Project 1 : The Cut Up
‘The Cut Up’ was a project first discussed in a lecture within the first few weeks of Semester A in which me and my group were all given a small piece of paper that was a segment of a larger photograph by Bruce Gilden. The idea was that everyone would go away and begin to explore the new city Lincoln, which we had just moved to and recreate their randomly selected segment. In the end all of these photos would be organised and curated on a display to see how well we all worked individually.
I was randomly given the following section which featured a man’s head and at what I could only assume at the time were some products on the back shelf lit by two long fluoresce lights with a third one only just being visible on the edge of the composition:
This shot was one that didn’t seem to challenge me in a technical way, it troubled me in that I needed to find a location that was similar in a city that I knew next to nothing about.
At the weekend I went location scouting around nearby buildings looking at windows, doors and essentially all types of shop and building openings in the hope that I would find something; sadly I didn’t, but decided to help out my fellow classmates with their work on the weekend in hopes I would spot something. We all met up and scoured Lincoln’s high street, I happened to spot numerous shops that ticked every box except the 3 that I did find all had the florescent lights pointing from left to right and not towards the window of the shop where I would be standing. I finally stumbled upon a charity shop towards the end of the high street that had the same lights in the correct position that I needed helping me recreate Bruce’s segment.
I framed the shot as close as I could to Bruce Gilden’s segment that I had been given, keeping in mind that my other classmates would be photographing their segments that would be surrounding my photo, which was a huge worry for me as I didn’t know how the others were framing their shots in the surrounding segments. The end result however was surprisingly well done and looked more like an abstract recreation than a group of individuals who tried to recreate the photograph really accurately. I used my DSLR, 50mm lens to take the shot which resulted in me being a far distance from the subject and shop opening to get everything in the composition.
I tried to get it as close as possible allowing for my classmates to have some extra room when framing their shots for when all of our segments were placed together to recreate the original photograph. I used a fellow classmate who was with me on the high street to stand in as the subject and positioned him as correctly as I could, matching his distance from the camera as Bruce had done in his shot.
After taking the photo I decided to edit the shot slightly in black and white to help with the recreation of the segment. I used bare minimum editing when correcting the shot as I wanted the photograph to remain true to how Bruce took the photograph and that was naturally with no post-manipulating tools, just colour grading.
As the shot was taken in RAW format it gave me the possibility of changing many options within Lightroom to fix problems and settings I may not have had in camera; I had however manually changed the exposure so I left it alone in post. Contrast and shadows were increased slightly to help achieve the correct style I was looking for when recreating Bruce’s shot and the highlights reduced considerably to really pull out the blacks in the shot.
On deadline day all photos were handed in via a JPEG file and printed off the following week by our tutor, Mike Downing, who lead us to a display board and gave me a stack of photographs in which I and the rest of my group had to correctly stick the photos back in order to produce Bruce Gildens’ final shot in its original composition, the following is the result:
In comparison to the original photograph I would say that the black and white colour grading by me and my group was incredibly well done as it matches the original very closely. In retrospect I would in future try to use different lenses I own to experiment with the different looks I could achieve, another thing would be to try and recreate the photo right down to the little details: such as a second subject who appears very hidden and usually unseen by most at the bottom right hand side of the composition.
Photographer Bio: Bruce Gilden
Gilden, is a New York, born Photographer who solely focuses on street photography, since a young age he used to sit at his second story bedroom window in Brooklyn and fell in love with the “characters” he spotted. He treats his subjects like they are characters allowing for him to spot and shoot random people in New York in very different and interesting ways that show off their important features and ultimately their “character” that most conventional photographers would never think of. He snaps with a 35mm camera and a flashgun at a rapid pace before colour grading the images to black and white allowing for him to show a really gritty and interesting character. I found his quote “if you can smell a street by looking at the photo, it’s a street photograph.” one of the most compelling photography quotes I’ve heard in a long time and it really has stuck in my mind for future street photography work.
