Monthly Archives: April 2017

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Bonfire movement

April 25, 2017 Layla Arthur Leave a comment

I wanted to experiment as well with creating some abstract movement photographs. I really liked how the over exposure of the woodland photographs worked and therefore i wanted to play more with creating slightly over exposed which had movement within them. After taking my more formal photographs of my friends as wild children and considering the work of Charles Fregar, i wanted to add an element of eeriness and almost suggestions of how the dens could be considered more sinister. I therefore decided to do the below photo shoot to juxtapose against my other images which involved making a fire and then movemnt around a fire. The idea od people dancing around a bonfire to me has strong connotations of witchcraft and paganism and therefore i was hoping this shoot might add these impression of something more sinter to my shoot.

I deliberately decided to plan this shoot down the beach as i wanted the images to be on the verge of being over exposed and i though the white light of the sand would help to create this impression. I however didn’t want the images to be too overexposed and so i did the shoot as the sun was setting so the light wasn’t intensely bright. Overall the outcome i think worked really well as the images give exactly the impression that i wanted them to. Another reason i choose to make a fire within this movement shoot is that a fire was a consistent element of every den we made as children. We would always make a fire to go with the den to “keep us warm” and to “cook food on.” I therefore was think again about presenting the cross over between the reality of the game and the real reality.

Most of the photographs i took i only focused on the legs and feet of my subjects. This is because i didn’t want the images to be about the people and personalities of the people but more so the concept of people being present. I created these images to create the abstract concept of people being present without obviously stating it and therefore i thought the inclusion of faces and whole bodies might be quite suggestive of this. The above and below images i composed so that the fire was in the right hand side of the frame and then the subjects are to the left surrounding the fire. The main source of light is coming from the left hand side of the frame towards the outside of the image and then spills into the rest of the frame. The images are fairly exposed as the smoke from the fire is also drifting into the frame from the fire and causing a haze in front of the figures. I remembered from my last photo shoot the speed in which i got my subject to move and i asked my subjects to replicate this. Therefore in these images you can see the movement of the subjects clearly but you can also still distinguish that they are human figures. I quite like the very pale and bright tones of the images, the bright light from the sun and the fire has meant the image is fairly washed out of colour which means the odd hint of colours stands out even more.

The above and below images worked really really well. These images rather then showing feet show the movement of a figure reaching. This works really well as the figure is solid as their legs are stillish and then the top half of their body and arms as they reach for more wood for the fire are blurred. I really like how in these images the movement has created a curved blur which is different from the other types of movement. The photographs are composed similarly with the fire in the right hand corner and the blur of the people to the left.

I quite like the above photograph for being really abstract as the impression of the smoke from the fire creates an interesting dynamic to the feet walking away.

The last image below was taken with the least amount of light as the sun was almost completely set. I quite like the composition of this image as it is different to the others. There is one subject walking in the very foreground of the frame and another in the center of the frame in the background. Even though the entire of this subject is in the frame you can not see there face and there body as it is blurred becomes all about the movement of bending over to pick up stuff for the fire. In this image the fire isn’t the center feature which draws you into the frame. You can see a bit of it to the right of the image but its not the main focus. In this image the fire and the sky in the background compliment each other, each bringing out the colour of the other.

Planning, Research

Documentary: Jersey Waste Disposal – Planning

April 24, 2017 Nina Powell Leave a comment

After completing my previous research and shoots looking at the different variety’s of waste pollution and where it’s found, I next wanted to explore what ultimately happens to it once it is thrown away. To combat the problem of the growing amount waste production, there are numerous solid waste facilities worldwide, including landfills, incinerators, and a growing number of transfer stations. Many of the older facilities run by municipalities have been closed down because of environmental concerns, paving the way for the waste industry to market their “state-of-the-art” management and facilities. Luckily this is the case with our island and my next documentary shoot will be concentrated on how Jersey deals with its household and commercial waste. I want to show this topic in order to give my viewers an idea of what happens with their everyday waste, even when they dispose of it ‘properly’. To do this I will have to visit La Colette and explore their recycling and waste to energy facilities.

As well as looking the new recycling centre at La Collette that has recently replaced Bellozanne, I am really interested to find out more about what happens to the waste that does not get separated. The common household and commercial waste that is not recycled is sent to the La Collette Energy from Waste Facility. This facility replaces an old incinerator and provides the Channel Island with a reliable means of waste disposal for the next 25 years. It will also be able to produce 10MW of power, equivalent to 7 – 8% of the island’s electricity usage. Reused and recycled items have also been used in the site’s construction, for example, the building takes its shape from the steel frame saved from the demolition of the Jersey Potteries building in Gorey. The waste to energy facility is located next to the existing Jersey power station enabling the EfW plant to share the chimney, cooling water and other auxiliary services, minimising the environmental impact of the development. The way that this site works, in basic terms, is it burns rubbish and uses the heat from the fire to generate steam which is then used to drive a turbine, generating electricity. In order to really explore this part of our islands waste disposal, I wrote to the department of infrastructure in the hopes they would give me some information about the smoke that is generated from the burning of the waste. Amazingly they do not actually produce any smoke and even offered for me to be escorted around the site on the condition that I later give them my photographic results. Below is a copy of the reply I received from the manager of the energy from waste facility, Ian Williams…Since receiving the email above I have been in contact with the ‘Energy from Waste’ facility and have arranged to meet with them on Thursday the 20th of April at 10:45 am. My plan of action for this shoot is to record the site from an insider’s perspective using topography and documentary photography techniques. Whilst there I will be taking as many images as possible, attempting to capture some interesting compositions and angles to draw in my viewer’s attention. All I will need to complete this shoot is my camera and the safety equipment that will be provided upon arrival. My goal for this opportunity is to truthfully present what happens to Jersey’s un-recycled waste, as well as the elements that go into the transforming it into energy.

