Historical edits- children

Out of all the photos I had been editing, I found the two small children were the edits coming out the most interesting. I feel this relates to the innocence of the children, and the rough looking streets around where I have placed them. Therefore, I would like to carry on with the use of children, but start by looking at photos of me as a child where I could start editing them into pictures I have taken around town. However, I am struggling to link this any of these pictures and the idea of history with my own history, something I am currently thinking of changing within my topic. 

Rather than cluttering up my blog, purely with the photos I have been editing, I have decided to create a sketchbook purely for them. The first reason for wanting a sketchbook is to be able to document all of the various changes and developments within the photos and edits. Therefore, I feel putting every single photo I create onto my blog, will bog down the blog, making it purely about one thing which I do not want. In addition to this, being able to look at the photos within a sketchbook, something I can actually touch and go through will help me think of new ideas on how to develop the photos and where to take them next. Therefore, I will be using my blog to show the developments within the sketchbook. 

Historical edits

Since taking the photos of the historical paintings within the Birmingham museum I wanted to start editing them together, with photos I had taken of the streets within Madrid. Whilst in Madrid, I really liked the graffiti and street art I was surround by therefore made sure I captured as much of it as I could. I started the process of adding the photos together, by editing the people mainly out of the paintings until they were alone. This proved two problems for me, the first being the photos were slightly blurred due to them been taken in low lighting and through glass frames therefore harder to capture a higher quality. Secondly, the photos were small, meaning the more I zoomed in the more pixelated they became. However, I edited a few of the photos, leaving a blank space behind for me to edit onto my Madrid photos. I feel each photo worked really well, the modern day background with the historical, stood figures in various places allows the photos to have a sense of detail with in it, making you want to look at it in more detail. I will continue to create these photos as I feel they work well, and whilst I want to move onto editing my photographs from historical events that changed history, and historical events that changed my history, I believe to stop creating these photos now would be pointless, as I feel I could go into more depth with them. 

The National Art Gallery- Birmingham 17th February

Before going to Madrid, I mind mapped all of the various themes and ideas I linked around them therefore, after Madrid, I looked back at the themes of my exam topic. The two themes I really like are "construct, de-construct and re-construct", and "it's in the details". Both of these themes allow me to look closer at items or objects, which would be something which interests me. However, what interests me more, is the idea of it's in the details of history .i.e. looking back at historical events and the focal points which I believe made them, or looking back into my history and focal points which changed the way I thought or made decisions affecting my life. Another idea surrounding this topic is to look at the details of historical figures then and now. For example, the famous Martin Luther King freedom speech which spoke out to everyone from children to teenagers to adults, compared to a famous speaker today, who relates to teenagers, for example, Kanye West. So looking around this theme I found he artist Alexey Kondakov who photoshops historical painted figures into modern day places. I really wanted to started looking at trying this out, and starting to use photoshop, something I haven't used before, therefore I decided to visit the National gallery within Birmingham. This wasn't only to look at historical paintings, but also to look around the gallery for inspiration and research. I found the paintings within the gallery really interesting, before discovering this artist I purely admired historical paintings and thought little into them, however now I'm starting to look at the paintings in more detail I have started to become really interested by the personal history behind them, the expression on the peoples faces and the vivid brush marks you tend to see on them. To conclude, visiting this gallery has helped me to take pictures and look at various historical paintings so I can started to photoshop them into modern day pictures I have take. 

Pinterest Link

For my coursework topic, I used a blog for everything, including raw research. However, for this exam unit, I have been encouraged to use Pinterest. Although I did not enjoy it at first, I have decided to keep all of my artist raw research on Pinterest due to it being easier to organise and sort between the various posts. In addition to this, it enables me to quickly access any artists photos I am planning to study from. 

Pinterest link- https://uk.pinterest.com/14ghales15/

Museo Nacional del Prado Difusion

This was the second gallery visited on this trip, just like the previous gallery, had a huge layout, however this gallery was not filled with as much artwork. There was a floor for photography which I found myself drawn too, and within that floor I found a particular photographer whose work I really enjoyed and this was Alejandro Marote. I found the complete collection of his photography so interesting that I struggled to focus on looking at much else within the gallery, a part from one thing. This one thing was being able to experience Kandinsky's work first hand. Sadly, you could not take any photos within this exhibition, which was annoying but in the end actually benefited me. When visiting galleries it is sometimes difficult to focus on the actual work you're looking at, I tend to get distracted by trying to take good photos of the pieces and miss the fact the artwork is right there in front of me. Therefore, all of my attention was focused on Kandinsky and his life journey. To conclude, I loved this exhibition, I got to view the real variety of his work, which I did not think he had, so looking around his different styles of mark making was really fascinating. To conclude, I enjoyed visiting this gallery, as it firstly, allowed me to find a new photographer I would like to use within my work, and secondly allowed me to view, learn about and appreciate an artist I did not know much about.