December 12, 2012

Welcome to my blog!
My name is Emma Savage and I am a first year Photography student studying at Southampton Solent, England. 
This blog has been put together to document my experiences in Image Lab. Links to other websites and sources can be found in italics. At the bottom of this page you will find a bibliography listing journals and books.
Use the buttons "Newer Posts" and "Older Posts" to navigate.
The Archive and Labels can also be found at the bottom of this page if you would like to navigate through my blog that way. Posts will start from the newest entry first. Clicking on any of the images on this blog will open them in a new window and allow you to see bigger versions.

link to my personal photography blog
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Unit Summary

Over the last eleven weeks I have learned about many techniques used in the photography world. Many of these techniques were completely new to me, such as the primer of making a wet collodion plate. I have made and used pinhole cameras in the past but not on such a large scale as we did this time. Using the studio gave me a brief but useful introduction into using studio lighting and equipment, something that I will find very important in the future. The many gallery visits I was able to experience here have also been very enlightening and inspirational to my work and I have become more aware of the importance of being able to critique and appreciate work of other artists and photographers. I had also never hung an exhibition before, and having to hang several as a group has helped me with this skill and learning the importance of accuracy and care with prints. If I was to continue with this unit, I would like to experiment further with studio lighting and making pinhole cameras or camera obscuras more similar to the artists I have researched.
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Week Eleven: Time & the Image: Final Outcome

I decided to select this image as my final image that I will print out for the exhibition because there are more frames to the image than the previous. It is more reminiscent of a Muybridge work and I am really happy with the outcome. It reflects on the concept of time well because it captures movement and freezes it completely. By making my model wear a dress and keep her hair down, it allowed for the movement to be enforced even more from the free flowing of the material in the breeze. If I was to perfect this image I would be more accurate with the measurements of each frame and even try to make the horizons line up.
This photo will be printed to an A3 size with a border using an inkjet printer and will eventually be displayed in our gallery space along with everyone else's interpretations of Time & the Image and I really look forward to seeing what everyone else has made too.
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Week Eleven: Time & the Image: Potential Final Images

Here is the outcome of my images. I used photoshop to convert the images into black and white and used cropping tools to put the images into a grid. 
I haven't yet decided which of the images I would like to use as a final outcome for printing.

Potential Final 1:
Moving Image form:
Potential Final 2:
Moving Image form:
I used an online gif maker called Gickr to put each image together and make a moving image similar to Muybridge's.
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Week Ten: Time & the Image: Creating Final Outcome


Ultimately I decided to experiment with Eadweard Muybridge's technique of photographing people in motion and these stills even being used to create a moving image. I went home to Cornwall over the weekend and met with one of my friends who has modelled for me in the past. We went into a field and I took a series of photographs of her running towards my camera and i would capture her movement. Above is a contact sheet of the best results from that shoot and I will later edit and alter them into a sequence.
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Week Ten: Time & the Image (Research): Eadweard Muybridge

One of the first people who came to mind when I thought about Time and the image was Eadweard Muybridge. Here he took a series of images of an ostrich in motion and these frames were then made to make a moving image. I would like to try this kind of technique as a potential idea for my own interpretation of time in the photograph.
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December 09, 2012

Time & the Image: Experimentation: Part 2: Water

I also considered how I could represent time by freezing it and found water to be an effective way of achieving this. I met with a friend and used the water from a shower and a fast shutter speed to capture it. The water is freeze framed and the water droplets remeniscent of diamonds rather than water. I am really happy with the outcomes of the images.
The black and white images are particular favourites of mine. I used photoshop to convert my digital images into black and white and used the sharpen tool to define the water even more.

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Time & the Image: Experimentation: Part 1: Old Objects

old and rusting: progression of time and wearing of an arga oven
This is the eskimo doll that was given to my mother when she lived in Canada as a child, she has since passed it onto me, I hold it very dear to me despite it being very worn and well loved.

These images were taken on a Canon EOS 400D
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December 03, 2012

Week Ten: Time & the Image (Research)

Martin Newth
8 Hours

  • night long shots record the movement of the sleeping figures
  •  photographs were made using a custom build large format (10" x 8") camera 
  • the following morning the negative was developed in the motel bathroom." 
I really like the use of long exposure in this series of images. The soft lights and movements show the peacefulness of sleep but at the same time subtly representing the intimacy of the couple. 
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Week Ten: Time & the Image: Brainstorm

Potential Ideas

Capturing Movement:
One idea I could consider would be capturing people or objects in motion.
The Beatles Running from Fans on Platform by Robert Freeman
The above photo is by blogger Shui Tsang (blog link). I like the freeze frame of images but the single blurred movement of another, in this case their faces.
Another example: (photographer and source unknown)
Other ideas:
  • Long Exposures
  • Photographing decay, erosion, fading of something over time
  • Freeze framing water
  • Changing of the sky through day and night
Above: footage of a shooting star

Martin Klimas
Vincent Skoglund
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Week Nine: Narrative: Donnie Darko "The Mad World Scene"


In the morning session of today we looked at a clip from the movie Donnie Darko to help us with the presentation of 'Narrative'. The above clip is similar to the extract viewed in class but not identical, as we watched a director's cut version that I couldn't find on YouTube. Here are some of the features I picked up on from the clip.

