My RSS Feed

Quick quote...

Rob — 2012-05-10T07:27:13+01:00

Well, I thought it pretty much summed up what has happened with the portfolio - I thought it would be one thing, but it has ended up being whatever it is, which is different. Anyway - off to see the Ballen expo in Manchester in a few hours, so I’d best be getting ready. ...Ok, he was talking about book cover design, but the same can be said of images, depending on their purpose.

Further tweaks

Rob — 2012-05-07T08:55:15+01:00

There is one last option I haven’t tried yet, and that’s the A3 Canon printer in the office - it’s an older 8 colour printer and I think that it uses dye inks although I’m not 100% sure and can’t see anything in a quick Google search. I’ve discarded the idea of having the prints done by Print Space as I would need it double sided - I’ve not spoken to them but it doesn’t appear on their website, or at least I’ve not seen it on their website… I might also resurrect the idea of the tablet (i.e. iPad) app, it depends if I can find a way of producing one that’s fairly straight forward and gives something more than a pdf - I’ll delve deeper into the capabilities of InDesign for this and see if it’s there.

Another day...

Rob — 2012-05-04T17:43:41+01:00

I’ve massaged the sequence of images again, and I think I’m getting closer to something that I’m happy with as it flows more with the idea I have in my head. ... This in itself will be a struggle as I don’t want it to sound pretentious, but then again I don’t want it to sound too casual or flippant. ...I’ve also made a paper copy at the size that I’m aiming for book to be, although this isn’t set in stone by any stretch of the imagination.

Layout

Rob — 2012-04-28T12:08:10+01:00

Clive’s recommendation of the film Radio On was right on the mark, an undeniably British film with its roots firmly in the past yet reaching for the present as it was - Dirk Bogarde would not have been out of place to my mind, although the music was Eno inspired synth-pop and post-punk for the most part. ...This is what was coming across to Clive with my photographs, although I hadn’t quite picked up on that as I was still looking to follow through on the proposal put forward in the first place. ...One that particularly strikes me is the pairing of the empty seats and the Morris dancers; I had intended to show some form of contrast between the emptiness and the vibrancy of the two photographs, but on the one-hand they feel disjointed and I’ll possibly drop the Morris dancers, or at least move it elsewhere.

Tutor chat

Rob — 2012-04-20T15:55:43+01:00

I looked at the works of Ravelious and others here, and whilst I was never going to go out and photograph farmers at work, I was working with the impression that popping over to a farmer’s market or an agricultural show would tick the required boxes and I’d become one of them (a local, not a farmer), rather than some bloke from the seaside who happens to live in the country. ...I guess Clive can be a little more straight forward in the way he says things - rather than guide me to make a self discovery, he came out and said it, but it will have been pretty obvious already I’d made the discovery anyway: I started this portfolio as effectively an outsider, and it’s how I’ll be finishing it - I’ve not found that magic way of integrating, perhaps due to the fact that I actually spend more time in other locations for work, perhaps because I wouldn’t have integrated anyway. ...I guess this frustration and feeling of being lost is more apparent in some images, but it’s also pretty obvious from the selected edits I guess - the pool of images provided in the assignments has a mix of “me” and what I think people want to see.

Hello Clive

Rob — 2012-04-14T10:41:27+01:00

With Clive’s arrival on the scene (although I know he’s always been around), I’m hopefully going to tap back into where I probably should have been going in the first place. Over the months this project has changed, and I know it was always going to develop, but ever since being encouraged to move in a certain direction I’ve felt uneasy, and I’ve said it on here a number of times. ... Much of what he has said since then has helped though, and I’m moving to what I feel is nearer to what I would want to do, and his input has been extremely useful, even if it was only to highlight to me what I really already knew - self discovery is very important.

Tutor change 2...

Rob — 2012-04-01T07:54:29+01:00

Just a quick post before starting to do todays work on the house, I’ll be getting my second new tutor for this module. ...That’s it for now - I’ll likely be fairly quiet on here for a week or two - kitchen work starts Monday and I’ve a huge amount of prep to do before I leave for work at 6am tomorrow. When I get back Thursday night, my father-in-law will have arrived for Easter, and I guess there will be another major task to do in moving everything back into the new kitchen, assuming it’s finished of course...

Early trial

Rob — 2012-03-31T10:07:27+01:00

I certainly favour portrait or square over landscape ones anyway, even though I very rarely shoot in a portrait format - all the photographs taken in YoP are landscape, even if taken with the Haselblad, I’ve cropped them for continuity ( in hindsight, it might have been nice to shoot all images square ). ...The band could also act as a background for using white text for any caption that might be added, even if it is just a page/plate number for indexing ( top example ), rather than the simple captions I would consider ( below ). ...I will probably stick to this sort of scale though ( actual point size would vary depending on the size of the page ) - anything larger may come across as overly “graphic” which I’m not sure would be appropriate for the images.

Layouts

Rob — 2012-03-30T18:06:16+01:00

This second option is a little unusual for Western viewers in that the photographs are rotated the opposite way round to what I’d expect - this is a Japanese book, reading from right to left though, i.e. what we might normally consider the back cover is the front cover. ...The images are a mix of orientations, with the portrait images printed full bleed, and the landscape ones being printed with top/bottom borders only, when not going across the double page. ...The book is 22x22cm and has the photographs mounted centrally in each page, and as a result the images do feel a little low - this is an odd one for me as I have presented the images for assignment in this way, and I’ve heard it said that it’s now fairly normal ( was that in No plastic sleeves or Exhibiting photography?

Thoughts of layout

Rob — 2012-03-30T15:22:59+01:00

Sewn signatures uses bigger sheets folded in half, and then there’s French folds as used in two of my favourite books from last year - Kawauchi’s Illuminance and Watabe’s A criminal investigation. ...Full bleed was certainly popular in the Provoke era of Japanese photo books (and in others - it’s not unique to the likes of Moriyama), but white borders (or I believe “margins” in layout parlance) is perhaps a more traditional style, and one certainly promoted by John Szarkowski. ...I’ll leave it at that for now, and I’m off to make some notes on some of the photo books I have on my shelves - how have they been put together and which ones work best...

Printing

Rob — 2012-03-24T17:43:10+00:00

However, the final output of the portfolio is to be a book of images and for this I ideally wanted a matte paper to give a different character to the book itself. ...In the end, I’ve created another new ICC profile using the ColorMunki (which decided not to work mid-process, then worked intermittently for a while), then fine tuned that ICC using a further custom colour cart created by the ColorMunki software using the image I wanted to print and finally, tweaking based on the finished printed picture. ...I’ve subsequently ordered a double sided lustre paper which I will try, but that then means that the book would not be how I wanted it.

