Category Archives: Course Work

5.2 – Assessment Criteria – Context

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Exercise 5.2

Select an image by any photographer of your choice and take a photograph in response to it. You can respond in any way you like to the whole image or to just a part of it, but you must make explicit in your notes what it is that you’re responding to. Is it a stylistic device such as John Davies’ high viewpoint, or Chris Steele Perkins’ juxtapositions? Is it the location, or the subject? Is it an idea, such as the decisive moment?
Add the original photograph together with your response to your learning log.  Which of the three types of information discussed by Barrett provides the context in this case? Take your time over writing your response because you’ll submit the relevant part of your learning log as part of Assignment Five. 

The image I have selected is John Wilhelm, who is a Swiss photographer who considers himself to be an artist only using his own images to create surreal photos of his children and family.

image by John Wilhelm

too see John’s work click here:  https://www.johnwilhelm.ch

One of my passions is digital manipulation and this kind of photography is something that I have done quite a bit of.  The image I have created, in ‘homage’ to John’s work, picks up the themes of daisies, children and miniatures.

Debra Flynn. Daisy Pinata, 2018

images used to create the image above

In his essay Terry Barrett (to read click here) suggests there are three sources of context: 

  • internal context – the picture itself, it’s name, who made it and when
  • external context – how and where it is presented 
  • original context – the understanding of the environment in which the photographer physically and psychologically made the image.

all of these elements can affect how the image is perceived or understood by the viewer.

Robert Doisneau. Paris Cafe, 1958

This is described by Barrett, using Robert Doisneau’s image of a couple drinking wine in a Paris cafe.  It has been published 5 separate times in different forms and each time it’s context has been altered.

  1. by Doisneau in a set called Paris cafes
  2. by the Temperance League extolling the perils of drinking alcohol.
  3. by a French scandal sheet with a caption about prostitution
  4. by a photo gallery in New York as an artwork
  5. in a book about modern art, suggesting it be a ‘possible seduction’.

Depending on which description the image is given at any one time (internal context) or the place where it is seen or published (external context) the viewers understanding of the image can be changed.  To really understand the context of the image the viewer should endeavour to understand the environment which caused the photographer to make in the image in the first place. (original context) i.e. when, where and why was it taken, what was the political or moral environment in which it was taken and what was the viewpoint of the photographer.

As a photographer, this makes me think very much about how and where I present my images.  In these times of Facebook and Instagram, 500 px etc photographs are rarely printed and once uploaded to the internet are pretty much free to be used by anyone.  Particularly when creating an image like the one by John Wilhelm and my ‘homage’ to it, there is a lot of work gone into collecting the right photos, and then digitally creating the image, to then just upload it to social media where it can be used at will, does that denigrate my hard work or reduce it the level of the selfies flooding the internet?  It’s a difficult one, because like most photographers I want to share my work for others to enjoy too.

Contextualising my image:

internal context: Debra Flynn. Daisy Pinata, 2018

external context: published on instagram / facebook (see here) 

original context: as the photographer, I physically have the equipment and computer software to produce this image, including the knowledge, skill and artistic vision to create the image.  Psychologically; I am drawn to the surreal and adding a bit of magic to children’s lives.  In the examples below, all but one are members of my family.

link to Assignment 5 – Photography is simple (reworked)

references:

www.terrybarrettosu.com/pdfs/B_PhotAndCont_97.pdf 

Click to access Barrett-1986-Photographs-Contexts.pdf

 

Part 5 – 5.1 – Place holder

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Exercise 5.1
Use your camera as a measuring device. This doesn’t refer to the distance scale on
the focus ring(!). Rather, find a subject that you have an empathy with and take a
sequence of shots to ‘explore the distance between you’. Add the sequence to your
learning log, indicating which is your ‘select’ – your best shot.
When you review the set to decide upon a ‘select’, don’t evaluate the shots just
according to the idea you had when you took the photographs; instead evaluate
it by what you discover within the frame (you’ve already done this in Exercise 1.4).
In other words, be open to the unexpected. In conversation with the author, the
photographer Alexia Clorinda expressed this idea in the following way:
Look critically at the work you did by including what you didn’t
mean to do. Include the mistake, or your unconscious, or whatever
you want to call it, and analyse it not from the point of view of your
intention, but because it is there.

still to do

Part 5

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Introduction:

so this Part is going to concentrate on viewpoint.

If you’re excited by what you read then it’s probably resonating in some way with your own deeper  interests; if you’re bored or irritated you need to find out why.

From what I have read so far, I believe it’s about developing an understanding of the viewpoint you have as a photographer, thereby understanding what it is that you are trying to convey.  I believe this section will be less about the technical side of photography and more about what you are conveying to your viewers.

I guess it’s bit like psychology, in that everyone comes from a different point, based on their upbringing, experience, hopes and desires etc.

