Tribal Forest Daemon

Today I photographed mountains covered partly with snow as you can see here.

I started admiring trees that look like skeletons against a white pale backdrop consisting of fog and clouds hiding nature. After playing around with the images I realised that within them natural creatures or faces can be discovered as they might also be in fact hiding away. I decided to enhanced them. 

The result as you can see below is no photograph anymore but rather something else, a forest creature. 

by Karolina Rupp

Change

After many years of being torn between joining or not, I finally did it. My photographs, or rather some of them, can now be found on facebook.

This it seems is quite the step as next year will be the start of something I don't yet understand. In about a weeks time I will have completed my studies. Exciting on the one hand, but also nerve wrecking on the other. I have so many plans but at the same time non at all. I have so many ideas, but question all of them. I am confident about the future but struggle to fully believe my own thoughts. It feels like at this particular moment I just am here. 

I think a very good description of how I feel is a photograph that I took recently. I must add though that I do find it being applicable to many feelings or ideas which is relieving. I hope that others can also identify with it. 

by Karolina Rupp Photography

Foresting

Today's excursion:

By Karolina Rupp Photography

By Karolina Rupp Photography

And to end this post:

"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." - Banksy (original variation by Finley Peter Dunne)

Thrown Together

Take photographs from the past, for example your ancestors and reinvent them. Not re-shooting them but working with them to create something new. What an inspiration. 

Writing and writing pages over pages every morning is the key but only referring to things you hear and learn does not justify this post. It needs to be personal. 

Here a thought on individualism.  

In today's world we are taught that being unique is a great thing and that it will take you far in life. Unfortunately there a certain guidelines that we follow that supposedly make us more unique if compared to others who coincidentally also follow those same suggestions. This of course is a hypocrisy in itself which I tried to address. By using lace consisting of a rose pattern and a real rose from a rose plant, I would like to demonstrate that being unique or an individual is not as easy but at the same time effortless. It is the idea that others might be able to see you or your problems more clearly than you do or can as you are occupied with understanding the chaos of stimuli coming together between your ears. Thus breaking out of the norm can be either confirmed or disregarded depending who looks at it, you or someone else. What I mean here is that I might see myself as unique and as an individual but you see quite the opposite and fit me neatly into a box. It is this grouping of people that contributes to the limits we encounter in regards to conquering the fear of life. This idea is a way to allow the thought of individualism and its possibility to grow out of a person, flowering like a rose to create a beautiful and unique being, which still belongs. 

The Three Corners of Reality

By Karolina Rupp Photography

There are three layers to our mind, the good, the bad and the grey areas in between that influence our understanding of things and our reality. We can't escape them, they are part of us inherently.

This photograph, taken on 120 film with a medium format camera, explores exactly that concept of being caught within our own realities and that everything is subjective essentially. We are fixed in that position, and still are trying to think outside of the box and explore even more profound topics just to realise over and over again that the moment a new thought is explored it becomes a cliché. We never stop discovering things but once found, place them neatly into one of the three corners of reality. It is the restlessness of blindly searching for answers to everyday questions that freezes us in time until the hunt is over, for now, and the collection of thoughts and ideas within the mind has been expanded once again. This process continues throughout life and only ends with death, this library we carefully construct through everyday living, that helps us to survive and cope with the reality we are living (in). To draw the concept closer to the photograph, it is necessary to explain the visual elements within this image. 

Firstly, a woman is portrayed a little blurry in the just off-center of the composition with the sleeves of her jersey rolled up, ready to run and explore. Behind her head three different types of walls meet, which represent the three corners of reality by having different shades of grey as one of their properties. These walls hold her within the composition and thus shows her being stuck and caught in her own reality. On the left a door can be recognised which demonstrates the human need to escape and think differently every now and then, but also to show that it is not used (it is closed) for a reason. On the right towards the back of the composition of this photograph random objects can be seen. These show that not everything is explored within our thoughts but at the same time if you would move closer you would know what these objects are, which reinforces the concept of the cliché as mentioned above.The setting was chosen as it is a familiar structure, our reality we live in. The fear of knowing what is out there and the subjective interpretation of the latter is shown through the closed eyes of the woman. Also having to fight your way through this reality, but doing so with closed eyes (eyes are closed towards ideas and things of others because they can only be subjectively perceived and thus become one own's thoughts and ideas) plays a role within this composition. In addition, the woman is a little unsure of her position within this/ her reality which is another reason her eyes are shut as she is essentially hiding away. Through that feature, the viewer of this photograph has the ability to judge and see but the subject decides to not perceive being observed in order to protect herself, like many do within this reality.

This photograph of mine will be exhibited at the end of the year. Watch this space for more details. 

Keep shooting

That's the key, to keep shooting images.. not to get lazy but to remember the medium and to go on.

Today was such a day where I took the camera and tried some stuff again. Instead of thinking about concepts and ways to execute them, a simple portrait was the result of playing around with my camera... a portrait of my dear sister (visit her blog here).

Medium Format Photography

An assignment: Medium Format Photography.

And I love it! The colours, the aspect ratio, the detail... I could go on... It is by far the best medium I've used so far to capture images. Just testing it with a black and white Ilford and seeing the results... it opened a little door in my head to a new room... where the light bulb was already on. 

Here an example of a photograph I've taken with the test film which was scanned as a negative:

Isn't the detail incredible? And the contrast... I could go on!

I have realised by seeing the images I've taken with a medium format camera that this is possibly the only medium I know so far which would accurately represent the concepts I have in mind photographing, criticising or cherishing.... essentially sharing. I feel I have reached a breakthrough of epic proportions (isn't the word epic just epic?!) with regards to being inspired. This medium inspires me. And it feels like it won't be a temporary thing... but a choice I've made or rather a choice that happened.

...just a pity that thing is so bulky... *


*you do get smaller awesome medium formats but I don't have access to them yet.