ARTIST RESEARCH | oksphotography

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Artist Research: Ryan Bush and Phil Straus

To start off this project, I wanted to experiment with unusual approaches to lighting and colour through the use of abstract photography. Ryan Bush is an experienced American fine art photographer who has done many abstract shoots, mostly focusing on strange or hidden objects or patterns in everyday life. His work has been exhibited on many occasions in the US and abroad and is currently being shown in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. Even though Bush's work has a recurring theme of abstract or macro work, it is all still very different and unique. Therefore I decided to split my research into three different sections for my own interpretation.

Bush's surrealism work provided me with an exciting challenge to do something I had never done before. I took photographs of a broad range of content so I had lots to experiment with (in terms of different lighting and colour).

I am glad I took this approach instead of narrowing my shoot to a specific category as it gave me many creative ideas and produced many different outcomes than I would've received from a certain category. It kept me open minded and helped during my editing process as the photos were all very different before I began editing, a positive aspect considering I found once editing that this photoshoot was more about how I edited my photos and not how I took them, due to my desire to exploit and enhance the range of lighting and colour present in the images.

I enjoyed experimenting with many different apps and techniques including Aviary, Leonardo, Lightroom, Afterlight, PicsArt, Superimpose and PhotoGrid to manipulate and alter the images.

Below I have briefly described what each app was used for.

Aviary, Leonardo and Lightroom: basic editing. Increasing saturation and clarity and decreasing brightness in most cases. Selective editing to reduce shadows or increase colour. Straightening, cropping or changing orientation of photographs.
Afterlight: filters to alter colour or add texture to photographs.
PicsArt: manipulative filters to distort colour or shape.
Superimpose: overlapping and masking photographs or objects within an image.
PhotoGrid: mirroring and reflecting photographs into two or four, at either halfway through the image or the centre.

Below are my final images.

Bush's most intriguing photo to me was the one shown to the right. I loved this photo for many reasons: its symmetry, overlapping, colour, messiness and confusion. In terms of lighting, I found it rather interesting as its brightness is very eye catching, however once your eyes are drawn to the image, I find the bright white appears quite dull, as more of a background complimentary colour to the contents of the image.

The images (below) show my editing process for my interpretation of Bush's 'Cords' photograph.

After replicating Bush's 'Cords' photograph, I wanted to experiment more with similar photographs and techniques, and how they can create different outcomes to my first.

The images in the second slideshow were all created by overlaying or mirroring images. I regularly increased my brightness, highlights and shadows to experiment with different lighting alternatives. I also experimented with colour - normally in a photoshoot I find I either prefer saturated images or black and white images, but in this one I liked the mix.

ARTIST 1: RYAN BUSH

PHOTOSHOOT 1: SURREALISM

PHOTOSHOOT 2: CORDS

1. This is my original image. During basic editing, I increased contrast to make the lead bolder and increased saturation to make the green of the plug and orange tint of the shadows stand out.

2. I then added filters to the edited version of the photograph on VSCO Cam. The one above had a posterised effect to it. The second is shown on the next slide.

3. The purpose of the second filter was to add colour to the image. I wanted to change the hue of the original colour in the image to make it different from the normal.

4. Next I overlayed the two filtered images using Superimpose. I masked the posterised image, the foreground, as much as I could to bring out the dark leads and plug colour.

5. Using Aviary, I flipped the image both horizontally and vertically so I had two

opposite images.

6. I then repeated step four, but with the opposite images (overlayed the two images using Superimpose and masked the foreground image).

This is my final image. I really liked how it replicated the chaos and messiness of Bush's version, as well as the pattern and colour. If I was to do this again, I would make sure the original photograph cut off the edges of the cords as this makes them seem almost continuous, like in Bush's photograph.

The following slideshow contains my remaining images from my interpretation of Bush's 'Cords' work.

I loved the simplicity and regularity captured in Bush's patterns and shapes work (shown to the right). My favourite of Bush's work in this photoshoot was by far the stair photographs because of the multiple lines and patterns created in such a small area due to the contrast of light and dark.

I was able to replicate this by using the railings of a pier. I liked the contrast between light and dark in these, and purposely over exposed some areas of the photographs during editing to intensify that difference. I also square-cropped all of my pier images and many others in this shoot to decrease the size of the photograph, giving the impression of a very busy yet small image, like Bush's.

Like his work, I left very little colour in my photographs. By making simple changes such as increasing brightness/contrast and eradicating saturation from images, they automatically became very structured and clear-cut, which I loved.

Both shoots are shown below.

PHOTOSHOOT 3: PATTERNS

ARTIST 2: PHIL STRAUS

After completing three shoots based on an artist of my choice, I decided to follow the guidance of my examination question which suggested three artists: Jo Whaley, Henry Troup and Phil Straus. I looked at the work of all three artists and these two images of Phil Straus' really caught my eye. I loved the fascination and interest of all the small details in the images. I began to think about these two images in terms of colour and lighting. The photograph (above) has quite a peaceful mood, due to the white colouring and soft texture of its background. This mood has been enhanced in editing by Straus' use of a semi-sepia effect. On the other hand, the photograph (right) makes me feel quite awake and alert because there is so much to observe. The use of a black background has been carefully chosen to set off the colours and patterns of all the earrings.

For my interpretation of Straus' work, I used stamps and polaroids. I chose these because I thought their variety of colours and patterns really suited 'detail'. My images are shown below.

Phil Straus is an American photographer who has been in the photography industry for 25 years despite graduating from Harvard with a degree in psychology. During his career he has worked with many famous artists such as Bruce Barnbaum, Don Kirby, Stu Levy and Jay Dusard. His work is on display in many exhibitions across the US.