Bruce tends to get up close and personal with his subjects by his sudden movements and instant snapping of shots before continuing to walk down the street like it was nothing, he does this numerous times a day and it’s his own personal and interesting style that has resulted in some very stimulating and thought-provoking shots.
Project 2 : Still Life
Hiking up to the top of Lincoln, and having to pick up litter from the floor was not something I thought I would be doing on a Sunday morning when I heard it was a still life assignment. The latest project had each and every group studying Photography travel to different parts of the city to collect miscellaneous items that we could find, all of this ended up just being thrown away items and nature. Once these photographs were taken they were then to be composited individually into a triptych that would be presented. I was given a small area towards the top of Lincoln near the Cathedral, where I had to find these random objects, here is the location:
I visited this location with a fellow group member where we gave ourselves the challenge of finding the best item to help us find it more enjoyable as looking for rubbish in the rain wasn’t something we were particularly happy about. I managed to find a few interesting items such as a pair of broken glasses, a bottle of beer and an empty packet of cigarettes that were all found separately but all seemed like that could have come from the same person; this led to me creating a character in my head that had been out the night before that had a little bit too much fun resulting in him breaking his glasses, leaving behind his beer and smoking all his fags away. I then had a sort of realisation that my character sounded very similar to a film’s character I had watched the previous week, which was from Edgar Wright’s 2012 comedy ‘The World’s End’ which featured Simon Pegg, as a drunken idiot who still thinks he is the coolest guy in town called Gary King.
Other items that were found included conkers, bottle caps, a shard of blunt glass and a piece of china that had been dropped and smashed from an ornament. Due to creating a character around 3 of the items it resulted in me excluding the use of the other subjects as I believed that the use of a triptych with the objects would help viewers of the photograph think of the triptych as a way of seeing the character compared to seeing the subjects individually. The brief for this project was to create a triptych consisting of an arrangement of items found or of individual objects taken, I didn’t want to rule out the possibility of having an arrangement of the items so I kept them with me to take a few tests in case I could make three arrangements of the items.
The items were placed on the green chair that I had in my room which was to be used as a backdrop, I didn’t personally think that the colour of green would look good, partially due to being colour blind with the colour green, orange, brown and red. I had access to a blue chair that I thought would be a lot more interesting visually which would be used later in the experimentation phase where I wanted to see what would work and what wouldn’t. Those factors would be what colour backdrop would work best with the subjects, portrait or landscape, close up or a full shot of the subject and the different lenses I had access to (50mm 1.8, 18-135mm and 300mm).
I believe that the lighting is the most important part of any photograph as it can influence a shot dramatically, especially in still life/product photography. The following shows how different a face’s shape can change with just a flash in a different position.
I found that using a flash with two diffused lights on either side of the subject on the lowest dim setting you can get with the 50mm some gritty, stylized and dark photographs of the subject which was what I was looking for representing an alcoholic character.
I knew when taking these photos that I would have them in a triptych and in what order, this is why I tried to frame the subjects in a way that would look aesthetically pleasing. The beer bottle was placed on the left hand side of the composition as it would be placed on the left hand side of the triptych, the cigarettes in the middle of the composition for the 2nd photograph and then the glasses on the right hand side for the 3rd photograph. This resulted in a stylized original look that I thought increased the triptych should they have all been in the middle.
Due to myself placing the items in the photo depending on what order they came in the triptych I knew it was going to leave some negative space which I purposely tried to get black instead of the blue chair as I didn’t believe that coloured background would work well with what I had in mind.
Project 3 : Short and Long Exposures
The short and long exposures project had me take two photographs, one a short exposure and one surprisingly, a long… During this project I had many different ideas and failures which meant I learned quite a few things along the journey which resulted in myself reshooting some of the shots, as I believe that what I learned could improve the photographs and they fortunately did.
For the short exposure I took inspiration from photographers like Diego Diaz, who has a large following on Flickr. His project was taken of subjects with balloons filled with different coloured paint exploding in their faces taken with a short exposure capturing the explosion and the subject’s reaction as the paint hits them. Another set included a girl screaming and a teapot smashing.
