Penultimate Peer Session

As the assignment deadline is drawing near, we began this session with a group review and discussion of everyone's ideas and latest work, towards the aim of helping each other along with our final pieces. I hope the session was beneficial, I for one was very encouraged to hear some excellent and inspiring ideas followed up by thoughtful questions and suggestions. The important thing now is that we really make a good effort at realising these ideas - don't be timid - if you've got something that you're passionate about then go for it. I'm keen that next week we will all have more images to show (even if they are just preliminary or research) so that we can get a stronger sense of where everyone is headed.

Following the review, I invited fellow second year student Joanna Ornowska to come and talk to us about some of her work. After the assignment to 'document a meeting' was set, Joanna's photography (in particular her Park Portraits series) came to mind. We asked about and discussed with Joanna her methods of approaching and directing strangers, her considerations of light and composition, and the technical challenges she dealt with. All of which was very insightful, and I hope useful to the group.

Her photography of strangers she meets is continuing - at the moment it's couples walking on Welsh mountains - and there is also her more personal and intimate project Awake, looking at her family life during and after her illness with hepatitis C and skin cancer. Joanna shows a great level of dedication to her projects, which is reflected in the quality of her pieces. Each time I see her work I am inspired to better my own.

For the remainder of the afternoon we had a flashgun workshop with Kevin, which I will endeavour to sum up here:

• The power of the flashguns can be stepped up or down by 3 stops (above or below the ambient exposure) so they can be used as a subtle fill light, your main light , or for an over-exposed effect. 
• The lights can be used on-board and off-board - mounted to light stands or tripods, using super clamps, magic arms, or just the foot, or you could even get an assistant to hold it. 
• They can be altered to send light in different manners - direct, bounced, diffused, or coloured using gels. 
• There are different ways of firing them remotely: using a radio trigger; using the 'SU 4' setting (similar to the 'cell' function on the studio heads); or using the flashguns' in built radio signals - which means setting one flash as the 'master' and the other(s) as 'remote' (remember that the master can be the camera's own flash). 
• Different models and brands will vary in settings and terminology, just to keep it confusing for us.
• You'll need to provide your own batteries (usually AA) and ideally they should be above 2000mAh (milli-amps). 

All of this might sound a bit techno mumbo jumbo, but as with any new equipment the best option would be to take it out and have a play. The crucial thing to remember is that these are just lights, apply the same principles as you would with studio lighting and don't over-complicate things. Again the Strobist blog is a useful resource, try the 102 lighting archive. And Kevin also mentioned the website of Ken Rockwell, who seems to know his camera equipment through and through and provides a review for just about anything.

Bradford Visit

Last Friday we braved the M1 and headed north to Bradford. First on the agenda was a visit to the Impressions Gallery, and a look at British-Indian photographer Max Kandhola's exhibition - Flatland: A landscape of Punjab. "...Kandhola explores themes of memory, migration and Sikh Diaspora through large-scale colour photographs of Punjab's many rivers and uncharted villages."

Max Kandhola - Kapurthala District travelling between Phagwara and Phillaur Jalandhar District

Personally I wasn't greatly impressed by the exhibition, feeling that beyond some interesting compositions and exotic landscapes, the work didn't hold a lot of depth to its purpose, and hence didn't really draw me in. The gallery had an excellent little bookshop though. 

We next visited (and spent the rest of the day at) The National Media Museum. We had a talk from the museum's photography curator Greg Hobson about the current exhibition - We English by Simon Roberts. Greg's talk was very informative, hearing both a curator's point of view, as well as some interesting 'behind the scenes' of Roberts' acclaimed project. I came across We English some months ago but I only ever saw the work online, and seeing the large prints on the wall just blew me away. The quality of detail was immense, and for me this made the images (and the whole project) much more impacting. The experience also restored my faith in a good old gallery visit.

Simon Roberts - Cotswold Water Park, Shornecote, Gloucestershire, 11th May 2008

Simon Roberts - Fantasy Island, Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire, 28th December 2007

You can find all the images from the body of work here, along with reviews, links, the blog from Robert's trip, and other goodies. Also a podcast from Foto8 of Simon talking about his project. 

