COVERT AND OBSCURED L E A N N E WA R R E N
FIRST IDEA –NIGHT TIME PHOTOGRAPHY
TONY RULI • What I like in particular about this technique is the fact that within one shot, you can get something that obscure’s every day life. I think that I was initially inspired by the fact that all of the colors were blurring together, and it created an effect that almost made it look like it could have been painted over the top of a normal photograph. I also really like the idea of bringing out the lights of a photograph at night and bringing out a brand new quality that you probably couldn’t get out of any other technique. I also think that the technique used to make nighttime photography can be effective in some places you may not expect. • I feel that this kind of technique is a really good idea to experiment less so with the photograph afterwards, but more trying out different locations and searching for the different effects I could achieve with nighttime photography. For example –the reflection of lights across water, or taking this idea originally made by Tony Ruli and then putting an object or a person in front of the moving lights, to see if I can make the blurred bus effect and have still life there as well.
MY PHOTOGRAPHS
INITIAL PHOTOGRAPHS EVALUATION • My initial intentions with these photographs was to experiment and achieve effective night time photography shots that would really stand out and look unique. I really enjoyed trying out some of the shots, such as the images with the moving vehicles that cause a blurred effect. I especially like this effect when I have something still in the foreground, keeping them still while the movement is happening from behind. I think I achieved my initial intentions, and I did manage to create a collection of effective night time photography images. • The collection was made up of about three trips, and this is made up of the best and most effective images. One detail that I really love about these images is the reflections of the lights going across the water. Through just initial photographs, some of these images have just brought out an array of colors, making the images look abstract in comparison to what you might see in person. I also like how the streetlights in each of the photographs taken tend to stand out bold and bright, barely looking like a traffic light anymore and possibly giving more of a star-like quality to the images. I like how in one particular photograph (The bridge photograph 3 pages back) how if you look closely on the bridge, you can see all the people blurring together and creating a busy feel to the bridge, even though there overall weren’t that many people there. It’s a quality that someone may not pick up straight away, but I do think that it does like quite effective. The overall visual impact of these photographs is quite strong, in my opinion, as in contrast to seeing some of these places during the day, it really manages to make the place look different. I think that people who were to look at some of these photographs may have some sort of visual impact from it.
DEVELOPMENT -KALEIDOSCOPE
ARTIST INSPIRATION - KATHRYN LAWES What I really find interesting about this photograph is the kind of effect that the photograph gets when you see faces duplicated and mixing together slightly, as it begins to form a more abstract image that you might not expect to see from it’s initial photo. I also think that the different shapes created by this image symmetrically really gives out a contrasting image to whatever it’s original was. I think that some of the elements within this photograph have inspired me to develop my own further. I feel that some of my pictures have certain shapes and colors that make the image appear much more vibrant and obscure. As opposed to having the black and white pictures however, I feel that Kaleidoscope’s would look much more effective if there is a vast amount of color blending together. And I think that the effect that I achieved in my photographs in which the lights are reflected in the water will also help to get an effective and obscure look. However, I do think that experimenting with the saturation could be quite interesting and will probably be trying this out.
MY INTERPRETATION
FINAL THREE OUTCOMES
EVALUATION OF IDEA 1 •
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I feel that my initial photographs for this idea were very effective, if not the best part about the first idea. I think that nighttime photography by itself does bring out a very strong and unique quality by itself, as within one shoot you do achieve very effective photographs. It’s something that’s a little bit more time consuming, but does give a very promising quality after practicing how to do it. I feel that I did try to push my creative boundaries in my experiments, though perhaps I could’ve pushed them further. Although they are not shown on this project, I did try using photo manipulation to try and overlap some of these photographs, so that the multiple colors could blend together. However, the overall effect it gave was not giving me the quality I wanted so I left them out. However, I was incredibly pleased with the outcomes of trying the kaleidoscope technique, as they do, as a collection, seem to look very effective. I feel the mixture of colors and new shapes gave it a very new kind of image and I wasn’t expecting the quality of them to come out the way they did. I think that my choice of artists and photographers were quite effective. These were the real inspiration behind wanting to do what I was going to do, in particular Kathryn Lawes as whilst I was looking for a way to develop my images, she was one of the few who’s technique really did make me feel impressed. I was suggested a tutorial online on how to make the kaleidoscope, and although it was only a simple technique, I still feel that it was effective. I sort of feel that I could have developed these photograph’s further through projection or by placing objects over the photograph and then re-photographing it. However, I ran out of time before I could make something like that. I think that my final project did work out very well and I’m incredibly happy with my final three outcomes. However, I did use one of my initial photographs as one of my final three outcomes, as I still feel that night time photography does look quite arty and effective on it’s own. I, personally, feel that these initial photograph’s didn’t need that much development, as I still think that the initial’s do all have a unique quality that’s quite hard to repeat. The technique used to take these kinds of photographs is very time consuming, so I feel that working longer to take the photographs is almost the same equivalent as working to develop another set of photographs. In developing these photographs further, I might have printed some of them onto acetate and then place them onto a light box to mix them together. However, I’m not quite sure how it would work, as a lot of photographs have got a very dark surrounding, so getting them to mix together may be quite hard.
