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Art from Garbage Photo Journalism June/July 2019

First Class

After thinking a long time about what i want to make my story i had the idea to take pics of our huge garbage place and then show that people make out Art of what they find there. I wanted to focus on something positive and not showing just how bad we are in destroying he nature. Our place is very chaotic but i found the this actually makes people much more creative. When i went around with my camera (i used my google pixel 3 that makes great photos with light room) i found that i even did never see how many artworks are in the kibbutz from garbage! I really enjoyed to see and be more aware so this reportage was a good information also new to me. All artworks i took pics are placed outside in our desert nature. Of course people use it also inside!

When creating the spark journal after using a pixabay image i used one i took from the art here that is a little funny . A friend of mine did it for me because i have mice in my house many time and i am addicted to CC and the Internet. So he put a computer mouse in a Mousetrap.... And i decided to go on the same subject for the second class and titles my Spark according to this.

To get all the pics into Lightroom on the PC took hours.... I was afraid they are lost but they are just being imported very slowly. I liked the option of the contact sheet and made two one for Portrait images one for Landscape in order to see them all from top to bottom. I did not make a lot of changes because i just will adjust the ones i take and keep the Rest original in order to use some for the black and white. i added a little shadow and a background from an pattern. I need to say that it took me some time to get a grid and to find the align tool and i ended up to place the images in shapes. I choose the most art looking ones the flower on the right is with sun collectors and in the night it does lighten in colors!

I want to tell the story how art came out of garbage there is so many artworks so it was hard to decide what to use. In the bottom i added the garbage place as panorama that i made in Photoshop from many images i took of it. I am glad Melissa encouraged me to take my pics alone and not use some i can get it was a great eye opening experience also to see how good the image quality on my new Pixel 3 phone is and also to discover many art works i never really saw!

Garbage Art in the Desert
contact sheet1
Contactsheet 2

Second Class

I was sure i will do my black and white version with images from the first project. Then i read we need to have people in an environment. I really wanted to keep the subject because i think art from Garbage is just wonderful and it shows that garbage can be beautiful as well. I remembered the pics i took from an exhibition in the last year where a local artist presents his Garbage Art all made from Iron and machine parts that are no longer in use. He has sculptures all over the region representing people we know, situations and more. To show people of our region connected to his art is best in this exhibition.

So i took five of many images i did there and changed them to black and white that really makes the metallic look even better then the colored images. I found that black and white does not go well with all subjects so i am glad i found one that it does fit. i tried to get strong contrast between the person and the sculpture and i had to stop myself a lot from editing to much because its journalism and not creative artwork... I think to learn what is important according to what you need to show is really making the difference.

I tried all provides ways and ended up in using black and white adjustment layers and a lot the channel mixer that i never used before for black and white. And its just great learned a new way that i will use a lot! the first image is the lightest one he last the darkest and just sculptures watching the visitors meaning is yours...

Exhibition Garbage Art

After getting a really helpful critique of one of the students i added a second one. I think the critics are really helpful and its so good that people start to write more then just nice!

Final Reflection

I love photoshop and i liked this course because i learned that sometimes to much editing is not requested. For journalism even some imperfect things make it more real thet to perfect images. So this is a really good starting point for beginners just to get a little in touch with all the tools and focus on the story. It also helps to get sense in the projects and not just effects. I learned about the contactsheet and even while using Photoshop for years daily i never saw this and i love it and will use it a lot its really good also for moodboards and projects that have a lot of images. Again another great course thank you all and see you in the next one!

Created By
Susanne Tamir
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Credits:

© Susanne Tamir