Defining Practice
Alice Hoyle - http://alicehoylephotography.blogspot.co.uk/
Contents
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6 14 20
22 24 26 34
38 40 44 48
62 64 66 68
70 72 74 78 80 88 90
Pinhole Photography
- Early Photography - Pinhole Research - My Pinhole Prints
- A timeline of the Photogram process - Photogram research - My Photograms
- 35mm Photography Research - Contact Sheet - Final Prints
- The Discovery of Solarisation - Solarisation research - My Solarisation
Photograms
35mm Photography Solarisation
Stop Motion
- Stop Motion Research - Stop Motion Ideas - Final Stop Motion video Other Photography Evaluation Bibliography
Pinhole
Photography
inside. From this, whatever is put in front of the hole can be viewed inside, albeit back-to-front and upside-down.
The Camera Obscura
It dates back to Aristotle (384-322BC) who noticed that when light passes through a small hole into a darkened room, a reversed image was produced on the opposite wall. In the 10th Century, the Camera Obscura was used by Al Hassan ‘to demonstrate how light travels in straight lines’. In the 13th Century the Camera Obscura was used by astronomers to view the sun. Artists began to use the Camera Obscura as an aid to drawing in the 16th Century, in order for them to draw more precise and detailed pictures.
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he Camera Obscura can be of any size from the size on an entire room to just a small box. Stripped back, it only comprises of a few key elements which are a closed room/box, small hole in one side of the room/box and the room/box to be darkened
In the 19th Century, ‘large Camera Obscuras became popular seaside attractions - where spying on courting couples became a popular pastime’. It wasn’t until the 19th Century where the Camera Obscura and the Photographical processed that had been discovered in the 18th Century finally came together and the result is Niepce’s first every photograph: The View from the Window at Le Gras.
Early Chemical Process Experiments
Through various experiments, Carl Wilhelm Scheele found that what made the chemical dark was Metallic Silver and that this could be created by reducing Silver Chloride by exposure to light. He also found that ammonia could preserve the image by dissolving the Silver Chloride (think of this as the unexposed area) while leaving the image tones remaining. However, these discoveries were only ‘noted in passing’ and the connection between this and the Camera Obscura, which had been ‘waiting in the wings’ was yet to be made.
J
ohann Heinrich Schulze discovered that a mixture of powdered chalk and nitric acid turned dark when exposed to sunlight. ‘He traced the discolouration to a contaminant in the acid, silver, and eventually proved that silver compounds were visibly changed by the action of light rather than heat or exposure to air’.
Not long after, Niepce began experimenting and in 1816 ‘set out to take pictures rom nature using a camera and paper sensitised with silver chloride. He found this was successful but was unhappy with the results as the tones were reversed. He also tried to fix the image but was unsuccessful, he managed to only postpone rather than prevent degradation of the image. Ten years later he had created a technique where he coated a sheet of pewter with Bitumen of Judea, a type of asphalt which hardens when exposed to light - the unexposed portion washed away - and resulted in the View from the Window at Gras, after an 8 hour exposure.
The Discovery of How to Fix an Image
Daguerre becaming increasinly interested in Silver Iodide and contacted Niepce informing him that he believed that Silver Iodide was ‘highly light-sensitive when in contact with [a silver plate]’. Having had bad experienced with silver in the past, Niepce ‘couldn’t contribute much, but Daguerre worked tirelessly with silver compounds, discovering ‘that treatment with mercury vapour would produce a visible image on an iodised silver plate that had been briefly exposed to light’ as well as the ability to ‘stabilise the image with a strong solution of salt’.
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iepce became friends with Louis Jaques-Mande Daguerre and though Niepce was dubious at first, after a while, Daguerre managed to get him to impart his knowledge.
Within a week of the discovery of Daguerre’s findings, Sir John Frederick William Herschel set about ‘investigationg the various known processes and keeping careful notes of his procedures. In less than two weeks, Herschel had produced ‘several successful pictures, printed a negative to make a positive paper image and fixed the images with a chemical he has described twenty years previously, which he called “hyposulphite of soda” (later referred to as just “hypo”.
Early Pinhole Photography
Arabian physicist, Ibn al-Haytham, noted that, when he placed a screen in between three candles and a wall, the three candles appeared on the wall inverted, but that this only occurred providing there was a small hole in the screen. Sir David Brewster is said to have made the first Pinhole Photograph in the 1850s, though it is difficult to find much information about him in regards to this image. Pinhole Photography really came into its own during the Ipressionist movement, particularly within the pictorialist circles who were trying to ‘achieve the atmospheric qualities of paintings’ in their Photography.