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with a tour around the Museum's archives, and their open viewing and research facility - Insight. I think we were all amazed at the breadth and depth of the archives, as well as the numerous exciting historic items - daguerreotypes, 10x8 plate cameras, spy cameras, old computers, newspaper prints, and so on. Via the Insight facility, the archives are open to the public to search and study photographic items of interest (best arranged by appointment). This can be very specific, from a certain photographer, to a certain time or style of photography, or a certain make/model of camera. Considering the potential for some very in-depth research, I'm thinking it would be a good idea to visit again as a group (perhaps in the next academic year), when there is a new exhibition on, and beforehand preparing some names whose work we want to have a good look at.

Next week we'll have a peer review session to see where everyone is at with the assignment, as well as a flashgun workshop, and a talk from photographer Joanna Ornowska.

Wwl - Week 4: 'Controlling Light'

Thursday 13th May

The lecture from today provided us with some case studies of practising or recent photographers. Wonathan began by discussing that one of the main driving forces behind a free market economy is that consumers have to believe that they can purchase solutions to their problems. Problems that we don't even have until an advert points them out to us. No doubt you are aware of this consumerist phenomenon, and the potential for people to be susceptible to it. The photographic industry is equally susceptible - a certain desirable aesthetic of an image is advertised as being mutual to a certain brand - the example given being Canon 'suggesting' that the photojournalists of VII agency rely on Canon cameras for their successful image making. Adverts aim to make an inference of association in our subconscious - association of a product to a success story. There is however an alternative option, which opposes this inference: enter Teru Kuwayama, who shoots on a Holga and has received numerous awards for his photojournalism work.

Why is Wonathan telling us all this? Because it's a mistake to think that a piece of equipment or a technical skill is the key to great photography. 

"All the technique in the world doesn't compensate for an inability to notice" - Elliot Erwitt

People can copy your images, and they can copy your style, but they will never be able to see the world as you do. It is why we should photograph what we feel passionately about and it is why we will not be taught lighting in the creative sense of what looks 'good'.

Richard Avedon's influential work 'In the American West' took six years to complete and included 123 prints selected from 17,000 exposures. He was very particular about those final exhibition prints, frequently rejecting them and asking his printers to "make the person more gentle" or "give the face more tension" etc. He wanted them to understand and appreciate the emotional content he sought from each portrait. His decisions in refining these portraits came through years of practice, collated knowledge, and dedication to honing his art. These are not things that we can purchase, but we can acquire such confidence in our own practice with dedication.

Laura Wilson (Avedon's assistant) reveals some of his techniques:

"Avedon mirrored the position of his subjects subconsciously - connecting with them" 

"Dick didn't direct in an obvious way - he waited... you have to know the moment when you see it"

Steve Pyke is a portrait photographer interested in physiognomy - or the study of facial features as indicative of their character. He also talks about documenting a conversation. Wonathan mentioned that Steve would remove things that he didn't feel in control of, hence the tight face shot, the simple block tone background, the straightforward light usage. This is an approach which I can empathise with strongly, and which I would encourage all less-experienced photographers to appreciate. It can be very embarrassing when you take all kinds of sophisticated techniques to a photograph and then discover that you don't quite know what's going on (or rather what's going wrong). Start simple, progress in line with your understanding, don't rush in and make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Steve Pyke - Arthur Danto

Jonathan Worth - who assisted Steve Pyke and learnt much from him - states he enjoys photographing a meeting rather than a conversation. Literally this translates to an interest in capturing the subject within their environment. Jonathan also discusses his use of light - how he builds up an image in his head with the use of a light meter - obviously important when working with film, and again relating to the importance of pre-visualisation. He described and gave examples of how he selects a frame (using a tripod) and then allows the subject to be at ease within it, and with the technical aspect taken care of, he can then concentrate on an interaction with the subject.

Jonathan Worth - Lilly Allen

Jonathan Worth - Stephen Merchant

Today the main assignment for the module was set - 'To document a meeting'. We will discuss and explore ideas for this brief in our next peer session, as well as reviewing and critiquing each others work, and going over technical issues as requested.

Lighting Workshop

Following our peer session yesterday, this post will outline some of the considerations we should take when using studio and location lighting.

