So what have I learnt?

The art of photography has been a lot of things over the last year. At times challenging in content & time, fun, exciting and informative. I have learnt some new technical aspects of photography but the most valuable thing I take away is that I now spend more time thinking about and analysing images, both my own and those of other photographers.

Throughout this course I have explored many other artists, some famous and some less so. Many have influenced the way I look at  photographs and the manner in which I now set out to make photographs. This is not always evident in the photographs I have taken for this course work. The nature of some of the exercise called for a more 'technical' approach. Also looking back over the course I now see that in some projects I took a more technical approach where an artistic view may have been possible and more appropriate, for example the assignment  for 'light'.

I have always been keen on people photography and now can add to this abstract which I explored for the first time in a serious manner in 'Elements of design'. Through exploring other artists I have also become interested in street photography and aware of the importance of narrative and illustration in my work. From the learning perspective I have made many notes on how to improve the presentation and content of my next Blog

I am now looking forward to the next chapter in this adventure.

Assignment 5: Applying the techniques of illustration and narrative.

It had been my intention to use a sixties style photo shoot I was planning as the basis for this assignment but on then day circumstances didn't quite work out as planned. As my deadline is looming I have had to fall back on my original idea, which was the coverage of a ploughing match.

Chichester Ploughing Match - research
The Chichester Ploughing Match takes place on the last Sunday of October every year in fields just outside Chichester, West Sussex. Although this is a competition, the match is just as much about keeping the skill of ploughing alive. The competition is judged on the ploughman's ability to cut straight and tidy furrows.

Photographically there should be variety in the types of machines attending, from the old to the new. I will also be on the lookout for some good  'farmer folk' onlookers. I am expecting a prize giving at the end of the day, so some shots of the winner would be good.

The publication
First, here is the publication I created.

Conclusions
This turned into a challenging exercise for me. This had been my original idea but I had abandoned it once due to the weather on the day not being very good. What this meant in real terms is that there wasn't much of a crowd of on-lookers and I was unable to stay for the final judging announcements. After my second choice also fell apart I returned to this project and found I was able to look at it in a new light. I still do not have images of onlookers or the final judges announcements but I think I am still able to get the story across. Admittedly some  nicer weather would have provided for nicer images.

If I were to do this exercise again I think I would try and find a much bigger event, provided such an event is available of course. If the event went on into the evening or even covered several days, so much the better.

The images
Cover image: 1/80, ISO400, F8 -2/3EC 84mm
Page 1: 1/13, ISO400, F22, 60mm
Page 2 top: 1/40, ISO160, F5.6 -2/3EC, 47mm
Page 2 bottom: 1/50, ISO100, F8 -2/3EC, 58mm
Page 3 top: 1/125, ISO100, F4 -2/3EC, 32mm
Page 3 bottom: 1/15, ISO400, F22, 45mm
Page 4 top: 1/160, ISO100, F4 -1/3EC, 58mm
Page 4 middle: 1/640, ISO100,F4 -2/3EC, 102mm
Page 4 bottom: 1/250, ISO100, F4 -1/3EC, 105mm
Page 5 top: 1/250, ISO100, F4 -1EC, 84mm
Page 5 bottom: 1/60, ISO160, F5.6 -2/3EC, 55mm
Page 6: 1/100, ISO100, F4 -1/3EC, 65mm
Page 7 top: 1/30, ISO100, F8 -2/3EC, 40mm
Page 7 middle: 1/100, ISO1000, F8 -2/3EC, 105mm
Page 7 bottom: 1/50, ISO200, F8 -2/3EC, 55mm

Rain

1 Photo that would work for a magazine cover on the subject of rain. I carried out a quick brainstorm and wrote down all the ideas that came to mind on the subject of rain. Here are some of them:

running down window, puddles, windscreen wipers, wet cat, dog shaking, umbrellas, raincoats, drips, splash, huddled under newspaper etc.

As you can see, even with brainstorming a lot of clichéd ideas still pop up.

I then set out trying to capture the above when the weather was right. I ended up with a few possibles but chose the following. I thought it worked best as a magazine cover because it had space for the writing, the orientation was correct and there is something that for me really works with the colours. Most of the colours are quite subdued except for the umbrellas. Because of this the umbrellas catch the eye and of course, they immediately say 'rain'!

Evidence of action

The brief for 'Evidence of action' calls for one photograph in which it can be seen that something has happened. I attended a local ploughing match with the initial thought of shooting for my final assignment. It was unfortunately not a very good day and I had to leave soaking wet before the time of the prize giving!

