growth and evolution
BRAINSTORM.
• Bacteria, algae, roots, shoots,branches, cells,
• History, politics, war, religion
• Volcanoes, coral reefs, wrecks, erosion, rivers
• Circuit boards, wiring, electrical components, the internet
• Media, communications, transport, networks, cities
• Urban development, factories, nuclear power stations, wind generators, turbines, motorways, industry
• Tessellation, fractals, diversity, chaos, galaxies
• Eco-friendly vehicles, recycling, rebuilding
• History, politics, war, religion
• Volcanoes, coral reefs, wrecks, erosion, rivers
• Circuit boards, wiring, electrical components, the internet
• Media, communications, transport, networks, cities
• Urban development, factories, nuclear power stations, wind generators, turbines, motorways, industry
• Tessellation, fractals, diversity, chaos, galaxies
• Eco-friendly vehicles, recycling, rebuilding
- Wisdom, maturity, old age, relationships, birth, spring
EVOLUTION OF TIME - THE AGEING PROCESS
The quest to capture eternal youth is somthing that has facinated man through out the ages and has been the subject of many books and films. The evolution from youth to old age is something that will eventually effect us all.
I took a self portrait. Using Photoshop I put the portrait of the old man on top of my face and rubbed out areas to show my facial features, so the portrait looks like me but older.
Bobby neal adams
In his 'Age Maps' Bobby Neal Adams takes two photographs of the same person, from different periods of time and then splices them together. in this fusion, a jump of time is established at the tear.
Emma Allen
A story of reincarnation told through stop frame animation and body art over a 5 day period. The artist transforms herself from live portrait through to face of the dead. This video is transformative and captures evolution of the ageing process in an art form.
Ruby from Emma Allen on Vimeo.
man evolves
Icarus the boy who flew to close to the sun
Son of Daedalus who dared to fly too near the sun on wings of feathers and wax. Daedalus had been imprisoned by King Minos of Crete within the walls of his own invention, the Labyrinth. But the great craftsman's genius would not suffer captivity. He made two pairs of wings by adhering feathers to a wooden frame with wax. Giving one pair to his son, he cautioned him that flying too near the sun would cause the wax to melt. But Icarus became ecstatic with the ability to fly and forgot his father's warning. The feathers came loose and Icarus plunged to his death in the sea.
The idea that man could evolve to one day fly is the theme of many science fictions movies. Super heroes that live among normal people is a theme that continues to create huge interest.
Son of Daedalus who dared to fly too near the sun on wings of feathers and wax. Daedalus had been imprisoned by King Minos of Crete within the walls of his own invention, the Labyrinth. But the great craftsman's genius would not suffer captivity. He made two pairs of wings by adhering feathers to a wooden frame with wax. Giving one pair to his son, he cautioned him that flying too near the sun would cause the wax to melt. But Icarus became ecstatic with the ability to fly and forgot his father's warning. The feathers came loose and Icarus plunged to his death in the sea.
The idea that man could evolve to one day fly is the theme of many science fictions movies. Super heroes that live among normal people is a theme that continues to create huge interest.
man evolves - ARTISTS RESEARCH - Maia Flore
Maia Flore - Sleep Elevations. A series of balletic and poetic images of woman sleeping, elevated in the air, apparently floating whilst sleeping through the air. These images evoke in my mind victorian levitation shows and the Cottingley fairies photographs by Elsie Wright in 1917, which were thought to be absolutely true at the time. Elevation pictures are successful if they seem plausible and real even though we know they cannot be, there is something very real about these images and i think it is also because the images have motivation and plausibility. This is something I will think about in my work. If I use manipulated images, there will need to be an inherent motivation and reason for the elevation.
