making the ordinary resonate

Quote

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What do you think should be the mission of an artist?

To express their intellectual curiosity. Just like Emily Dickinson said, to reinterpret the obvious world in the way that enlightens it and enriches it. As artists, we have the obligation to do so, because we have the gift to see things differently from other people. If the world we present to the viewers can challenge them, provoke them, and even change their situation, so much the better. And if it is beautiful at the same time, that’s icing on the cake. That’s my own mandate: to make beautiful art that also is about something. I want to make the ordinary resonate for my viewers in a universal way.

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

4.2 – Layered, complex and mysterious . . .

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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

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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

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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.

Nicolas Laboire

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Nicolas Laboire, is a French photographer who has lived and worked in London for over 25 years.

His Presentation at the Brighton and Hove Camera Club on Tuesday 30th January 2018, entitled 
“Tin Tribes in the garden of Ether and Wet Plate Collodion” was about personal work that he has been doing using  an old Wet Plate Colldion Camera. This camera was invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851.

Nicolas coats the glass plates with a highly toxic mix of chemicals which he mixes himself.  He described the process as taking approximately 7 minutes for each plate, which includes coating the glass, exposing the image and then carrying out post process methods to fix the image 

He has won national and international acclaim with this set of portraits in which he mixes contemporary figures with this antique method of image making.

Portrait of Britain Entry used as a bill board poster – by Nicolas Laboire

The first half of the presentation consisted of Nicholas showing his images on a projector and talking about how he had made them.  He said that always looks for the story in the image.

The second half of the evening was demonstration of the process he uses to operate the Wet Plate Collodian works, followed by a question and answer session.

My impressions

Nicolas clearly enjoys the whole process of making the image, including buying and mixing the chemicals, right through to finished plate.  Rather than producing a digital image he enjoys the making of a ‘product’ that is original and can not be replicated.  I found the project images a little bland, but the images really come to alive when you see and hold the plates.

I felt this was a really ‘photography as art’.because of the tangible product produced. which was so much better in the flesh than the printed image. Nicolas was very engaging and passionate about his work and i found the whole evening, both informative and interesting. Particularly learning more about the history of photography and the danger early photographers were in.

client’s of early photographers often didn’t like their images because they were used to painters who amended their imperfections. Reminded me of what we do in Photoshop now, so maybe we’ve come full circle!

When asked if he was a fine art photographer or a photo journalist, Nicolas replied that “if you take an image from a newspaper and hang it on the wall, it would be called fine art.  It depends on what you want to do with the image.”  I really liked that analogy and felt that the really didn’t want a label, he just wants to take photos that tell a story he wants to tell.

He is currently working on a set of images about suffragette in order to celebrate 100 years of (some) women being given the vote.

for more info about Nicolas visit his website: http://www.nicolaslaborie.com (accessed 31.01.18)

 

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

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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

Jo Teasdale

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I was really motivated by Jo Teasdale’s presentation at Brighton and Hove Camera Club on 23.01.18.  She presented projects she is currently working on, one of which is “Looking Forward, Turning Back” series really inspired me.

read more about:Jo Teasdale’s; Looking Forward: Turning Back (accessed 28.01.18)

Looking Forward: Turning Back by Jo Teasdale

In Jo’s blog she says:

The concept came about when I thought how I took my photographs. Looking, watching and waiting, trying to keep alert for those individual moments in time when a picture is born. So taking a photograph of a particular view we naturally look around at what is in front of us. It occurred to me we never see what is behind us, there’s no reason to, we have found the view we wish to photograph. However, if we were to turn around what would we see? I wanted to capture precisely this

I found this a really interesting juxtaposition between in front and behind, in terms of Assignment 3 – Decisive Moment, I feel that this is something I could use or expand to incorporate the other themes.  Jo’s image above definitely engenders both landscape and a decisive moment.

Following this presentation, I went out the next day to have a go at taking a similar image.  I found out I can ‘overlay images’ in camera, so used this feature for this image. I chose to stand inside one of the shelters to take the images, as I wanted to explore the idea of Henri Cartier-Bresson that form and frame of the image can be prepared in advance and provides structure to the image. 

Mewsbrook – 24.01.18 – overlay image in camera

I would like to explore this idea further, taking an image of a person coming towards the camera and then from behind as they walk away. The decisive moment will be as they pass me, but the viewer will only see the before and after.

 

Mind Whirring

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At the moment, I have a number of ideas for Assignment 3 – The Decisive Moment, and was hoping to get out with my camera a start my set, but to be honest, I don’t think I can.  For the last assignment, I mapped out my thoughts and came up with a coherent idea and then prepared my equipment to go out to the right places to capture the images I wanted.

At this stage, ideas are are whirring around inside my head and I just haven’t nailed it down yet, so I think it would be foolish to just go out with my camera and hope I get what I’m looking for.  From the research I’ve done so far, I am convinced that the photographers, researched their locations, including the time and and usage before taking their cameras out.

So I’ve given myself some SMART objectives to get this done:

  1. to nail down my concept and make a decision by the end of next week (2.2.18)
  2. to research my chosen location/s by 9.2.19
  3. to have taken all images by 28.2.18 to enable printing in time for submission.
  4. to carry on with the coursework (Part 4) so that I don’t loose momentum.

Christian Stoll

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Christian Stoll, is a German photographer, working in Dussledorf and New York.

Multiple Exposure Street Scene – Christian Stoll

I particularly liked this image from his series “New York Split Second’.I love the concept of lots of ‘decisive moments’.  I know how to create double exposure images in my camera using the overlay function, but I think this level of multi-exposure will need to be worked up in post processing.

source: http://www.christian-stoll.com/website/photos_detail.php?gallerieID=1102&gallery=new-york_split_second (accessed 26.01.19)

Martin Dietrich

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Martin Dietrich is a German photographer living and working in Frankfurt

He says of himself:

My work is mostly of a certain abstract, minimalistic and geometrical nature including strong leading lines and shapes. To a large part my work incorporates urban themes such as architecture and street photography. Nevertheless you’ll also find some other things I feel like at the moment. 

source: http://www.martindietrichphotography.de/about-me/ (accessed 26.01.19)

I came across Martin’s work whilst doing research for Assignment 3 – The decisive moment. I have an idea for doing double exposure images for this assignment and was looking up other photographers who have done this.  

This image came up in a page: 10-photographers-creating-enigmatic-works-with-double-exposure.  i particularly liked the monochrome forms and the matt look of the image.

Double Exposure done in Camera (Fuji X-Pro 1) by Martin Dietrich

I particularly connected with Martin’s Street Photography work, which has other examples of this type of image.  Many of his images are very minimalist, and looking down from above at this subjects.  They are mostly high contrast and always have great light.  Many of the images also make use of shadows, which makes me think that he must research his locations in terms of time and light.

Looking at these images, brought back the comment by Henri- Cartier-Bresson in the video, that he always looked for form first, to him Light was just the ‘purfume’.  I am inclined to think, however, that getting the light right, really makes the difference and this is definitely the case in Martin’s work.

 

 

 

 

http://www.martindietrichphotography.de/