Jason and the argonauts test shot 1

I have taken a first test shot for my still life image:

 The props for this image  were collected from around college and are just meant to represent the objects I will be using in my final shot. I did this to save carting around all my props as some are fragile and I didn't want to risk damaging them before the shoot!

I shot this image against a green screen as I was planning on having the option to add in a separate background to satisfy the 'set' element of the brief.

 

The brown fur blanket is to represent the fleece, the small skull in place of the horned skull I have purchased and the cloths in place of gold items and fruit. 

The lighting set up was fairly simple and I was following a tutorial on re-creating daylight I saw on the internet. This set up consisted of a main light (or key light) with soft box to the right of the set up, a large soft box above the set and a silver reflector to the left. 

http://photo.net/photography-lighting-equipment-techniques-forum/007jz7

I applied this technique but wanted a more contrasted look as if I were in a darkened room without electric lighting - as would have been available to a 15th century painter similar to the paintings below.

In Photoshop I then played with the green screen but quickly abandoned it in favor of a more plain background. This is because the vanitas are all of objects on a table against a wall and so there is not need for a more interesting background. It is all about the props on the table. 

I then discovered a useful filter called 'oil paint' this can create a range of painting like effect from the subtle to the extremely dramatic. I decided this would be useful to get that painterly effect as the vantias were also painted in oil paint! I am trying to remove as many elements that betray a photograph as possible as I am recreating a painting style.

I played with the effects and discovered that it works better on some objects than oter. You can see here that it has had a good effect on the cloth making in look painted, but the sand pile looks nothing like sand:

 

I decided to duplicate the layer, add a dramatic oil paint filter and the see what happened when I reduced the opacity, the top image is the oil paint filter and the middle image is the photo with no filter; the last image is the original with the oil paint layer at 48%.

This has given a more matte effect to the skull and doesn't look overly 'shopped'. 

I will practice with this more and may lessen the effect more depending on if I can improve my lighting. 

here is the green screen being used, unfortunately I couldn't fly to greece and so here is an image from Google images as the background:

The images is from this link: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh722cxw-Xs3rgLKbMBO28nyVh_meZgkIK-AmQIq1grqgdOFzYiP3i86rvyVncme_LEFy1AXJf2uMGoCOCOCMmZouAncqxdsvdyO2JiwVyJbdOHvNkLm79RoQ_QK74sczsR4765ZkFxD5A/s1600/Greek+window+with+a+view+Meg+Mantinea.jpg

Obviously the lighting in the image doesn't match with where the light is seen to be coming from in the background, this is just to test the green screen idea and the ease in which a background can be placed in to give the illusion of a grander set. The light could be coming from another window in the 'room'.

To go to the next studio lighting post, please click here

Experimental Photography - Action plan

Having explored 9 different experiments I now must produce an action plan for 3 'final' images I am going to produce for the brief and how I might aim it towards to the competition 'Pride and Prejudice'.

As I stated before, I intend to mainly explore prejudice - breaking conventions of composition, shape and form.

I am going to take forward the Kaleidoscopic Prism, Peephole Photography, and the Camera Obscura technique.

Within these experiments I am going to use digital and/or darkroom manipulation to crop and/or make minor adjustments such as a curves adjustment.



With the Camera Obscura, I want to make it mobile. I am planning to use my car as a mobile camera obscura to allow me to photograph different scenes - not just the view from my bedroom. It has occurred to me that this is basically a pinhole camera, and so I am going to try and use a much larger paper stock that is appropriate for such a large camera such as 16X20 IN or 20X24 IN.

The video below has inspired me to take this technique outside.

http://vimeo.com/39578584

Although not as spectacular a technique as that in the video,  I hope to capture something to the effect of those photographs. 

I will produce custom black out window covers and attach them to the inside of my car windows, in each one I will have a pin hole that I can open and close, this is so that I have options when parking the car on which window to use if for some reason the front or back window are not suitable.

I have also discovered an Israeli photographer working in France who photographs exclusively with pinhole cameras. Since about 1994 he has been using his van as a pinhole camera and has used it on a project in Paris.