Random thoughts on Land Matters

Rob — 2012-03-16T16:03:37+00:00

Part of my thinking on the YOP project is how the rural farming heritage is perhaps under threat in the Ribble Valley, primarily from commuters like myself thinning down the farming base, but I suppose there is also how that rural tradition fights back, making the heritage part of the community through what Gary Penny described in our conversation as the “rural theme park” that the agricultural shows really are. I hadn’t thought of them quite in this manner, but of course, that’s because I’m an interloper from the post-modern nightmare that is Blackpool… (having said that, my cousin’s children went to school a couple of miles away from where I now live, so there is a family connection to the area). ...Anyway, I’m going to leave it at that for now, although I will come back to the book - there’s many more ideas I need to formulate from what I have read, but if I go much further, the blog entry will become far too heavy going.

User error…?

Rob — 2012-03-15T12:56:13+00:00

I only ran through the test once each with 2 lenses, and not all shutter speeds were exercised (notably the slower ones), but the images all sported the same exposure, there were no images overexposed to indicate that the shutter was sticking, although on 120mm lens, the slowest speed (1/2s) did sound like it was taking far longer than expected, but it was all consistent - well, pretty close to being consistent. ...With my older Hasselblad with the 80mm (now being cared for by Yiann), I never had this problem, but then again I only used film which has a wider latitude, perhaps it’s the sensor that doesn’t have the dynamic range that I’ve become accustomed to. ... One other thing that has crossed my mind is that I always shoot with 1/3 to 1/2 stop of underexposure with any camera with TTL metering (unless shooting snow, etc.) - I guess I need to adopt that strategy with the Hassie too, I’m still getting used to her really and need to adapt to her idiosyncrasies.

Still learning way of the 'Blad

Rob — 2012-03-01T16:13:59+00:00

I ventured out around my local area this morning with my little Fuji and my Hasselblad with no firm plans in my mind, just a case of seeing how things happened when shooting MF. ...I tried to shoot in a different way, and some of the photographs have captured this, but I very soon seemed to come back to what I seemed to be doing before. ...I’m beginning to wonder if it’s the iPhone app that was wrong after the last couple of days shooting using the Sekonic light meter resulted in photographs that also seemed incorrectly exposed.

RAW support

Rob — 2012-02-11T17:32:43+00:00

Well, I’ve finally gotten around to doing it - I’ve downloaded RAW support for the Fuji through Photoshop (still not available through Aperture though, and maybe it never will be) and also the latest firmware for the camera to see if it helps with my opinion of it. The RAW support (as opposed to the RAW converter) certainly helps, and I’ll need to reprocess a number of images I suppose - this is one of the photographsI took today - jpg to the top and RAW file to the bottom, both with similar processing applied. Of course, there’s a case for the settings in the jpg file being the cause of the colours, so inherently it’s down to user error in terms of colour, etc.

New toy

Rob — 2012-02-02T20:16:38+00:00

I also went and bought a new body and 2 new lenses as well, but I figure some of my older stuff will go to help pay for it (probably a lens, a body, a polaroid back and 2 film backs… ) ...Rather than setting something up, I just used a section of my bookshelf as the subject and photographed it from the same spot, adjusting the tripod height and focal length to make sure the image covered the same height - the Fuji was set to square format, the 5Dmk2 was cropped afterwards. ...There will be a little shake in the Hasselblad image, I’ve not got a cable release and I wasn’t using any lighting other than natural daylight, so the shutter action will be apparent.

Be free...

Rob — 2012-01-29T11:12:12+00:00

Some were just a little to cliched, too realist in their approach for my liking, but I had felt compelled to capture them (the Union Flag on the castle, for example). ...I suppose one thing in the back of my mind has been the “presence” of Martin Parr, and a few other contemporary British photographers for that matter. ... However, I’ve just gotten hold of One Day, a collection of books by 10 different photographers, and Parr’s entry in that feels very different to what I would normally expect.

Ansel does street

Rob — 2012-01-28T09:41:51+00:00

I’ve just come across this via Twitter: http://flavorwire.com/253506/ansel-adams-los-angeles No particular comment other than to say it’s interesting to see Adams do something other than his famous landscapes.

Swarthmoor

Rob — 2012-01-26T09:21:31+00:00

Whilst I’ve been working up in Barrow in Cumbria, I’ve been living in a place called Swarthmoor. There’s really not much to do there, but occasionally I walk the short distance to Ulverston. This week I took my little Fuji with me - previously it’s been a film camera, but I’ve not had the film developed yet, I’m only 1/3 way through it.

More Believing is Seeing

Rob — 2012-01-28T09:04:29+00:00

At the time, there was a drought in North Dakota, and a couple of images were used that caused a bit of a furore - one showed cows grazing outside the state capitol, inferring that they had been brought there because of the drought conditions, when in fact they regularly grazed there. ...Perhaps a generic photograph of beach pollution doesn’t quite cut the mustard, even if it is pretty non-specific with regards to location (the tower at Blackpool isn’t visible… ). I would like to point out at this stage that I never made any claims to this having been taken in America, and I didn’t pose the beer can either...

Believing is Seeing

Rob — 2012-01-19T17:38:59+00:00

Part of this is perhaps because he writes in a clear yet interesting manner; he doesn’t hide behind difficult words in putting forward his thoughts and findings, a pleasant change from the very different style of the likes of Derrida and Barthes, the latter having clear links to what has been said (I gave up on Derrida because it was too obscure for me, so I can’t comment on that). ...Morris looked at the history behind the photographs after reading Sontag and found that there is actually no indications as to which order the photographs were taken in, Sontag had taken as fact a supposition tabled earlier by another writer, Ulrich Keller, and it became apparent that this writer was not a fan of Fenton… ...Perhaps the anonymity of the Internet will help some say what they want, but then again there’s more to go against, and if you think your opinion matters… Yes, filtering out the good from the bad is getting harder, both in terms of the photographs themselves and in terms of meaningful interpretation of them.

Captions (again)

Rob — 2012-01-16T05:51:50+00:00

It’s an issue that tends to divide photographers — there are those who believe an image should speak for itself, and others who agree that text/commentary can assist the reading of photographs without detracting from the power of the image. ...I tend to be in the camp which has some sort of additional text – whether this accompanies the image or is as an appendix – or at least some sort of explanation from author about the image. ... People will form their own opinions/interpretations but I think it is useful to have access somewhere to the author thoughts about the image so that opinions/interpretations can be made in light of this rather than without this information.

Land matters

Rob — 2012-01-08T09:50:52+00:00

I’m merrily working my way through Liz Wells’ “Land matters” at the moment, skipping out the bits on American photography for the time being. There’s plenty of things to trigger further thought, and I will be returning to it on the blog in due course to try and communicate how reading it might have both influenced and made sense of my direction with the landscape portion of the portfolio…

To caption, or not...?