4.5 – Assessment Criteria – Creativity

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Exercise 4.5
Make a Google Images search for ‘landscape’, ‘portrait’, or any ordinary subject such
as ‘apple’ or ‘sunset’. Add a screengrab of a representative page to your learning log
and note down the similarities you find between the images.
Now take a number of your own photographs of the same subject, paying special
attention to the ‘Creativity’ criteria at the end of Part One. You might like to make
the subject appear ‘incidental’, for instance by using juxtaposition, focus or framing.
Or you might begin with the observation of Ernst Haas, or the ‘camera vision’ of Bill
Brandt.
Add a final image to your learning log, together with a selection of preparatory
shots. In your notes describe how your photograph differs from your Google Images
source images of the same subject.

a google search for ‘pink tuplips’

The image I have chosen from my set of images, is one where the tulips appear to be incidental in the picture.  However, they were actually placed there deliberately behind the statue to get this image.

tulips incidental in the image

I liked Chris Steele-Perkins’ shots of mount fuji which showed it in juxtapostion against the everyday life that is carrying on around it.

Chris Steele-Perkins

with such a well known flower it was very difficult to come up with something new, but the act of doing so, made me look harder at the subject and decide if there were different angles, or positions I could place them to get different light on.

The contacts below show the different ideas I had for capturing this flower. Mostly I went for prominent in the frame, but I also tried the incidental shots. 

 

4.4 – Ex Nihilo

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Exercise 4.4 Use a combination of quality, contrast, direction and colour to light an object in order to reveal its form. For this exercise we recommend that you choose a natural or organic object such as an egg, stone, vegetable or plant, or the human face or body, rather than a man-made object. Man-made or cultural artifacts can be fascinating to light but they also contain another layer of meaning requiring interpretation by the photographer; this exercise is just about controlling the light to reveal form. You don’t need a studio light for this exercise; a desk lamp or even window light will be fine, although a camera flash that you can use remotely is a useful tool. The only proviso is that you can control the way the light falls on the subject. Take some time to set up the shot. The background for your subject will be crucial. For a smallish object, you can tape a large sheet of paper or card to the wall as an ‘infinity curve’ which you can mask off from the main light source by pieces of card. You don’t need to use a curve if you can manage the ‘horizon line’ effectively – the line where the surface meets background. Taking a high viewpoint will make the surface the background, in which case the surface you choose will be important to the shot. Exposure times will be much longer than you’re used to (unless you’re using flash) and metering and focusing will be challenging. The key to success is to keep it simple. The important thing is to aim for four or five unique shots – either change the viewpoint, the subject or the lighting for each shot. Add the sequence to your learning log. Draw a simple lighting diagram for each of your shots showing the position of the camera, the subject and the direction of the key light and fill. Don’t labour the diagrams; quick sketches with notes will be just as useful as perfect graphics. In your notes try to describe any similarities between the qualities of controlled lighting and the daylight and ambient artificial light shots from Exercises 4.2 and 4.3.

 

using studio lighting gives you a lot of control over the look and feel of your final images. 

Project 4: Ex nihilo

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Ex nihilo – out of nothing

This section is about using studio lights to control how you shape form:

Things to consider are:

  • Quality – hard or soft, modifiers, diffused
  • Contrast – the difference between highlights and the shadows, low key, high key, wrapped around
  • Direction – where is the light coming from, which is the key light, or fill light, create drama, bring out the form of the subject
  • Colour – add colour with gels, or reflectors (i.e. gold to warm skin tones)

Lighting guide

Film Noir

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Film Noir Research

researching Christopher Doyle’s lighting, I came across the ‘Film Noir’ genre which was the name given to a series of films made in the 40s and 50s.  Doyle’s cinematography seems to contain a lot of the elements of film noir, but in a more modern setting.
 
film noir
fɪlm ˈnwɑː,French film nwaʀ/
noun
  1. a style or genre of cinematographic film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace. The term was originally applied (by a group of French critics) to American thriller or detective films made in the period 1944–54 and to the work of directors such as Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, and Billy Wilder.
    • a film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace.
      plural noun: films noirs
       

    http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/infographic-what-makes-film-noir [accessed 07.04.18]

according to this article, to make a good Film Noir image, it should contain:

  • assymetrical, imbalanced
  • Deep focus, give background equal importance
  • High contrast, no fill light, long shadows
  • use reflections to increase sense of drama and unreality
  • ‘Choker’ close-up to heighten intensity
  • wide angle focal length
  • dutch tilt, strong diagonal bands (cased by prison bars, staircasses, blinds)
  • obscured vision (cigarette smoke, rain, fog, protagonist being drugged or knocked out)

google image search for ‘film noir’

http://www.darkmansdarkroom.com/film-noir-lighting-with-lighting-diagrams/ [accessed 07.04.2018]

In Darkman’s blog, gives examples of lighting setups and says :

The lighting is sometimes either stark dark or light contrasts as are the dramatic shadowing effects known also as the chiaroscuro style. Chiaroscuro is a style of light and dark paterning that came from Renaissance painting. One typical cliche and always notable scene type is the shadows of venetian blinds on the wall or across the face of the characters in the movie or photo.