I did however take a number of shots and one of those is my representation of 'Evidence of action'.



The 'Evidence' is obviously the ploughed strip and kinda like that it is actually not the most dominant part of the image. Attention is drawn to the strip by the judges who are looking at it. The other end of the strip is blocked off by the horses, which stop the eye from following the furrow and then leaving the frame.

As a little self critique, I do wish I had angled the camera to allow just a little more of the ploughed area. Perhaps if I had moved a couple more feet to the left so that the furrow was angled like in the picture below?

Assignment 4: Applying lighting techniques - Reflection

I have finally managed to sit down and take some action based on my tutors observations of assignment 4. There are a few bits of tidying up to do but one comment rings very true. Somewhere during this assignment I lost the 'Art' side of the project and ended up with a bland 'technical' exercise.

In this post I am going to address some of the shortcomings and try to do it in a more artistic way.

Form
The first issue is with Form 1. It was suggested that some vignetting would help to anchor the figure in the frame. I have added some vignetting to the bottom of the image by burning in Photoshop which does help. Note also how the black background appears to alter the texture of the statue when compared to other shots. This must be due to the black material not reflecting as much light back on to the statue. This in turn causes less light to hit the highlight areas and lowers the contrast between the background and the object. Here is the corrected image.

I have also re-shot the second 'Form' image to give a more abstract feel to the framing. Again the statue was lit with a torch. I had the camera on a tripod in my garage. After setting manual focus I fired the shutter with a thirty second exposure and painted the statue with light from the torch. I took quite a few shots as it was very trial and error.

Re-shot to show form in a more abstract manner.

Texture

Cropped to show texture.

The original image has been shot with strong side lighting which shows up the texture. In shooting I have slightly lit the background which has put some dark lines in the shot. To get rid of the distractions I could darken down the back a bit in Photoshop or crop the image.

In keeping with the lack of artistic framing I mentioned earlier, I am taking the second approach. I want to crop the image and as I am showing texture I can crop to just part of the image. I have chosen to get rid of everything except the chest area. The shape of the object really shows the texture off well here.

There was also a problem with my second texture picture. As the shot was framed in a landscape format, the image is left with two large black area's, one either side of the statue. Again I cropped to loose this dead space. I have re-framed and used the rule of thirds to provide a more pleasing composition.

Re-framed by cropping to eliminate the large black areas of the original shot. I have placed the child roughly on thirds and also allowed some 'looking space'.

Colour
The first colour picture has been replaced with another that was shot at the same time. This is to get rid of the wooden table top in the original photo. I have taken just a small section of the statue as this shows the colour well. Doing it this way adds more variety to the group of shots in the assignment. Unfortunately there is a little blur at the bottom of the shot.

Colour.

Finally, the second colour image was cropped to balance out the picture a bit better.

I have to say that I lost my way a bit with this exercise. With this redo I hope to have swung the balance back in favour of the 'Art' side of this course!

Preparation for assignment 5 - Applying the techniques of illustration and narrative.

Assignment five is the final assignment for this module. The task requires us to illustrate a story for a magazine. The story should provide images for six to twelve pages and I will also be required to provide a magazine cover. Words for the story are not required but captions for the pictures are.

I should be pulling together all the techniques and experience I have learnt so far. The final part of the brief states that any theme that has a narrative element could be suitable.

As this is the final piece I have decided to combine it closely with my interest in fashion style photography and a fairly large project that I have just started organising. It is clear from the assignments in part five that the planning and ability to get the shots required are important aspects. This post deals with some of the organisation required for this shoot.

The Concept
The concept is that of two women, friends, that are on a small road trip in their Volkswagen beetle. The style is 60's and the various scenarios depict incidents that happen on route. I will be using a make-up artist who specialises in vintage make-up. I will also be assisted by another photographer.

The Assets
OK, so we obviously need a car. It is no coincidence that we are using a Volkswagen Beetle as a friend of mine has a 1966 restored model. As previously mentioned the story revolves around two friends so I need two models. I also require a certain amount of props such as clothing and smaller items such as bags etc.

Planning Shots
Planning ahead I have several ideas for shots:

• Filling the car with petrol 
• Checking a map for directions. Maybe by a sign post?
• Photographing sites
• Trouble with the car - looking under the bonnet.
• The car has broken down. The girls are trying to push it.
• They give up and decide to Hitch hike.

