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.
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