Art 261: Filters and Art for Toby

I've been avoiding photography posts. Inevitably it means exploring this shadow... one I have been avoiding because I still don't know what it means. Something I'm still trying to understand. 

Early March my photography professor, Toby, was the victim of a hit and run motorcycle accident. Recovery was looking good when a blood clot ended his life as he was leaving the hospital. Toby was a great guy, by all accounts the heart of the photography department at USC. A philosopher and vegetarian, he often said his thoughts were best expressed as images. He was compassionate and open in a way that disarms people, and then instantly charms them. He believed in simplicity of form and composition. I think we saw beauty in the same way. He believed in hugs. I feel cheated because I never got one of his famous hugs. I know we were going to be great friends. I suppose this is a very narrow view of how his death just effected me. But that is what it is, and thats where it ends. 

Toby said "Make art you want to make." It is so true - everyone can tell when you are faking it, when you don't believe in what you have produced. I've been thinking about that alot lately. 

So the semester has kind of dissolved in the wake of what has happened. We took a few weeks to get back in the swing of things. The last project Toby assigned was and exploration in filters: colored camera filters and the employment of filters in the darkroom when processing images. 

Camera Filters

 daffodils, yellow filter

daffodils, no filter

daffodils, blue filter

So, which negative is best?  Most people prefer the yellow.  The general rule with filters is that the filter will lighten the same color and darken the opposite color.  Here the daffodils were photographed on a deck with blueish hues.  The daffodils are yellow.  So with the Yellow filter the deck is darkened (because blue is almost the opposite of yellow).  

Good experimentation, but I can't make a decision about which print I like most.  What do you think (Burt Tietje)?

Art for Toby

I made the daffodil prints before Toby's accident.  The rest of the prints required for this assignment was to make art for Toby.  Inspired by Toby's spirit of sharing your art with others (they could only find 2 prints of his own work to display at school because he was always tried to give away his work) I decided to make a set of prints of the dancers that I photographed for the motion assignment to share with the dance department.  Here are some of the additional prints I made to share.