Working with black-and-white photographic paper, he adds sepia tones or uses color paper to create aurora-like glows of red and orange. He recently converted a van into a rolling pinhole camera. “I have holes on both sides, on the back and on the roof,” Wolff says. The roof holes he uses for poster-sized portraits of buildings like the ever-photogenic Eiffel Tower. To compose his shots, he’s forced to do a lot of illegal parking, he cheerfully admits. “I get many tickets, but I just add these to the price of the photographs.”

"1994-97 : Based in PARIS:
Trasforming my car as Camera Obscura , specialized in "PINOGRAM" technique , using my car as camera. Project for the city of Lorient (France) "the harbour". Creating a series about the monuments of Paris using my car as camera."

With the Peephole I am going to explore both close up and long range photography to stretch the limits of the technique. I want to try and get a more prominent 'halo' around my photographs and will use both colour and black and white.  I like how in the below image the horse in the background has been reduced to an almost indistinguishable shape; almost.

The further away objects are from the Peep hole,  the smaller and less defined they become. I am interested in using this effect in my photographs to make the viewer have to really look at the image to decipher its contents.

Another Idea is to do a 'fly on the wall' photo series, as the pin hole makes you feel like you are looking from a secret spot, it might be good to maybe pretend you are a spider hiding behind the sofa, or a mouse in its hole. 

With the Prism, I am going to experiment photographing buildings, people, landscapes, objects... anything really! It's all about breaking shape and form. I have discovered that when combined with the Peephole you get an even more Kaleidoscopic effect - something I will also experiment with.
I have yet to use this properly as it is quite large, I wanted to have a clear idea of what I wanted to photograph before going out and shooting with this, as it is an awkward object to have to carry 'just in case'.

For a Time Plan I do not have a rigid structure but I'm obviously going to have to shoot outside of college. This means in college I can use my time on the computer or developing film/paper in the dark room.

to go to the next post click here

Studio Lighting - Film Noir Recration.

 This post is from before I decided to no longer do this particular image. I have kept it as I still did some research and analysis on this image.


 Within our studio lighting brief are to produce a still life and a portrait images to demonstrate different 'specialist' lighting techniques.  One of these images had to be a recreation, and one was to be of your own idea.

Here is the photograph I am going to recreate for the portrait shot,  it's in 'film noir' style, and the woman is meant to be portraying a femme fatale character. :

Film Nor lighting is a very specific style requiring minimal lighting (often only one or two lights) usually one side to create shadowy contrasted images. If the lighting is straight on, shadows can be eliminated and the resulting photograph can appear flat, side lighting helps define features by catching on protrusions and creating shadows.
Additionally, if the scene were lit with light from multiple angles and/or sides, shadows would appear twice and would be more grey than black, as the lights would affect the darkness of each others shadows.

On this photo I stole from Google images and converted to black and white, you can see how even though the ball is lit from the same side by two lights, the different angles of light have caused there to be two overlapping shadows.

If more than one light is used to light the subject, the second light is often pointed at a separate part of the image, or pointed so that the shadow won't affect existing shadows and can fall outside of the frame.

You can see in this image that more than one light has been used, but one is lighting the actors and one is lighting the background. This helps give the pair a strong outline and silhouette against the lit background and allows their faces to also be lit. You can't see the shadow of the actors as it falls outside the frame.

Another technique used in film noir is something called a 'Gobo' abbreviated from 'Go Between' a gobo is an object that goes between the light source and the subject to cast a shadow.

In the photo I'm going to attempt to recreate it appears as if a gobo has been used. Gobos can come in a variety of styles, and are usually metal plates with shapes cut out that fit in to a holder in front of the bulb. However, these can sometimes be too rigid in their application and it is always possible to fashion your own; for example: to create the blinds effect I could literally hold a set of blinds between the light and the model.

I think two lights have been used here, one with a gobo attachment to create the effect of blinds lighting from the side to the right of the frame, angled down between 45 - 60 degrees. This is the main light.

The second light is behind the model - possibly on a floor stand - lighting the background slightly, and catching on the models hair as you can see some illumination on the back. 

It's possible that some blocking cards have been used as the light stops abruptly at the hair line and I think a reflector may have come in to play as the side of the face that is in shadow is not completely black.

