Thoughts on my personal project

I have been giving some thought to my personal project over the last few days and put together a short brief and some preliminary ideas.

The assignment

To create a series of 10-12 images from a theme of my choice applying what I have learned from this course. 

My personal brief

To date my assignments have been based on real objects/subjects – things that we can see.  I have set myself the challenge of working on a theme that cannot be shown directly but can be illustrated through the use of symbols and creative illustrative techniques.  I feel this will give me a good opportunity to utilise what I have learnt on the course giving me a greater creative freedom to explore a particular theme.

I have chosen the theme ‘time’ for this project.   I want to produce a series of images that capture and illustrate the essence of time, its effects, passage and cyclical nature.  Time is ever flowing but we are often unaware and oblivious to this.  The times when we become aware of the passage of time is when we haven’t seen someone for a long time and we see how they have aged or changed.  I also would like to explore how we tend to represent time and try to contain it – hours, days, months, seasons and years. 

I would like to look at what time means to me personally and show this in my images. 

Research

As part of my research and a basic starting point I have made a list of all items/symbols we would associate with time. 

General

• ·         Clocks – hands on clock, digital clock
• ·         Hourglass
• ·         Calendars, diaries and schedules
• ·         Decay
• ·         Graveyards
• ·         Newspapers
• ·         Passing of time, history

     Contrasts

• ·         Old and new
• ·         Young and old
• ·         Day and night

Camera specific

• ·         Shutter speed – extrusive time, frozen time,  still time, long exposures
• ·         Photographs are static how do you capture the flow of time?
• ·         Opaque and transparent – while some pictures draw you in others prevent you from moving into the frame
• ·         Colour V monochrome

Shoot specific

• ·         Street photography – capturing fleeting moments
• ·         Still life/studio work
• ·         Landscapes
• ·         Day and night
• ·         Times of day, year
• ·         Weather
• ·         Planned and unplanned shoots

As part of my research I plan to carry out a number of recces for planned shoots, identify possible still life compositions and undertake some random street shots where appropriate.  

Presentation

I believe presentation will contribute to this piece of work.  I have seen from the exhibitions I have been to the effect of colour and black and white prints together with the size of prints.  I would like to see how I might incorporate this into my work. 

I would also like to consider the use of dyptychs. 

Ethics

In relation to ethics, I believe that working with the time theme will present a few ethical dilemmas with regard to representation and will therefore help me identify where my own ethical boundaries lie.  It will not be a case of shooting a subject but looking at a concept and visually portraying it in a variety of ways. 

Exercise: Alteration

For this exercise I had to take an image and remove a subject from the picture.

I chose this image of a gravestone.

I think the image would look a lot better without the distracting gravestone in the background.

Before

After

I used the clone stamp tool to remove the distracting headstone in the background.  I think although this alters the picture it enhances it.  

Experimenting with HDR

I have never really played around with HDR in my images preferring to go for a more natural looking.  However, I thought I would give it a try to see what my image from the previous exercise would like in HDR.

This first image was converted to HDR using the Photorealistic preset.  I don't think it looks too realistic myself, the blues in the sky are somewhat unnatural.

Using the More saturated setting in the Presets this looks very unrealistic.  

I'm not quite sure where I stand with the surreal effects of an HDR image. Perhaps it works better for some images that others. Perhaps it's something I should experiment with some more.  

Exercise: Addition

For this exercise I had to look at taking a landscape picture and changing the appearance of the sky.

From a shooting perspective I used a tripod to take a series of images at different exposures with a view to producing two images - one with the sky exposed correctly and the other exposed for the land.

For the land exposure I used the average meter reading from the camera.  For the sky I under-exposed by a stop.

Exposed as per the average meter reading

One stop under-exposed

Photograph adjusted in PS using the eraser tool.  

Another way of changing the sky is to use the Magic Wand tool to select the sky using the lasso tool where necessary to include or deselect elements accordingly.  Once the selection has been made you can the save it and delete the sky from the upper image.  This will leave you with a similar image to the one above.  However, you have more control over the image selection using the Magic Wand tool.  It is also a quicker way of achieving the result.

Image adjusted using the magic wand tool.

Adding a new sky to the image

There is also the option to add a different sky to the image above.  This too is intervention but unlike above it it not at legitimate.  You are taking two images one with a better sky and adding that to your landscape.  Above you are taking two images of the exact same scene which capture the full range of brightness in the image.  This seems more like a natural process.  

With sky replaced

I'm not so sure that this works.  Perhaps I would need a sky with more white in it or even a brighter sky.  Maybe because I know the sky does not belong to the image I know that it is not right.  The reflection of the clouds is not mirrored in the water correctly.  

I don't think that replacing the sky is something that I would ever really want to do with my photographs.  I feel that it is a step too far.  

Exercise: Enhancement

This exercise involves making changes that many would say go beyond reality.

I had to photograph a close up head and shoulders portrait in natural lighting for this exercise.

The first selection is basic dodging where I have to draw attention to the face by adjusting the brightness and contrast.

The second selection and adjustment is of the eyes - by exaggerating the colour of the iris by increasing saturation and brightness.

And then by using the hue.

This is the original picture.

Original 

With brightness and contrast increased.  This brings out more definition in the face but the difference is subtle. 

The difference between the original and the image that has been adjusted is very subtle and can be seen close up.  I think that the difference would be less subtle if the subject was more in the shade.