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he basic optics of Pinhole Photography were commented upon in the fifth Century BC by Mo Ti. He observed that light travelled in straight lines and is considered the first to ‘record the formation of an inverted image with a Pinhole or Screen.’
In 1890s, Pinhole Photography became very popular, and George Davidson’s ‘The Onion Field’ Pinhole Photograph ‘won the first award at the Annual Exhibition of the Photographic Society of London’, which led to the founding of ‘the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring’, created to defend the art of Photography and to look for new techniques. However, by the 20th Century, this technique was all but forgotten about with the desire for “mass production of cameras and new realism”.
Ian Ruhter’s Unique Process
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an Ruhter made a camera out of a van and creates huge wet collodion plates that produce exceedingly detailed images. The amount of work that goes into just one shot is phenomenal - plus there’s always the possibility that the image won’t develop right and there are so many other factors that could set his dream up to fail, but he always manages to pull through and create stunning images. When one sees the result of all this effort, you realise that it was all worth it. Ruhter invested so much money and time into his project and watching his short films on his technique and process are truly inspiring. To the right is perhaps my favourite image of his. It is placed under the project title ‘the American Dream’ and shows the contrast between expectation and reality and how this may parallel his journey; the trials he overcame in the beginning of the project and the final outcome where he succeeded in living the dream.
Justin Quinell’s Pinhole Photography
After scanning the image, which initially it a pinkish colour, he inverts the colours and produces these beautiful dreamy-blue images. The colours remind me of the cyanotype process.
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uinell’s ‘solargraphs’ are taken with a pinhole camera and a lot of patience. His shutter speed is one that spans 6 months, he uses no chemistry and his results are beautiful depictions of the suns progress throughout the half-year. His technique for these images I find most baffling. He builds a camera of out something like a beer can and taped it into place for 6 months. After this, he removes the image (not under red light) and scans the image straight into his computer. He says that developing just blackens the image and fixing just washes it away. This, I suppose means there is no physical document of the image, just the scanned image on the computer.
In another series Quinell did, he made a small pinhole camera which he placed in his mouth and took an image from there. The perspective is strange, unique but fun. I think Quinell’s light hearted personality comes accross in his photographs, in particular the image on the baby on the bottom right. I personally very much like Quinell’s work as he is bringing a more modern and fun approach to photography. On his website he includes tutorial videos on how he creates these cameras and suggests ways of making them more child friendly and group friendly, helping to bring photography to more people. I think in the 21st Century, bringing this type of photography to the masses if you will is a great thing. People who are used to creating an image with just a click of a shutter are amazed that you can create beautiful and fun images in this way, no lens or trigger button necessary.
My Pinhole Image at BCU
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his is a pinhole image taken with Daren’s home-made pinhole camera. Due to the relatively love lighting conditions (compared to daylight) we needed a fairly long exposure of 8 minutes to capture enough detail without over exposing everything (as we did in a 10 minute exposure). I feel in terms of technique, it is quite a simple image (say in comparison to the next) but I very much like the image as a whole. I find it visually appealing, I like the tones and the patterns, lines, shapes that can be seen. I feel the image turned out much better than expected after seeing the negative image. Because our eyes are used to seeing positive images and not negative, the initial print looks a little underwhelming but the inverted (using Photoshop rather than the enlarger technique due to its size) is quite impressive, given that it was made from just an empty jar of coffee and a small hole.
Pinhole Photography Double Exposure
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his pinhole image took a fe attempts to perfect! We had seen something similar in a workshop, the double exposure within a pinhole picture and wanted to create the effect ourselves. The first attempts were far too over exposed and we found we weren’t achieving enough detail in the closer face. We realise from the first tests that we wanted more information, therefore more time, closer to the camera and less time further away. This resulted in a total exposure of 6 minutes (outside), 4 minutes closer and 2 minutes further away. Conceptually, this image is quite interesting. The clasped hands of the kneeling figure in the background in addition to the slight glow or halo around the figure is somewhat symbolic of prayer and religion. The closer face appears to be staring into the soul, suggesting a judgement and the combination of the two provides an eerie visual, perhaps one that makes you look deeper into yourself.
