woensdag 24 november 2010
zondag 17 oktober 2010
Going to the dogs
Visited a park where dogs can play in order to take photo's of them. Found out something about human psychology and moving dogs. Coming soon.
FVS 30-09-10
Went out and played some candid camera on a rainy day. Hindered by autofocus issues, rain, and inexperience.
FVS 24-09-10
Taking portraits at 30 secs shutter time made me realise a few things, but more on that later.
My Street - a photographic review
The biggest assignment for the module was "a reportage about your street".
It so happens that I live in a small street, which is barely more than a glorified parking place, as it only has one entrance, 15 houses, and not much more use than justifying a separate address for houses that are well placed back from the busy road in front of it.
Enter the writers block, where I absolutely had no clue where to start, and was even further hindered by my visceral dislike of my surroundings.
The major ideas with which I toyed:
- a collage of all the houses and gardens, showing a pretty quiet neighbourhood, with almost exactly identical houses, and rather unimaginitive gardens.
I dropped the idea because it was too straightforward, and I'd need to add something to avoid people just thinking "so? and what is the point of this?"
- cheating slightly on the "my", take the street two blocks further, which has a primary school, and take a photo each hour on exactly the same place, to show the progress of the day and the light.
Activity in the street: fuck-all. Progress of the light: misty.
The first part made me drop the thing, the second was just adding insult to injury.
- Corner views. The houses are built in a row, joined to eachother, and it'd possibly make an interesting perspective to see the whole row stretch into the horizon, with minor differences for each row.
Dropped it as it'd be about the whole neighbourhood, and while possibly interesting for an autist with asperger's it'd be kinda boring for a rather more normal viewing public.
- Follow the light. A bit of a "journey" at night, where you follow a strong light through the street, ending up at some mysterious place between the bushes.
Probably fascinating in actual dark. You know. What happens when there isn't a strong light source placed every 20 meters, fixed on a 10m pole.
No idea what kind of light would be interesting enough to follow in those conditions.
- An Ant's Life. A game of "change the perspective", and make a series of how an ant would see the street, from his point of view.
Dropped the actual ants view as I can't physically get my camera that low, but I retained the idea, and incorporated my cats, as they also have a massively different perspective on the street, due to their (lack of) height, and their tendency to climb in things.
It so happens that I live in a small street, which is barely more than a glorified parking place, as it only has one entrance, 15 houses, and not much more use than justifying a separate address for houses that are well placed back from the busy road in front of it.
Enter the writers block, where I absolutely had no clue where to start, and was even further hindered by my visceral dislike of my surroundings.
The major ideas with which I toyed:
- a collage of all the houses and gardens, showing a pretty quiet neighbourhood, with almost exactly identical houses, and rather unimaginitive gardens.
I dropped the idea because it was too straightforward, and I'd need to add something to avoid people just thinking "so? and what is the point of this?"
- cheating slightly on the "my", take the street two blocks further, which has a primary school, and take a photo each hour on exactly the same place, to show the progress of the day and the light.
Activity in the street: fuck-all. Progress of the light: misty.
The first part made me drop the thing, the second was just adding insult to injury.
- Corner views. The houses are built in a row, joined to eachother, and it'd possibly make an interesting perspective to see the whole row stretch into the horizon, with minor differences for each row.
Dropped it as it'd be about the whole neighbourhood, and while possibly interesting for an autist with asperger's it'd be kinda boring for a rather more normal viewing public.
- Follow the light. A bit of a "journey" at night, where you follow a strong light through the street, ending up at some mysterious place between the bushes.
Probably fascinating in actual dark. You know. What happens when there isn't a strong light source placed every 20 meters, fixed on a 10m pole.
No idea what kind of light would be interesting enough to follow in those conditions.
- An Ant's Life. A game of "change the perspective", and make a series of how an ant would see the street, from his point of view.
Dropped the actual ants view as I can't physically get my camera that low, but I retained the idea, and incorporated my cats, as they also have a massively different perspective on the street, due to their (lack of) height, and their tendency to climb in things.