I very much like this genre and shows what can be done with little lighting.  However, I would like to think about how to use this genre in a modern contemporary setting rather than just recreate images like those above.

4.3 – The Beauty of Artificial Light

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Exercise 4.3
Capture ‘the beauty of artificial light’ in a short sequence of shots (‘beauty’ is, of
course, a subjective term). The correct white balance setting will be important; this
can get tricky –but interesting – if there are mixed light sources of different colour
temperatures in the same shot. You can shoot indoors or outside but the light should
be ambient rather than camera flash. Add the sequence to your learning log. In your
notes try to describe the difference in the quality of light from the daylight shots in
Exercise 4.2.

a selection of images taken indoors using only ambient lighting from the room.  All were taken using a tripod and longer shutter speeds.

The SOOC shots have a warmer yellower light caused by the lamp lights in the room.  There was no other natural light. I took each of the following images and adjusted only the white balance on each.This gives an idea of the difference in colour temperature between taken these images in daylight and artificial light.  

When looking at the scene myself, I would say I saw something in between the two.

 

 

Project 3 – The beauty of artificial light

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Photographers review and research

Sata Shintaro

Night Lights

Sato Shintaro

These shots were taken in the streets of Tokyo and Osaka at night from 1997 to 1999, and in them I have avoided the more aesthetically pleasing locations such as seaside areas and the well-known “subcenters” in favor of the everyday disorder of the streets. Take a brightly-lit busy street bustling with people and remove the people: the purpose of the lighting is lost and only the glow remains – providing a glimpse of the streets we know well from a less familiar perspective.

images from Sata Shintaro’s Night Lights collection

did he take these images by staying until there were now people, or did he use a long exposure, long enough to eliminate the people?

Rut Blees Luxemburg

German photographer takes mostly images of urban landscapes at night.  She is also a lecturer at the royal collage of art.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/gallery/2009/mar/09/rut-blees-luxemburg-photography

she uses long exposure, using only ambient light.  Many of her images have a very orangy/red or green hue.

I came across an explanation about the colour of light during a Phlearn Tutorial on editing a film noire style image. He explained that most flashes and lights are set to mimic ‘white light’ or the light that we would typically get at midday.  This tends to have a bluish tint because the this the time when the radio waves combine the most and humans see this as white.

At the ends of the day, the light turns more yellow, orange and red. therefore many photographers use CTO (colour temperature orange) gels to recreate an night-time feel to photos.

 

http://www.westinghouselighting.com/color-temperature.aspx

this web page explains how you can use this scale to create the look and feel you want.

having now found this, I can compare with images I took for exercise 4.2 and notice that the later images definitely have a bluer tint as the light fades.

Project 3 The beauty of artificial light

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Review of Photographers using artificial light:

Christopher Doyle

This video shows the evocative lighting that Christoper Doyle uses to light his characters. Alot of the scenes are dark and are shot looking through something, often completely black on the edges with bright almost primary colours lighting the subjects.  He particularly seems to like reds and oranges which give a warm sensual nature to the images.

The techniques outlined in this video:

  • Wide angle lens as wide as 18 mm
  • long lenses
  • shallow depth of field
  • angles off kilter
  • moving camera
  • use of colour, influenced the neon colours
  • embraced random chaos of colours
  • used dark alleys and tight spaces
  • silhouetted actors against the colours
  • liked buildings and the way light fell on them
  • inspired low angle shots
  • used small spaces and street lights
  • the lighting in a naturalistic environment is always from the top
  • actors always lit by one light, rarely any back light or glamour light
  • introduce a slight blue tint into the faces of the leading ladies.
  • Contrast ratio of the charts
  • Blacks had a lot of green in because he’s using fuji film

“I think the point of cinematography, of what we do, is intimacy. Is intent, is the balance between the familiar and the dream, it is being subjective and objective, it is being engaged and yet standing back and noticing something that perhaps other people didn’t notice before, or celebrating something that you feel is beautiful or valid, or true or engaging in some way.” — Christopher Doyle

Don’t Look Now Nicolas Roeg, 1973 Cinematography | Anthony B. Richmond

“During the minutes or seconds that this fleeting image is on the screen, you have to enable the viewer to see and especially to experience that there is a very rapid emotional shock. So the lighting has to be designed in such a way that its form can pierce through the screen and travel like an arrow into the viewer’s mind.” — Henri Alekan

The advantage of still photography, is that the viewer has time to peruse the image at leisure so perhaps the impact could be more subtle?

quotes and images from : https://mattystanfield.com/2016/01/06/light-and-shadow-or-the-magic-of-cinematography/ [accessed 20.04.18

Brassai

Tony Ray-Jones Interviews Brassai” Pt. I (1970)

Although trained in art Brassai says he thinks education and intelligence are better prerequisites for photography as painters try to unconsciously take photos like paintings and that photographers need to see things fresh, using their intelligence as well as their eye.