Photo
ograms
A Timeline of the Photogram Process
William Henry Fox Talbot
Anna Atkins
Hippolyte Bayard
Christian Schad
William Henry Fox Talbot’s Photograms
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illiam Henry Fox Talbot, a scientist and mathematician, began using the Camera Lucida to aid his drawing of nature and through finding difficulty in drawing the details of various subjects, he decided to explore ways of capturing these details more permanently through photography. His experimentation with silver salts led to his production of photosensitive paper, which was created by coating paper in a salt solution, followed by silver nitrate and used this “salted paper” to create his photograms. He found too much salt in this process reduced the sensitivity of the paper and so used a strong salt solution to ‘fix’ his images.
Talbot called his process “Photogenic Drawing” and started by recording botanical specimens. In 1939 he published a report documenting his findings: Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing of the Process by which Natural Objects may be made to delineate themselves without the aid of the Artist’s Pencil. Friends with the Father of Anna Atkins, Talbot inspired her to produce her own process, the cyanotype process, to record botanical specimens and was very successful in doing so.
Anna Atkins’ Cyanotye Process
ical specimens after finding them particularly difficult to draw. She worked with a medium similar to what we now know of as a photogram, called a Cyanotype, which is a mixture of Potassium Ferricyanide and Ferric Ammonium citrate painted onto an absorbant matierial (paper, card) and exposed to UV light. The Cyanotype process, originally known as the blueprint process and invented by Sir John Herschel, are interesting because they require no specific developing solutions (developer, stop), only rinsing with water after exposure. In addition to this, the unexposed paper only reacts to UV light and so can be worked with under nonUV lighting situations, though its best to keep brightness to a minimum.
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nne Atkins, whose father was friendly with William Henry Fox Talbot, is regarded as a pioneer in the photogram process, through a desire to scientifically record botan-
Atkins’ work brought Cyanotypes into the realm of Photography, with their interesting patterns, transparencies and dreamy compositions that appear suspended in a sea of prussian blue they create a more elegant image than perhaps black and white photograms do. The process was later rediscovered by such artists as Christian Schad, Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy throughout various art movements of the 20th Century.
He was associated with the movements of Futurism, Cubism and Expressionism within his artwork as well as being considered to have brought the process of photograms to the art movements of the time, influencing such artists as Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
He looked at the way light could be manipulated to create interesting shapes and effects, using sieves and veils to create interesting paterns and played with the angles of the light to see what effects could be achieved with such basic tools; light and light sensitive material. I’m not completely sure as to how Moholy-Nagy achieved this look, but I would like to experiment, laying something down, exposing it for a second or two, then laying something else down, roughly on top of where the first item was and exposing again for another second or two.
Man Ray’s work was said to be, by Tristan Tzara, of ‘pure Dada creation’, an art movement ‘born out of negative reaction to the horrors of WWI’ and ‘rejected reason and logic, prized nonsense, irrationality and intuition’, which seemingly fits the description of Man Ray’s photograms - or Rayograms as he modestly named them - perfectly.
Man Ray
Moholy-Nagy had a passion for more industrial and constructivist pieces than Schad’s, evident in both his photograms and photomontage. He used liquids, glass, crystals and lenses in many ways to discover the ‘shaping of the light’ mysteries: the peculiar way in which light behaved in relation to certain objects and transparencies and how this in event affected the result on paper.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Christian Schad
Photogram Research
Schad experimented with photograms from 1919 onwards. He renambed the process ‘Schadographs’ which has been said to have been in relation to the German translation of schaden to mean damaged. In his photograms, Schad often used damaged scraps and ‘unimportant objects’ as his subject matter which could provide the link. Others have said it was done in a similar vein to Man Ray as a play on his surname. Schad used things like torn tickets, rags, receipts and discarded objects to create his compositions, which are unsettling, with a somewhat constructed, industrial feel.
His compositions of seemingly disparate objects is highly influential, which possibly accounts for the fame of which is photograms have reached. Man Ray’s photograms were considered to be much more elegant in their compositon that Schad’s or Moholy-Nagy’s. He chose to capture images of thumbtacks, coils or wire, circular forms, combs, straight razors, needles and other ephemera.
The bottom portrait over on the right is of Georgia O’Keeffe, which might not be obvious from the silhouette alone, but Lye added various plant matter around the face to represent the nature of the work that O’Keeffe is known for.