Some of the items have been sourced already. There are also some images here for inspiration and ideas.

A date has been added to the diary (weather permitting) to carry out this shoot towards the end of November.

Check List of items already obtained
Dress 1
Dress 2
Car
Maps
Camera's (vintage for models)
Coca Cola in glass bottles
Accessories

This post is somewhat organic and may grow as the project unfolds!

Narrative by other photographers - Darcy Padilla

As part of the suggested reading, I have been looking at the work of some photographers who have produced some important narrative work. The first of these I have looked at is Darcy Padilla, who over the course of a number of years photographed and documented the life of a woman with aids. The project was called 'The Julie Project'. I have made some notes to refer back to for my final assignment which is also a photographic narrative.

1. Mood.
The project has been shot entirely in black and white. The first thing that strikes the viewer is the perception of time of the images. Darcy started his project in 1993, that's 18 years ago at the time of writing this post. The very first image gives the impression that the photographs were taken a lot longer ago than that, the black and white re-enforcing the 50's look of the old building. This combination has set the tone for the rest of the images that follow.

2. The journey
We are not distracted from the journey by the shape of the photo's either. All are presented in landscape format which here leads you from one image to the next without any 'awkward' jumps in the process.

3. Information
Each shot shows enough information to put it's subject in context. Interestingly, this mostly seems to have been achieved by focal length and by light on the subject. Depth of field is used to direct the viewers attention but nowhere near as much as other artists make use it. take for example the year 2008. The attention of each shot is grabbed by the lighter main subject with DOF playing much less of a role. Note also that as well as showing enough of the surrounding of the subject, the images have been carefully crafted so as to not show too much.

4. Narrative.
The occasional insertion of a newspaper article or some other document gives a break in the images.I do find the written notes a bit distracting though.

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition in illustration is described in the learning text as the putting together of two objects so as to suggest a relationship. The exercise gives the option of creating a still life to act as the cover for a book or to photograph a person with a possession or the result of their hobby or work. I have a friend called David who has a model railway layout so I chose the latter of the two exercise options.

Below we see my image of David with one of his model trains.I have asked David to hold the train the way he is holding it, to really emphasize that this picture is about him and the locomotive, his possession. In the bottom left had of the shot I have also included part of the layout. I took about two dozen pictures in this session and have photographs both with and without. It was a difficult decision whether to include it or not but in the end I chose to as I felt it added a little context to the image without distracting too much from the main subject.

Technically the shot was very straight forward. I set up a flash light on a stand to camera right and a little higher than David. This light was diffused by shooting through a white umbrella and the flash was fired by a remote radio trigger. Other things I tried in the same session were a bare flash which was too harsh, A snoot which was harsh but did work and finally a grid. I should explain that there are some shelves behind David that I did not wish to include, hence the exercises to limit the amount of light falling on the background.

In the end I preferred the light from the shoot through umbrella so solved the problem by hanging some black material over the shelves and carefully positioning the light so that as little as possible spilt on to the background. Finally I did a little post processing in Photoshop by using the burn tool around the edges of the photograph to concentrate the viewers attention on David.

A narrative picture essay

For my narrative picture essay I have decided to document our anniversary weekend break to Ghent in Belgium. Ghent is a beautiful city with much to see. Canals, Cathedrals and a very attractive medieval quarter provide for the cultural side of the visit whilst the many bars and restaurants provide entertainment.

Ghent is a university town and is becoming a very popular tourist attraction. We travelled there by car using the Channel Tunnel.

Before we went I made the made a note of shots which I took with me. They were as follows:

1. Setting of in the morning - show the car and either bags, the time or the sat nav with Ghent as the destination
2. The channel tunnel - to show the way we are crossing the channel.
3. driving through France to Belgium - maybe a shot of the border?
4. Arrival in Ghent - a landmark to show we have arrived.
5. The hotel.
6. Things we do in Ghent.
7. A flavour of the holiday atmosphere in the town centre.

I managed to capture most of the images I needed but did fail to get one or two important ones, such as a shot to specify that we were in Ghent.

Anyway, we set off with a shot of the Channel Tunnel. It is pretty difficult to take pictures in this area as you are confined to your car so this shot was taken through the car window with a compact camera. In my notes I had put a shot of bags or luggage as we set of in the morning, but this didn't add anything to the story that couldn't be deduced from the following shots.

Boarding the Channel Tunnel.

The next image is of the car on the train in the Channel Tunnel. This symbolises the short trip across to France.

