Week 8: Image Processes

We were asked this week to attend an exhibition and choose an image from that exhibition to focus on and research around it so we could produce a write up about it.

I went to two exhibitions at Somerset House in London, the first Tim Walker: Story Teller and the second Cartier-Bresson: A Question Of Colour. I found both to be very interesting yet different exhibitions as Tim Walker is primarily a quirky fashion photographer where as Henri Cartier-Bresson and the other featured photographers in the exhibtion are street or documentary photographers.

Tim Walker from the exhibtion Tim Walker: Story Teller

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Fred Herzog, Harry Guyaert from the exhibtion Cartier-Bresson: A Question Of Colour

In the end I chose an image from the Cartier-Bresson: A Question Of Colour exhibtion. The photograph I chose is an image by Fred Herzog called Crossing Powell taken in 1984. Fred Herzog had a range of images in the exhibtion all of which I found to be beautiful prints that proved Cartier-Bresson wrong and colour photography did have a place within street photography. As the main reason it caught my eye was the vivid lighting at first then with this image in particular the painting like quality to it. I also like the idea of a photographer capturing a seeming normal or boring moment and making it into a piece of artwork and I think that is exactly what has been done here.

When we had our image chosen we had a template to follow so we could insert our image and write up the necessary information.

Template                              .

My final write up                              .

Week 7: Hanging Work

Again this week we were hanging the work we had produced in the previous week, we gathered all of our separate digital layering images together and set them out side by side on photoshop in a grid of 3 images x 4 images to create one large image. 

We printed our work large scale so to get as much detail as possible, but as the prints were so large we had to take care not to kink or damage them so we wore white gloves to protect them. We then used the same tools as before, a laser level, bulldog clips and nails.

An example of how the work was hung

A photographer that uses digital layering frequently in his work is Jasper James, a photographer who layers together and landscape with a portrait image to create one image. I think the work he creates is very beautiful, charming and mysterious. I like how simple it is and how you can clearly make out both photographs.

City Silhouettes by Jasper James

Week 6: Digital Layering

In this week we continued the work that we started in Week 4. We first watched a film called 'The Eye' about photographers Gilbert and George's work. We focused on them because of how they set out and presented their work. They used a technique close to tiling where they put photographs side by side to create one large image. 

Dirty Words by Gilbert and George 1970's

I found their work very striking and thought provoking, I think the use of black and white with the sudden shock of red makes the images instantly eye catching and also quite sinister looking then when you read the words you see the deeper more emotional meaning. I think their work is designed to shock and it certainly achieved that with me.

We then went on to create our own images and started layering our own photographs of our meaningful objects that we photographed in week 4 using photoshop. This is my finished image.

I didn't just want to produce an image of the objects layered on top of one another, I wanted to make a scene and make them interact with one another. I found it quite hard to make the images work with each other and make them look natural.

Week 5: Hanging Work

In this session we hung the pinhole photography we had produced over the last few weeks. First we had to decide what images should be shown as a few of the images hadn't come out properly and were just black and as we only had limited we had to get rid of a few.

We then used a laser level to set up our exhibition and make sure it's straight. We used bulldog clips and nails to hang the project, it took us quite a long time to get the composition right and we continually experimented with different combinations of images until we were happy with our results.

The hanging in process

Our pinhole image

Also in this session we finished off our wet collodion images by cleaning the dust off the back of the glass with a wet paper towel, before spraying them black using black spray paint. This made all the images look a lot neater, cleaner and more professional. We also hung them as a complete set of 12 images using a grid made up of 48 nails, which you simply slotted the pieces of glass into. To the left is a photo of my group's wet collodion portrait, I am happy with our final outcome especially as none of us had ever produced this kind of image before.