The results, in particular her Sunprints in her River Taw series are beautiful, elegant images of water from below the surface, providing a narrative of a relationship between the self and nature. What I also find admirable in this series is the consideration of the dimensions of the piece; the long slim shape of the paper provides a similarity to the shape of a river or stream of which she is using to take her images. I find her work a wonderful example of a more modern type of Photogram.
Fuss is most known for his baby portraits which were done by a relatively simple technique but have produced startling and beautiful results.
Adam Fuss
To counteract this he added simple details and patterns to give hints as to the identity of the mysterious silhouette. He combined the ‘notion of individuality’ and ‘the phsyical factors’, intuition and feeling (as Man Ray did also) to produce interesting and different portraits by Photogram, something that seems to have rarely been done, most likely because of the difficulty in doing so and getting right, as Lye very much did.
Derges’ complex ideas and teachniques use the art of Photograms in a unique and intriguing way to create works that are surreal, dreamlike and intrinsically calming. At night, she submerges hug sheets of light sensitive paper in an aluminium slide and exposes to a flash of light from a torch.
Susan Derges
Photogram Research
Len Lye
Lye’s Photograms consisted of portraits of his artist friends however, he found that within the technique of Photograms, there wasn’t much detailing in the picture so it wasn’t particularly obvious who the portrait was of.
He used Cibachrome paper in a small amount of water, into which he laid babies and with a short, sharp flash of light recorded the baby and the ripples of water from their movements. The example image in the right seems kind of sad to me, maybe it’s because I am currently listening to an emotional song but if you just look at the top half of the image it appears to be a baby with it’s hands pressed up against glass with splayed fingers, like it has been trapped and it is pleading for freedom. Fuss has photogrammed matter such as babies, but also snakes, water droplets, flowers, christening gowns, birds during flight, balloons, egg yolks, sunflowers and decay. Another great example of a more modern take on photograms.
My Photograms
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My Photograms
or my Pinhole print, I decided to make like Christian Schad and use receipts and scraps that have meaning to myself. I collect receipts, tickets, tokens and lots of other things as a means of remembering a certain time, place or event. It is something I have done for a while, so it made sense to me to create a photogram with my own little memories. I knew that scanning the actual receipts etc might not yield the results I desire, so I scanned them all into my computer, increased the contrast and printed off the images onto tracing paper. This was I could get a higher contrast between information and no information (white/black respectively).
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fter I had finished the above photograms, I couldn’t get the thought of Moholy-Nagy’s photogram where you can see the sihouette of his hand. I wanted to play with this idea and produced the image to the right. To achieve this, I placed my hand on the paper and exposed for 10 seconds. I wanted to make sure that the black area around my hand was completely blackened and no more information could be recorded there.
I then laid out the pieces onto a piece of light sensitive paper and exposed to light.
I then placed the printed tracing paper of letters and receipts from the eariler photograms over where was hand had laid and exposed for 5 seconds. This way of working meant that the only areas that could be seen are in the shape of my exposed hand.
I am very pleased with the results. However, with the two images about it is difficult for me to chose a preferable image. The left image is, of course tonally much more pleasing, but then on the right. the composition and general aesthetic is more pleasing.
The overall image does look a little gimmicky and simplistic but I think there is potential here to play around with shapes and exposures. Perhaps for the upcoming Valentine’s day one could expose a heart and written love letters inside it?
35mm
Photography
Aaron Siskind 35mm Research
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n his work, Siskind focuses on peeling paint, crumbling buildings and just the general decay of city living. He photographs these things in order to show that you can’t just patch things over and expect things to be just fine - once you scratch the surface you reveal the neglect and decay of something that it touted as brilliant. I feel a particular emotional connection to Siskind’s photographs - it stirs something up inside me. I think the detail and quiality of his images are stunning and I love the drama that is evoked by the images being black and white. There are textures and patterns and a real grit to his images; a raw truthfulness; it’s not hidden, it’s here right in front of you.
Lewis Baltz 35mm Research
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ewis Baltz is another photographer whose work I am particularly fond of. I like the angular, square organised aesthetic, it evokes a peaceful lonliness, crisp air on a bright wintery day - quite the opposite to Siskind’s more brash pieces. There is also an element of obsession/ compulsion within Baltz’s images, the carefully composed layout, each element just so, evenly spaced. Perhaps it is this element I find so relaxing.