These photos gave me the idea of capturing something that’s incredibly fast in motion that we tend to see at such a high speed that we don’t see the beauty that it can some time create like something smashing or paint flying out in multiple directions. This gave me the idea of some sort of liquid being in motion which I finally settled on using a barber’s spray bottle to spray water against a black background and hopefully capture the instant it leaves the bottle as we tend to see the shape but only briefly.
The following shot was taken with my black reflector behind the water due to not having access to a black background and two lights underneath/in front of the water to help make the water more visible.
After post processing in Lightroom I was left with this shot as well as a few others that all had their own spray projection with different amounts of water and natural transparency due to twisting the nozzle every time I sprayed and took a shot on a fast shutter speed.
The long exposure of this project took me a multiple attempts due to having numerous ideas as I find that long exposure has more creative ideas surrounding it than short. I first started off at Lincoln’s sausage festival where I had no intention of taking any short or long exposures at all however at one point a band started playing and a group of people surrounded so I decided I would try and get close to the front and take a short exposure with my 50mm at 1/15 sec to capture the movement of the guitarist hands and strings as he played, this also caught another member of the band moving as she danced and the hand movements of the double bass player.
This helped me understand the difference in how fast a movement needs to be with a certain exposure time to correctly create a blurred long exposure. This image was never intended to be a final image that I would submit, only a test; it then allowed me to move onto my next piece that I wanted to try out.
I had the idea of having two escalators on either side of the composition and having there be a long exposure of the steps as I believe it could create a gradual blur due to the steps starting slow at the bottom, then gradually speeding up which I believe would create an interesting photo. I attempted to shoot this however the only are in Lincoln that had open area escalators where I could just walk in and take the photo was at the shopping centre. I managed to get in with my tripod however I was kicked out before I could take the photograph; this didn’t stop me as when outside the security hadn’t followed me so I quickly took the photo however it looked nowhere near aesthetically pleasing as the original shot had been planned. Since editing the photographs on the mac in the library and then plugging it into my home computer the files had disappeared which was very disheartening as I had heard from multiple people that the macs do that; in future I will make sure to have a backup of the file on both USB and SD card to reduce the risk of losing my photographs.
Due to this happening I looked towards astrophotography as it’s always interested me, a switch was used to start and end the long exposures in the hope that there would be some star trails in my images. Sadly due to the DSLR I have (Canon 70d) I couldn’t keep the shutter open for 30+ minutes so it only ended up being around an 8 second exposure.
I didn’t like this shot so I attempted to create something with style which was a shot of me stood with my arms out beside me in the hopes of creating a hybrid between an alien beam absorbing me and a light bursting out of my chest like I was Iron Man.
If I was to reshoot this photograph again I would have tried to keep more still, especially my head as I was wearing a bobble hat which can clearly be seen to be shaking and to also have framed it better with a brighter torch to give it more of a beam.
Once again I didn’t like the outcome of my photograph so I attempted a different type of long exposure. The Lincoln Christmas Festival came to town and with it a few rides, one of which was a Ferris wheel that illuminated the sky, due to it rotating I wanted to capture a long exposure of that, the street lights and the cars zooming by.
Project 4 : Unknown Portraits
For our second to last assignment for Photography we were given the task of taking 4 portrait photographs, two of which had to be of unknown subjects and the other two of people we knew. I decided to head to the highstreet and steep hill to look out for interesting people who would create compelling subjects, I kept an eye on the street and also at employees within the shops. I came across a lady in a whisky shop and spoke to her about my project and if I could take a photo to which she kindly agreed.
I tried to frame the subject in a way that was a close up of the subject’s face with the top of her head just being cut off with the same on her neck; I kept this as my style across all of my 4 photos but more specifically my second unknown photograph as they had a theme underneath them. That theme was to have the subject framed as talked above with the product they were selling blurred out in the background; post processing was an important key in the production of this photo as I made the whites in her eyes pop a little bit more alongside the pupil in addition to brightening up the labels of the whisky in the background to make them more clear.
