A Photographer of Sculpture

I came on a great opportunity last month. 

I responded to an announcement from the AAU Fine Art Sculpture Department and was hired to do a work study position there. In this position they have asked me to take pictures of their students and their work, finished and in progress for the department’s Facebook page. 

So for the past couple weeks I've been focusing my lens on students in life size sculpture, figure model sculpture, portrait sculpture, animal sculpture, wheel ceramics, neon sculpture and forging and welding sculpture classes. As you can imagine, I’ve been having a lot of fun. 

When I introduce myself to students some ask me if I’m a photographer. I usually answer, “I am now.” In fact my background in photography is very similar to my art background, I’ve done it my entire life but not professionally and not always with the confidence that the term implies. The question is a bit silly, like asking if your an artist. We all take photos these days. Many if not most of us now carry cameras with us on cell phones and get beautiful results. 

Our unit this week for the AAU Integrating Technology into Art Education is focused on the use of the digital camera. This has been a great opportunity for me as I ramp up my photography skills to review and relearn some photography basics. I was happy to be reminded about various ways of blurring the background by changing the aperture, speed and sensitivity settings. 

We also learned some Photoshop basics. I wanted to used a picture I took of a sculpted face that had been left on it’s side a classroom.

After sifting through some old photos I found one of my son kicking a log down a beautiful beach. I decided to replace the log on the beach with the sculpted head. 

Here is the beach without the log.

Here’s the log replaced with the head. 

 Here I cropped the photo to bring more attention to the sculpted head. 

I am pleased with the result and I’m happy to be using photoshop again.