Category Archives: Course Work

Project 2 – ‘Layered, complex and mysterious…’

Posted on by

Photographers reviewed:

 

www.prixpictet.com/portfolios/consumption-shortlist/michael-schmidt/
[accessed 24.03.18]

Michael Schmidt’s project – Lebensmittel (Foods) – 

The images on their own didn’t make much sense until I translated the title which is ‘Foods’.  It is a series of 10 images which have a connection to the food we eat.  the majority of the images are black and white with just two being in colour.  The lighting is very defused and almost clinical with no dark blacks or white whites.

I think he may have deliberately taken his images this way so as not to put his feelings into the images, allowing the viewer to make there own conclusions. 

translation: The photographer Michael Schmidt will be exhibiting at the Gropius-Bau in Berlin in his exhibition “Michael Schmidt. Lebensmittel” on January 11, 2013. For his most recent long-term project, the artist photographed the production of food in salmon farms, bread factories, slaughterhouses and vegetable farms. Photo: Maurizio Gambarini / dpa)

Michael Schmidt

In this article Michael Schmidt is described as a contemporary photographer, with is analytical style.  From this I take that they mean that the images are not ‘painterly’ Personally I think they work as a series together, but individually I don’t really like them as individual pieces.  some of his earlier work is

http://www.americansuburbx.com/2013/01/interview-sally-mann-the-touch-of-an-angel-2010.html [accessed 19.03.018]

http://sallymann.com/selected-works/southern-landscapes

In contrast to Michael Schmidt, Sally Mann’s images in Southern Landscapes are full of dark and light almost macabre.  Alot of her subjects seem to be around decay and deep contrasts and soft lighting seem to add to the feeling of the image. 

Her images are all feel very intimate and she explores some very deep emotions around sex and death.  She says in her interview for ASX that quite often the project finds her, rather than her starting with it all mapped out, a bit like a writer to doesn’t know the ending when he starts to write.

Tacita Dean’s short film on the ‘green ray’ at http://vimeo.com/38026163 [accessed 18.03.2018 – interesting

https://www.nga.gov/404status.html [accessed 19.03.18 – page not found]

Golden, R, 1999, 20th Century Photography, Carlton, London

Le Quai, I’lle de la Cite (1925) – Eugene Atget

Atget’s images were largely seen as ‘functional illustrations’ of life in Paris, until he sold them to a lot of the painters of the time. It wasn’t until after his death that people recognised the artistry in the images themselves.

In the image above, Arget has used the early morning light to create a serene and mysterious look to his image.  When look at his images i was reminded of the glass plates made Nicolas Laboire now and remembered how much better the glass plates look than the printed images, I would like to seen these on their original plates.

4.2 – Layered, complex and mysterious . . .

Posted on by

Exercise 4.2
In manual mode take a sequence of shots of a subject of your choosing at different
times on a single day. It doesn’t matter if the day is overcast or clear but you need
a good spread of times from early morning to dusk. You might decide to fix your
viewpoint or you might prefer to ‘work into’ your subject, but the important thing is
to observe the light, not just photograph it. Add the sequence to your learning log
together with a timestamp from the time/date info in the metadata. In your own
words, briefly describe the quality of light in each image.

Following light 19.3.2018

These images were all taken on the same day at about hourly intervals.  The camera was set up with a remote trigger so that all images should be the same.  The only adjustment made for each image was the shutter speed, which was altered to maintain optimum exposure. All images are SOOC.

The light was very diffused throughout the day, and there doesn’t appear to be much in the way of shadows or contrast.  

4.1.1 & 4.1.2 – Exposure

Posted on by

Part 4 – Project 1 – Exercise 4.1

Exercise 4.1
1. Set your camera to any of the auto or semi-auto modes. Photograph a dark tone (such as a black jacket), a mid-tone (the inside of a cereal packet traditionally makes a useful ‘grey card’) and a light tone (such as a sheet of white paper), making sure that the tone fills the viewfinder frame (it’s not necessary to focus). Add the shots to your learning log with quick sketches of the histograms and your observations. You might be surprised to see that the histograms for each of the frames – black, grey and white – are the same. If there’s not much tonal variation within the frame you’ll see a narrow spike at the mid-tone; if there is tonal variation (such as detail) you’ll see a more gentle curve. If you find the tone curve isn’t centered on the mid-tone, make sure that you have your exposure compensation set to zero. You may see an unpleasant colour cast if you’re shooting under artificial light, in which case you can repeat the exercise using your monochrome setting (a light meter is sensitive to brightness, not to colour). This simple exercise exposes the obvious flaw in calibrating the camera’s light meter to the mid-tone. The meter can’t know that a night scene is dark or a snow scene is light so it averages each exposure around the mid-tone and hopes for the best. But why can’t the camera just measure the light as it is? The reason is that a camera measures reflected light – the light reflected from the subject, not incident light – the light falling on the subject. To measure the incident light you’d have to walk over to the subject and hold an incident light meter (a hand- 78 Photography 1: Expressing your Vision held meter) pointing back towards the camera, which isn’t always practical. If you did that each of the tones would be exposed correctly because the auto or semi-auto modes wouldn’t try to compensate for the specific brightness of the subject.

4.1.1.

As the exercise suggested the three items looks almost the same colour and the histograms are very similar.  This shows that if left to the camera, it will always try to make everything 50% grey or the mid tone.

4.1.2

 Set your camera to manual mode. Now you can see your light meter! The mid- tone exposure is indicated by the ‘0’ on the meter scale with darker or lighter exposures as – or + on either side. Repeat the exercise in manual mode, this time adjusting either your aperture or shutter to place the dark, mid and light tones at their correct positions on the histogram. The light and dark tones shouldn’t fall off either the left or right side of the graph. Add the shots to your learning log with sketches of their histograms and your observations. Switching to manual mode disconnects the aperture, shutter and ISO so they’re no longer linked. Because they’re no longer reciprocal, you can make adjustments to any one of them without affecting the others.

In manual mode, the shutter speed or aperture can be altered to get the correct exposure.  However, if you want the image to be darker and closer to the black range, you can slow the shutter or close the aperture until the midpoint on the camera moved to the left or (-) side.  The reverse is true if you want to lighten the image.

Using manual mode gives you more control of the light that hits the sensor.  Of course you can also use the ISO to change this too 

 

Part 4 – The Language of Light

Posted on by

Making  a start:

This Part is going to focus on manual mode and how changing exposure can change the look and feel of your image.

One of the exercises from 4.2, 4.3 or 4.4 will need to be expanded to fill the assignment brief at the end of the section, therefore, i will need to bare this in mind as I work through the projects.

The exercises for this part are:

Exercise 4.1 1. Set your camera to any of the auto or semi-auto modes. Photograph a dark tone (such as a black jacket), a mid-tone (the inside of a cereal packet traditionally makes a useful ‘grey card’) and a light tone (such as a sheet of white paper), making sure that the tone fills the viewfinder frame (it’s not necessary to focus). Add the shots to your learning log with quick sketches of the histograms and your observations. You might be surprised to see that the histograms for each of the frames – black, grey and white – are the same. If there’s not much tonal variation within the frame you’ll see a narrow spike at the mid-tone; if there is tonal variation (such as detail) you’ll see a more gentle curve. If you find the tone curve isn’t centered on the mid-tone, make sure that you have your exposure compensation set to zero. You may see an unpleasant colour cast if you’re shooting under artificial light, in which case you can repeat the exercise using your monochrome setting (a light meter is sensitive to brightness, not to colour). This simple exercise exposes the obvious flaw in calibrating the camera’s light meter to the mid-tone. The meter can’t know that a night scene is dark or a snow scene is light so it averages each exposure around the mid-tone and hopes for the best. But why can’t the camera just measure the light as it is? The reason is that a camera measures reflected light – the light reflected from the subject, not incident light – the light falling on the subject. To measure the incident light you’d have to walk over to the subject and hold an incident light meter (a hand- 78 Photography 1: Expressing your Vision held meter) pointing back towards the camera, which isn’t always practical. If you did that each of the tones would be exposed correctly because the auto or semi-auto modes wouldn’t try to compensate for the specific brightness of the subject. 2. Set your camera to manual mode. Now you can see your light meter! The mid- tone exposure is indicated by the ‘0’ on the meter scale with darker or lighter exposures as – or + on either side. Repeat the exercise in manual mode, this time adjusting either your aperture or shutter to place the dark, mid and light tones at their correct positions on the histogram. The light and dark tones shouldn’t fall off either the left or right side of the graph. Add the shots to your learning log with sketches of their histograms and your observations. Switching to manual mode disconnects the aperture, shutter and ISO so they’re no longer linked. Because they’re no longer reciprocal, you can make adjustments to any one of them without affecting the others.
 
Exercise 4.2 In manual mode take a sequence of shots of a subject of your choosing at different times on a single day. It doesn’t matter if the day is overcast or clear but you need a good spread of times from early morning to dusk. You might decide to fix your viewpoint or you might prefer to ‘work into’ your subject, but the important thing is to observe the light, not just photograph it. Add the sequence to your learning log together with a timestamp from the time/date info in the metadata. In your own words, briefly describe the quality of light in each image.
 
 
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.
 
 
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.
 
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.

Project 3 ‘What matters is to look’ – research point

Posted on by

What Matters is to look

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris, 1932

This image by Henri Carier-Bresson is described as ‘one of the most iconic photographs of the twentieth century’. Personally I’ve never seen it before.

As part of my research into Henri Cartier-Bresson, I watched ‘L’amour tout court’ on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/106009378 (accessed 10/01/2018).

The film is an interview with HC-B made by Raphael O’Byrne entitled ‘Just Plain Love’
It is in French but has English subtitles
 
HC-B starts by saying that most people don’t look properly at their subject, they just press the shutter buttons
 
He intermates that his parents were strict and prudish, whilst he frequented bordellos 
Left-wing catholics
 
HCB went to Africa
He is a bit of crusader for people less fortunate than himself.
He been in jail and then to the commandos, he feels like an escaped prisoner
 
HCB and Klavdij Sluban hold a regular photography workshop with the inmates in the Fleury-Mergois.  Sluban is now also going to a prison in Georgia.  At first the inmates seem very cautious and suspicious, but are soon running around taking photos, mostly of themselves.  He says that the inmates either refer to themselves as before incarceration or after, but not during.  By giving them a camera, we see their view of the prison, rather than the photographers.
 
HCB reviewing his famous leaping man image, said it was just luck, but that you need to leave yourself open, you can’t just want it to happen, because it won’t
 
He has framed his images, using geometry, divine proportion. Which he instinctively knows where it is.  It’s about capturing the physical rhythm of a situation.
 
Form should come first, light is the icing on the cake. Interview with writing, says that HCB was always looking, will see things others don’t see.  He sees the form or geometry of an image and the people within it provide the interest.
 
HCB you either have it you don’t.
 
Arkivah – people need to love to look, you can’t look at something you don’t love
Art is not a visual think, is a sensual think, if you don’t taste it you won’t see it.

 

just plain love a film by Raphael O’Bryan

the gaze should pierce 

wanting won’t work

physidcal rhythm

light is like purfune to me.

giocometti?

to look means to love – painter

suite nl3 en re mineur sarabande, bach

suite no3 en ut majeur, parelude, bach

suite no 1 en sol majeur, courante, bach

suite no 9 courante, haendel eric heidsieck

Assignment 3 – The Decisive Moment – Research

Posted on by

Research into the concept of ‘the decisive moment’

How to Master “The Decisive Moment”

Eric Kim says that H C-B believed that:

  • “The Decisive Moment” was that split second of genius and inspiration that a photographer had to capture a certain moment
  • You can never recreate the same circumstances in terms of location and people.
  • You must constantly be looking for moments to capture,
  • Once that moment is gone, it is gone forever

7 Tips How to Capture “The Decisive Moment” in Street Photography

  1. What is a “decisive moment” for you
  2. Follow your intuition
  3. Set it and forgetit
  4. Photograph what you’re afraid of
  5. Look for emotion and gestures
  6. What is personally-meaningful to you
  7. Work the scene

The Decisive Moment and the Brain

this is an interesting article from Petapixel, which explores the interactions between conscious (i.e., knowing) and unconscious (i.e., intuiting) awareness and how the brain works to link the two. 

 

Extract from conversation on on student forum about a3 decisive moment.

https://discuss.oca-student.com/t/eyv-a3-decisive-moment-feedback-needed/6483

Comment by Clive White – OCA tutor:

I didn’t want them to be just an extension of cliché esthetics’

The decisive moment isn’t an outdated Modernist conceit, it’s an ever present appropriate strategy concerned with when you decided to press the shutter button. It’s the second most important decision the photographer makes after framing.

Some students seem to get the idea that they’re supposed to critique it in some way as an outmoded idea by redefining it or that they’re supposed to be critiquing the work of H. C-B.; as tutors we don’t really understand why the section has been read like this but the assignment, along with the rest of EYV is being revised and I’m contributing a case study from one of my students to help explain the concept and this assignment more effectively.

You are encouraged to critique it in the sense that one can consciously produce indecisive or non-decisive moments but in order to do that one needs to understand what a decisive moment is, some people are jumping straight to the critique position with out properly understanding the concept of the decisive moment and a spurious motivation.

The minimum requirement of this assignment is that the images should visually demonstrate the understanding of the concept without requiring any explanation or captioning when viewed by those familiar with the concept. It is not enough to say this is a decisive moment because I say it is. The image at the moment of capture should have a significance which is not extant at the moment before or the moment after.

Once that’s achieved the aspiration should be to make images which are not only decisive moments but to make them part of the natural progressive flow of one’s work.

Review the images you’ve made and decide if they meet the base criteria, was the moment you’ve chosen different in its resonance in any significant way from a moment before or after.

I think this really helps clarify what is needed from this assignment.

  • it it NOT a critique of HC-B, but needs to demonstrate and understanding of the concept
  • it should capture a moment in time that is different from the moment before and the moment after.
  • the images should have aesthetic balance

I also had a look at a couple of blogs suggested by the tutors which were held up as demonstrating the required response to the brief

Kate Aston  and David Fletcher 

two very different responses and very interesting.

 

3.3.2 What matters is to look

Posted on by
Reply

3.3.2.  Find a good viewpoint, perhaps fairly high up (an upstairs window might do)
where you can see a wide view or panorama. Start by looking at the things
closest to you in the foreground. Then pay attention to the details in the middle
distance and, finally, the things towards the horizon. Now try and see the whole
landscape together, from the foreground to horizon (you can move your eyes).
Include the sky in your observation and try to see the whole visual field together,
all in movement (there is always some movement). When you’ve got it, raise your
camera and take a picture. Add the picture and a description of the process to
your learning log.

To complete this exercise, I needed a to take jolly jaunt during my lunch hour, up to High down Hill, which is the highest point locally and has a 360 degree views.

As I stood at top the Highdown Hill, looking down over North Worthing.  I followed the instructions and started by looking close to me and moving my eyes further away into the distance and then up to the sky.  i was surprised just how much the human eye can see and perceive in one go.

At first the scene looked fairly static but the more I looked, the more I started to see, and even the slightest movement was apparent.  In this exercise I took the image when I saw the movement, but in actual fact it was so far away that the camera  didn’t really capture it.  in the image below I have shown where the movement was, a double decker bus.  I was able to watch the bus approaching the gap, and took the image as it reached the gap.  So I feel that I did capture the decisive moment, even though it’s very small 🙂

this view captures a train passing the level crossing.  I first spotted the flashing red lights and then saw the train approaching from the right. I waited until the train reached the lights before taking the shot.

I have marked the movement and the train in this second image

3.3.1 What matters is to look

Posted on by

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

3.2 – A durational space

Posted on by

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

Part 3 – Project 2 – A durational space

Posted on by

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/