Seeing

Yann Arthus-Bertrand is a famous French photographer who specialized in animal photography but then began to do aerial photography of places around the world. He has produced many books of his landscape photographs taken from helicopter and even balloon. His work often was related both politically and aesthetically. He wrote a book called '365 days: Earth from the Air' which this image was a part of:

This park is the largest protected space of Africa, it surrounds the Etosha Pan a great basin covered in salt, which transforms into a lake for a few weeks out of each year. Its water, although a repellent to mammals, allows growth of a blue-green algae, which attracts tens of thousands of flamingos. When the basin dries up, it is covered with grass on which the parks herbivores feed. Many areas such as this are protected in name only and are still exploited, as agriculture is practiced in nearly have of the protected areas in the world.

Arthus-Bertrand use the aerial shot to show the majesty of nature, and beauty in the startling shapes of bizarre plants and animals formed by the shoreline of this lake, which can be seen from the sky.

Shots like the photo of the lake and this of the Gorge of Bras de Caverne on the island of Reunion which was taken to show what was being lost to agricultural or urban use.

This photographer shows what's lost and leaves it to you to decide if it matters to you and if you will do anything about it.

Thesis is a proposed idea, anti-thesis is the conflicting idea. The synthesis is the answer, a solution by reconciling the common truths at a higher level, therefore a stronger, newer thesis is made some examples are:

'Being / Non-being / Becoming,
subjective / objective / absolute, or
symbolic / classical / romantic.'

http://www.philosophypages.com/dy/t.htm

The thesis of Yann Arthus-Bertrand's work is that the destruction of nature is detrimental to deeper needs of people, such as the need for a sunrise, a natural beauty around them, while the anti-thesis of this is that the forests have to be cleared and rivers tamed for expansion of cities and towns. The synthesis is for each person to decide, how far do you go for expansion, and how much do we need of nature?

Drawing from Life/ Observations

Observing the world around long enough you start to see patterns you didn't notice before, and we can take down these patterns to use later by daily recording what we see in the people, and the environment around us. Looking back at the recordings we begin to see cycles and a variety of patterns that we can use in our work.

Gestalt psychology is a theory that describes the brain as organised and parallel, taking in smaller parts of information such as lines and curves in a drawing and combining them to form an image, to see whole figures and forms rather then broken down aspects. The problem with this theory is that there is no explanation for it, why people see objects that logically have nothing to do with each other as more then they are, as a whole object.

Cognitive psychology is the study of the mental processes of problem solving, memory, and language, which stems from Gestalt psychology. In away it is the study of how the Gestalt theory works.

Through a journal people look to more then just note events and experiences, but actually try to comprehend what they are seeing and add meaning to whats around them. After looking at the extract from Jennifer New, it comes to my my mind that everyone who uses a journal for whatever reason reaches the same end use, and that is to express ones feelings through words to see not only how they view the world, but how they view themselves.

Observations

















A Tree with Eyes

Don't really know why i noticed this, just thought it looked like a giant man looking over my house, kind of like the marshmallow man from ghost busters. What people see depends on the person and their own experiences, it for instance it will determine what they see in the shape of cloud, or what pattern in the pavement. Like the Gestalt psychology i guess i did not see the smaller parts of the whole, instead of the leaves, the branches and sky i saw a man.
















My Dog

Patterns can be found all around in nature, including animals, for example, the colour of animals from dogs to parrots. Animals use patterns to survive, like a leopard who's coat allows it to hide in the grass.

Abstraction is the process of reducing an observation to retain only information which is relevant for a particular purpose, for instance abstracting a corgi cross with a beagle to simply a dog strips the traits of the that specific dog to the general traits of all dogs.
















Perspective

The point of this photo is to show the vanishing point, as the the bricks seem to grow smaller in the distance, and the angles of objects like the tables, pots and chairs. You can use the environment to influence drawing from 1st to 3rd perspective, as its all around us.

In the studio we looked at perspective drawing, and at looking at the results of different techniques at drawing perspective and comparing them to real life you can get a real understanding of how it works, and advance in skill.
















Depth

What i find interesting is how the wallpaper gives depth to the image, the balloons at different distances though its all on the same layer. This can be used as an example in drawing perspective.

Perspective has everything to with the focus of the eye, the variation in size of the balloon causes us to not balloons s different sizes but balloons at different distances, and in this way it acts like an optical illusion.
















Patterns

There are patterns everywhere made made and natural, on purpose or accidental. Patterns in themselves are no more then connected lines and curves, but our mind makes them into something more, into shapes, and from shapes into patterns. This is in my opinion the base of the Gestalt theory, our mind abstracts the smaller specific detail to create something greater, to put meaning were there is none.

Ramble

There has to be a time to take a break, to just walk for the pleasure of walking, its in these moments that we open our eyes to things around us, we notice objects and patterns in the area around us that we didn't see before because we are to busy walking from a to b, resenting the journey rather then enjoying as a moment to think.

I started to notice things on the way home that i never noticed before, most things that are man made have someones personality behind them, they put themselves in their work, from the design of a house, to advertisement billboards and even graffiti.



I have noticed how most people, for instance people on the bus, are lost in their own thoughts, distant from everyone else, looking through the window into their own little world.

Looking at the 1000 journals project it is amazing how many are doing it, putting their thoughts to paper, in a growing journal traveling around the world, more then a thousand of them now due the new 1001 project were people can now submit their own journals and send them around to others. This allows you to see the thoughts of other people, it is a medium for people to put their creativity, their thoughts to paper.

A journal is like a release for creativity, primal and unaltered thought. It allows people, especially adults, to put their thoughts down without criticism, the project allows them to do the same, but not just keeping it to themselves but show it to others, and taking comfort that thousands of people are doing the same.