Rob — 2011-12-26T10:14:40+00:00

Whilst I’ve been trying to select the first batch of images for the portfolio, I’ve been discussing them with my partner in terms of how they work together, how some will drop out and be replaced later and how the final intention is to produce a book. ...James Ravilious, An English eye : a photograph on each side of the double page spread, with numbered captions accompanying each image, such as “Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, 1995” or “Doctor Cramp as Father Christmas, Christmas Day, Torrington Cottage Hospital, devon, 1976”. ...As an alternative I might provide a map with page numbers “pinned” to it for where the photographs where taken - I’ve seen this a few times now and found it quite effective.

Tanka

Rob — 2011-12-17T11:30:28+00:00

We are constantly being subjected to so many sensations, coming from both within and outside ourselves, that we forget them soon after they occur, or even if we remember them for a little while, we end up never once in our whole lives expressing them… ...Firstly, the open declaration that we feel and forget so much without truly considering it, which is especially true with the mass-media explosion that is literally streamed into our consciousness through TV, the Internet and all those other streams of consciousness. ...The rest of the introduction, and the photography that follows, is equally interesting, but I will leave it for now, other than to say he sums up with something I would love to use in my essay on Japanese photography.

Oslo...

Rob — 2011-12-09T18:14:48+00:00

The majority of the photographs I took were on the memory card I’ve lost, with a mere handful from my iPhone and from the second memory card in the Fuji - most of which were taken at night, and it’s not done too well to be honest. Yeah, I get the distinct feeling that I’ve lost the best of the images, although of course, having not looked at them on a big screen (and I did have the opportunity to put them on a laptop, which I passed on - lesson duly learnt), they may have been pretty shoddy anyway. ...OK, I’ve lost circa 400 images I guess, and maybe there would have been something on there that I was happy with, but there’s a feeling of inadequacy in my photography that I just can’t shake at the moment.

Some random thoughts...

Rob — 2011-12-07T19:51:42+00:00

There were a few comments on the photography side of thing though, notably about the addition of the video aspect and a question as to whether it could be something to be incorporated into the portfolio (the idea of multimedia, rather than the specific video). ...There have already been a few interesting points made in the few pages I’ve read though, and something she has said echoes with Jose’s notes on my proposal, and that’s about a”sense of place”. ...Oh, and one last note - Kawauchi Rinko is up for the Deutsche Börse - Illuminance is a wonderful book, and I really must make some notes, if I haven’t already (I’ve still not managed to migrate all of my blog, or sort out the commenting side of things).

Little Fuji X10

Rob — 2011-11-20T08:42:57+00:00

There’s differences in contrast, colour and what have you, all because of the in camera jpg processing - crops will be slightly different too as I had set up the camera to 3:2, which of course just applies to the jpg file, the raw comes out at native 4:3 format, so I’ve cropped to the same general setting. ...Noise has been handled well enough in the JPG file (I was shooting at ISO400), not so in the RAW, but then again I didn’t apply any noise reduction to that file. ...As I mentioned, what will no doubt have to happen is that my processing routine changes to compensate for the camera, which is normal I guess, so these images will need to be reworked at some point, should I decide to go forward with them.

The end of photography…?

Rob — 2011-11-18T08:36:23+00:00

In an article written by John Szarkowski and printed in Creative Camera in 1969 (Photography and the mass media), he describes how the role of the photographer has shifted from being the creator and editor of the images to being more of a journeyman in the image making process as the editor took more control of what was to be shown, and how. ...Sometimes there can be such graphic simplicity that there is no hook, it has to be searched for, and I think this is the case with the Gursky, although this doesn’t mean I think it is actually worth the price tag it fetched... ...There appears to be a fine line “good” and “bad” sometimes, and I suppose this will continue to blur with the continued proliferation of photographic image making with the masses, or should that be with the continued convergence of technologies meaning that cameras are not just cameras, they’re phones and games consoles and whatever happens next - you can always have a camera with you and be ready to take another image, the good is buried under tons of the bad?

Billingham's Landscape

Rob — 2011-11-04T08:34:13+00:00

I’ve had Richard Billingham’s book of landscape photography ( Landscapes 2001-2003) for a while now, but I’ve come back to it in preparation for the landscape section of the YOP portfolio. ...The rest of the passage doesn’t really make it clear to me what this is meant to mean, a hint coming at the end with a comment about a particular image (Dusk 2002) which is described as “not so much about knowledge as knowing how to look”. ...It might not be all of the information needed to have an intimate knowledge about everything concerning the photograph (the exact location, date, time, or who was he with when he took the photograph, and what was he thinking), but then some of this is not truly relevant.

Pendle Witch

Rob — 2011-10-31T08:30:07+00:00

However, I was a little ill over night and didn’t sleep, so whilst I duly set off to Barrowford this morning, I got as far as Clitheroe before I returned home, too tired to continue. ...I put this down to my state of mind at the moment - throughout the week I don’t really see daylight, other than some murky light that is filtered through dirty windows that are too high to look through (I work in an old Victorian building that leaves a little to be desired). ... This is something that many experience, but I guess my travel times just make it more extreme, leaving before 6am, home after 7:30pm unless I decide to stay in a B+B.

Inspired

Rob — 2011-10-20T08:20:03+01:00

From In-Publics “Inspiration” to the “Inspired” exhibition taking place at Clitheroe’s Steward’s Gallery - the opening night is tomorrow, and it runs to mid-January. I’ve only got one photograph in the mixed arts exhibition, but even so, it’s one more photograph than I’ve previously had in a “real” gallery - previous displays have taken place in offices and the like. ...Ok, I suppose as preview nights go, this might be a little unusual, as it was a group exhibition with lots of different stuff going on to the walls (a few photographs, lots of painting, some collage, some textiles and a handful of sculpture).

Inspiration

Rob — 2011-10-17T08:16:10+01:00

In a recent e-mail, Jose advised me to look towards the book “Street Photography Now”, and I have done, but I’ve also looked further and into the work of the In-Public collective run by Nick Turpin, including “10” and the magazine “Inspiration”. ...It’s necessary to keep on looking to the work of others in order to keep your mind fertilised, not so that you can go off and copy, but so your own style can be informed by what you see - ideas can be sparked off at a tangent, and this has certainly happened for me in the past. ...As a result of reading that, I’ve actually dug out my Leica from my camera bag and fired a couple of imaginary shots off, sort of “Donovan Wylie style” - I’ve still to pluck up the courage to dig out a film, but I might just do that...

2: Colour accent, again...

