Monday, December 5, 2011

self assessment for studio project

The artist I chose to research was Kevin Fleming, he is a nature photographer focusing on Delmarva's wild life. I chose to research him because I look up to him as an artist and I want to be a wild life photographer as successful as him one day. I decided to create a photo book as my studio response along with three activist posters. I know of Kevin Fleming's images primarily because of his print and books. My intention with creating my book was to show my view of the Delmarva shore thus far, and my photographs of it. I also created three posters which consisted of three animals I hold dear to my heart and accompanying them with activist statements. By creating these posters saying "Appreciate Nature" I wanted to show people the beauty of what is in their own back yard and make them want to save these animals.

I made the photo book as soon as I heard about the project so that ever really change din intention or ideas. Yet originally I was planning on just using the book as my studio response but then as the actual studio response time approached I decided to create posters to get my point across. It is sometimes not just enough to show the public pictures of the wild and expect them to care. A lot of the time it takes more, it takes statements to make them realize. So for this reason I printed posters with bold text over the images. All of them said "Appreciate Nature", then on the individual ones they had more specific statements. It bugs me how the University of Maryland portrays the terp to not even look like the true species, s0 for one of the posters I used my photo of a Diamondback terrapin on the beach and printed on it "The Real Maryland Terp" and "Save the Terp". To show people how beautiful the real Diamondback Terrapin species is. The statement on this poster was taking the realistic direct approach to make people act. Another poster I made took the sympathy path by printing "Save those who cannot save themselves" on my photo of a blue heron. Lastly I used on of my favorite pictures ever of horse shoe crabs. Animals often forgotten about and not even noticed.

When creating the Poster I did not have the original idea of keeping "Appreciate Nature" as the key phrase on each, that idea just progressed after making the first one. I also imagined them larger at first and only a pair but then was advised to create three. The end result was rewarding though especially since I have never created posters like these before.

Stepping back from my art work I would be probably a little puzzled at first glance at the posters. I would first of course notice the pictures and like them but them start reading the words and try and figure out their point. I think the "Appreciate Nature" would make me realize it was an activist poster rather then just a photo of an animal. When looking at the horse show crab poster I would wonder what it meant by "supporting out health system" and would look it up on my handy dandy i phone. I would notice the visual boldness of the font and colors and how the colors match nicely with the background enough to stand out but also fit in. I would immediately pick up on the color association in the terp image as being the MD terps colors. I do agree though that the blue heron image is a little too busy compared to the others in how there is more going on in the background and it is distracting from the fords especially "graceful' wrapped around the birds chest. I think to make a better statement they should be bigger and possibly have outlines around the text to make it stand out more.

Stepping back from my photo book I would notice the neatness of how it is formatted and presented. I would immediately want it to be larger to seem more professional. The contrast of the black book ad the bright colored images would catch my attention better and help see the images in a more professional manner. I may not notice at first how the book is set up as far as progression through the year and places across the shore but it may click with me the second or third time I viewed it.

If I had the opportunity to change anything I would make both projects larger. I would edit the typing on the posters to stand out more. I would edit the blue heron photo slightly to make the background not so distracting and I would take the word graceful out of the poster. I love the book, so I would not change probably anything about it.


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