Audra Brawley's Pictoralist Excursion Photographs

Figure 1: Filter Supply Pack

My supply pack included a Ziploc plastic bag, a fruit plastic bag, saran wrap, a blue plastic Tesco bag, and my red, pink and yellow scarf.  Not pictured here is the fog I created with my breathe on the camera screen.  

Figure 2:  Chatelherault Hunting Lodge (from the front path)

This picture was taken with the fruit plastic bag with a small hole in it across the lens (see Fig. 1).  I created the small hole to vignette the photograph to have a clear shot of the focus of my picture, the hunting lodge.  The bag was partially see-through so it gave a great soft focus on the surroundings.  You are able to see the dark cloud moving in from the right side of the picture in contrast to the rest of the sky, which was still slightly brighter.

Figure 3:  Field in front of the Chatelherault Hunting Lodge (from the front path)

This long-shot of the field was created by the blue Tesco bag with a hole in it across the lens (see Fig. 1 Supply Pack).  The resulting image is vignetted, allowing the edges to be blurred with the blue plastic, but not completely out of focus since the bag is not totally see-through.  There is still a soft focus on the field though because the bag made the focal point closer on the blue plastic instead of off in the field.  This follows the pictoralist movement’s love for landscape pictures.  Robert Demachy was known for using gum-bichromate to add color to his photographs, which is where I got the idea for this image.

Figure 4:  Hunting Lodge and sky behind it

This image was created with saran wrap in front of the lens (see Fig. 1 Supply Pack).  It is a much softer shot than my camera usually takes.  I was capturing the contrast of the dark cloud moving in across the sky behind the lodge. This is similar to Alvin Langdon Coburn’s The Clouds in that it is enhancing the stark contrast.  Since our brain reads left to right, the way the lodge blocks out the right side of the picture keeps your focus from leaving the image.  Also, this does not encompass the entire hunting lodge, only a part of it which is similar to some of Demachy’s photographs that he was imitating Degas’ painting of not capturing the entire image.

Figure 5:  Top of the Hunting Lodge with sky contrast

This picture was taken with the red part of my scarf over the lens (see Fig. 1 Supply Pack).  This allowed the picture to be slightly out of focus, since my camera picked up on the scarf that was closer.  It also gives that kind of medium that the pictoralist photographers strived for in their pictures.  One such photographer is Robert Demachy that used gum-bichromate to create a medium to color the photograph.

Figure 6:  Down the walkway around the lodge

This black and white photograph was taken to show a silhouette of a universal person in nature.  John G. Bullock’s Marjorie in the Garden inspired this picture because of the natural aesthetic.  This is a pictoralist image because it is not as if a tourist was capturing themselves in a place, but the photographer was capturing nature as a painter would have done.  In addition, I had breathed on the lens to make it a softer photograph to look more like a painting. 

Figure 7: Back of the Hunting Lodge

This image was taken through the Ziploc plastic bag (see Fig. 1 Supply Pack).  It gives it a very soft focus to definitely look like a painter’s brush strokes instead of a sharp, in focus photograph.  It is framed between the two silhouetted trees to allow a focal point of the picture as well.  Silhouetting of photographs was very important to Gertrude Kasebier.

Figure 8: Clyde Falls at New Lanark (from above)

My breathing on the lens created a very soft focus for this image.  The light seemed to be filtered through the clouds, thus the whole picture was not crisp and bright.  The contrast from the dark trees to the brighter water draws the viewer into the photograph.  Once again, the landscape photography was significant to pictoralist photographers.

Figure 9: Clyde River at New Lanark

This picture is similar to Alvin Langdon Coburn’s Brooklyn Bridge.  The lines of the river and of the tree line allow for a one-point perspective.  This draws the eyes of the viewer into the image.  The saran wrap once again helped make the soft texture displayed in this image (see Fig. 1 Supply Pack).  Also, the ripples and froth show the movement of the water.  This movement shows the naturalist aesthetic that was captured in pictoralist images.