EXAM IDEA –PHOTO MANIPULATION
TÁRI TELEMNAR • What I find particularly interesting about this photograph is the kind of message it tries to convey in it’s imagery. I feel that the use of a person staring out an actual, larger scale, eye can make someone think it means many different things, however I feel that it’s some sort of relevance to having some sort of emotions/feelings being hidden in surreal locations, such as the “Minds eye” and other such things like that. • The elements of this photograph that have inspired me with my own is the fact that I could attempt to try and place people in multiple places that could show that they are somewhere where they shouldn’t be e.g. in a jar or a plant pot. I think that photo manipulation is certainly something I’ve tried many times before now and I think that this is an idea that I will be able to carry out effectively.
EXAM PHOTOGRAPHS -INITIAL
FINAL OUTCOMES
EXAM EVALUATION • I started my exam project by first thinking about how I could interpret the idea of something being ‘covert and obscured’. I asked for advice from teachers and such, and then I decided to try using nighttime photography as my initial idea. I had not long before taken a one-time class to do with this technique so I decided that it would be a good idea since I would be able to achieve good quality photographs from being able to think about my composition. I feel that these initial photographs were very successful and I feel that the quality of them were effective and good. The initial photographs were a mixture of London at night (The London Eye, busses driving past on the street, St. Paul’s Cathedral) And then there were also simply photographs of a street at night time –but I found that the effect that the street lights, and the reflection of some of the puddles, made the picture itself extremely effective. Even though I didn’t use this idea in the exam, I did enjoy it and feel as if some of the photographs are of an extremely good quality. • I feel that some of the initial photographs could use improvements –in particular the nighttime photographs with the busses driving past. Although the initial effects of these pictures are quite interesting, I feel as if the composition of it is just a little bit unplanned. Compared to the picture that I have of someone standing by the traffic as it drives past, giving the effect of him being there whilst lights and such shoot past, was better planned out and overall a better composition. I also think that I may have used the wrong settings on my camera for a picture of a street, which was taken at night. I had taken the picture at night, but it looks as if it was taken during the day, since the sky is a very light blue. This doesn’t ruin the photograph, but it does however begin to bring it out of the nighttime photography section.
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For the exam, I decided to develop a different idea, and I went with the aspect of objects and people being where they shouldn’t be, or things we may not see normally. Through doing this, I used two different aspects. One being photographing people and then photo manipulating them into everyday places, such as in a jar, plant pot, or a teacup. I think that this get’s the general gist of maybe there are things we don’t see which happen, or people are in places where you wouldn’t expect them to be. But, however, I also took this approach with the photographs in which I held a photo frame over certain people and places and then replaced them with something different. I had to take careful precision in editing these photographs since they were made up of two separate photographs. I cropped the photographs into the frame after I had taken it, and therefore I needed to edit these photographs with quite close precision, since the two images needed to be aligned so that I would achieve the look I was searching for. I felt like I needed to combine these two techniques of photo manipulation together, since I found it quite difficult to find places that I could use the photo frame technique on it. I think that it’s an idea that needs precision and exact alignment.
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I think that my creative boundaries may not have been as thoroughly pushed as I had originally planned to do. I think that there may have been a way that I could have experimented more, considering most of the developments I did were created on Photoshop, and were not something made more physically. I did try using a kaleidoscope effect on Photoshop for quite a few of my photographs, particularly the nighttime photography photos. These worked very effectively and I found that a mixture of the vast amount of colors and the repetition of certain objects created a sense of interest and excitement. I’ve experimented with photo manipulation before, and I thought that this may help with enough.
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I feel that the exam itself went well, and I managed to get a total of eleven outcomes finished all together. I do think however that once I had finished the images I had in mind, I was trying to find ways to develop the photographs onwards. I did end up using some of the extra photographs, or re-using some photographs, and turned them into other things. Such as taking one of the photographs that I had made and then using the frame and repeating the same image within that frame. I think that this photo, although quite effective, is starting to fall away from the theme of ‘Covert and Obscured’ and going more into my own interpretation of the project in general. I think that I may have a few photographs that, although using the same technique as before, start to move away from my original idea and take on something different.
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This said, I do think that my final outcomes are quite effective. I especially like the photograph of the man in the jar. However, there are a few there where I feel like it may not have worked due to differentiation in lighting or such. These might include the one of the boy climbing in the teacup, or sleeping in the matchbox. I just think that this doesn’t look as ‘smooth’ as some of the other pictures, such as the eye with someone looking out of it. The outcomes, as a collection, seem to go well with each other, in the sense that all of them have a sort of obscurity to them. I feel as though perhaps I didn’t make enough final outcomes, but I think this might be because I spent the eight hours with precise editing and making sure that some ideas in the exam. However, I still feel a bit disappointed that I didn’t do any developments that may have involved rephotographing certain photographs or maybe projections, because I feel that I may not have developed these photographs the positioning was correct. There were a few that I made towards the end that might have been a little bit rushed, but otherwise –I do feel that they all look effective.
• If I were to have more time to work on this project and develop onto the next level, I would probable want to incorporate the photo frame back into this final idea and use it in some way to present the photographs in a manner away from the screen. I think I’d also like to experiment with mixing nighttime photography with this sort of idea as well. One of my original ideas was to use the photo frame and hold it in front of a specific place in London. Outside the frame would be daytime, and within the photo frame would be nighttime. Though, when I tried doing this, it proved too difficult as I would need to be exact about whereabouts I would place the camera, and so I didn’t incorporate it within this project. Another thing that I was quite upset about is the fact that I only had time to make one idea, and this therefore brings me back on coursework. I am extremely upset about it, however, the likelihood is that I would be experimenting with the idea I used in the exam anyway, but I think that if I had chosen to try out that kind of idea before hand, I think the quality of my final exam pieces may have been better.