Portrait+of+a+Place-NW



The first photo is of an abandon Milwaukee factory by Peter Gnas, I picked this particular photo because it's close to home, in a literal sense and otherwise. Not only is this factory in Milwaukee, but my parents own a metal fab. company similar to this one, it reminded me of this one in look and overall feel, likewise my own portrait of a place will be of my parents factory and I will try to invoke a similar feeling, so it made sense to add this photo to my banner. Peter Gnas doesn't seem to be a very well know artist, but what we do know is that a lot of his work is abandon places with an eerie or creepy feel to it, also he likes to light these places with color to make a certain look and feel, and as we can see in the photo above, it works, blue on the bottom, greenish on top, and a darker or black color in the middle add some dramatic lighting to the abandon factory.

The second image is a photo by Ansel Adams, of a mountain and some snow covered trees. I picked this one because it reminded me of the view up north at my cabin, minus the mountain, but the land looks beautiful when covered in snow. Making this image black and white may have made it a little more dramatic, but I'm not sure it was the right way to go in this case, if it was in color you would be able to see the greens of the trees, the blues of the freezing water and the sky, and the darker tones of the mountain in background would've kept the dramatic tone. Ansel Adams work consists of outdoor images similar to this, all of them in black and white with the same tone and feel, I personally am not a huge fan of his work due to the lack of variety in his work, even though the images are of the beauty of nature.

The last image is by who is now one of my favorite artist, John Paul Caponigro. The Northern Lights, or scientifically known as Aurora Borealis, is basically gas particles from the Earth's atmosphere that collide and get hit by the light from the sun or moon causing them to appear different colors based on the gasses in the sky at the moment. Yet to some this is simply a message from God or even God himself, people have claimed to have visions or even talked to God from this very spot, skeptics dismiss this as hallucinations from the gasses. JPC has lots of variety in his work, especially in his places. He has lots of work of the sky, the desert and a few of the Northern Lights. His photos are so hyperrealistic, and they look amazing, that's part of the reason I like his work so much.

I have yet to chooses a method of printing, I was going to hold off on making that decision, until after I found a good picture to use of the metals shop. I have taken a few already but they are turning out very dark on the computer, so I may have to make another trip there, to shoot some better quality photos. The way I want to portray my piece is, unlike the factory image at the top, that work gets done here. The photo taken by Gnas is great picture, no doubt, but the main issue is it is abandon, empty, it doesn't look like any work gets done. The pictures I took all have heavy metal machinery and, and other tools, I want it to look like this is a place where men come for a hard days work, an industrial kind of look, like you could almost picture the hard work that goes into everything that's made there, all the blood, sweat, tears.