First Film Shoot
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personally feel this roll of film in unremarkable at best. A couple of shots are perhaps worth considering but overall I feel the shoot was poor. This was because I rushed the shoot in order to have it prepared for a workshop, when I should have laid out more time for myself to consider the shots more than I did here. I would say that I need to reshoot this film and really refine what it is I want to be photographing, before I jump straight in, as well as stick more closely to the briefs of ‘Aperture’, ‘Focal Length’ and ‘Shutter Speed’.
Second Film Shoot
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his shoot was much better than the first as I had researched what I wanted to photograph a little more. I feel I had better focus and kept my influences in mind as well as trying to stick to the aforementioned key word briefs. I found this challenging at times but am overall pleased with this shoot and feel that I have captured each of the briefs at least once in this shoot. As you can see over on the right, I have circled images I feel are strong and crossed over the weak images as well as providing a concise reason as to why. The editing stage in photography is very important and is somewhat a matter of opinion. What one person thinks is the most awe-inspiring photograph they have seen, another thinks is terrible, though this is what makes Photography so great.
50mm Focal Length
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his image is of the main ceiling in the Birmingham Central Library. Though quite an obvious image to take, I do like the composition of the image and how the darker layers in the bottom right build up to the most contrast-y layer right at the top. Through printing several test strips, I found that the cross section in the top left and the dark area in the bottom right just weren’t quite dark enough. To correct this, I burned in both areas in the darkroom using a torn piece of card to match the curve of both areas. For the cross section at the top, I was a little worried that burning the area would make the whites grey but I found this wasn’t a problem as I only burned the area for about 8 seconds. I decided not to use this as a 35mm Final image as it is a little obvious, but I didn’t want to throw it out completely. Instead, to make it perhaps a little different, I decided to solarise the image.
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Aperture F2.2
he aperture on a camera is a hole in the lens which can be made larger or smaller to let in more or less light. This has a direct effect on the depth of field: the larger the aperture number (smaller hole), the greater the depth of field, the smaller the aperture number (bigger hole), the shallower the depth of field. There are merits to using both and it often depends on the type of Photography on is doing. In the 20th Century, there was a group of Photographers who utilised this, specifically the larger aperture numbers to create stunning landscapes of ‘sharply-focused’, ‘carefully framed’ natural forms. Here I have utilised quite the opposite. I have used the technique often related to macro Photography and more ‘artistic’/’creative’ images. This image is of a wall of crushed cars, the crushed skeletons of rusting old cars, which is reflected in the blurred, backgound image. As you may be able to see, there is an eerie, skeleton like form in the background and I feel represents the general feel of the wall and surrounding area, like a car graveyard.
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ertain apertures are considered better for certain types of image.
More on Aperture
A wider aperture such as F2.8 would be used for macro and close up photography. This is to draw attention to and isolate the subject. A medium sized aperture, say F8/F11 would be used for portraiture. This is so that the subject/model is all in focus and the background is not in focus, again to draw attention to and isolate the subject. A small aperture, for example F22 would be used for landscapes to get everything in focus, as generally in this type of photography there is not just one subject point. The group of photographers I mentioned previously went under the name ‘F64 Group’, which included such photographers as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham and they prided themselves on having perfectly exposed, super sharp images of natural forms.
Shutter Speed Image - Frozen in Time
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his image was taken with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘Decisive Moment’ technique in mind. There were a few seconds where I had to decide, ‘Am I going to shoot this?’, set the aperture, focus and compose before she was gone. At the time I chose this particular woman to photograph because of her boots and fur coat. I liked the contrast between her apparant glamour and the old and run down backdrop of the crushed car wall behind her. The first image (top, left) I didn’t like as the top right corner is completely blown out. When I tried to burn this and the opposite side in it felt too staged and false so I went on to print the image again but cropped it. I am happy with the final outcome including the grain that is visible. I would even say that it enhances the concept of the image as well as making it look as if it was taken in perhaps the 70s. In additon to this, mobiles phones were not as ubiquitous in the 70s as they are today and so this would create an unusual image, if it were to be set at that time.
50mm Focal Length - Needless Alley
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his image was taken in Birmingham City centre of a street called Needless Alley. This information is relevant to the image because of the subject, and older person. A number of people nowadays think that old people are, well, needless. I composed this image so that the walls of the alley swallowed up the man but his lone presence, confident walk and position right a the turn in the path creates a strong and unwavering stance. It suggests that this particular man does not care for the opinions of those that think older people are needless as he has the confidence in himself to know that he has lived a fulfilling life and has been far from needless. This comes from the somewhat military feel from the way he holds himself. All of this is conceded by his facial expression, which sums the image up effortlessly.