sam taylor wood
Sam Taylor Wood's photographic self -portraits are truly inspiring. As she explores notions of weight and gravity, she places herself in situations where her interior and external sense of self is in conflict. Her work examines our shared social and psychological conditions. "Testing our physical and emotional limits, Sam Taylor-Wood examines the vulnerability and fragility of the human body, addressing the major themes of life and death, and reflecting on our own mortality. Whilst contemporary in feel and presentation, her work references the symbolism of Dutch still life and Renaissance paintings. This exhibition consolidates Taylor-Wood as an artist whose work is magical, beguiling and constantly surprising.” (photoforager.com)
philippe halsman
Philippe Halsman was a highly successful portrait photographer working in the 1950's. He devised an innovative twin lens reflex camera and collaborated for many years with Salvador Dali. At then end of every sitting he asked his clients to jump creating a unique set of witty energetic images. But he also creates an exploration of how we see events and how they are photographed. This dualism in jump bends the truth with the illusion of stopping motion, but on the other hand seeking a greater truth from the jumper. ' In a jump, the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and limb muscles, the mask falls, the real self becomes visible.
man evolves RESPONSE - levitation and jump
I carried out my own initial experiments with levitation and jumps in my photography. I took simple pictures of a friend jumping and using a high shutter speed to capture the image without blurring. The results work, but the subjects facial expression shows that they are jumping. For Philippe Halsman this would bring the viewer nearer to the truth of the person sitting, but it looks tense. Maia Flore's sleeping images get around this problem by hanging - therefore the body is relaxed and mirrors how it would be if this situation is real.
I tried then using photoshop to put my subject in a location to make it look like they are levitating. It is a rough first attempt and I think the image lacks the motivation it needs - it doesn't really make sense - but it is a technique I can explore further. I think a series of images like Flore's would be essential to making this work. |
EVOLUTION OF THE CAMERA
Photography is a medium which is constanly evolving. The quest to fix an image has occupied the thoughts of men for centuries. Three different forms of photography that different generations have used to capture the image in front of them include:
1 ) Pin Hole Camera
2 ) Film Camera
3 ) Digital Camera
In this task I took the same image with three different cameras.
1 ) Pin Hole Camera
2 ) Film Camera
3 ) Digital Camera
In this task I took the same image with three different cameras.
evolution artists research - timelapse and open shutter techniques
Michael Wesley's approach is the antithesis of Henri Cartier- Bresson's 'decisive moment'. He argues that it deconstructs this notion by 'abandoning representation and moving away from the dominant voyeurism that dominates photography'. His open shutter pictures give a very different sense of photography. Wesley's urban landscapes are taken using a technique of leaving the shutter open for a very long time. Not minutes, or hours, or days, but years. Using a home made pin hole camera, tiny apertures and a special combination of filters, he is able to minimise light hitting the film and creates blurred images of a city, not dissolving as at first appears, but of a city in creation. This single image of New York took three years to complete.
Esteban Pastorino Diaz, is an Argentinian photographer, who has the Guinness Record for the longest photographic negative - a 130 feet long exposure of Buenos Aires. He constructs a series of cameras for each photo he takes. He then captures a series of 'discrete moments' as the camera moves through space. His camera acts autonomously - Diaz only sees the images after they have been exposed - meaning luck and chance have a big role to play in his work. ' we assume photographic representation has to follow the same rules as our vision, but it doesn't. This seems to sum up what a lot of these techniques can bring. An ability to see the evolution of a place, time or person in a way that the human eye alone cannot capture.
Timelapse - research
These photos are far more than proxies for a single moment or even a specific trip,” Addis says. “They are also ways for us to freeze time for one week in October and reflect on time and how we change from year to year—and not just physically, but in every way. Because while we take the same photo, our perspectives change.”
|
Click to set custom HTML
Clip on You Tube combining growth and timelapse idea. A father has taken footage of his daughter since birth and made a timelapse that spans 13 years.
