3.3.1 – What do the timeframes of the camera actually look like? If you have a manual
film camera, open the camera back (make sure there’s no film in the camera
first!) and look through the shutter as you press the shutter release. What is the
shortest duration in which your eyes can perceive a recognisable image in bright
daylight? Describe the experiment in your learning log
holding place in order to complete this exercise when I can use a film camera
This is a review of Maja Daniels’ talk about her work at Brighton and Hove Camera Club, on 9th January 2018
Maja Daniels is a Swedish photographer who was talking about her projects and showing the resulting images.
Maja described herself as a Psychologist whose photography is usually the result of a very long process. She left home in Sweden at 18 to move to France and has studied Photography, psychology, journalism and speaks a number of different languages.
Maja sees her projects as of a way of communicating stories of the society in which she is living, and which gives her the opportunity to “talk about the world, to the world“.
Maja Daniels – INTERVIEW in The NEW YORK TIMES
‘Into Oblivion’ was the result of a three year project which came out of a call out by the director or a geriatric unit in France, near to where Maja was studying. She started the project alongside 4 other students but quickly ended up being the only person still doing it. She says that she spent a year visiting the hospital, working the with patients and getting to know their families before she even picked up a camera. She then spent a further 2 years developing the work to a point where she thought it was finished. The initial concept of the door came during her initial visit when she saw patients peering out of the window from the other side.
Photographing the patients looking out of the window is a message for those making medical policies.”can you see the reality of the policies you make”. She says that Alzheimer sufferers often walk and move around and their attention becomes focused on the door, because they ‘stuck’ by not being able to get through.
Maja like the idea that the viewer of the image always brings half the story. so doesn’t like her projects to direct the viewers thoughts too much.
Maja likes to work in different mediums depending on the impact she want’s to achieve. We saw a video of her images which were dubbed with the sounds recorded on the ward. Although the images themselves are ‘quiet’ and subtle the video felt much more impactful and really gave a sense of the realty of living in this place.
In the break, I was able to speak with Maja and asked how she decided what images to use in her set and how many images to include the project. This is something that I thought might help with the assignments for EYV. She said that she always goes back to a subject on numerous occasions and challenges herself to try different angles and new views. She always tries to come away with something new. She also tries to get a range such as wide angle placement shots as well as details and each image should add something new to the work. When asked how do you know when it’s finished, she replied that when she keeps coming back with the same images and can’t add anything new she will realise that it’s finished. She doesn’t have any timescales and tries to be organic and open to the work expanding.
She also said she very good at cutting images out.
MADY AND MONETTE IN NEW YORK MAGAZINE
The second project that Maja showed us, was a project that chronicles the lives of identical twlns Mady and Monette who live in Paris. The work is a juxtaposition to the oblivion project in that it celebrates the positive side of ageing. She has never sought to ‘expose’ the twins, but to help illustrate how they see themselves and how they enjoy their ‘twindom’ and document the way it shapes their lives. I particularly like the image above in terms of the composition, colours and light.
Maja goes back regularly to visit them and has built up a great relationship with the twins, I think she see this more as a collaboration with the twins as they retain much of artistic control over the images she takes and also where she publishes them..
Sweden
Finally Maja shared some of the images she is currently working on, back in her home country of Sweden. She has moved into a log cabin in the hometown of her grandparents, where they speak the oldest form of Norse still spoken. She was fascinated by how the language has survived and how it is now declining as the younger generations are no longer learning and speaking it.
This is a very different piece of work from the other two projects and when finished, i think, it will be very interesting.
Maja says that her work is personal and subjective and shouldn’t be taken as an objective documentation of people or a situation. She aims to make knowledge, through participative observation.
It seems that for all of her projects, she has spent a lot of time and invested emotionally in the subjects she is photographing. I think this is evident in the resulting images, they are intimate and real.
All in all, I like her approach and was very touched by the subject matter. I think hearing her speak about them also gave a real connection with the people and places portrayed
Debra Flynn 10.01.2018
addendum- 07/08/2018
Sharon Boothroyd talks to photographer Maja Daniels about her work.
https://www.oca-student.com/resource-type/conversation-maja-daniels
Exercise 3.2
Start by doing your own research into some of the artists discussed above. Then, using slow shutter speeds, the multiple exposure function, or another technique inspired by the examples above, try to record the trace of movement within the frame. You can be as experimental as you like. Add a selection of shots together with relevant shooting data and a description of your process (how you captured the shots) to your learning log.