Reconstruction of a photo
Another assignment was the careful reconstruction of a photo, in order to learn to look at light and shadows to determine how photo's are taken.
My first choice was this photo, a slightly mysterious photo of a youth in St. Petersburg, smoking inside some sort of concrete structure.
I decided against it as after some discussion in class we still couldn't figure out what that bright "beam" was on the right hand side of the photo.
Second option:
Picasso, as photographed by Irving Penn. Rather distinctive use of light and shadow, which would be quite suitable for the excercise, as they defined enough to judge whether I'd get the final picture exactly right.
As model I asked a friend, even though he sadly didn't have the pronounced wrinkles (yet). In my opinion the wrinkles were of less importance than having a model that I could work with easily.
The hat was supplied by him, as he by chance actually had one that looked like it.
I determined that there had been a single light source, of what probably was sunlight, above and behind the object. In order to get the fall correct I put Boy (the model) on a desk chair that could rotate, told him to sit perfectly still, and rotated the chair until I was perfectly happy with the fall of the light and the shadow.
My only misgivings are a double irony: I couldn't find a picture on the internet of sufficient quality and size to show the detail that a photo book told me the original photo had. This did hide though that the original photo actually does show detail in the dark side of the face, and I in retrospect should've used some reflector to get a little, little bit of light on the dark side.
Postprocessing got a bit of criticism as to whether the photo was perfectly sharp (a full second shutter time), which lead to some heavy sharpening performed by Else.
I decided against it as after some discussion in class we still couldn't figure out what that bright "beam" was on the right hand side of the photo.
Second option:
As model I asked a friend, even though he sadly didn't have the pronounced wrinkles (yet). In my opinion the wrinkles were of less importance than having a model that I could work with easily.
The hat was supplied by him, as he by chance actually had one that looked like it.
My only misgivings are a double irony: I couldn't find a picture on the internet of sufficient quality and size to show the detail that a photo book told me the original photo had. This did hide though that the original photo actually does show detail in the dark side of the face, and I in retrospect should've used some reflector to get a little, little bit of light on the dark side.
Postprocessing got a bit of criticism as to whether the photo was perfectly sharp (a full second shutter time), which lead to some heavy sharpening performed by Else.
Portrait of a loved one
One of the assignments for the module was "Portrait of a loved one". Just went and picked my uncle for that one.
Summer definitively was over already, and had taken the bright midday lighting with it. As I had no flash at my disposal I was working with speeds of approx. 1/30-1/60, which lead to a good many of the photo's being slightly unfocused.
I had decided on the general surroundings of the portrait beforehand, as I know my uncle quite well, and didn't need to observe him first in order to see what side I needed to show of him. It would be either him with his piano, or with the massive gong he acquired a few weeks before, and which he would play ever so softly.
In the decision-making process beforehand I already had decided on that I wanted his photo to be like him: gentle and introverted.
In order to achieve this I kept his face a bit dark and/or hidden, and didn't have him looking in the camera.
I picked the photo with the gong in the end, mainly because it's the clearest, and partially because that was the advice of Else as well, and she'd be the one judging the photo's in the end.
Summer definitively was over already, and had taken the bright midday lighting with it. As I had no flash at my disposal I was working with speeds of approx. 1/30-1/60, which lead to a good many of the photo's being slightly unfocused.
I had decided on the general surroundings of the portrait beforehand, as I know my uncle quite well, and didn't need to observe him first in order to see what side I needed to show of him. It would be either him with his piano, or with the massive gong he acquired a few weeks before, and which he would play ever so softly.
In order to achieve this I kept his face a bit dark and/or hidden, and didn't have him looking in the camera.
I picked the photo with the gong in the end, mainly because it's the clearest, and partially because that was the advice of Else as well, and she'd be the one judging the photo's in the end.
Cars at night
Went out to the highway, and took a bunch of photo's as lowly illuminated cars flashed by. Article soon.