Making the crossing.

Again in my notes I had the border crossing but as it turned out there was not anywhere to stop! Again we took shots through the car window with the compact camera. None were that good but I needed a shot and this was the best one. In my picture montage at the end of this piece, I have hidden the quality of this image but setting it as a background.

Entering Belgium.

We have now arrived at the hotel. Although there is no sign that actually says Hotel I believe this is clear from the location of this photograph in the sequence and from the interior of the building.

The hotel.

Now a bit of a jump. Here (or before the last image) I should have had a sign or something with the word 'Ghent'  to show the city we were in. With this missing we go straight to a shot of a typical building and crowds of people sitting on the waterfront.

Typical buildings and masses of tourists.

Now showing a more modern street view which also conveys the faster pace of this part of the area.

Busy town centre.

 Ghent has award winning illuminations which are shown here in the most popular part of the city to visit. This is also a glimpse of the many restaurants and bars.

Ghent in the evening.

The next three images are grouped to show some of the other types of attractions to visit. The tower houses a museum dedicated to bells and also allows visitors to see the clock mechanism.

The Belfort.

The clock mechanism.

One of the cast bells.

More bells in the bell museum.

Below I have tried to select images to tell the story over three pages. The three pages roughly outline different parts of the journey, namely travelling & accommodation in the first page, the tourist element in the second and finally the historic aspect.

Conclusion
This was good fun and highlighted some of the problems you may come across, even with a photo script. Some of the images were impossible to get, like the border shots. Others I think I may have been able to get in different circumstances. Another point that this exercise highlighted is that it is not always possible to go back if you don't get what you need to in the first instance. 

Symbols

This little project is about symbols. Below are a number of concepts for which I need to find suitable symbols and give a brief description of how I would use these in a photograph.

Symbols are important in photography as they help us get a message across with limited imagery. This can be very useful for advertising or illustration for example.

For a symbol to be effective, its meaning has to be easily recognisable. The problem with this of course, is that it is easy to fall into common cliché's. Symbols may also have different cultural meanings and can change meaning over time.

Growth
Could be represented by a seedling. The image could be a macro shot. Growth could also be represented by a shot of a line chart hanging on a wall with the graph always increasing and eventually leaving the chart and continuing on the wall.

Other ideas: young animal with mother, baby

Excess
Imagine a cocktail glass filled with diamonds. The image could be shot with the diamonds actually spilling out of the glass. Secondly a shot of a dozen credit cards held in fan fashion. Maybe a city gent with money notes spilling from every pocket and under the brim of his bowler hat etc.

Crime
First symbol that springs to mind is a CCTV camera. Could be used in a photograph as a close up against groups of people. Handcuffs & justice scales could be used as stand-alone imagery.

Silence
A finger held to pursed lips is pretty much a universal sign of silence or 'quiet'. Would work best if fairly large in the image. Also an exam hall or a very tranquil pond or lake scene.

Poverty
To represent poverty we could have a close up of hands holding a begging bowl. Another symbol for poverty is related to the home, such as an empty fridge or a dirty and unkempt house.

Assignment 4: Applying lighting techniques

This assignment pulls together elements of lighting and colour from the exercises in part four. We should now be able to use light to demonstrate properties of our subject such as shape, form, texture and colour. We are required to use a portable subject and take about eight photographs that best show these properties.

Prior to taking the photographs I made some notes on each property which are as follows:

Shape: I am not worried about detail here. Shape is well represented by an outline which could be achieved by exposing the camera for a strong back light. This could be from a flash unit or as the subject is portable, we could take this outside and simply use the sky as a light source.

Form: For form I need to show the 'volume' of the object. For this I need the show the object with good detail and overall lighting. Here I need shadows to show the shape but with some detail in the dark area's - unlike texture. Detail in the shadows calls for some control over lighting and the ability to influence how dark the shadows are. This may call for a two light set-up or some form of reflector to bounce light back into the subject.

Texture: We should know from our experiment with a single light source that shadows can be made to be very strong if we have a single un-diffused light coming from one side. Strong shadows will be ideal to show the texture of our subject so this may be a good approach here.

Colour: From our light throughout the day and other natural light exercises I think I will try to represent the colour of the object with natural light.

In addition to this any other interesting light sources can be photographed. Here are the exercises.