In a similar project, Steven Addis did the same thing, but returned to a street corner in New York to ask passers by to take the same photograph of him and his daughter every year for 17 years. What this series respresents is more than the just the images, it is the act of taking them . Dustin Farrell created this timelapse landscape. "Every frame of this video is a raw still from a Canon 5D2 DSLR and processed with Adobe software," he says "I felt that showing them again with motion controlled HDR and/or night timelapse would be a new way to see old landmarks."
|
TIMELAPSE - FIRST RESPONSE
I started off my project by experimenting with timelapse. I thought this was relevant to the title of my project and Ive always wanted to try shooting a time lapse, I think my attempt (above) was very successful considering the recent weather I had to pick the right time and fortunately was blessed with a clear and colorful sunset. I took it using a Lumix GH2 using a timelapse continuous setting. It took several attempts to get the settings right - earlier attempts did not record. I then imported the images into IMovie to create the time-lapse.
GROWTH OF NATURE IN A MAN MADE ENVIRONMENT
The growth of man across the globe has coincided with the collaspe of many natural environments. Places such as the rain forests have been destroyed to make way for man's ever increasing desire for space and habitat. However the earth and nature does not stand still and can often reclaim its territory. Photographer's such as Gregorty Crewdson and Chrisse MacDonald have captured the struggle between man and the natural environment.
Chrisse Macdonald explores the drive of nature to fight back against the industrialisation of the world in a series of images called 'Overgrown'. The images are placed and the plants are fake, but the effect of life pushing through the man made structures is striking in its simplicity.
Gregory Crewdson Gregory Crewdson makes beautiful and unsettling images of American life that can require crews of 50 people to produce. I"'m always trying to project unknown and mysterious images onto ordinary landscapes." "The pictures are not meant to be that specific," he says. "They come out of the same world or landscape, but there's no literal narrative that ties it all together. If there's a common theme, it's that the pictures share a beauty and a sadness, doubled with an underlying sense of anxiety or alienation. In the end, they are very quiet photographs. Even though the production was large and complicated, the tone of the photographs is almost naturalistic. It's a paradox."(telegraph.co.uk)
Growth of nature - response.
My first response was to take a series of images around London where nature has naturally forced its way through concrete, finding any crack or space where life can grow. My second response was to create more surrealist, posed images like Chrisse MacDonalds of placing plants in the home environment. I took something of Gregory Crewdson's idea who only shoots at dusk or when light is failing to create enigmatic, atmospheric images.
I took these shots as a further response to Chrisse Macdonalds images which manage to give the viewer an atmospheric feeling, its the lighting and the dull settings around the plants that achieve this eery feeling in his images. I attempted to recreate this atmosphere which is why i made the photos black and white, I wanted the lighting to have the main effect on the viewer and not the vibrant colours of the plant, I used an angle pose lamp to control the lighting in the way I intended, I think I managed to achieve the lighting I wanted in each photos and still make it interesting with the composition of the plant growing in the house.
CELLS. GROWTH...
Artists like Jack Deane and Matt Shalian explore patterns in growth, cells change and tesselation that comes from our very being. I am drawn to this almost scientific analysis of the human form and the essence of life, Some of the patterns we see in macro photography, I also saw replicated in architecture in Barcelona which has the same symmetry and design. This may be something I can explore further - perhaps there is a connection between intricate cell structure and intricate design.
Three strands
I have selected three starting points to develop into my project, this means I will be able to develop my project in a way that suits me best and the way that I am most interested in. For my first starting point I am going to develop time-lapse in a number of different ways, one idea is to look into expressing over population and the development of London as a city, another is looking at the growth and evolution of nature. I might also experiment with other ideas as I develop this strand like overlaying images from a time-lapse on top of each other or creating a montage of different time-lapses.
The next starting point is expanding on the work inspired by artists like Jack Deane and Matt Shalian, using magnification to explore pattern and tesselation in cells structure and the world around us. I was particularly interested to explore my own body and surroundings as part of a Darwinian concept of Evolution. A final thread that I am also keen to explore is contained in the photography of Bobby Neal Adams and how a time shift can be represented in the point at which two images join. That the evolution of time is held in that single place.