It's boring, but it needs to be covered, so: Safety First

• Don't plug the light into a battery and the mains at the same time.
• Make sure your light is securely attached to the lighting stand, and when moving it, carry it by the light not the stand (which one is going to break if it falls off?)
• A tip when attaching the power cord, is to wrap it around one of the feet of the stand. This way if someone trips on the wire, the light is less likely to topple over.
• The higher you raise the light, the more unstable it will become. Weigh down the legs with some handy sandbags, or get an assistant to hold the stand (especially if you're outdoors, windy, umbrella, Mary Poppins etc.)
• When setting up the stands give the three legs a wide spread for stability, also with the light on top allow the weight to 'settle' the stand so that it's not under too much pressure.  
• Avoid touching the bulbs, they're delicate, and the grease from your fingers is not good for them. Also the modelling lamp in particular gets very hot - try not to have that on for unnecessary amounts of time.
• Take care when attaching/removing the various reflectors (or 'heads') - they will get hot from the lamp. The black plastic bulb covers are for storage purposes only. They will melt very quickly (and expensively) if you use them with the lights on. 

Basics with using the Lights

• With the 'cell' button on, the light will trigger when it detects any other flash in the room. 
• The 'beep' or 'sound' button will mean the light makes an indicating noise when it is charged and ready for the next shot. 
• The modelling lamp has different settings ranging from: off, half-power, equal to flash, to full power. The modelling lamp is primarily there to help you get an idea of where and how the light is falling - where the shadows will be etc. 
• The light needs to be synchronised to fire at the same instant that the photo is taken. This is done with either a sync cable (from camera to light) or radio triggers (a transmitter on the hot shoe of the camera, and a receiver in the sync socket of the light). 
• If you lower the power of the flash you need to 'dump' the charge to reset it.     

Some Further Tips

• There's a whole variety of different heads to attach to these lights, which will alter the angle, the spread, the diffusion, the intensity and so on. The best way to find out what different effects these have is to test them out. Yesterday we found that having an umbrella closer to the light source will give less 'spread out' light, i.e. more defined shadows, than having it further away.
• Keep it simple, if one light will do the job then use one light. It starts to get complicated when you've got multiple flashes going off, and you're trying to keep them all balanced and stop them from spilling into each other.
• If you are using multiple lights then perhaps work by 'building up' the picture - start with your key light and get it the way you want it, then add the next and get it balanced, then the next and so on. 
• Make use of reflectors and gobos, to bounce back and block off light - give yourself more control.
• If you're working in the studio it might be an idea to isolate the subject from the background, so as to control the light/tone of them separately. 
• Use your light meter, and use it wisely - arrange things carefully and take lots of readings. You should have a good idea of how a picture is going to come out before you go near the camera.
• Remember everything is a variant. If something doesn't look right there are numerous ways you can alter it: the power of the light, the angle of the light, the distance between light and subject, the  position of the subject, the position of the camera, the exposure of the camera, the list continues.

Here's a good video on Dean Collins (a master of lighting) working on a portrait. It's a bit geeky and technical but it's particularly significant to what I was saying about 'building up' a picture. Also note how he talks through the picture with his assistant - some awesome pre-vis skills.

The original link from the strobist blog is here. Do check out strobist, and their series of posts - Lighting 101.
Some more videos which go over the range of equipment you can use with studio lighting.
There's also studiolighting.net and a bunch of others, google it!

But remember, when researching this stuff you are frequently going to run into 'experts' telling you that "this is how you make someone look sexy" or "never use a tripod and always shoot at f5.6" - ignore them. It's not the case that one type of light is 'attractive' and one isn't. It's that there is soft light, and harsh light, restricted, spread, diffused, directional and many other types. It is up to you to decide how to use lighting, to create the effect that you desire. Learn from others the technical, teach yourself the creative.

WwL - Week 3

Thursday 6th May

Today's lecture began with a quick recap of a previous lecture - What is a Photograph? - which aimed to help us better understand the physical qualities of a photograph (in other words the physical manifestation of our practice), and then to recognise those elements in others' work, and moreover consider them in our own practices.

Five physical qualities of photographs were highlighted (as taken from Stephen Shore's book - The Nature of Photographs. A primer).

• It is two dimensional.
• It is limited in scope (i.e. bounded by a frame).
• It is still.
• It is multi-coloured or monotone.
• It ages.

We discussed and evidenced these qualities in further detail, and thereby began to get a clearer idea of how we as practitioners may apply a consideration of these elements to our working practices. In other words: pre-visualisation.