50mm Focal Length
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his is the only shot I have printed from my first film shoot. I thought it was the best of the images, but as you can see even this didn’t turn out very well. I had Lewis Baltz and Aaron Siskind’s work in mind very much when taking this photograph but it just hasn’t turned out the way I hoped. There are a number of problems with it, but I don’t see much point to correcting these as I have other, much stronger images from my second film shoot.
Solaris
sation
Early Solarisation
In 1857, Jackson wrote a letter to the editor of ‘the Photographic Society of London’ entitled “On a Method of Reversing the Action of Light on the Collodion Film and thereby producing Transparent Positives” which is adescription of the process when working with negatives rather than in print. At the time, Photography wasn’t understood too well and so this was regarded as ‘no more remarkable than the normal development of collodion plates to produce negatives.
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olarisation is said to have been discovered by Mr William Jackson in 1857, but was later refined by Man Ray and his assistant, Lee Miller.
The effect - in print - is one caused by a flash of light mid development which causes the whites and mid tones to somewhat reverse, working best on high contrast images where blacks lie directly next to whites. It is considered ‘magical’ because of the expectation that the image will completely blacken. The first solarised image is thought to have come from Edgar Degas in his Ballerina image of 1881. One can tell that the image has been solarised due to the Sabatier border lines specifically along her outstretched arm and shadows on her shoulders.
Man Ray’s Solarisation
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an Ray, along with his assitant Lee Miller, rediscovered solarisation in the late 20’s and he soon went on to utilise in many of his prints. Initially, when the pair discovered the technique, Miller claimed to have had something crawl over her foot and instinctively turn on the light, thus exposing the film to light. She stated that Man Ray just put them straight into the ‘hypo’ to look at later. Neither expected much from the images. When they did get around to looking at the images, they found that the background that had been left unexposed and was initially black, had turned out white right up to the white nude body save for a black line as the ‘background and image couldn’t heal together’. Man Ray then wanted to be able to control this process, so the results would be the same every time. He wanted to use this to ‘escape banality... to produce a photograph that would not look like a photograph.
My Own Solarisation - Sabatier Border
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decided to solarise this image because, as I mentioned previously, though the image iteself I feel is quite strong, it is a little obvious and boring. I found the whole solarisation technique pretty challenging. On the top left you can see a crop of my first test strip. When developed. I couldn’t believe how perfectly defined the Sabatier border lines were in this image. I decided to print a full print right away and resulted in the bottom left image. Frustrated and confused as to why the image was so drastically different, I went on to do 15 more test strips in order to achieve the effect from the first test strip. After about 10 test strips, I decided that I’d had enough and went home for the day. The next day I tried again. I was adamant I was going to get this to work...I knew that it COULD work, but because of my own negligence to writing down the times, I could not remember what I had done to get this effect. The final image to the right is about as close as I could get to the test strip and even then I’m not completely satisfied with the quality of the lines.
Stop
pMotion
Stop Motions Initial Research
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here are quite a few different types of stop motion videos and here I looked at a few different ones to help in giving me some idea as to what I will do for my stop motion video. The Pen Story is probably the most elaborate and perhaps cost the most to create. This is because of the sheer amount of physical prints they ordered for the video (almost 10,000) however the results are brilliant. It takes the audience through the life of the main character in a series of snapshot type images. In Magic water, there is some cool effects that just wouldnt be possible with normal video, it has to be stop motion. Another type of stop motion is time lapse. I personally really like time lapse videos; ones of people aging, clouds mocing across a sky and ones like this to the right, fruit throughout its decay.
The Pen Story
Magic Water
Western Spaghetti
Time Lapse Fruit & Veg Decay
Stop Motions Ideas and Inspiration
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hilst browsing the internet, I happened upon these images. The top two are examples of toys being made out of children’s drawings, whilst the bottom two are children’s drawings that have been coloured in by their father. This technique of incorporating children’s artwork into your own got me thinking, and it reminded me of a poem that my younger brother wrote when he was about 8 or so. As I was trying to remember how that poem went, I realised that I could create a visual representation of his poem for my stop motion. To the left you can see an image of the poem. I changed a couple of lines round and removed one, but the poem in my final stop motion is pretty much the same as the one to the left.