The next starting point is expanding on the work inspired by artists like Jack Deane and Matt Shalian, using magnification to explore pattern and tesselation in cells structure and the world around us. I was particularly interested to explore my own body and surroundings as part of a Darwinian concept of Evolution. A final thread that I am also keen to explore is contained in the photography of Bobby Neal Adams and how a time shift can be represented in the point at which two images join. That the evolution of time is held in that single place.
CELL GROWTH - THE WORLD IN MEGAPIXELS
Developing the idea of cells as , I took a Discovery USB microscope with 400 x magnification. Typically used in medical practice, I began by photographing my own body and clothes. The close ups are of fibres, skin, hair and body parts.
I feel as though with the camera/microscope I used, the Veho Discovery x400, I am discovering a whole new field of photography for myself. It can capture fields of zoom that you cannot see with the human eye, this open some very interesting possibilities for me as instead of the conventional photographer capturing his surroundings through his eyes I could now discover and capture things that no one can normally see through their eyes. I found one of the most interesting things to capture is the fabrics as you can really appreciate the attention to detail. The other thing I found was that a lot of parts of the body where quite unsightly at this level of detail.
Timelapse - new srand
|
I decided to take advantage of the first sunny day in a while and went to the heath with the intention of capturing the mass of people throughout the first sunny day of spring. I used a Nikon D70 SLR with no timelapse capability, so I had to manually take a series of shots. I set a fast shutter speed, taking two pictures every second for three minutes. Unable to control the environment and the timing, the shots were wobbly. I used this to my advantage in post production and the way I edited and the slight camera shake makes it look like an old 1910 film. I haven't added any music or one much editing as this was primarily an experiment to see how time-lapse would work on have a device or a built in setting for it. In this strand I am hoping to capture the how quickly the world moves in a day.
|
I found the film Baraka quite inspiring to this strand of my project. It uses time-lapse to show the entire world, it was filmed all over the world and took several years to make. The shots and technicality of the film is amazing, its not like any other film photography, as appose to showing a obvious story like conventional films this film has no speaking and considered a good film more for its artistic side than an intuitive story. If think this is very relevant to my Timelapse as this is something similar to what I am aiming to capture.
|
|
An hour in a photo - CITY - new strand
Henri Cartier Bresson said that ' a photograph captures a moment in time'. His pervasive philosophy was that ' The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box'.
As I thought about the City I live in, as constantly evolving and changing space, I was struck by the ebb and flow of population, ever changing in it's diversity and how the city has to expand and contract to contain this mass of humanity. My explorations therefore became about how does the city contain and change in the face of increasing population. Playing with this idea I also wanted to play with the notion of the evolution of time in a single photograph - but not to capture and to freeze it, but to capture movement that takes place over a period of time, in a single shot. My intention for these images therefore was to overlay stills from a time-lapse that I shot over an hour to show the movement of people in a busy congested area. So I went to kings cross and time-lapse this shot on a bridge over the trains. I used a Lumix GH3 with a built in intervelometer, which made the task easier than when I was using the Nikon D70 in which I had to press the shutter button repeatedly.
As I thought about the City I live in, as constantly evolving and changing space, I was struck by the ebb and flow of population, ever changing in it's diversity and how the city has to expand and contract to contain this mass of humanity. My explorations therefore became about how does the city contain and change in the face of increasing population. Playing with this idea I also wanted to play with the notion of the evolution of time in a single photograph - but not to capture and to freeze it, but to capture movement that takes place over a period of time, in a single shot. My intention for these images therefore was to overlay stills from a time-lapse that I shot over an hour to show the movement of people in a busy congested area. So I went to kings cross and time-lapse this shot on a bridge over the trains. I used a Lumix GH3 with a built in intervelometer, which made the task easier than when I was using the Nikon D70 in which I had to press the shutter button repeatedly.