Rob — 2011-10-02T09:55:56+01:00

Several months ago, I took what I planned as being the first in a quick series of photographs on colour accents, working in a similar vein as the Night Walks series from Landscape, but introducing a narrative element: an indication that something was coming and that something was about to unfold. ...Again, the top one is perhaps losing a little of what I wanted in terms of colour, but it’s just about there with a range of blue, greens and a touch (just a touch...) of orangish light, but it is going a little white. ...Looking at these photographs, I suppose some comparison with Crewdson might be inevitable because of the light and the unclear narrative, although this is not something I’ve consciously set out to do - I did get the same sort of comment on some of my Night Walk images, and the inspiration for those came from Robert Adams.

Japanese photography - historical timeline

Rob — 2011-08-27T09:48:20+01:00

As part of my essay on Japanese photography, I’m pulling together a bit of a timeline of the history, which is linked very closely to things happening in the West and with its own social history. What’s shown below is the start of a potted timeline, and I’ll add more to it as I go (such as the release dates of the books I’ll be studying, etc.) Anyway, that’s it for now - off to take some photographs...

Tough going...

Rob — 2011-08-07T09:45:04+01:00

It’s tough going and photography will take a hit, there’s no doubt about that - part of the reason I agreed to park Advanced for a while, at least until I’m a little more organised. ...Whilst I’ve not taken any photographs though, I have managed to do a bit of lunchtime reading, so I will try and collect my thoughts on some of this and get the notes together on the blog. ...As for the portfolio, I’ve not worked out what my third leg will be yet, and there’s no events that I’ll be able to get to until later this month (Chipping agricultural show on the 27th).

Cyrile Henry - Voyages

Rob — 2011-07-25T09:43:01+01:00

At the 2008 QPN in Nantes, the work of Cyrille Henry was displayed, one of the series was his Voyages project which included thin slices taken from thousands of photographs taken during a train journey, arranged in chronological order. The result is an intriguing blur of colour that show when the train was moving and when it was stationary - longer blocks of colour form when there is no change. ...I’ve tried something with much thicker slices (and included it in an earlier post as an update), but I may well give something more more abstract a go - back to the “clouds scudding across the sky” perhaps?

Printing

Rob — 2011-07-21T09:40:13+01:00

Anyway, looking at the four prints (which I’ve put in my sketchbook), there’s quite some difference, and none of them are really representative of what’s on the screen, but this is understandable as the screen is backlit so has a luminance that paper prints do not have. The Night Walks series was difficult to print in the past, especially in terms of shadow (they sometimes went too dark) and also luminance of the colours, especially the one I’ve chosen as the blue on the path sometimes came out looking completely wrong. ...I was aware of the shadow detail problem from the comments that came back from the first assignment (can’t remember if I printed from Aperture or Photoshop at that time, which is a mistake - I should have noted it - if I did, I can’t remember where), which is why I tweaked the brightness up a few notches, then the contrast and saturation was just playing.

5: An impartial view (2)

Rob — 2011-07-19T09:37:37+01:00

I’ve been doing some more thinking about the final presentation for the “impartial view” project, and as I mentioned yesterday, the photographs are fine for what I want, but it’s this final presentation that needs the push. ...So, as I also mentioned yesterday, I thought I’d have a play with a more graphic idea, and the image below is the first thing I’ve come up with - an advert for the camera. The text used is that from the original advert from the 1970s, but the design is obviously something I’ve cooked up - it’s quite simple and perhaps harks back to an earlier era, to something I quite like.

8: The decisive moment

Rob — 2011-07-17T09:22:10+01:00

Certainly, whilst I was there, the “crowds” were absent, just a few other brave/foolish* people (* delete as appropriate) went to have a look what was going on - later in the afternoon it brightened up a little, but I was long gone by then. ...I’m no longer really sure whether this is actually necessary for me to do, there’s a bit of confusion with the notes and the requirements set by the tutor which could really do with being cleared up within the notes. ...These are in the sequence as shot, and in this case it’s actually the first one that I prefer, they’re both leaning in to each other, and there feels like a little more connection between the two people.

The choices of the photographer

Rob — 2011-07-10T09:19:36+01:00

Even when a photographer shoots in an objective, deadpan manner, there’s still a lot to consider about what is shown, and how this affects the perception of the truth. ...Now this is rather light-hearted, but in reportage there’s all sorts of issues that can come up with this sort of thing, and this has been discussed recently on the OCA student forum (login required) as a result of the news coverage of the kissing couple in the riot, and the release of video coverage and an interview with the pair that changed the perspective on the actual events. ... This raises questions of ethics too, which could spiral into that of photo-manipulation and the essay I wrote some time ago for PwDP.

More on Japanese photography

Rob — 2011-07-04T09:17:06+01:00

My interest in Japanese photography has mainly been in that high period of post-war activity exemplified by Provoke, and to some extent also by the slightly earlier VIVO collective. However, recently I’ve been looking through an old book (Changing Japan: seen through the camera / Image du Japon - 1933) of photographs from the Asahi Shimbun collection where, unfortunately, the individual photographers aren’t named. ...It does precede their work by half a century, and Bernd’s birth by 22 years and Germany’s New Objectivity movement by a decade or so (not to mention the offshoot of this that came back to Japan during the “modern era” of Japanese photography.

9: Change

Rob — 2011-07-03T09:01:03+01:00

Disappearing Music for Face - Mieko Shiomi (1966) from joncates on Vimeo.

...As part of things I’d been trying with the idea of change and also the ‘obscured’ portraits, I thought that I’d try a layering project that plays with the previous image I’d done of a portrait with movement, change within a single frame and also the work of Idris Khan and his appropriation of the Becher images. ... The black and white treatment is just because I didn’t particularly like the final colour palette introduced when layering in Photoshop… I think this works better than the ‘striped’ image, but to be honest, I’m not 100% sure it’s successful.

9: Change 08:54-11:22

Rob — 2011-06-28T08:55:58+01:00

Maybe it’s dull and not very interesting to some people (like any image can be), but if I was to take the time, this is what I would see. ... My camera has become a surveillance camera, but not one looking at people, as it was effectively yesterday, but at the sky and the random patterns that dance across it. ...Here’s a link to a time-lapse of a dust storm approaching - photographically I don’t find this interesting, but as a news item, it certainly has an impact.