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o the left is the table I made of lines in the poem along with the stop motion ideas I had. I had to make a few changes to the original poem due to time contraints I placed upon myself, but I do not necessarily think this detracts from the poem. For instance, I thought the line ‘Hands opening wooden and metal door’ might be somewhat difficult for me to get perfect, and found it wasn’t beneficial to the poem as a whole and so discarded it. I also changed the order of the lines ending in ‘groove’ and ‘move’ for aesthetical reasons and changed ‘sunflower plants’ to ‘sunflower petals’. I checked that all of these poems were okay with the author of the poem, my younger brother, and he said they were all absolutely fine.
Hands on the groove
Frames of hands playing keyboard drawn on whiteboard? Maybe get keyboard on computer
Hands on the move
Frames of hands pointing at houses in newspaper
Hands always improve
Frames of hands writing and crossing out then writing neater?
Hands drawing road and car
Frames of hands drawing road and car
Hands building houses
Frames of hands building houses out of lego or other similar toy??
Hands opening wooden and metal door
Frames of hands opening wooden and metal doors
Hands reaching white moon of night,
Perspective frames of fingers holding moon
it will write a bright picture of the
Hand moving across frame, edit to look like hand it painting stars into sky
shadows in the sky Hands picking up sunflower plants
Frames of hand picking up sunflowers? any plants, perhaps get image on computer, then 'pull' petal off screen, make this out of paper?
Hands planting foods and flowers of
Hands putting seeds into soil/grass
red joyful roses
Stop motion of rose petals growing
Hands that see
Stop motion of fists moving up to eyes then opening and eyes being there, blinking fists close and come forwards then open in front of you and there is a shining golden key
they hold a golden key so i need to get: seeds or nuts or something maybe pumpkin seeds a golden key - i will use the key we got cut for Ben as that is golden-ish origami roses – coloured paper something to build houses with wooden and metal door?
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y final video has been uploaded onto Youtube. I stuck quite closely to the chart on the previous pages but I have now also added music. I wanted something instrumental, a little folksy, maybe with a guitar and found the perfect song to be Sleep by Kimya Dawson. I am quite proud of the final video. It is only 30 seconds long and goes quite quickly but I am happy with the general appearance of it. I did put a fair amount of effort into getting all of the images taken and it took quite a lot of effort trying to maneuvre my way around After Effects having never used it before!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjppvKyyFJ4
OtherP
Photography
5x4 Large Format Photography
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arge format photography is a long and potentially expensive process. Because of this, it is imperative that you get everything right in the first instance. When a single image costs £1.60 just for the negative, you don’t really want to be shooting too many images, so you have to get it right in as few shots as possible - a thousand miles away from digital photography where you can get thousands of images on a single, small card for very little cost. I felt like my image was a little rushed and was not calculated properly. On the left side of the face it is quite over exposed for my liking. I increased the contrasted and played with the curves quite a lot just to make the image visible, which has also made the specks and bad quality scan lines more visible too. If I had more time, I would have shot this with a grey background and composed it much better. I’m not satisfied with the outcome but I did enjoy the experience of shooting large format and would consider it in the future.
120 Medium Format, Hasselblad
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uring the workshop on medium format, we were shown Hasselblad cameras and had the chance to take a picture each. What I like about the format is the sqaure composition. Most of us are used to a rectangular image shape and so you perhaps have to consider the composition more. It was great using the Hasselblad and completely different to using a standard 35mm camera - you look down into the camera to see the image which is a little like live view on a digital camera, except you are looking through the actual lens thanks to mirrors and such. Because of this, the image is reversed and so this is something else you have to consider when taking the image. The film used in these cameras is a lot larger than 35mm film, which means there will be a lot more information captured, so when you enlarge the image, you can get a bigger picture before the grain becomes visible to the naked eye.
Painting with light
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ainting with light has been used in such amazing and creative ways it is a bit of an embarassment to place my quickly done, random and pretty meaningless ones beside them. To the left is one of Janne Parviainen’s pieces which I think is truly wonderful. The image is busy, bright, in your face and you can’t really tell what the figure is doing. It gives perhaps a hallucinatory feeling with the brash colours and slouching pose, but theres also an observational element to this image as there is a figure in the background who just appears to be watching the subject. Other work I find truly inspirational is Sonia Soberat’s Light Painting. As a blind woman, it is truly astonishing that she can create such beautifully creepy images.
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he biggest joy for me during this project, was probably the Pinhole camera. In the past I have never been able to get it to work quite right, but thanks to in depth workshops hosted throughout the project I have finally produced a print I am proud of.