I made these images black and white so the lighting is the strongest feature of the image, the roof and the end of the station where made from glass, this combined with a sunny day worked well and made the strong lighting and quite a high contrast when made B&W. The mass of people who where moving up and down the platform and the way I edited the images to overlay ontop of each other makes the people look like ghosts moving around the human world.
|
This is an image of people walking to the platform, I created black and white again to concentrate on the contrast of light, and the ghostly effect of the people moving around works a lot better in B&W as the all the colours merging together make it confusing to see individual persons. The camera moved slightly in one of the pictures which explains the slight duplication on the barrier in the foreground, but I liked the effect this made. I feel it added to the general sense of movement and frantic activity of the photo which is what I intended to capture.
|
an hour in a photo - skyline
I tried to apply his technique to a time-lapse of the sky, I experimented with different editing techniques and different ways to overlay the photos. I don't think this work as well as it did with the shots from the train station, I realised that having the trees in the shot was not a good idea as they had moved slightly inbetween each shot so it looks like the plants are blurred. I think the technique on the sky alone worked quite well and makes a dramatic image.
|
Alexey titarenko
Alexey Titarenko is a russian photographer and artist, I found this series that he created, "Nomenklatura of signs" quite similar to the photos I created in Kings Cross, he created these images by superimposing several negatives, he also introduced long exposure and intentional camera movements into street photography and used these techniques to create strong metaphors about communist regimes in his photos.
This picture looks even more sinister, as the movement of people with the black and white effect has created a black mist of people, the mist looks like smoke populating the city or a plague layering itself over the streets. Titarenko's Images are very dull but at the same time almost dream like, he captures that same kind of haze that you get being in a dream and not really knowing whats going on, if I would relate his images to dreams, it would be a bad dream as his images are also very remeniscent of a 60s horror film.
|
In this picture Titarenko has exposed his pinhole camera for an extended period in a populated area where this is a stream of people going up the stairs. The flow of people in this period has created what looks like a stream of clouds in the street. It is reminiscent of the ghostly affect I created in my photos. He called this project 'The Shadow" which i think is the perfect name for the image images. The camera he managed to capture the perfect amount of contrast in the images, along with them being black and white it makes the crowd look like a shadow moving through a dull lifeless city, I find the image quite sinister and surreal.
|
waterloo
I took these pictures with the intentions of capturing a picture with the same affect that Titarenko creates, making the crowds of people look like moving clouds. I think I created a similar effect but the people look more like individual ghosts than a mass of black mist like in Titarenko's images. I think this is because we achieve our images in different ways, he gets this affect by leaving his
|
I dont think this image was as successful in photography terms. I think it was successful in creating a similar effect to Titarenko, the mass of people do almost look like a ghostly cloud of bodies. I attempted to do HDR to bring out the sky a bit more because it was not a particularly sunny day, therefore not such good lighting, but this made a strange haze around the london eye and the flag that didn't work so well in black and white.
|
I went out into central London to experiment as film. I decided to try out some film as I felt it manually recreated the same kind of effect that I was attempting to create in photoshop and in sony vegas with the old black and white theme. It was quite successful I feel I did recreate this old scratchy black and white look, especially in the time-lapse below. Some of my other images are more clear and higher contrast black and white, with all the low opacity people, overlaid on top of each other sometimes the film effect was too chaotic and made the image unclear. I also attempted double exposure, it was a hard process so only came out with one good print, this is an interesting method of photography and I feel it is quite similar to the images i have been creating in my project, its almost like manually creating the images I create on photoshop, in the camera.