This shot was taken of a lady who looks a little younger than the first image’s subject and was working in an ice cream shop on steep hill. I kept all of the same rules I had set myself above in this photograph to making them a fairly good set.
The other two photographs were of my friend and girlfriend, they both had the top of their heads and necks chopped off by my framing on purpose, and they also had no background as I used my reflector as a background with the use of a flash and a dull handheld light to illuminate the eyes. I framed my subjects in a way that they were either on the left or right of the composition interesting the rule of thirds line with their heads tilted in a way that made the subjects look into the negative space even though their gaze was focused on the camera lens.
Project 5 : Article Photo Representation
For the final project of Photography in Semester A I was asked to produce 4 photographs in response to a newspaper article that I had to find through either the library or on the web, I researched over a couple of days saving the articles that I found interesting to create a stack of recent news that I found I could respond to photographically in a compelling way. One of these included a headline called ‘In the Shadows’ which was about millions being left behind by Obama’s migrant plan which I thought would be interesting to create a set of portraiture photographs that are heavily shadow focused.
However the article I decided to respond to was ‘Ubisoft apologises for Assassin’s Creed Unity bugs’ which caught my attention; this article was about bugs and glitches that were happening in a game console creating abstract, odd and sometimes beautiful pieces of art that we usually would never tend to creatively think of or have the time to create whereas a computer crashing can create these fascinating shapes and colours in a short amount of time.
In my previous Photography education at Sixth Form I did glitch art in conjunction with the built environment which I had learned a lot of the processes from such as opening up an image as an MP3, cutting and adding effects in Audacity before then opening the photo as a JPEG. Others include using a paragraph of code that I found on a website called Reddit.com which took met to a website called GitHub.com that allows the community to upload lines of code to do certain things. The code I found allows you to change multiple parameters to affect the contents of the photograph. This is done by installing a program called Processing that allows you to run code through it within a window, this can be used to create all sorts of programs, where in this case I’m using it for glitch art.
When transferring my photographs from SD card to computer I had noticed that two photographs by coincidence had glitched out creating the two shots you’ve just seen. It was a nice surprise to see on my photos that I had took earlier in the day, this type of glitch is usually achieved by opening the photo as a text file and manipulating it, however I plan to do it different as talked about above. With the code I plan to glitch the photographs through a process called pixel sorting that depending on the parameters that I give it will shift the pixels of the photographs in different ways. The best way I can describe the glitch I want to take is to – imagine a painting where the canvas is still wet and drying, you take a piece of plastic and place the end of it at the top of the canvas and pull down smudging the paint. This is how I envisioned the processing program reading the coded script. The following shows the photographs I glitched:
I decided that I would take photographs of buildings that relate to the game in some way, the ones I took were of the cathedral and the Tudor esque like buildings in Lincoln’s high street and steel hill since they look like they have been pulled out of the Assassin’s Creed franchise. I would tend to try and stay away from the cathedral as I know that it is very common amongst Lincoln students however I believe that I do have a reason to this time around due to its architecture, history and relation to the game.
I believe that I have created a set of very bizarre glitch photographs that you would never have seen before, especially with the cathedral. The article could very well use any of the pictures I have created above due to them having an atmosphere to them that looks like the game engine/world had corrupted throwing all different types of values into the game’s code producing worlds that look as surreal as those.
In conclusion:
In conclusion I feel that I have produced some very strong work at level one that will hopefully achieve a decent grade. I know that I have learned a fair few things across the last few months with learning new techniques and through new knowledge learned from seminars, lectures and especially workshops. It was also great to get feedback and a hands on with the Hasselblad camera in the studio before level 2 next year as it gave me the opportunity to see what the course has in future. All in all I’ve enjoyed this semester of Photography and proud of my work that I’ve created.