Quotes

Rob — 2011-06-28T08:54:02+01:00

I’d love to work following the first, but at the end of the day it can be quite impractical (depends on your chosen genre of photography). The second is something I’m fighting with at the moment, and I might have to make a radical change in order to win. ...(2011) Interviews with contemporary photographers: Simon Roberts [HTML Page] Located at http://2waylens.blogspot.com/2011/04/simon-roberts.html (accessed 28/06/2011)

9: Change

Rob — 2011-06-27T08:49:13+01:00

This should last for the next 20 hours(ish) - I’m basing this on the fact that I should get about 240 images on my memory card, but of course this is only a guess that the camera makes and it will actually depend on the images themselves (I’ve no idea how RAW actually encodes - the engineer in me is telling me to find out, the photographer is telling me it’s not important). ...What I’m planning on doing with this is actually cobbling together a time-lapse video from the images, something I’ve never done before. 240 frames should give me about 9.5s of video (25fps), so we should see from 9am through the night and to approximately sunrise. ...I was under the impression that QuickTime7 would do the job, but this isn’t compatible with Snow Leopard, so it’s back to an Aperture slideshow, and the shortest time the images will last on this is for 0.1s, for normal video it would need 0.04s, so it’s not quite full speed.

4: An idea

Rob — 2011-06-26T08:44:26+01:00

The brief calls for you to photograph something you feel strongly about, and to be honest I guess I’m not the kind of person who feels “strongly” about many things - I don’t want to photograph my partner for this, it would feel a little twee, and to be honest she hasn’t got the time at the moment, I’m still waiting for her to be free to help with the colour accent work. I do like my Japanese photography books though, so I might have a go at this as a subject, and it would also work with the photographs of the camera for “objective” (5) too... The photo above was something I quickly set up when I first got my GF1, so it’s not something I’ve taken for this exercise.

Japanese photography

Rob — 2011-06-24T08:43:22+01:00

My plan is to write my essay on Japanese photography, and my recent trip to Paris came up trumps with a couple of exhibitions that I wasn’t aware of - notes have been added in Other Stuff. When I can find them, I’ll also add the exhibition notes into my logbook.

9: Change

Rob — 2011-06-24T08:40:55+01:00

They’re photographs from my hotel window whilst in Paris, and whilst I’ve tried to keep the framing pretty regular (and mundane), they’re taken from slightly different positions, and with different cameras - I didn’t have a tripod I could leave set-up, so they’re approximate, which is fine for the purpose of this test. ...The 2 daylight photographs were taken on different days, but within a couple of minutes of 5:30 in the afternoon, this was to show how light can change from day to day ...This will be from looking towards the lit rooms, which brings forward a sense of the panopticon - ok, the rooms are higher so you can’t actually “see” anything, but you know there is life going on, rather than just an empty feeling from the other two.

Airshow

Rob — 2011-06-23T08:34:19+01:00

As it was, I was just fascinated by photographing the people watching the air display, completely oblivious to what is happening on the ground, i.e. to me taking their photographs. This is very similar to something learned from a Nick Turpin workshop on street photography - if the person is caught up in doing something (he used the example of taking photographs), then they won’t notice you taking their photograph. ...“Using a fairly wide angle elns (sic) like this you can get quite close to people, which I think would work better, as long as you don't make eye contact they'll assume you are photographing something else, you want them over to the side anyway.”

Thought provoking

Rob — 2011-06-07T08:24:00+01:00

I’ve not been out much in the past few days, but instead I’m taking the opportunity to do some reading. Setting Sun is the tome of choice for the moment, and I’m just getting to grips with it (some background for my essay on Japanese photography that is to follow). ...I’ll need to think about this some more as I read through the various texts, but on first glance it appears to point to the post-modern and the simulacra.

I am Rob™

Rob — 2011-06-05T08:21:00+01:00

I’ve set up a blogger blog to follow the Ribble Life project and any others I might start. This is meant to be more of a “proper photography” blog, rather than a learning log, so whilst the subject is perhaps the same, the context has changed. ...I have set up an alternative though, at www.iamrobtm.co.uk and the content has been carried over...

The prosaic vs the poetic

Rob — 2011-06-04T08:18:55+01:00

In thinking about the objective/subjective debate recently, my mind has gone to something that I read in Toshi-e - in the essay by Gerry Badger (Image of the City - Yutaka Takanashi’s Toshi-e) Takanashi was talking about how “two conflicting creatures settled into my body. ...debate: in choosing a subject, and the manner it is being photographed there is a degree of subjectivity being shown, but the final photograph can either be prosaic or poetic (ok, or somewhere in between). ...I have, however, also been quite poetic, notably with some of the Night Walk series photographed for Landscape, and being updated with the colour accent photographs for the colour exercise.

5: An impartial view

Rob — 2011-06-04T19:37:53+01:00

The subject (it wouldn’t really matter what it was for the purposes of this exercise) has been photographed and laid out so as to mimic an orthographic drawing, with a front elevation, end elevation and a plan view. I even had a play at putting a drawing border around it and labelling it all up, but soon gave up as I wasn’t really sure that I liked the effect (below). If I’d kept up with it, maybe it would have started to look ok, but to be honest, PS isn’t the obvious choice for doing stuff like that.

The suit and the photograph

Rob — 2011-06-04T19:35:05+01:00

Berger argues that the suit tells more about the people than their faces, and by comparing the three farmers and a similar photograph of a village band with that of a group of older gentlemen, professional types posing formally in a studio in their tailored suits. ...Much of this can be taken back to Barthes and Foucault, and their writing on the death of the author: it is the viewer that interprets the photograph, and will read into what they will based upon their own understand of what is present in the image. ...The photograph was taken in the 1870s, and whilst the Japanese may have considered the camera as a means to record the truth, they’re not completely objective in such photographs - the very point of this image will be to show the superiority of the Japanese over the Ainu whilst the Hokkaido region was being annexed.

Colour accents

Rob — 2011-06-03T19:13:55+01:00

The second image was the result of increasing the ISO (400) and shooting slightly earlier in the night, there’s still some daylight left in the sky in the direction I was pointing the camera. Anyway, I have been thinking of drifting away from this as a mini theme for the accents, but maybe I’ll draft in an assistant to park the car just around the corner whilst I take the photographs. It’s not something I’ve done before, but we’ll give it a go - maybe next week after my girlfriend has gotten over the flu she’s struck down with at the moment.

Objective vs Subjective

Rob — 2011-06-02T19:00:20+01:00

I’ve been thinking about objective vs subjective photography for a little while, a sort of displacement activity from taking any colour accent photographs, and it struck me that a simple comparison would be with photographs of the same type of subject, one objectively done, the other subjectively. ...This is a photograph in the modernist style, and whilst Weston was known as a”straight photographer”, and therefore assumed to be objective, I don’t see this to be same as contemporary objectivity. ...OK, this is maybe a little light-hearted, but I believe it illustrates the point that the same family of object can be photographed in completely different ways and with a completely different end result.