This timelapse has given me the idea for the theme for my project which will be images and video to express the fact that London has grown to such an extent and the overpopulation is such a large issue that many measurements have been put in place to control and compensate for these issues. As London grows and evolves there are always going to be new methods of controlling these issues, but even now if you just walk round the city there's public transport, motorways skyscrapers, tower blocks which are all in place to compensate for the mass of people. I think that time lapse is a good way of capturing this as you can see the motion and movement of people over a long time in a few seconds of viewing. I also think that the overlayed images express the exact same theme and it gives the viewer time to absorb whats going on which is in contrast to the fast pace of the time lapse. Both methods of photography seem to go hand in hand so I will continue to do both in the same style but keep them under the same theme. I split the screen to develop the idea I explored earlier in Bobby Neal Adams work - that the time shift can be seen at the point at which the two images meet. The composition I have chosen of dividing the screen is meant to introduce an underlying idea of setting one thing against another. I am not sure it works in this timelapse, but I do like the concept and the idea that growth and evolution in the city happens at different speeds and at different times. Tension comes when those two collide. e.g._ people are in a hurry and the train is slow. Cars want to move fast and they are stuck in a Jam. This creates tension. There is also something in the contrast of the images and of the colour that I want to explore. Contrast plays a key role in photography and I would like to explore contrast in colour and contrast in focus and whether these can enhance the sense of the passage of time.
Sean Clover, A photographer from San Francisco has brilliantly captured the theme of time transition and evolution in a single photograph. He took existing stills of San Francisco after an earth quake in 1906 and then took the same stills again 100 years later to show how the city had evolved.. To underscore the time shift- he used black and white images for the before and colour for the after. This creates the time shift that Bobby Neal Adams created at the tear. Clover however had the advantage of having time to source and take the contrasting images. I may not have the same time, but I can take something of the effect that using colour is having in these images and find a way to bring it into my work. Can colour enhance the meaning ?
ARTISTS RESEARCH - Jenny holzer
Jenny Holzer is an American conceptual artist. Holzer lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York. Where she creates overlaid images usually with strong messages. In the particular project I am looking at she creates images where text is projected up onto buildings streets, and many other inner city structures, she creates such large scale visual displays that it often leaves the viewer questioning if it is really projected or just created in Photoshop. Holzer belongs to the feminist branch of a generation of artists that emerged around 1980 that sought to promote and understand women's art. In her work the message she conveys through the project text is often about feminism, women in fashion, women in the work place and more.
ARTISTS RESEARCH - THE USE OF TEXT IN PHOTOJOURNALISM.
Time Magazine has an archive of it's front covers spanning 100 years. I searched population growth and discovered that the same concerns about population growth had been in existance since the magazine began. What I wanted to think about was how the text and headline enhanced the image. Can text provide a second layer of understanding and thought about the image and increase the impact. I was also thoughtful about the centrality of the text - where it is placed, how it is placed and how it enhances the message. In the case of the megacities cover, it explains the subtext of the image, which is not entirely clear at the outset. The photographic image is created to convey a thought or a meaning , or to say something about how the photographer views the world. I wanted to explore whether this can be enhanced with text. Barthes wrote : What is the content of the photographic message? What does the photograph transmit? Be defintion the scene itself, the literal reality'. Can Text change this ?
I felt I could take Holzer's apporach to projecting text and manipulate it so it became an addition to the work I have been doing in the project so far. I feel my images look good and interesting but without me writing about them the message is not so clear. Taking the main aspect of Holzer's work I decided to add text to images with the same overlaid editing technique I have been using, as appose to the obvious block capital text I decided to use articles and newspaper headlines that where discussing the same theme I have been writing about in my project, making my work a half way point between a journalistic side to photography with a message and the more artistic work that looks interesting .
The Process
I then go through each image starting from the top and working my way down, making the opacity a low percentage to start with and make the images more and more visible as I work down. I then select the Eraser tool and rub away certain areas of the image., this is always the most improvised stage sometimes I rub away the same area in each photo to have a section of clarity and sometimes different areas to create clarity in different areas in the photo. In this image I rubbed away the Tree from every layer besides the last one to make it more visible than the rest of the images
|
At this point I experiment with moving one of the images completely out of line with the rest, usually the one with the lowest opacity, this sometimes creates a nice effect that gives the image a more chaotic look to it, sometimes it just confuses the image too much. Once I'm happy with the opacity levels and the placment of the images, I merge them all together into one layer which means I can edit the image and it applies to all the layers. In this case the image was already black and white but I like to experiment with colour of different saturations and black and white with different contrast. The final image is below.