Prop-wise it should be quite easy to gather the items I need, so I am focusing more on my
 lighting. I am yet to take a test shot and need to get a move on!

Another less obvious prop is the smoke from the cigarette. As this can't be replicated in the studio (it's illegal to smoke inside a public building) I will have to add this in in post processing. The video tutorial below gives a simple example of how to achieve the effect of smoke. As it is such a small feature in the photo I think this quite basic method will suffice to give the illusion of smoke. 

To go to the next post, click here

Lubitel 166B, Cornwall and Polperro

 Using an old Lubitel 166B (1980-1990) and some medium format B+W 120 film, I took some postcard/picturesque photographs of Cornwall - specifically Downderry and Polperro.
I (stupidly) forgot to set my focus ring to an appropriate distance as it all looked fine through the viewfinder, so some photos such as the cave have very soft focus.

to go the next post click here

Unit 5 - Narrative

We spent part of the afternoon creating a narrative - a sequence of photographs that tell a story. This fits in with our theme of film noir that the brief is based upon.

In particular we looked at the work of photographer Duane Michaels:

Looking at Duane Michals photographs reminded me of the work of Sophie Calle which we saw on a visit to The Corner House  Gallery Manchester exhibition 'Double Indemnity', inspired by the film with the same title. 

In her work, Sophie Calle had hired a private investigator to follow her and photograph and document her movements, unbeknownst to the investigator who never met Calle in person before following her. 

The above photo of the work is taken from the Gallery website. 

The added notes by the investigator in between images added to the work and really made you feel involved in the process. I would describe the experience as similar to watching a subtitled film, the images and text flowed well;  a few photos on their own and some two or three together; you lingered on certain images and skipped through others depending on their content - but this changing pace made it feel even more film-like. 

Later in class we took half an hour to create and shoot our own narrative, here's mine:

I've gone for a first person perspective where I am part of the narrative, in Duane Michals work you are always the observer. I shot in black and white and used a high ISO to keep with the film noir style and get a grainy film-like effect (although it's not as visible in the thumbnail composition).

To go to the next post click here

Experimental Photography - Peephole fish eye

After looking for other home made distortion techniques online I've come across something called 'peephole photography', happily it's not as perverted as it sounds(!)

This type of photography is basically fish eye lens photography on a budget. You take an ordinary peephole that you typically have in a front door, create a lens-friendly holder that won't scratch, and simply fasten it over your normal camera lens. 

These peep hole lenses can come in a variety of angles of view, usually 160 or 180 degrees, but they can be more or less. This extra wide angle and causes curving and bulging distortions to objects close to the lens or near to the edge of the view. 

The quality of the lens and its state of wear and tear will also have an effect on the images produced. 

This page on alternativephotography.com is a short article about peephole lenses and their qualities, and below are some images by the writer of said article:

She writes: "For ten years, I’d been playing with a peephole myself, creating magical floating worlds hanging in empty space, bathed in halos from their own light. The images were, by choice of aperture, not completely sharp, but there were details in the image that were brought in sharp relief with almost crystal clarity. Objects at the sides warped and swirled around the edges. Each halo was unique, like the fingerprint of the image within."

Here is a video tutorial about making a peephole attachment for your camera:

http://lifehacker.com/5920205/turn-a-door-peephole-into-a-fisheye-camera-lens

I have watched the video and will be making my own style of fitting to adapt to my camera. 

UPDATE 4/10/13

I have bought a 200 degree peephole for £2.45 online that should arrive in a couple of weeks, and I have bought a 180 degree peephole from a local hardware shop for £4.50.

To attach my 180 peephole to the lens I first put it through a block of polystyrene (to protect the lens) with a hole in the middle, held on to the camera by two elastic bands. This presented two problems, the first being that the elastic bands held the polystyrene to tight it was impossible to turn the focus ring by hand or with autofocus; the second being that they also made it impossible to change the focal length as the bands always pulled the lens back in so I would have to continuously hold the lens barrel. This was annoying. 

To bypass this problem I  drilled a hole in the middle of a spare lens cap and glued the cap and peephole together. I can now place the lens cap on the camera and not have any movement of the lens restricted.