Shape
To show the shape of the object I have concentrated on showing the curvy outline of the statue. The first method I have used is to set the exposure of the camera for the sky. The statue was then photographed against the sky the result being an underexposed object allowing us to concentrate on the shape . When I took this image the day was quite overcast which has resulted in a slightly more balanced shot (less contrast) but I think that this is alright. The level of detail we can see is not too distracting from the shape.

I then tried the same thing with a different approach. I wanted to light this with my off camera flash. In a previous exercise I had shot against a diffused light sitting behind the subject so for this shot I used  the light off to the right of the subject aimed at the background. I had to place a piece of card between the flash and the subject to stop light spilling onto the subject. I metered with a flash meter and deliberately over exposed the background.

Form
To show the form of our subject I am trying to capture all the curves and angles in such a way as to get an overall impression of it's three dimensionality. The information our brain needs to build this picture is some reference to depth which we can provide by way of shadows. I have approached  'form' two different ways.

The first is with a natural light rendering where I have used a reflector to lighten the shadows a little. This was to give a better idea of depth on the back curve of the statue's legs and around the arms. The subject is standing on a piece of black velvet to minimise distractions from the background. As the light is diffused, it is coming from all around but in this instance with a slight bias towards high and on the left. The reflector, which is silver, is placed to the right of the subject.

For the second shot I have used a totally different approach inspired by the exercise with traffic at night. Here the subject has been placed on the velvet in a completely dark environment. The camera, which is tripod mounted, has been set to the smallest aperture and slowest shutter speed. I have tripped the shutter and then 'painted' the statue with light from a small LED torch. I did many of these shots as it is difficult to know what the outcome will be as you are painting. Below is the one I best feel shows form.

As an interesting foot note, I did not have a white balance setting for LED on my camera so I shot in auto. When I edited the RAW a did a quick lookup on the internet and found the colour temperature for LED. There were a couple of ranges but I set the white balance by using colour temperature and found a temperature of around 9500k to be a fairly close match.


Texture

Home made cardboard snoot.

From our previous experiments we know that strong side lighting is good to show up texture. Here I have used the cardboard snoot I made for the 'Concentrating light' exercise as a sidelight for the subject. The snoot is fixed to a camera flash to the left of the subject and at approximately the same hight. The flash is then fired by radio trigger. I have made no effort to fill in any of the shadows as the shadows actually help to show the texture of this object. The camera was set to manual and I used flash photography settings (shown below the image). This helped to eliminate the background.

The second image was taken in natural diffused light with a little light bounced back with a silver reflector. The background is a piece of black velvet. The location is my conservatory which I have used before due to it's semi transparent roof which really diffuses the light nicely. In one respect this image goes against what we have learnt as the light is diffused and not very strong but this shot still shows good texture detail. When you look at the image closely you can see why it still works. The first image is using shadow to highlight the texture but the one below is working in the opposite way. The light is reflecting off of the highlights thereby accentuating them which is giving the texture some relief, particularly in the chest area of the statue.

Colour
From the exercises we should know that a good way to show the colour of an object is by natural light from roughly mid day. We also know that colour can be made stronger by exposing a stop or so below the actual light reading of the subject. In the following image I have used natural light from a window with a piece of white paper just reflecting a tiny amount of light back into the shadows. The exposure is dropped about half a stop lower than it metered. White balance is set to sunlight.

This is the more accurate colour representation of the subject.

The second shot was taken in the shade in my garden early afternoon with the white balance set to auto. At first I thought this image had the better colour reproduction but looking at the statue again I can see that this is actually not the case. I believe that the addition of a slight blue cast has cooled the colours down.

Initially this was perceived to be the more accurate colour representation

Conclusion
The chapter on light was quite an extensive chapter which I guess makes sense as without light there would be no photography! The main lesson to take away from this is that to have some control over light gives a great deal of control over your photography. If you do not have control over the light source such as in the case of natural light, understanding how light works will still give you more choices about how you wish to make your photo.Finally, there is a link between light and colour that must be understood to give us more control. over what we create.


Finally, some of the other results I had when experimenting for this exercise.

Concentrating light

For this exercise I am going to concentrate light on a subject. I decided to go a bit 'blue peter' here and make a snoot for my flashgun from a cereal packet and some black gaffer tape. Within ten minutes this is what I had...

Snoot made from cereal packet and black tape.

I then used this with the camera set to standard manual settings for flash photography to take the photo below. I didn't have an awful lot of room indoors so I set this up on our garden table and took the photo after dark. I am pretty pleased with my makeshift light modifier and have already made a couple more of different lengths!