Evaluation
I also feel that working with the larger format cameras, the medium format Hasselblad and the large format camera, has given me much more of an appreciation for the film process in general. In terms of output quantity, the amount of images one can produce is much, much fewer than in digital, and so the process forces you to think about the image you are taking; forces you to be active in your photography rather than passively shooting 2,000 photographs and hoping that you manage to get the shot out of all of those. I like that analogue photography makes me work harder in this way, I end up with a result I am proud of and no something I feel like anyone could have done given half the chance. Something that I have done this time that I have not in the past is photograph people. I’ve always avoided photographing people in the street for fear of some sort of confrontation, but
I did not get this reaction from the pictures of people I did take. I do think this is something I still need to work on; building up my confidence of shooting people in the street, but also in the studio to – talking to them and making them feel at ease and such. Stop Motion is something that has been completely new to me this module; it is something I have never done before, so learning a completely new software was something I found quite a challenge! I very much enjoyed taking the photographs but in future should consider taking them at a lower quality, as the high quality my camera is automatically set to is not necessary for moving image, it just takes up lots of space and takes a long time to load. I feel that the amount of research I have done is moderate, some areas have a lot more than other areas and I think in future I should focus on balancing this out. I think for this to happen I need to manage my time better. This module has not been so bad for time management, I learnt that from the last module I really needed to keep on top of research and make sure I spend enough time on this aspect, but I feel that I did leave a lot of the research to be done over the Christmas holiday so there wasn’t much time to relax. I should, in future, try to focus Monday
and Tuesday, every single week, not just a few weeks in, to researching and documenting this in the RVJ. Another big change for me personally was the RVJ. I have always made the RVJ in a physical format and for it to be asked to work digitally is quite a change for me. I was dubious at first, however I am much more impressed with the final outcome than I feel I would have been if the RVJ was in a physical format. I wanted a slight magazine feel to my RVJ and feel the fact that I made the RVJ of InDesign made this possible. I have also uploaded my final RVJ onto issuu.com. Throughout this project I have gained many skills relating to the darkroom process. The workshops have helped me refine and better my technique; I feel that my prints and the images that I have taken are of a better quality to previous occasions when I have shot film. I am proud of the work that I have produced and I also want to aim towards a more cohesive body of work in the future. I would really like to look into feminism within photography, however I should wait until the next brief has been released until I make any solid decisions!
Bibilography
• http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/stilphotography.htm • http://www.ianruhter.com/
Web
• http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1255795/Anna-Atkins • http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/processes/cyanotype/cyanotype-classic-process • http://www.diyphotography.net/make-your-own-photogram-cyanotype • http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/history/cyanotype-history-john-herschels-invention • http://www.photograms.org/chapter01.html • http://www.illuminatednegatives.com/photogramhistory.html • http://aqua-velvet.com/2010/06/man-ray-photograms/ • http://www.masters-of-photography.com/T/talbot/talbot_articles2.html • http://www.olinda.com/Art/Beginnings/early_photography.htm • http://www.vam.ac.uk/channel/people/photography/shadow_catchers_ camera-less_photography_susan_derges/ • http://www.danzigergallery.com/artists/susan-derges/5 • http://db-artmag.de/archiv/04/e/thema-london-derges.html • http://www.xavierhufkens.com/artists/adam-fuss • http://fraenkelgallery.com/artists/adam-fuss • http://www.tufts.edu/programs/mma/fah189/2002/nmadahar/adamfuss. html • www.artistsandalchemists.com/film/artists/profile/adam_fuss • http://www.fundaciotapies.org/site/spip.php?rubrique471 • http://www.atgetphotography.com/The-Photographers/Laszlo-Moholy-Nagy.html • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada • http://www.edgeoftheplank.com/2010/08/susan-derges-photograms.html • http://unccphotography.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/len-lye-photograms.html • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarisation • http://mattjstokes.com/journal/darkroom-tutorial-1/ • http://www.cchem.berkeley.edu/wljeme/Chapt3.html • http://camera-obscura.co.uk/camera_obscura/camera_history.asp • http://photo.net/pinhole/pinhole.htm
• Badger, Gerry The Genius of Photography: How Photography has Changed our Lives: Quadrille, BBC (2008)
Personal web pages www.alicehoyle.wix.com/alicehoyle www.alicehoylephotography.blogspot.co.uk www.alicehoylephotography.tumblr.com http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwTfXtsB7vhlG4s6B_aUBaA