Here is one image I have taken, this will be all for now as I need to allow the glue time to dry properly, and it's raining outside.

Here's another shot, I have put both the black and white and colour version on as I think they both have their own merits.

to go to the next post click here

Experimental Photography - Liquid Emulsion

As part of our experimental photography brief we completed some workshops covering 4 different techniques, namely: Liquid emulsion, Light painting and Projector photography, and Pin hole photography. These workshops were intended to start us off with basic ideas to help start us off with generating our own ideas or to take the workshops further.

The first experiment we did was with liquid emulsion. The emulsion is photosensitive silver based sensitizer, it is basically the same as is used on photo paper you would purchase, but in liquid form. It can be applied to many different surfaces meaning you can turn almost anything in to a photographic object.

When wet, the emulsion is very 'slow' (not very sensitive to light) , as it dries it becomes 'quicker' (more sensitive to light). When the emulsion we were using was dry, it had an ISO of 4. It didn't really matter in this case though because we were using an enlarger to print an image, rather than use it as a film or plate to get a negative.

In the dark room we coated some watercolour paper and some fabric with the liquid emulsion. To apply an even coat, we used a paintbrush to brush width ways and then length ways across both the paper and the fabric to try and cover as much of the surfaces as possible. This proved to be quite difficult as the emulsion is clear/opaque and hard to see even under the safe red light. The emulsion takes around 24 hours to dry at room temperature, but we wouldn't be back in the dark room for another week.

I had trouble with my prints as I kept losing concentration in the dark room, it's my own fault, and a series of silly mistakes led to me not having a decent print with either the paper or the fabric.

Anyway, I will explain the process and hopefully I will follow my own instruction better next time!

First you must choose a negative to put in the enlarger (the enlarger projects light through the negative, producing the positive image on your chosen sensitized object).

When you are creating a print you must first make a test strip. A test strip is made by giving the paper (or whatever your medium) multiple exposures across the image to find the optimum exposure settings. Below are my test strips from the watercolour paper; each line represents +3 seconds of exposure, beginning at 3 seconds on the lightest section. 
The test strips were made by cutting the paper in half, and cutting that half in half again meaning I would get one A5 print, and two A6 test strips.

Here is a digital scan of the negative used:

From the test strips you can see that around 9 to 12 seconds is a suitable exposure time.

To make sure the rest of the paper is not exposed, you used a piece of blocking card that doesn't allow light through, and move it along the paper as you expose. You can begin with your longest or shortest exposure, the diagram below demonstrates exposing for the longest exposure first; if you were exposing for your shortest exposure first, you would cover up the paper instead of revealing it.
So that your exposure times are the same, you use a self timer on the enlarger that switches on and off the bulb automatically.

 

The problem I had with my paper exposure was that on the enlarger the 'self timer' switch and the 'constant' switch are right next to each other. The room is dark. I was rushing. I think you can guess what happened. Therefore I have no final print; but this doesn't really matter to me as I know that I can do it, although I guess it would have been nice to have a proper print of this image. I might use this format to present some of my work if I feel it suits the photos I've taken.

The second piece I did was on the fabric. I followed the same process as with the paper but the negative wasn't really producing a clear image. For my print I cranked up the magenta filter to provide more contrast, and gave a slightly longer exposure to compensate as the filter absorbs some light. As it is a colour negative, the areas that would be black or grey on a black and white negative were instead transparent blue. This didn't give good contrast on the image and so all the detail was pretty much washed out.

This is the final image:

Here is a digital scan of the negative used:

Disappointing to say the least, but it was down to poor choice of negative. The photo was taken at Leeds Festival 2009 and I thought it would be a good idea to have it printed on a piece of frayed fabric as it is reminiscent of the festival experience and so is suitable medium for the image. The negative is very transparent. The red of the flare is a pale blue on the negative and so light just went straight though it. You can see the white blob of where the flare is on the fabric.

I liked the textured that the watercolour paper and fabric, and it is interesting to think of all the objects this can be applied to, with the right image and the right object, each can enhance the other to produce a more attention grabbing piece of work.


to go to the next post click here