|
I feel that as I have developed my work, using this editing technique, I have developed my skills in it and I feel I have perfected the technique. I am yet to find an artist who creates these images using the same technique, many are similar like the works of Alexey Titarenko and Stephanie Jung but I feel that my work is my own take on a similar way of photographing I feel that the idea is still original. Photographer Ernst Haas wrote "the best pictures differentiate themselves by nuances.. a tiny relationship - either a harmony or a disharmony -that creates a picture'. I feel my overlay technique does this - I am creating a disharmony in the image.
|
These still images are taken from a time lapse I created around London, my idea is to edit all the time lapse clips I have captured and put them together in a video that expresses my subject for the project,'How London compensates for overpopulation'. I feel that I have also developed my skills in time lapsing, and in particular editing the time lapses, as you can see from the first one I created to the most recent the editing is a lot better, which leaves me wondering how to edit the big time lapse.
|
Notes on doing time-lapse - As a photographer, the act of taking timelapse shots became interesting in how I was either able to interact with my subject or not. Carrying out a timelapse in tube stations and over the North Circular created anxiety in people passing in that they either hurried their steps or looked directly at the camera. Even though I had permission to shoot, officials would approach me repeatedly and ask me what I was doing. On the North Circular, I stood on a bridge for over an hour taking a single shot and in that time, motorists bibbed their horns, called out to me not to jump and interacted with me in a way that was unexpected. It feels as if the process is at one quite distancing from the subject - with an advanced camera like the Lumix, I just stood with the camera for a long time and it did the work. At others, people interacted with me far more than they would in a single shot and in a way that I felt was more naturalistic.
I feel that this time-lapse is a good representation of how much my skill has advanced in time lapse since the beginning of my project. I tried to fit a few different editing techniques in at different points, some that I have learnt in this process and from a basic understanding of the editing program, Sony Vegas, prior to the project. I feel the outcome fit well with the theme, I had set myself to capture busy areas so I created a list of the kind of areas/scenarios I wanted to shoot eg. train stations, Building sites, Public Transport. Getting access to some of these areas and achieving these shots was another challenge, I spent alot time trying to get access to many places, in particular the tube station and the building site, even though it was clear I was a student capturing shots for a project, I was still accessed for security reasons. There where some faster paced and more hectic parts and some smoother shots which was a good contrast, similar to the contrasting parts of London as a city. As well as choosing out of many shots for the timelaspe I had to choose a fitting piece of music, I decided to pick music by an artist called JDilla, looking through his tracks I quickly realised that his fans consider his music to be quite emotionally provoking which i thought was quite fitting, I also picked the track because the snare and kick, when timed right, makes for a smooth transition between shots and opens up many editing possibilities to be timed with the music. Considering how much time and effort it took to make this short 2 minute video, and I personally don't know how to develop this more to improve it, I think I am going to develop the overlayed stills more from this point onwards as I think about a final outcome for this project.
Stephanie Jung
Stephanie Jung is a Flemish photographer. She creates super imposed images around Tokyo and France in cityscape, congested areas, she layers up to four photos on top of each other, the busy-ness and unclarity in the photo is a reflection of the busy and crazy nature of capital cities. She manages to capture a feeling of your senses being blurred by the rushing mass of people, the loud cars, the complex of different sounds and flashing neon lights. Amongst all this confusing haze you can still make out recognizable locations giving the view a reminiscent sense of being in a dream. Jung captures this same fuzzy confusion in her stills.