Photographing movement
Another week, another homework assignment. This time: movement.
12 photo's, 2 of each style to depict movement in a certain way. Things like freezing movement, having a blurry subject, having a blurry background, etc.
Like most photo's made around this time, the main excercise for me was not to get a specific thing like freezing movement in order, but to sort out the big flaws like proper contrast, focus, and overall lighting.
And of course train the good ol' creativity in duking out what to go for in the first place =)
>>Link to the album<<
12 photo's, 2 of each style to depict movement in a certain way. Things like freezing movement, having a blurry subject, having a blurry background, etc.
Like most photo's made around this time, the main excercise for me was not to get a specific thing like freezing movement in order, but to sort out the big flaws like proper contrast, focus, and overall lighting.
And of course train the good ol' creativity in duking out what to go for in the first place =)
>>Link to the album<<
Night photography
In this photo one of the elements that make it much better is the flammable icon on the can of spraypaint. However, this was a lucky accident in putting down the can, as I never paid attention to what text / layout would be visible. Next time better pay attention to these details, as after all it's details I'm shooting.
Experiments with unfocusing and movement.
During the course of making photo's for a homework assignment I started some experiments with focus and movement. In particular: how I could make interesting images while technically having screwed over my photo.
I liked the softer effect that it caused in the left photo, which made it resemble a painting. However, the second experiment produced a bit more mixed result, as it quite quickly started bordering on the inrecognisable. Interesting however, was that the moving effect looks quite spooky, and possibly can be used for some sort of horror photo. Probably is used for it already.
1 second shutter time, and a walking person down the same dirt road, not 5 yard away from the last two photo's. Personally I doubt whether anyone who doesn't know what is depicted can recognise it, and I don't like that.
17-9-10
In this particular photo I could've put much more emphasis on the people in it, simply by focusing them, and being able to make their clothes more vivid against the gray-ish surroundings.
FVS 16-9-10
Movement. So were sent out to capture movement. Freeze it. Blur it.
First note: if you want to capture moving cars, then don't pick a traffic jam.
Secondly: an urban environment is something we're so familiar with that you'll need to make it more interesting somehow, as it quite quickly looks like the illustrations of a driving test.
Thirdly: learn to anticipate movement, as otherwise you'll never get it on your photo.
Secondly: an urban environment is something we're so familiar with that you'll need to make it more interesting somehow, as it quite quickly looks like the illustrations of a driving test.
Thirdly: learn to anticipate movement, as otherwise you'll never get it on your photo.
FVS 10-09-10
Subtler = better here.
FVS 9-9-10
Our first lesson. An introduction to the school, a documentary on Cartier-Bresson, and a simple excercise to go and shoot some pics.
Looking at the photo's afterwards made me make a mental note: change perspective more often, and look at things from a different side before you take a photo. That and that I clearly needed a lot more experience in order to easily use my camera to get what I want out of a scene.
Not my best photo, but one which I think shows that my taking of photo's needs to look more natural. This feels a bit stilted and odd.
Looking at the photo's afterwards made me make a mental note: change perspective more often, and look at things from a different side before you take a photo. That and that I clearly needed a lot more experience in order to easily use my camera to get what I want out of a scene.
Not my best photo, but one which I think shows that my taking of photo's needs to look more natural. This feels a bit stilted and odd.
maandag 4 oktober 2010
And in the beginning there was.... A Blog
So far I've kept myself rather distanced from this strange hobby of sharing your thoughts with complete strangers, who in all likelihood don't really care, or even know. However, the perspective has just shifted oh so slightly with my new study, and the need to keep some notes on what I'm doing, and learning.
If you happen to just have stumbled across this blog: I'm always interested in criticism, as long as it reaches certain standards of grammar, interpunction, and thoughtfulness.
If you happen to just have stumbled across this blog: I'm always interested in criticism, as long as it reaches certain standards of grammar, interpunction, and thoughtfulness.
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