Colour complications

Rob — 2011-06-02T18:57:53+01:00

I process all of my photographs in Adobe RGB - it’s what they’re taken in (ARGB is the setting in each of my cameras), so I figured it to be logical to continue to work in ARGB throughout the workflow. ...I guess it’s just one of those things I need to be aware of, and understand that the finished article is on paper (as the page in a book or a print), not the image on the Internet. ...IWeb is being phased out, well, certainly MobileMe is going to the wall, so “I’m certainly not about to move my blog” has proven to be a little premature...

Objectivity and me

Rob — 2011-06-01T18:51:52+01:00

I’ve been thinking about my style recently, and this is really where I am beginning to see my photographic work now, not with the recording of pretty flowers or stunning sunsets. But with the recording of the mundane aspects of what is essentially everyday existence, even if I am looking at the extra-ordinary things that don’t happen everyday, such as a vintage steam festival. ...I just have to get my head around the commercial prospects of my work - whilst everyone says that you don’t get rich in photography, this is especially true from books, and at some point I think I’ll need to bring some money in...

3: More "key" images

Rob — 2011-06-01T18:49:33+01:00

I’ve also thought about the low key images too, which were more what I may have done a year or two ago (certainly the “no fishing” sign), but perhaps a little off from how I ‘feel’ now as a photographer. Anyway, I’ve decided to come back to it, look at the subject again (like I knew I would - I’ll scratch at it like a scab until I have it fixed in my mind what it means to me). ...I’m still working on it to be honest, and have been contemplating using the set to illustrate the colour accent exercise, but I’m drifting away from that to something else, although I currently have no idea what.

Style

Rob — 2011-06-01T18:47:47+01:00

What with all the backwards and forwards with respect to shooting in colour or black & white, and then the recent ponderings on objectivity, I’ve once again drifted to the question of “what’s my style?”, or even “do I have one?” ...There’s been much discussion about conservatism, creativity and interpreting the brief recently, it’s like I feel that I must do something “spectacular” to fulfil the requirements (or at least “non-conservative” ), and this will generally mean something different to what I would normally do. ...In a way, I think these exercises would have perhaps been more suited to the earlier levels, but hey, I suppose a client could ask for a shoot in a particular style (but then again, why chose you if your style is different to what he wants?)

Deadpan

Rob — 2011-05-31T18:43:16+01:00

So, whilst the photograph of my Leica might be objective through the framing and the logical (formal) arrangement (it could easily be part of a typology of cameras), the following can also be thought of as “objective”: ...The photograph is very much a simple document of what I saw, I’ve not tried to beautify it by using shallow DoF or other tricks. ...Similarly, some of the photographs from Chipping the other day can be considered “objective” - there’s no emotional input on my behalf, whilst I want the viewer to be interested, I’m not trying to impart my opinion within these photographs:

Look 11

Rob — 2011-05-25T18:40:54+01:00

As the theme for the festival is “a call to action”, it is fair to say that the works on display will feature some form of persuasive tendencies, but to be honest I’m not sure that all of them did, at least not in the manner I expected. ...Having looked at these large prints, especially those whose technical perfection is in question, I’m wondering if this is the right way to go - I’ve just printed some test prints at 3x2cm, and I like the intimacy this affords, as with the recent Moriyama book I commented on a few updates back... ...The reason for this post is that I’ve just been looking through a back issue of the RPS journal (November 2010), and there’s an article on Clark, and there’s a number of photographs in the magazine that were in the Bluecoat, and I find them to be much more... interesting?

5: An impartial view

Rob — 2011-05-23T18:14:22+01:00

In the video I posted from vimeo some time ago, Thomas Ruff says that the only time he could get truly objective was with photographs of stars, and even then, what time to take the photograph, where to take them from, etc. are all subjective choices. ...Of course, which roundabouts and where they were photographed from was by choice, but I was trying more to be impartial to the season whilst also including the signs of the season, if that makes sense (possibly not). What I mean is that it would have been easy to go off and shoot photographs of daffodils in the spring and fallen leaves in the autumn, but what I wanted was to produce something where the season wasn’t specifically the subject, but it was the theme running behind the photographs of roundabouts.

3: More experiments in key

Rob — 2011-05-23T18:09:18+01:00

I usually aim at a fairly even spread I guess, although, with the exception of the Mont St Michel photograph, these all feature the full histogram in them, they’re just predominantly one end or the other of the scale. ...I wanted this photograph of the boardwalk in a harbour to be graphically simple, and even toyed with the idea of making the water completely black, but opted not to in the end - maybe I’ll revisit it (there’s also what looks like fish bubbles to clone out, or maybe it’s sensor dirt...) This doesn’t feel so melancholy as the other, and it just goes to show that low key doesn’t have to be foreboding, which it often does.

2: Colour chart (again… )

Rob — 2011-05-23T18:04:34+01:00

One thing that perhaps should be said though is that I usually shoot in “Neutral”, so it would be fairly straightforward to tweak some of variables using the in-camera options and change this. ...Even if calibration does work, it may not result in what we want - you only have to look at the example in the notes which has that golden hour tone taken away, only for it to be put straight back in again. ...Whatever, these results don’t appear to be that close to those expected, but now I know this, it’s really a case of making use of the information rather than trying to work out how to fix the technology.

6: Clear separation

Rob — 2011-05-22T17:59:53+01:00

Anyway, minor grumble about the course content aside, here’s a couple of photographs from around the Ribble Valley that illustrate the points raised in the brief, those of a distinct foreground and background, and the ‘tripartite’ arrangement of fore, mid and background. This photograph of the tree (above) was taken just a few hundred metres from my house during the power outage the other day, and features the tree and tyre tracks as the foreground items, framing the horizon line with the trees as the background items. ...I have a few personal “style” issues about this last photograph, whilst I often wonder about my own personal style, I know what I like less, and that’s this slightly chocolate box style view, certainly the colours feel a little that way, and the fluffy clouds, albeit not against a blue sky.

Pointer>>>

Rob — 2011-05-21T17:59:16+01:00

Just a quick note to say that I’ve recently added some posts on Other Stuff documenting a visit to the Cornerhouse in Manchester (New Cartographies and Redeye).

2: Still more colour tinkering

Rob — 2011-05-20T17:36:12+01:00

The weather was poor, and the garage door is electric, so I just wandered down the lane on which I live with the hope I could do something for the major project (perhaps a bit of a landscape or something) or alternatively something for this exploration of colour accuracy. I took a reading with the colour checker board at the start and the end of my walk (about 9:30 and again at 11:00), and it’s noticeable that the white balance from the grey card is about 500 kelvin different (from 5993 to 5497 later). ...Anyway, I’ve imported the images into Photoshop, saving a copy of the RAW image without any adjustment, the calibrated version based on the earlier colour chart (this taken about 20 minutes after the calibration image) and then a final version with a little post-processing, this is kept to a minimum and is representative of my usual colour processing.