All the wet collodion  images

Week 4: Visual Histories

This week we moved on to digital techniques and used the studio lights, we were asked to bring in things that were meaningful to us to photograph. We then set out our objects individually to photograph in small groups. I wasn't pleased with the objects that I photographed so I choose to re shoot mine again at home as an attempt to produce a better final image. Unfortunately they are not as good quality, but the objects have more meaning.

My objects included:

•  a concert wristband- to represent my love of music, and live music.
• a note book- which I have on my person nearly all the time.
• two DVD's- these are two of my favourite films, one by the director Tim Burton who has inspired me a lot.
• my day to day diary- this has all my important dates and deadlines and I would be lost without it. 
• a photograph of my parents- to represent my family and how important they are.
• a bracelet that I wear everyday- I have worn this bracelet for about 8 years and never want to be without it.

I think all these things describe me well and show what is important to me. Although I enjoyed using the studio and the lights I was not happy with the objects that I originally took in to be photographed as I didn't think they represented me very well. Therefore I went home and reshot everything and different things that were more personal. Although they lacked in quality I think it worked better than my other objects would have.

Week 3: Pinhole Photography Continued

This week we were told in our groups to create our own pinhole image of a scene that could be inspired by either a film, book or music lyrics. Our group chose to do Alice In Wonderland.

We spent time creating the characters and finding props that would help us to create the feeling of Alice In Wonderland.

We started to place our characters within the frame, we chose to tilt the camera down slightly from a height so we could get quite a large spectrum and hopefully get more detail of the floor and avoid getting too much sky in the image. As there were only three people in the shot we wanted to have different levels and depth within our image so we decided to have each person at a different level, one lying down, one crouching and one standing up. I think this worked well and the place we took the image had quite a lot going on so it helped that we kept things simple.

A Digital Example

Here are two images of our final pinhole images, a negative and a positive, which I inverted. I was very pleased how our image came out; I especially liked the angle at which it was taken as I think the perspective works really well.

Negative Image

Positive Image

I wanted to look at some pinhole photographers that could relate to our shoot, I found Bethany De Forest: Studio/Diorama who produced quite quirky dreamy images that she would create herself inside a box to make her own scenes. Here is some examples of her work.

Week 2: Pinhole Photography

Examples of pinhole photography by Justin Quinnell

This week Justin Quinnell a pinhole photographer came in to introduce us to pinhole photography, an alternative way of photography, in which but cutting a hole in an object and filling it with photographic paper you are able to make a camera and an image. 

First we went out in our groups to produce 3 images with 3 different bins giving each of them a different exposure time (Bin 1: 13 minutes, Bin 2: 12 seconds, Bin 3: 25 seconds). We set up scenes as a group with Justin with various people staying still and others moving around in and out of the frame to create weird and ghostly effects. We had to alter the times as the light was fading so we had to expose them all for longer, they all were fairly successful. 

We were then sent off in smaller groups of 3 or 4 to produce our own pinhole. Our group chose to take an image of a motorbike, as the light was constantly faded we had to expose our photograph for 8 minutes.

Below are images of our final image that we made, both the negative then a positive image that I created using my phone to invert it. The image came out quite grey and foggy so consequently some of the detail was lost.

Week 1: Wet Collodion

In our first week we learnt how to produce a wet collodion image (see video above for method). We worked in small groups of 4 to 5 to produce our images, each member of the group having a different task to complete. My job was to pour the collodion on to the glass, it was hard to get it even and keep a steady hand while doing so.

I wanted to look at more wet collodion photographers and projects the one that particularly interested me was Sally Mann: Faces as the portraits where quite harsh and close up and sometimes quite blurry so the detail was a little lost like on the image on the far left. However I admired that what she liked most about wet collodion was the imperfections she got and said that she hoped she never mastered the art as she liked to see what would come out when she developed it.

Here are two images of my groups wet collodion, one when it was just printed (on the left) and one when it was sprayed black making our final image (on the right). I really like this method of taking a photograph as it creates interesting affects on the surface of the image. It is also something that I have never done or experienced before.