The godfather of this, and the man who coined the term - Ansel Adams, suggested that photographs are made, not taken. 

"In my mind's eye, I visualise how a particular... sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice."

"I can't verbalise the internal meaning of pictures whatsoever. Some of my friends can at very mystical levels, but I prefer to say that, if I feel something strongly, I would make a photograph that would be the equivalent of what I saw and felt... When I'm ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my mind's eye something that is not literally there, in the true meaning of the word. I'm interested in expressing something which is built up from within, rather than extracted from without."

To demonstrate this approach we looked at his famous work 'Moonrise'. Comparing the straight print to the fine print we can see the dramatic differences in appearance, and remember that Adams envisaged the fine print whilst taking the exposure. He always aimed to make the best interpretation of the negative so that it would express not how the scene looked in reality, but how it felt to him emotionally.

Pre-visualisation is not something that can be acquired quickly and definitively, it is a skill that we as photographers must grow and develop, and it will always be present and progressing within our practices. We edit the world, we show things to people that they otherwise would not see. And as our photographic eye develops, we will see things that can potentially take on a new meaning - a certain beauty and illusion - when we photograph them in a particular way, controlling that creative process. Just as Beethoven pre-visualised (or if you like 'pre-audibilised') his great symphonies. 

And so for this week, the task of 'control' has been set. To control the light of your location (by taking a light, or lights to it), to create a mood/effect/whatever of your image - and hence determine something more of how the image is viewed.

Chungking Express

I didn't come away from this screening thinking much on the plot, instead I was more interested in the style of the film, and this lead me to inquire further into Wong Kar Wai. There's a good article on his radical and inspirational method of film making here. I didn't find myself mulling over Chungking Express as I do with films that make a strong impression, but I find myself now wanting to see more from Kar Wai, titles such as - Fallen Angels, Happy Together, and In the Mood for Love, so as to experience more of what this director/writer has to offer, hopefully some films with more engaging stories.
Rebecca Bett's review of Chungking Express.

Today there was also a significant technical workshop on studio and location lighting. We covered a lot, both technically and creatively, in a rather short space of time. In the next peer led session (on Monday) we will spend a sizeable chunk of our time going over these lights, answering questions, setting light-based challenges and so on. A technical post on that will follow.

How to make a changing bag.

A changing bag in photography refers to a light-proof portable container with 'sleeves' which allows for work with photosensitive materials when a darkroom isn't available, for instance loading film onto spools, or into a developing tank, retrieving damaged film, or even reloading pinhole cameras. These bags can be purchased for somewhere in the region of £10 to £30. Or you can go for the very cheap, very simple, DIY option.

You will need the following: 3 black bin bags, a fairly light-proof coat (stick it over your head and stand outside to check), sticky tape, rubber bands, and scissors.

The steps are:

• Put one bin bag inside another, and square them up nicely (a single bin bag is not particularly light-proof, but two together are).
• About half-way down the bags cut a slit each side, around 10cm long - these will be your arm holes, and be sure to cut through both bags.

• Use sticky tape to stick the two bags together at these openings - this will help to keep the holes in line. 

• Take your third bin bag, cut the bottom off and cut it in half. These two pieces will be used as sleeves.

• Insert the sleeves into the holes on each side, and tape from the inside (turn it inside-out to make this bit easier). Once turned back out, it should have a good shape to it.

• Place the coat into the bag 'head-first' and put the coat sleeves through the bin bag sleeves.

• The changing bag is now ready to use. Put the paper/film/camera in via the bottom, and then fold or scrunch it up and seal it with an elastic band.

A group of us went out with the bag to work on our street pinhole photography. Working with a changing bag involves a bit of fumbling, but with a bit of practice we were able to reload quite quickly and hence take several pinhole pictures in one outing, and no paper was fogged!

The other part of the day with the 'Working with Light' group, was spent discussing last week's inspiration film and lecture, followed by a quick workshop Q&A on using a light meter. Further technical assistance with pinhole work, exposure reading, lighting and so on, is scheduled for following weeks and also available on request. 