As well as this guided tour I am also planning to take a trip to the recycling centre to demonstrate the new amazing and easy to use facility we now have at La Collette. Although I am coming at these next few shoots from a documentary perspective, I predict I will also be including some abstract images to emphasise my message. Below is a contact sheet depicting some photographs I have found of each of these departments. One the top row are some of the things I can expect to see at the energy to waste facility and on the bottom row the recycling centre…

Analysis, Inspiration, Research

Manipulation of Film Negatives

April 24, 2017 George Tidy Leave a comment

“Breaking” Film Negatives

Going on from looking at using film I have looked into different ways that you can distort film negatives. By distorting the negatives and rescanning/printing them you can get some incredible results that are completely unpredictable. I have looked at a lot of different ways of distorting and destroying negatives. One source that I looked at first was this article. It talks about many different ways of distorting the images that are stored on a strip of negatives and how they can have different effects. One of the more abstract results that they show are by the artist Phillip Stearns.

He creates his pieces in an unusual way that even different to the other artists that manipulate film. Instead of taking images on the film (Fujifilm FP-100C Color Instant Film) and then messing with the negatives, or messing with the film and then taking the images, he simply messes around with the film and then those negatives are the final pieces.

The video above shows him using some of his techniques. He uses many, many different ways to edit the negatives, including different chemicals, high voltage electricity and even common house salt but in the video we only see him using 15,000 volt electricity and comoun bleach. He never knows what the images will look like until he opens the negatives and sees the final result, this sense of the unknown and anticipation is what I want to achieve with my project, due to these both being properties of water. Stearns talks about why he has chosen this as a project that he pursued on his blog here. He says that

“I was struck by the similarities between the layering of materials in the film and the layering of cells in the [retina]… the similarities were striking.”

He goes on to talk about how the camera is the extension of the eye and looking more into the links between the images that he is creating and the different things that are going on in the human eye. Stearns mentions that with digital photography there has been a loss of connection between the eye and photography and so he is almost creating these images that bring back that link between the eye and photography. To link further to this he says:

“I find it curious and exhilarating that the impressions left behind after developing these extreme exposures so perfectly resemble networks of blood vessels in the retina.”

The two images above demonstrate this visual relationship between his creations and the physiological structure of the retina. They both have these large spots of darkness, in the retina these are the optical nerves or the Fovea centralis, and in the artwork they are the epicenter from where the electrical current touches down on the film. The “veins” that come out from here also look very similar to each other and really lend to this connection between the eye and his artwork.

A similar idea but more connected with my project is “Fox River Derivatives” by Peter Hoffman. In this series of photographs Hoffman traveled along Fox River in Illinois with a medium format camera taking images of the river and it’s immediate surroundings, he then takes the negatives from this and sprays them with gasoline before throwing a match into the pile of images and gasoline and dousing them with water before they are completely destroyed. He talks about his motivation for the project being that

“our consumption habits—specifically dealing with precious natural resources—are out of control and unsustainable.”

He talks about how the next generation will not get to see what we get to see and so to highlight this he did not just want to make photographs of the river, he wanted to have an element of destructive chance being applied to his images.

“I wanted to transfer that feeling I had, which was maybe something like a sense of powerlessness or dread, to the image making process. I wanted to lose control, having the resulting work border on ceasing to exist in any recognizable form.”

The surreal bubbly effects, often obscuring other parts of the image show the rapidly disappearing natural landscapes that are almost hiding behind the destruction. By using gasoline he is using one of these natural resources that we are using up and exhausting to destroy the natural landscapes he is showing the volatility of the environment, and the randomness with which it is disappearing.

But out of all of the different examples of what other artists have done this kind of film manipulation the one that I connect with the most is the work of Matthew Brandt. He has made lots of different bodies of work and there are several of them that are relevant to my project. The first is titled “Waterbodies,” in this series he takes a number of images of different bodies of water, often oceans, and collects water from them. He then uses that water as part of the development process to create the final images.

He has not produced many images via this process but it is very interesting to see what the images have turned out like. This concept of using parts of the environment to create these images is a very interesting idea to me and even though they are not the most visually impressive the concept behind their production is really fun and suited well to my project. I looked for the conceptual reasoning for why Brandit did this particular project but could not come up with anything in particular. My interpretation of it though is that to create something then you need inspiration and resources. He already had the inspiration for these images but for the resources he decided not to use the standard salted water for the development process, instead allowing the environment to leave even more of its mark on the images. A truly personalised image that is perfectly customised for the environment.

While he was taking the exposures of this project he came across the idea to do another project, Lakes and Reservoirs. This body of work does not involve using the water to create the images, instead it involves using the water from the environment to destroy the images. Finding out the reasoning behind this project was not what I expected ether and may explain the lack of information about the previous project. In an interview with Brandit for Dazed Magazine the article states that:

“The creative process of his latest series shows that he clearly understands the art in photography, although Brandt himself insists it is merely a representation of what he sees in front of him.”

Later on he talks about the hiking and climbing that he needed to do to be able to take the images that he used. and how even though the images were being taken to be destroyed he still spent the time to get into good position and to properly compose the images.

“For these ‘shots’, I was looking for the most calendaresque view I could find. A view and composition that was the most encompassing to visually represent that lake and/or reservoir… to me, I enjoy the perversity in subverting all this photographic labor by later degrading it with the lake water.”

This is definitely something that I am going to look into for my project. There are a lot of different water sources around Jersey and it would be interesting to see the difference in effect that this could have on the images. I will be updating about my process of altering the negatives in another blog post.

More links to pages that I found interesting: