Category Archives: Research and Reflection

Part 3 – Project 2 – A durational space

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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/

Part 3 – Traces of Time – Coursework

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Shutter Speed

‘Freezing Time’

I was surprised to discover that today’s fast shutter speeds were developed so recently, and that the first photographs took hours to develop.  I started my photographic journey with film, many years ago, but even then, it seemed quick to take a photo.

Names to remember in shutter speed development:

In being able to stop motion, in the fraction of a second it takes to push the shutter button, we are able to see things that our eyes couldn’t actually see. Szarkowski, 2007, p.5 argues that we can derive much pleasure in the fragmenting of time because of the aesthetic quality of shapes we can capture

Bullet Through Flame (Schlieren Method) © Kim Vandiver and Harold Edgerton, 1973

This image by Harold Edgerton is an example of how there can be beauty in capturing something we wouldn’t normally be able to see.

I believe that images like this, capture both a fragment of time, but also movement, because as humans we do have the ability to discern movement, even if we can’t actually see it happening.

I like the idea of being able to capture both.

 

 

 

 

http://alasdairgill.blogspot.co.uk/

 

 

Collecting – Initial thoughts

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executing the idea!

So I’m worrying! or is that panicking!!  I have my idea and I’ve taken a couple of test shots.  I like my idea, but my struggle now is how to execute it within the time scale I have?

I don’t want to be forced to do something else or not feel I’ve achieved my plan to the best of my ability because of the fact that I am at work pretty much all of the time there is daylight at the moment. aaaaaargh!!!

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test shot

Although this photo isn’t exactly very artistic, I was testing my idea of watching people, comfortable in their own spaces, coupled with the reflection of what’s on the outside. Inspired by Mona Kuhn’s work, which I really connected with.

When I took this one, I was also struck by the fact that you can’t actually see his face.  This gave me the idea of ‘seen but not seen’, you know that he’s there, but you can’t really see him, it reminded me of the glimpse of people you get in their homes as you pass by.  They are comfortable and feeling secure in their private spaces but in actual fact they are still partly visible to the outside world.

So my challenge is to execute this idea and make the images interesting!

The time of year isn’t helping with this! so do I consider night time images? or street photography, or do I put this thinking on hold and consider something more manageable in the time frame. I could simplify it to the reflections, but I do like the human element;   hmmm . . . . off to ruminate . . . . .

 

Collecting – research

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I really like the theme of heads, and I like the idea of reflections and through windows, so if I put all of this together, my theme would be:

people looking through windows, with the reflection of the outside – some images, I’ve found that I like

 

Processed with VSCOcam with m3 preset

 

I ‘ve bought Mona Kuhn’s book ‘Evidence’ which I really like and want to use as inspiration.

Project 2 – Lens Work – thoughts

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My thoughts about deep and shallow depths of field:

here are some of my own images which demonstrate use of different depths of field.

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Long Furlong, April 2017

24mm f/22, 1/100 sec, ISO100 – came across this view whilst driving between Rustington and Findon.  Reminded me of the Windows default screen and stopped to take this photo. I agree that the small f stop and wide angle do work well for this kind of landscape. However, the notion that by having everything in focus, the view can choose where to look and focus within the scene seems a little mute!  Afterall, as the photographer, haven’t we already chosen where we want our views to look.  In most cases we will have edited the image as well, thereby, enhancing the characteristics we want to promote.  Admittedly, one does have the option to roam around with the image and look at different elements within it. Perhaps that what Bazin means:

(Bazin (1948) quoted in Thompson & Bordwell, 2007)

I think that possibly, I like directing the viewers eyes to what I think is important, because it’s probably why I took the photo in the first place.

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Poppies, Brighton, June 2017

These other photos are more my normal style, using a shallower depth of field, or in the case of the woodpecker, the use of the zoom lens, because the subject is not close, which almost forces the background to be out of focus.

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Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Millers Wood, April 2017

In this autumn leaves photograph I wanted to focus in on the leaves, but I love the colour contrasts between the leaves and the background and with the very shallow depth of field it gives a very abstract look

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Autumn Leaves, Hotham Park, November 2016

Project 2 – Lens Work

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Research – Photographers and Artists

Ansel Adams (1901-1984):

Famous for black and white wilderness photos, and membership of club f64, the name of the group is taken from the smallest setting of a large-format camera diaphragm aperture that gives particularly good resolution and depth of field.

The group believed in the “innate honesty” of the camera, which, as Weston described, “should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.” The f/64 photographers were concerned with natural subjects—Weston’s evocative close-ups of fruits and vegetables, for example, or Adams’s sublime images of Yosemite National Park, nudes, and everyday objects. In their 1932 manifesto, Group f/64 described pure photography as “possessing no qualities of technique, composition, or idea derivative of any other art form,” a conviction very much in line with modernism’s celebration of the intrinsic qualities of each medium—paintings should be painterly, photographs should be photographic, and sculptures should be sculptural.

https://www.artsy.net/article/theartgenomeproject-how-ansel-adams-and-the-photography-group

and teaching the ‘zone system‘, which is a way of calculating perfect exposure no matter what the conditions.  It mostly related to film photography but could be used in digital photography.

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Half Dome, Ansel Adams (1927)

 

Fay Godwin (1931-2005)

British photographer, used her images to campaign for conservation of the british countryside. Mostly used deep focus

Godwin’s exceptional body of work, her outspoken personality and her genuine concern for the environment made her a unique figure in British photography. Her unpretentious attitude to photography and her devotion to the landscape are captured in this quote from one of her final interviews, with journalist David Corfield in 2004:

‘I don’t get wrapped up in technique and the like,’ she said. ‘I have a simple rule and that is to spend as much time in the location as possible. You can’t expect to take a definitive image in half an hour. It takes days, often years. And in fact I don’t believe there is such a thing as a definitive picture of something. The land is a living, breathing thing and light changes its character every second of every day. That’s why I love it so much.’
Read more at http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/technique/fay-godwin-1931-2005-iconic-photographer-18907#R7eEhF4wpR6vAmlv.99

by Fay godwin

images by Fay Godwin – really like the atmosphere created and the depth created by having a focal point in the foreground which leads the eyes into the image.

 

Gianluca Cosci

Gianluca’s work seems a complete opposite from Ansel Adams and Fay Godwin’s.  He uses very shallow depths of field and shows us very limited views of his subjects.

Standardisation is a tool of control and constraint of people into reassuring and harmless psychological and architectural boxes in which any hint of improbable rebellion would be easily sedated.

My work tries to suggest these ideas showing sanitised office blocks, censored landscapes and lifeless environments. With my photographs I would like to insinuate a subtle sense of violence in our deeply hierarchical society. I am interested in the point of view of the loser, the marginalised.

Often we are forced to have only restricted views, uncomfortable to maintain. In spite of this, I believe that one can take advantage of this apparent fault and use it to observe and understand things in a different, unexpected way.

Gianluca Cosci, 2006

From Fragments by Gianluca Cosci
From Fragments by Gianluca Cosci
ffrom Panem et Circencses by Gianluca Cosci
from Panem et Circencses by Gianluca Cosci

In his interview with Kevin Byrne in April 2016, Gianluca says “G.C.: I don’t really consider myself a “photographer” rather an artist without a defined, strict identity… “

He seems to have a real issue with capitalism and the immense wealth of a few.  I think by denying us the full view of their creations he is pouring doubt on their achievements and giving us a more abstract art where we can interpret it how we wish. This may stem from his roots in small town Bologna in Italy where wealth and power may be less obvious. Is this a visual interpretation of his own feelings of self worth or pushing the viewer to think freely?

These 3 photographers had different viewpoints

  • Ansel Adams – the pure wonder of nature
  • Fay Godwin – mans effect of the beauty of nature
  • Gianluca Cosci – Manmade creations and their link with power and suppression of free thinking

 

Mona Kuhn:

As soon as I saw Mona’s images, I absolutely connected with them, I love the imagery, and colouration.  The soft creams and browns coupled with the duel exposures of looking through the windows at her subjects. She has used a fairly shallow depth of field which gives a soft dreamy look.

This is something I’ve tried a lot in my own work, so definitely something I would like to emulate and take forward.

Kim Kirkpatrick:

just 5 photos!!! very shallow depth of field, in industrial landscapes not very inspiring to me.

Guy Bourdin (1928 – 1991)

Guy Bourdin, was a French artist and fashion photographer known for his provocative images. From 1955, Bourdin worked mostly with Vogue as well as other publications including Harper’s Bazaar.

All of Guy’s photos are sharp throughout and yet still have a very graphic and artistic quality.

 

web references:

Allesandra Sanguinetti

Aside

Allesandra_Sanguinetti_rsz_h403_8_221

Vida mia, 2002, Allesandra Sanguinetti

I came across this photograph whilst flicking through the pages of a new book:

‘The Photograph as contemporary Art’ by Charlotte Cotton.

It was one of those that immediately caught my attention and I wanted to know more about it.

The photographer Allesandra Sanguinetti, had made a 4 year study of two cousins starting when they were aged 9 and 10.

Exploring how they represented themselves to others.  but what really comes across for me in the set is their interaction with each other and in this photograph, is such raw emotion. I love the whole ambiance of the image as well as the story telling.  It feels like your feeling the emotion with her and is very intimate.  There may be also a small element of relating to this girl!

http://alessandrasanguinetti.com/index.php/adventures/info/

I believe there is a second book coming, I would be interested to see how these girls have grown into women.

Project 3 – Surface and Depth

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Research Blog

JPEGs by Thomas Ruff

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JPEGs by Thomas Ruff

All images that appear on the internet and/or printed in books and magazines today are digitised.  Nearly all images are digital even if they originated in non-digital or pre-digital forms. Given this fact it is surprising how few of them ever wish to address the fact that they exist as masses of electronic information that take visual form as pixels. Ruff has done a great deal to introduce into photographic art what we might call an ‘art of the pixel’, allowing us to contemplate at an aesthetic and philosophical level the basic condition of the electronic image. Of course he does this not by showing us the images on screens but by making large scale photographic prints, blowing them up far beyond their photorealist resolution. This might be the  first time some of these images have ever taken a material form.

extract from David Campany's blog/essay

http://davidcampany.com/thomas-ruff-the

http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/2009/04/review_jpegs_by_thomas_ruff/

The tremendous beauty of some of the images notwithstanding, the concept itself seems to rely a bit too much on the technique itself. What else is there? Make no mistake, there is nothing wrong with producing beautiful images or images that are “just” beautiful. And everything would be fine if there hadn’t been so many attempts to convince me that in reality “jpegs” is more.

extract from Joerg Colberg's review

These two articles are reviewing Thomas Ruff’s book; JPEGs.  In this book he has collected photos from different archives to create his own archive of iconic photos.  He has taken the concept that even though many of the images were created on film, they are all now stored in digital format which he found on the ‘web’.

In Joerg’s article he says that the photographer is stating that the idea behind the photos is that even when stored in poor resolution they still have an aesthetical quality.  the Question is: is this photography or art?  He also makes the point that an individual image can be part of many different archives, each with a different focus. I would relate this _DJF1817to ‘collections’ in Adobe Lightroom, where a single photograph could be in a number of different collections based on the focus of that particular collection.

eg: my beach huts image could be a member of various collections, such as, Beaches, Golden Hour, or Structures.

The 9/11 images were iconic, but of terribly low resolution. With the […] jpeg structure and the results from work with image structures I managed to modify the terribly poorly resolved but still visually aesthetical images my way. ‘Terribly beautiful’ images they were.” In a nutshell, this is the idea behind jpegs.

I find it interesting that he has taken a very modern phenomenon of  pixelated photos and printed them.  It’s a bit of a reversal of mediums.

This book was made in 2009, most mobile phones, ipads and computers these days have very high resolution screens, so we are used to seeing all of our media in a very photorealistic way, so it actually requires us to look closely at pixelated image to make sense of it. (Was that his point?).  I believe most people would continue searching for a better quality image rather than look at a low resolution, pixalated photo these days.

In order to relate this to my own work, I took two recently taken photographs and attempted to create the same effect by re-sizing the photographs to 180 x 270 pixels, and saving at ‘zero quality’ compression using Photoshop’s ‘save for web’.

As David Campney noted that the photos are best appreciated in printed form, I also printed them out, to see how they looked.

jpegs_Lachlan

jpgs_beachhuts

Conclusion:

I initially struggled a bit with the concept, and didn’t get why anyone would want to lower the resolution of an image, but then most photographers edit and amend their images to present them in a format they choose.  Therefore, I think there is an argument that photography is just about shape and form, and that humans can understand meaning in images even if they are not realistic.

I wonder, however, how far you can degrade an image before it is no longer recognisable or meaningful? I took the same two images and used the dry brush filter in photoshop to deconstruct the photos even further.

Aesthetically interesting but no longer recognisable?  As with Thomas Ruff’s, JPEGs, if you hadn’t already seen the realistic version, would they still have meaning? This is something that might be interesting to explore further.

 

 

Thomas Kellner

Aside

I came across this photographer whilst reading another learning blog by Derek Youd. I thought it was really interesting and did some further research as I felt it carried on the theme of deconstructing image to create something different.

Whereas Thomas Ruff has taken existing images and reduced them to pixels, Thomas Kellner has interestingly taken images of one subject in order to create something new, but which seems to also encompass the original.

 

http://lenscratch.com/2017/03/thomas-kellner/

German photo artist Thomas Kellner has spent much of his photo career deconstructing architecture.  He calls his methodology  “visual analytical synthesis” where he thoughtfully plans a series of photographs in order to create a picture out of contact sheets. “His work is often referred to Cubism considering that his creative process includes a construction but the results resemble a deconstruction.”

I particularly liked this image of Big Ben:

Kellner_14_01

Exercise 1.4 – research

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Research :

researching what is the difference between framing and cropping:

why-framing-should-be-your-first-priority-and-cropping-second

Difference Between Framing and Cropping

Framing is the arrangement of elements within the confines of the imaging device. In other words, you have a rectangular surface area (film or digital sensor) that is going to image your photograph. The act of framing is you making a determination as to how you are going to fill that surface area with your subject. So, what is cropping?

Cropping is a tool meant to fine-tune an image in post-production. With film it’s done using an enlarger and with digital it’s done by cutting down the size of the resolved image.

From this I understand, that in order to maximise the full potential of your camera, you should fill as much of the frame as possible with what you actually want in the finished image.  That means that you should take a little more time, wherever you can to compose the image in the frame.

As I have a 36 megapixel camera and I know that I am sometimes lazy about moving closer or composing, because I know have plenty of  resolution and can crop what I don’t want.  However, I am now thinking how much sharper my photos could be if I make more effort to frame the photos properly.

For Victor Burgin (b. 1941), composition is ‘a device for retarding…recognition of the frame’ (Burgin, 1980, p.56). Looking back at some of your compositional exercises from earlier in Part One, would you agree that in the less successful shots there is the feeling of a ‘cropped view’ rather than a ‘transparent window to the world’?

Alfred Stieglitz’s (1864–1946) cloudscapes, the Equivalents, illustrate Burgin’s point. They don’t appear to be composed at all; instead they’re ‘equivalent’ in that any section of the sky would seem to do as well as any other. Because there’s no sense of composition our eye is drawn to the edges, to the frame. The sense of a cropped rather than a composed view is what makes the Equivalents so uniquely photographic – ‘a naked function of the cut’ (Foster et al., 2004, p.147).

I think this means that if an image is composed well, the viewer will be engaged with the contents of the image, whereas if it isn’t the viewers eyes are likely to go to the edges of the frames, wondering what they’re not seeing.