I created this image in the likes of Stephanie jung's work, I used an old shot that featured in one of my timelapses but worked quite well when stills taken out of it where overlayed. I decided to change my editing technique a bit an keep it in colour but try and achieve the same aery, almost sinister effect that some of the black and white images have. I have noticed when editing these images that shots that have a lot more depth to them are much better to edit, it creates an effect that almost isolates the confusing, messy, haze in to one region of the image and it slowly expands and gets less intense to the edges of the image. The diference between Jung's and my images ins that hers are the same shot just copied and asted at different opacitites, I have taken this element of changing the opacity but instead of one still duplicated, it is a series of stills showing a space of time, In a way I have taken the same editing technique that Jung uses but by adding the element of time I have twisted it so it reflects my theme in a complex way. I will continue to try out the colour images as a development towards a final piece.
|
Colour overlay - tesco
After creating an interesting affect with colouring the overlaid images I went out to capture some more images with lighting and colour in mind. I had planned to capture a supermarket for my last time lapse as I feel it expresses my theme of overpopulation but was previously not allowed for security reasons. I attempted to capture a depth to my photo that as i discussed before creates an interesting addition of the ghostly effect getting more intense as the depth gets further. The lighting of the supermarket creates a similar gloomy colour alteration that I attempt to create when editing the images, so with this image I just boosted the contrast to bring out the ghost like figures and to add more depth to the colour of the flags, bottles etc.
|
I found one of the most interesting things about images from the supermarket was the effect that the big hanging lights created, when duplicated and moved slightly it created a sort of unordered pattern in the lights that i thing was an interesting addition to the composition of the photo. Getting permission to take photos in Tesco is not such an easy process, anyone in the shop with a camera round their neck is suspected of being someone who's there to compare prices or somehow going to make the supermarket look bad. I had to go through the process of asking security, then asking the customs desk who referred me a to manager who was very understanding about the whole circumstances. Although I had permission I still found that I was getting odd looks from customers and staff.
|
artists research - jeremy mann
Jeremy Mann's oil on Canvas work, explores New York in cinematic style, but uses oil to create steaming, wet, glistening street scenes. the titles of his work underline his thesis of the city "Hell's Kitchen' for Fifth Avenue - hot, fetid, full to the point of boiling over. Words critics use to describe his work include 'gritty', Boiling, Brooding. Even though not all the images in the series convey night time scenes, they all are dark and brooding. Like the Swedish dramas 'The Killing' they portray a relentlessly dark world, full of atmosphere and foreboding. I wanted to use this concept in my work. Having developed the colour as a theme in my series of images illustrating how the city adapts and copes with the ever evolving and expanding population, I wanted to inject the same sense of beauty and foreboding that Mann injects in his work.
Colour Overlays
I feel the coloured images are a good development in my project I find them slightly more interesting then the conventional black and white images that felt a bit repetitive in the earlier stages of my project. When the images are overlaid in colour the colours all merge together in a blur but if you stare at it for long enough you will find the colours separate each persons body unlike in the black and white images where it just looked like a dark haze. I feel that these images are a clearer representation of my theme aswell. As its easier to make out each individual person, I feel you get a better representation of the movement and mass of people in each image which is what i intended to capture in these overlaid images.
|
I feel this is the editing technique I will use in my exam as aposed to the black and white version. My next step is to go out and capture images for my final piece, when I went out to capture the images above It was not such a sunny day, the lighting was not so great, the images themselves weren't brilliant on their own but turned out good after edditing. When I go out to capture the images for my final piece I will concentrate more on lighting and the weather for the day and try and capture the perfect images for editing. I will also plan out the locations for my shoot as this is very important to composition and how many people are at the location, I aim to capture areas that have a heavy mass of people but with an interesting composition.
Final Piece
I am very happy with my final piece. I feel it is a good reflection of the progress and evolution of my project. I feel for this piece my biggest inspiration is Stephanie Jung, I took the aspect of her distorted images that represent the busy chaotic nature of cities and made my own twist on it by adding the element of time into the images, I feel this is very relevant to the theme as our world grows and evolves over time. I attempted to capture this process within the time space of an hour, reflecting the movement and mass of people in scenarios that have been created to compensate for this overpopulated, ever-evolving mass of people.