2: Colour comparisons ( again )

Rob — 2011-05-17T17:29:12+01:00

Anyway, without using it on a proper shoot, I thought I’d just compare the checker itself in three versions: as shot and imported into Aperture, the same again with PS5 and using the camera profile/custom white balance in PS5. I used my GF1 (I didn’t manage to get my 5D cleaned - there was a 4 hour queue for the sensor cleaning), and only after taking the photograph did I realise that I had a 1/3 stop underexposure dialled in, which will go some way to explaining the overly grey white square. ...Looking on my screen, they all look different, but I know that the browser and the monitor these are looked at on will make a difference, so here’s a close up on the blues (the one to the left of the white square, bottom right):

3: Experiments in key

Rob — 2011-05-17T17:15:46+01:00

I’m still working on the colour exercise, but in the absence of a full colour chart (I’m off to one of the Photovision roadshows to talk to Colour Confidence in a little while), I thought I’d start looking at key in black and white images. ...With this image, there’s not a great deal amount of different colours so playing with the sliders doesn’t create the differences shown in the course notes, but it does prove that the same image can be effectively made either high or low key in Photoshop. ...This isn’t particularly new to me, I’ve enjoyed working with black & white for some time now, and whilst I opt for the easy preset filters, this sort of thing has been looked at in the earlier modules and in my own work too.

遠野物語

Rob — 2011-05-13T17:14:27+01:00

Before I go further, I think I better explain that I’ve a number of photobooks by Japanese photographers, including those that are reproductions of Japanese books but done with a western perspective, however this is the first one that is exclusively Japanese. ...The first thing that really comes across, and something discussed with Jose and some students at the Derby Format Festival study day is that the book is printed in the Japanese way that is “back to front” as far as I’m concerned. ...The second thing that comes across is that at the start of the book there’s a handful of colour images (including one that looks very washed out so it might even be sepia) before being launched into Moriyama’s trademark dark, black monochrome images, many seemingly printed to include the film sprocket guides.

Raw processing

Rob — 2011-05-12T17:07:50+01:00

After some discussion with Stan on the merits of Adobe Camera Raw, I thought I’d do a test and put the same photograph into Aperture and then crop and export, and similarly with Photoshop. ...My eye tells me that the Aperture version is warmer and the PS version a little greener, and reading the values of the centre of the “O” in the top “PROPERTY” gives me (RGB values): ...Both these readings were taken in Aperture, repeating it in PS (spot colour) gives approximately the same results (129/129/129 and 130/132/131), these differences will be because the sample won’t be exactly the same.

The great Colour vs B&W debate

Rob — 2011-05-09T16:57:16+01:00

After posting the mono set from Saturday’s shoot on the blog, Stan has commented against it with some cryptic comments and also an observation that perhaps I should wait until I have reached a final outcome on the colour exercises first, before making a decision. ...As you can see, the white is grey in all of them until the auto toned version, and even that is still grey, the background is grey for this web page too so maybe this isn’t quite so obvious. ...For the moment though, I think I’ll keep an open mind, posting both colour and black & white versions of some images for the portfolio to begin with, and once the project progresses, and with some tutor feedback, I’ll make a decision then.

Exhibiting

Rob — 2011-05-09T16:39:51+01:00

It’s not a big place, but there again I haven’t got the body of work and the presence for a ‘big place’ - looking around it would be ideal. So, I’ve spoken to the woman in charge of exhibiting, and I now know what I need to submit to be considered for exhibition, but I’ve been told that it’s actually booked up until 2013 as there is a lot of work going on with the 400 year anniversary of the Pendle witches next year. To be honest, for this body of work, 2013 might not be too bad - I’m doubting it will be completed in time for the July assessment; it would certainly be a bit tight.

Colour chart comparison

Rob — 2011-05-09T16:31:55+01:00

Some time ago, I bought a BST13 colour/greyscale separation guide, so I thought I’d use it to compare the colour capture on the three digital cameras I own - my workhorse Canon 5D mk2, a Panasonic GF1 and a Canon G11. ...Oh, and whilst I’ve included the process values as a strip, these don’t relate to the way may eyes see the test strip, the luminance of the screen vs the paper will have something to do with it, then there’s the issue of inks which, although consistent and repeatable, won’t be exact to the above (CMYK values?). ...No doubt I’ll be doing this again soon, or at least something similar, and I can use the chart in a test photograph first to ensure that I can achieve the nearest thing to “true”.

2: Moving on to colour accuracy

Rob — 2011-05-05T16:23:56+01:00

They were pretty straight forward and perhaps over-simplistic. having said that, it was a tentative foray into still life, so I suppose I shouldn’t be expecting miracles and I did benefit from the task in that I actually took some photographs: I’ve been blighted with self-doubt recently, resulting in a rather poor quantity of output, and quality if truth be known - more misses than I would normally care to admit. ...This comparison must be slightly flawed though, as the side by side view is done in a single profile (my Color Munki one), so the Pro Photo one is actually being viewed in a smaller space, it’s being compressed and no longer looking like it should. ...I’m not too keen on the idea of sRGB as it removes colour information (just check the gamut on the linked image from the dpreview site), and whilst I might upload a lot of images to the Internet, where sRGB might be most useful, for the moment I’ll stick my head in the sand and hope that people use a profile aware browser.

Flickr observation

Rob — 2011-05-01T16:19:57+01:00

The resolution of each image was within a few pixels (668 across on the PC image, 660 on the Mac) and other than placing together and adding the labels, neither has been altered. It was the sharpness of the image that initially struck me, although I must say this looks to have deteriorated again - the “Olympus” text across the pentaprism is sharp on my screen in Flickr, but wasn’t on the Windows PC, but I guess the jpg algorithms have affected it as it appears a little fuzzy in both above. The other thing that is really quite bad is the affect on the floor pattern (top two triangles), the Windows version has very much reduced the range of tones, resulting in quite appalling banding not present in the version from my Mac.

Proust

Rob — 2011-04-14T16:13:39+01:00

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes” ...This quote came to me via the JH Engström website, but I find the words to be very strong, very apt. Having new eyes will be something I need to develop...

Yet more Gestalt...

Rob — 2011-04-11T16:10:10+01:00

The set-up is really straight forward, a single light with a soft box to the high left, and as can be seen, there needs to be a fill light from the right (or a reflector) - as I said this was the first image and I broke straight away to look at it on the screen. It’s also the first “studio” shot with the GF1 and the first time I’ve used the 1.4 Nokton lens on it, so I wanted to be sure everything was ok before going too far down the line. ...This one is playing on the law of similarity, the three lenses are grouped through similar shape (and also by proximity) The camera is a different object and is not immediately grouped with the lenses, although it can be argued it becomes a group by proximity and by association (they’re all Canon).

Off at the first hurdle...