Here is an example of the subject shot in deeper shade.

Original

With the brightness and contrast adjusted. 

The second image shows the effects of the adjustment more.  I think both look natural and the adjustments enhance the image.  

In this image the colour of the iris has been exaggerated using brightness and saturation.  Personally I think this looks fake.  The eyes stand out and look slightly odd.  

The colour of the eyes here have been changed using hue.  Again they don't look natural to me.  

I feel that simple dodging and burning techniques produce natural results therefore I would see them as acceptable.  However, when you start changing the colour of the eyes the image starts to look tampered with.  

In saying that there are instances where I would consider adjusting the colour of the eyes.  If you are looking for a creative effect with a high key black and white image colour in the eyes however unnatural looking would be interesting.  The very fact that the image is black and white makes it unnatural as it is not the way our eyes see what is in front of us.  

Burtynsky's OIL

Last week I was able to visit Burtynsky’s OIL exhibition at the Photographer’s Gallery in London.  After reading the reviews, I was keen to see this body of work and see for myself what all the excitement was about. 

When I thought about the word oil and what this exhibition could possibly be about I conjured up images of money, wealth, deserts, cars, greed and I suppose lastly the effect the oil industry has on our planet.

 

However, I did some preliminary research and found the themes of the exhibition included:

• ·         The industrialisation of land
• ·         Photography as a medium for environmental issues
• ·         The visual language of scale, perspective and detail

For over 12 years Edward Burtynsky has travelled the world documenting oil extraction, refinement and its effects.  The exhibition OIL shows a selection of work from these travels including:

• ·         Extraction and Refinement
• ·         Transportation and Motor Culture
• ·         The End of Oil

“In 1997, it occurred to me that all the vast man-altered landscapes I had perused for over 20 years had been made possible by the discovery of oil and the progress occasioned by the internal combustion engine.  Over the next 12 years I researched and photographed the largest oil fields I could find.  I went on to make images of refineries, freeways interchanges, automobile plants and the scrap industry resulting from the recycling of cars.  I began to look at motor culture, where vast tribes come together with vehicles as the main attraction”.  Edward Burtynsky

As part of the research I listened to his talk (link below) where he describes himself as a fine art photographer who struggled to get away from the trap of the ‘calendar art’ type landscape images.  It was by accident after taking a wrong turn and getting lost that he came upon an open coal mine which was a landscape “totally surreal, transformed by man.”  It was then that he discovered that the two could work together – the landscape and man’s transformation and industrialisation of the landscape and this could be his lifetimes work.    

http://www.ted.com/talks/edward_burtynsky_on_manufactured_landscapes.html

Extraction and Refinement and The End of Oil contain images of places that are often remote and not known to us.  They are vast landscapes that are scarred by the extraction of oil: oil fields, refineries and the urban sprawl invading our natural landscapes.    

Although his images show the horror of man's influence or invasion of his natural landscape there is also a beauty in his imagery.  They are attractive and repulsive in almost equal measure. The use of a large format camera brings out the detail in his images and works well with his use of scale.  

The beauty and the horror also works to highlight the contradiction of man wanting all the trappings of the good life despite the consequences of that on our landscape.  In his images we see first hand what we are usually shielded from - the processes required to give us the materialism we crave.  We can see first hand the destruction of our landscape which ensures we have oil for our cars.

Transportation and Motor Culture is a series of work that sets out to depict man's dependence on motor vehicles not just for work but also for recreational purposes.  As someone who is not that interested in cars I found this particularly stimulating.  The land speed trials starting line in Utah, Talladega Speedway and the rows of Harleys at the Kiss concert are a sad reminder of man's obsession with the motor vehicle and also are dependence on oil.  

Burtynsky draws attention to the coming end of oil as we face its rising cost which is having a huge impact on us now but also the dwindling supplies and availability.  

From a photographic point of view, Burtynsky uses large format cameras to capture every detail in his images.  This can be seen in his work on the interiors of oil refineries and also the vast landscapes.  

His large scale prints add impact to the themes in OIL with some work presented as diptychs to highlight the vastness of the landscapes.  

As someone who is interested in landscape photography and also industrialisation of the landscape I found the birds-eye view Burtynsky's images very appealing.  However, I'm not sure when the day will come where I'll be able to utilise helicopters and cranes in my work!

Exercise: Improvement or interpretation?

For this exercise I had to look at creating the old darkroom techniques of dodging and burning digitally.  Although there are a few ways in which you can do this, I chose to use the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom as I felt it gave me personally more accurate selections and control over the image.  I think the results were more realistic looking too compared to what I would achieve in Photoshop.  This probably has more of a bearing on my Photoshop skills than the software itself.

The before image.  

And after dodging and burning

I felt that the bookshelf in the background was rather distracting and took away from the subject in this picture.  I adjusted the exposure to darken the image and then used the Adjustment brush to make local exposure adjustments to the subject.  In addition I added a blur effect to the background to give a lens blur effect.   

The enhancements of this image are realistic in the sense that it is just the lighting effect that has been altered. This draws the viewer's attention to the subject as he stands out more from the background.

I feel that there are limits with this type of enhancement which would be reached once the lighting effect looked odd and not in any way realistic.  The additional blur effect affects the depth of field naturally.  Had I used a wider aperture when I shot the image I would have achieved that result.

Perhaps the limit is reached when you know that the alterations/enhancements you have made could not be achieved in camera at the time of shooting.