“Self Knowledge is a lifelong Process”

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“Self Knowledge is a lifelong Process” that was the line in my fortune cookie last night!

I thought it was very appropriate as I sit down to try and put my thoughts down in writing.

So first thoughts around the feedback I received from my tutor on Assignment 2 – Collecting:

at first I felt a bit despondent about the comments he made about some of my photos, but having reread the report and tried a couple of his suggestions I’m feeling much more positive.  In fact when I reflect that he has given me quite detailed technical feedback, I am encouraged that he actually thinks I can understand it, so early in the degree journey.

It’s quite a thing to put your work up for expert opinion and when you invest in it so emotionally, it can be a kick in the teeth. However, that is the very reason I am taking this course, to get out of my comfort zone, to push my knowledge and to produce images that I love and am happy to share with others.

I think I need to consider each of Clive’s points and reflect on them before I formulate my response.

I did immediately have a go at one of this suggestions though:

“Image 5 has a similar problem to 2 but not as acute.  The eye is led across the bread as you say but again is denied the interest of what it’s been lead to.  Being sharp from back to front and shot at a more propitious moment for the two figures it would have been a good companion to 1 and 4”.

I definitely do see the difference in the images and I understand Clive’s point about being able to the viewer being able to delve into to different parts of the image at their leisure. I also did an image that pulled back and gave a greater because I liked the reflection in the window.  Not sure which one I’d pick so I might pick up the courage to put them up on the critiques page to see what others think.

On reflection, I now see that the couple at the back of the photo aren’t doing anything that you could call a ‘decisive moment’ hence I am now not really happy with the image at all.

 

Self Reflection

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I have tended to add my personal reflections about how the course is going and what I am learning into posts as I am learning about new concepts or photographers.  However, I understand that when my work is assessed at the end of the course, the assessor will be looking for evidence that I have developed and learned during the course.

thinking time

So this section will be a ‘dear diary’ section to log my personal journey through the course

Assignment 3 – The Decisive Moment – Research

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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

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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

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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

Maja Daniels – Participant Observation

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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.

Twins

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 

majadaniels.com

addendum- 07/08/2018

In conversation: Maja Daniels

Sharon Boothroyd talks to photographer Maja Daniels about her work.

https://www.oca-student.com/resource-type/conversation-maja-daniels

3.2 – A durational space

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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

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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/

3.1 – The Frozen Moment

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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:

  • 35 mm camera with 105 mm macro lens
  • f/14 & f/20 with ISO100, 105 mm, 1/200 (to sync with flashes)
  • 2 flash guns with various coloured gels, fired with triggers, set at between 1/8 & 1/4
  • remote shutter

for water:

  • tray of water with black plastic on bottom to give reflections
  • black back ground
  • used clear water with xanthium gum added (makes it thicker)
  • and a mixture of skimmed milk and cream

set up for water drop images

contacts for this shoot can be seen here 

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/