is needed because the movement is so subtle and there are so many things to look at in the cinema graph.
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In this cinema graph burg and beck have focused on creating a mood about travelling. This is shown as a souvenir shop is the centre of the image. This suggests that the women reading a paper might be a tourist, and she is exploring the town or city that she has visited. Within the photograph itself movement is captured. We not only see the women look through the paper, there is also chaos in the street, it is busy, however this movement adds more interesting factors as it implies there is both still and moving people in the city, and it also allows the women to blend in with the background.
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This was my first successful cinema graph that i had created. I found that the single person on the platform was a bit boring and not very effective so tried to change this in my second response. Another improvement i focused on was trying to make the train move more smoothly. The cinema graph above jumps at the end of the clip which might be because i didn't make the opacity fade out till the end of the second layer.
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In this second response i thought i managed to create the loop for the cinema graph correctly. It is overall much smoother and more is going on than in the response on the left. I managed to capture the right amount of people on the platform, however one of the women standing close to the edge moves her arm which i didn't manage to erase from the movement.
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First i opened a already cut and edited video into photoshop. I cut the video, so that it was short enough for the cinema graph and so that it was at the right starting point. I then tried the beginning of the clip so that i could later create a loop.
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I then duplicated the video, so that i had two layer and could edit them both to create the loop for my cinema graph.
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After duplicating the layer i then dragged the layer till it cut and was inline with the end of the first layer i then dragged back the beginning of the clip and trimmed out the rest of the clip so that the second layer is just the original beginging.
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I then had to make sure that the first layers opacity was at zero by the end of the whole clip. To do this i had to insert two key frames. The first one starts at the beginning of the second layer and is at opacity level 100, then the second one is at the end and is at level 0. After doing this the loop had been created.
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After creating my loop i had to freeze a frame and make it a still image layer. To do this i pressed shift,cmd,alt,e. This then created the top layer of my cinema graph.
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On top of my still image layer, i added a vector mask. The vector mask allowed me to erase part of the still photograph so that only part of the image was moving. Then after erasing everything i needed to the cinema graph was completed.
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