Research into photographers / artists using movement in their work: http://debraflynnphotography.co.uk/EYV-blog/course-work/part-3-project-2-a-durational-space/
This first exercise to answer this brief wasn’t really inspired by any of the research, more it came out of what can I do on a wet friday afternoon! Hence I went with some coin spinning. Using shutter priority and a remote, I was able to set the camera on the table and spin the coin. My first attempts were using 1/40 second, but I only managed to capture a blur, so I increased the speed to 1/80 and then was happier with the results. I wanted to able to still that it was a coin even though it was moving. Using the marble slab underneath also gave a nice reflection.
I started using just ambient light, but decided to try side light the coin with my phone torch. I was actually quite pleased with the results. Whilst editing the images I have tried to crop them all differently, to see if that changes the feel and impact of the image.
see contacts for these images here
This was an attempt at camera movement rather than subject
Long Exposures:
Photographer Michael Wesely has taken some really long exposure images,
See: http://itchyi.squarespace.com/thelatest/2010/7/20/the-longest-photographic-
exposures-in-history.html [accessed 25/09/14])
www.wesely.org
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2001–2004. Michael Wesely
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2001–2004. Michael Wesely
I really enjoy these images and they obviously take a lot of patience. There is a ghostly quality to them, which gives a glimpse of how the space has changed over time, really like this.
Hiroshi Sugimoto
watched video about this artist: but to be honest was left a little underwhelmed by his results, I don’t really get why you’d want to take an image of a white screen and with the lack of motion in the rest of image, it could just have been a photo taken of a white screen in an empty theater.
Alisdair Gill
http://alasdairgill.blogspot.co.uk/
Exercise 3.1
Using fast shutter speeds, try to isolate a frozen moment of time in a moving subject. Depending on the available light you may have to select a high ISO to avoid visible blur in the photograph. Try to find the beauty in a fragment of time that fascinated John Szarkowski. Add a selection of shots, together with relevant shooting data and a description of your process (how you captured the images), to your learning log.
Well what better to do on New’ Year’s Day than go and try to stop time 🙂 !
Our idea was to go and watch some silly nutters running into the sea in the morning, but when we got there the beach was bare!! Presumably the rain, wind and rough high tide combined to discourage anyone. Either that or it was cancelled .
Anyway, we finally found ourselves on the beach at Littlehampton where the combination of rolling waves, shoreline birds and mad people running, gave me the opportunity to capture some motion and stop the action.
As instructed I set the camera onto shutter priority, and because it was wet and raining, but still relatively bright, I put the ISO on 640, so that I could keep the speed as high as possible. I was also using a Tamron 70-200 2.8 lens, which is fairly heavy especially in conjunction with the camera so wanted to ensure I could combat any camera shake as well.
I am pleased with the outcome of this exercise. Using shutter priority did make things easier, as I wasn’t worrying about the settings once set up, which meant I could concentrate on watching the scene for movement.
For most of the shots I tried to stand as still as possible, but with some of the bird shots, I did try panning along with the flight and as I was able to keep the shutter speed up, that was quite successful.
I think that in order to stop motion, you also need to actually see that movement is happening, i.e. if you took a photo of a car, stopping all motion, then it could just be parked!, where as a person running or a bird in flight is still moving in the image even though the motion is stopped. That’s why I chose to take photos of things that look different when they’re are moving to how they look when they are still.
I agree with Flusser’s view that ‘framing a photograph is not just space, but also time. The human eye certainly doesn’t see all of the different movement of a birds wings, by just watching.
Contact Sheets for this shoot can be seen here: contact sheets
Water Drops
Also tried to emulate Harold Edgerton’s mild drop coronet, 1957 by having a go a milk drops in water. It took thousands of shots to get a few good ones, but was really enjoyable and a little bit addictive. In this instance shutter speed is coupled with flash lighting and coloured gels to stop the action.
Technical Notes:
for water:
set up for water drop images
contacts for this shoot can be seen here