  • Panorama shot connecting all the characters reacting and waking up from a dream
  • The song 'Mad World' (Gary Jules) is played over the scene and additional sound is removed, the lyrics and somber mood of the song narrate it in a more emotional way than perhaps dialogue could.
  • Body language of characters is important because of the lack of dialogue
Directors cut features:
  • Girl and mother are filmed in a way that it could be freeze framed like a photograph
  • Flashbacks: multiple images in a grid representing crazed disorganised thoughts
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Bibliography

JOURNALS:

1)
British Journal of Photography
November 2012
Volume 159: issue no. 7806
The Portrait Issue
Page: 31-36
Images from the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize:
Article by: BJP editor Simon Bainbridge
Extract: "...Alma Haser (who BJP named as one of the most promising graduates of 2010) provides the most unusual approach, capturing two of her housemates, and the clever title of 'The Ventriloquist' adds to the mystery. "I asked them to sit on a tiny wobbly coffee table, forcing them to almost cling onto each other" she explains. "Ultimately, I want to turn their verbal banter into a visual image. The title is designed to help viewers make up their own stories about what is going on."

2)
Source
The Photographic Review
Issue 40
Autumn 2004
Page: 8
8 Hours: Martin Newth
Extract: "The series of images was made during my honeymoon- a road trip to the United States in 2001. The photographs show an entire nights sleep in budget motels in California... Exposure time is 8 hours. The night long shots record the movement of the sleeping figures, my wife and I, as vapour trails over the bed. The photographs were made using a custom build large format (10" x 8") camera which was placed on top of the TV each evening. The following morning the negative was developed in the motel bathroom."

3)
British Journal of Photography
July 2012
Volume 159: Issue no. 7802
Stephen Gill
Article By: Sue Steward
Extract: "Ants, birds and microscopic wriggly creatures in pond water, poppy seeds and pressed flowers that partly describes the elements in Stephen Gill's repertoire, which he calls 'descriptive' and which ranges from the early series Hackney Flowers to his recent project Co-Existence, shot in Luxemburg." "...Piles of boxes labelled as dried flowers, seeds and crumpled betting slips sat alongside negatives and contact prints- reminders of his analogue life."

4)
British Journal of Photography
June 2011
Volume 158: Issue 7789
High Velocity (freeze motion)
Extract: "The effect is achieved by freezing the action of a rapid moving subject, using either very fast shutter speeds or very fast flash lighting."
Examples: Marcel Christ for Coca-Cola, Martin Klimas- flowers series, Vincent Skoglund for Nixon watches


BOOKS:

1)
Architecture of Absence
Aperture
Page: 21

Candida Höfer

Extract: "Whether the aura of absence is signalled by the physical dominance of white, the exclusion of man's physical presence, or references to the social activity- without personalisation- that would be consonant with the classification of the interior, Höfer leaves us with uniquely evocative spaces that are not empty. They are devoid of any diversions that would disrupt her transcendental rooms- where nothing is staged, but where, as the architect of order, Höfer leaves nothing to chance."

2)

Andreas Gursky

The Museum of Modern Art (New York)

Author: Peter Galassi

Publisher: MOMA: Thames & Hudson

3)

Eadweard Muybridge 55

Author: Paul Hill

Publisher: Phaidon

Extract: "Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) is a key name in early photographic history. His pioneering locomotion studies of the 1870s + 1880s which produced over 20,000 photographs, radically changed the way in which people understood animal and human movement."

4)

Mouthpiece

Justin Quinnell

Publisher: Dewi Lewis Publishing

Extract: "The earliest reference to pinhole was in 5 century BC when the Chinese philosopher Mo-Ti compared light forming an image through a hole to 'an arrow being fired'."

"My own journey started in the early 1990s. Many of my students couldn't afford cameras, but could afford several cans of fizz a day."

5)

Photographs 1978-2004

Jeff Wall

Written by: Sheena Wagstaff

Publisher: Tate Publishing

Extract: "Weaving together the narrative and compositional potential of all three media to create a sympathitc celebration of quotidian life, Wall also spins subtle enigmas within his scenarios, which- if we are prepared to look closely- sharpen our awareness about their subjects without ever leading us to conclude a 'moral to the story'."

6)

The Genius of Photography

How Photography Has Changed Our Lives
By: Gerry Badger

Gregory Crewdson

Work: Ophelia - Digital (Type C) Coloue Print, from series: Twilight

Extract: "Here Crewdson's protagonist floats in her flooded living room, dressed in her lingerie. Her eyes are open, and her slippers are on the stairs above the flood. She may be dead, but there is a ecstatic look on her face and she is floating above the water rather than in it."

(Book also contains the work of Rineka Dijkstra)