Rob — 2011-04-10T15:37:32+01:00

I sent in the UVC essay that had been preventing me from progressing, and so I’m now back with YOP for a while (I can do both at the same time to be honest, I was just concentrating on an essay). However, I feel like I’ve been thrown off at the first hurdle (again): I’m trying to come up with something interesting for the Gestalt images for project 1, and whilst I’ve sketched out a few still life images, I’ve not taken them and I’m almost at the point of not bothering because I’m not so sure they’ll be “interesting”. ...I’m probably trying too hard to illustrate Gestalt, I should go out, take the photographs and let the eye naturally pick out the Gestalt laws (like with the street images previously used) rather than trying to force the issue.

Deconstruction

Rob — 2011-04-04T15:34:43+01:00

I had an hour or two to kill today whilst waiting for some work to be done to the car, so I wandered a short distance from the garage and was surprised to find an area of housing where the houses were being bought and demolished, I assume to make way for new houses. ...I really can’t make up my mind if I want to work in colour or black & white at the moment: I guess I’ll do things in both until I can make my mind up... ...It all made for quite a sorry sight that’s for sure, and even the presence of a children’s playground didn’t lift the mood, in fact, the litter in the corners of the area add to the feeling.

Recent events

Rob — 2011-03-26T15:31:28+00:00

On the 22nd March, I went to the Impressions Gallery for the Zed Nelson exhibition and followed it with JH Engström in conversation at the Bradford Media Museum. Notes on both of these can be found in Other Stuff.

Tutor chat

Rob — 2011-03-19T15:30:30+00:00

He’s worried I’m thinking too far ahead and should let it all happen more naturally, which is perhaps true, but I’m aware that the Landscape roundabout series wasn’t thought out enough and I wanted to change it some time in the middle, and I couldn’t because of the cohesion aspect. Anyway, he was pleased I’ve decided to stop the postcard idea and there was some gentle steering taking place. ... I’ll be doing some thinking in the next week or two, so will likely be quieter than normal.

Derby Format Festival

Rob — 2011-03-13T15:27:29+00:00

I don’t see the point in posting it twice, so look over in Other Stuff.

The Düsseldorf School

Rob — 2011-03-11T15:20:21+00:00

This book goes on to explain how the Düsseldorf School is an extension of New Objectivity (August Sander, Karl Blossfeldt, etc.) but how it can be seen to have subsequently developed into experimental and digital manipulation work, especially through Ruff and Gursky. ...Gronert posits the growing importance of photography and specifically as an art form in Germany in relationship to both the writings of Walter Benjamin and as form of resistance against abstract art, which in the words of Hilla Becher “had gone into its third generation of students, and had become boring and imitative.” ...Together with American colour photography (Eggleston, Shore et al, which will be looked at later), this selection of photographers seem to be at the forefront of contemporary art photography, and over the coming months I will be focusing on some of them in more detail, this post just acting as a springboard into this research.

Modern influences

Rob — 2011-03-09T15:17:21+00:00

I’ve just started reading The Düsseldorf School of Photography (rather than just looking at the photographs), and I will be writing some notes as part of my study of modern influences, but in the meantime I thought I would post the following video of Thomas Ruff: ...One thing I specifically noted was that Ruff commented on the advice offered to him by the Becher’s to always reflect on the photographic medium. Photography is not a painting, or a drawing or whatever, so in effect this is drawing on the modernist idea of highlighting the unique attributes of the media being used.

More Gestalt in composition

Rob — 2011-03-07T13:10:55+00:00

As I mentioned, this will have been with my own approach as much as anything, but it has struck me this morning that perhaps I’m trying too hard to simplify things and that the local landscape is not the best thing for me to look towards at the moment. ...This could be argued as a triangle following the shape of the coat and to a peak at the umbrella, but I’ve chose a circle as the law of closure uses this umbrella, the hair of the girl on the left and the bottom of the shirt of the girl on the right to form the circle for me... ...Now, what I need to do is look at these laws in terms of landscape images, as it will be this genre that I work with for my major project.

Continued importance of composition

Rob — 2011-03-06T12:50:27+00:00

A good few years ago I was in an cycling accident that has done some damage to my knee, and recently this injury has been bothering me more than normal and I haven’t ventured out as much as I would like. ...Maybe it also feels more like this because the subject matter is quite similar to TAoP’s graphical and compositional elements exercises, on reading the notes here I certainly didn’t feel like I’d progressed through to the final year of the course. ... I can make the images I want to make and then draw the various Gestalt laws from them, rather than force the photographs for the sake of illustrating the point.

1: Gestalt in composition

Rob — 2011-02-26T11:28:49+00:00

However, in terms of composition, it concerns the way in which compositional elements work with each other, often so as to imply some form of shape, the example given in the notes is the Kanizsa figure (devised by Gaetano Kanisza), a copy of which is shown below: ...The small deer, being different stands out from these lanterns and becomes a focal point because of the difference, even though it is quite insignificant in terms of size within the frame (this is sometimes identified as an additional law, that of segregation, but it is related to that of similarity). ...All of these photographs have been pulled out of the archives, having been taken for different courses along the way, so now I’ll have to go out and make another 3 photographs specifically to illustrate some of these laws.

The importance of composition

Rob — 2011-02-25T10:40:00+00:00

What I’m aiming to do is complete an entry before and after the exercise at hand just to give a better measure of what my thought process is, what I’m planning on doing and I’ve actually been up to, including any conclusions that I might draw. ...I’ve not drawn a balance diagram because to be honest I’m not sure how I would draw it because of the upper/lower balance (and indeed I won’t be doing so for further photographs, I feel the presentation is too limited in application). ...The eye is the focal point that would normally be chosen, and it draws the viewer to look in that location, however by focusing the lens onto the gold chain, a tension develops in that we want to look at the eye (which is very low and left, beyond the thirds), but we’re told that it’s the chain that we should be looking at.

And we're off!

Rob — 2011-02-24T10:36:00+00:00

My course notes came today, and I’ve had a quick look through them, Very different to what has been presented for the lower level courses, but I expected it to be different so no surprise there. The next few days will be spent reading through the notes so I know what will be coming over the next year - there’s no point trying to rush it through any quicker because I can’t get it assessed before next July (2012) and anyway these last two courses are the ones that count towards the final grade and I really want a first. ...Anyway, as is customary at this point I thought I’d jot down my initial (and brief) thoughts about the course and what I want to get from it (in addition to the grade).

Oh my...

Rob — 2011-02-21T10:35:00+00:00

I’ve gone and done it - I’ve signed up for both Your own Portfolio and Advanced. I’ve asked for Advanced to be held back for a little while though, just whilst I find my feet with YOP. The course material should arrive in the next few days.