Working with Light - Week 2

Thursday 29th April

This session included a variety of activities all pertinent to our understanding and application of light - to understand it technically, and then to explore applying it creatively. We had a session with Wonathan in the studio with light meters and ambient lighting, doing some basic portraiture (hatchet lighting, silhouette, exposing for shadows, exposing for highlights). To recap when using a light meter:

• positioning is important - light/shadow can alter dramatically over a short distance, make sure you get close to your subject (if it's a person I always favour plonking it on their nose).
• likewise angle - the meter will read all the light falling into it from the area it is facing, hence it will most often be facing the camera (but not always, there's no rule here)
• the meter will always measure at Zone 5 i.e. give exposure settings such that the metered area will be exposed as a mid-grey tone, or in other words 'correctly' exposed. Zone 0 is complete black/shadow, Zone 10 is complete white/highlight. 
• the meters give precise aperture readings with increments within the f-stops. For example a reading of f16.9, or f16 and a full bar, pretty much means the next stop up - f22. 

We then had an exercise outside looking at natural light, observing its changing behaviour as we move in, through, and around a space. We experimented with a few shots, and this led us to think about image management - how are you going to frame a given subject? Are you going to move the subject within the light? Or alter the light? It's very important to note that there is no right answer to a well lit or 'good' photograph. Lighting will be taught as a technical skill, how it is used and applied is up to you. Keep your eyes open and take notice of the behaviour of light around you. You will start to predict how a given scene will be exposed in a camera, or how you make use of a certain light with a subject. This is pre-visualisation - understanding the difference between the eye and the camera, and as with anything it comes best with practice and experience.

Wikipedia has a good article on the zone system.

Playing with Light

This week's lecture looked at a range of practitioners' work where light is used as more of a defining feature, rather than a taken-for-granted element. Quite a lot of practitioners' work was shown, and hence a lot of ideas and potential inspiration passed on. I'm just going to pick out a few which stood out to me, and try to sum up the overall message of the lecture, I'm hoping to hear from other students of 'light defined' work which has inspired them. 

Anthony McCall's, and James Turrell's installation pieces encourage interaction and appreciation of light in a pre-designed space or environment. Shonathan referred to these works as 'Light as the subject'. James Turrell said:

"A lot of people come to art and they look at it - and this is one of the problems of contemporary art - they don't actually enter the realm the artist was involved in."

Anthony McCall - from his website.

Skyscape by James Turrell (video)

We then moved on to look at work which used 'Light as a Measurement of Time'. This began with Eadweard Muybridge's sequences of humans and animals in motion. His work effectively paves the way to the concept of video (moving image from numerous stills/frames a second), and other effects such as time-slice, and the famous bullet-time from The Matrix.

Eadweard Muybridge 

Harold Edgerton was one of the first to use high speed photography, precisely synchronised to capture a moving bullet - amongst other things. 

Harold Edgerton

Anton Giulio Bragaglia

Anton Giulio Bragaglia invented a process that he called 'photodynamism'. He was interested in portraying time and movement as an indivisible reality rather than segmenting or fracturing it into moments. This leads us quite nicely to Jonathan Shaw's work, which draws upon many of those mentioned above, and as he states on his Twitter bio - "I drill holes in cameras and pull them apart to make pictures which explore photography and time." A favourite piece of mine is Gallery 13, which was shot in the same gallery it was shown in, thereby exploring the viewers relationship to the work through their sense and awareness of the space in which it (and they) reside.

Jonathan Shaw - of the exhibition Crash

 

Jonathan Shaw - Gallery 13 from his website.

This finished off our lecture on 'Playing with Light'. A further link is to Michael Gondry's music video for the Rolling Stones - made entirely from stills.

Inspiration - Obsession

The final thing we did during the day was to watch John Waters' film Pecker: a light-hearted venture following the story of a happy-go-lucky obsessive photographer, and the consequences to his life when he makes it big on the art scene. I unfortunately missed the end of the film, and so would be grateful for other students to post their reviews/opinions on it.  

Next week Shonathan has asked us to stick up on the wall a sample of our work produced so far for this module. The aim I think is for everyone to share their experiences, ideas, inspirations, successes etc. to date, encouraging this attitude of shared learning. And hence we should aim to stick up absolutely everything we've been working on that's interesting, regardless of any fears we may have of it being scorned, or thought of as a 'poor' image. Our peer session on Wednesday will be a chance to prepare for this group critique. 

We'll also have a look at this week's portrait task - which as Wonathan put it - "is to return to your chosen street location, and investigate a character who exists within, or is involved with that space, by photographing them."