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."