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Experimentation, Presentation

Shoot 2 Edits

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The following images are edited influenced by Theo Gosselin’s cinematic style, as well as traditional skateboard documentation. I experimented with shutter speed, shooting angle, and I tried to capture motion full images of skateboarding, as well as sharp portraits with interesting compositions. I am fairly happy with the outcome of the shoot, however

I edited this image to look fairly cinematic. I increased the whites in particular with this photograph to create a very bright, sky has become hard to make out from other areas of the image, forcing us to focus more on Zac. I tried to use the windscreen of the car to compose the image interestingly. Whilst using a larger aperture and shorter shutter speed I managed to blur the windscreen again focusing us on Zac far more.

Similar to the first, I used a short depth of field to blur the windscreen I purposefully added into the frame for interesting composition. This time, the image is a portrait of Zac looking at something, but the space of interest to him is covered by my blurry insurance disc and windscreen frame. I really like this composition as the way my insurance disk and windscreen frame cover from the top left down and round to the right side works very well against Zacs torso and the open space in the top right.

With this image I wanted to create a heavy contrast to attemot the cinematic look again. I raised the whites and brought down the black, and also but down the shadow toggle the have a large contrast of light and dark. This made the image look more ‘epic’ due to the strong sunlight, the shadow cast behind Zac running towards the sunlight away from the dark.

This image shows an example of my angle experimentation. Zac repeatedly did a trick over a pavement until I got a good angled photograph. I wanted to get really low to further capture the height of Zac on his skateboard, so I lay down as close to the ground as possible and angled my camera up. I also turned my shutter speed up slightly, and turned my aperture down to give a larger depth of field so I was able to definitely capture Zac moving in the air sharply.

This image is an example of my portrait experimentation. I saw Zac standinghere and thought it may be interesting to capture an image of this wall with him at the very center. The size and repetition of the wall is very interesting against Zac breaking this pattern up in the centre. His horizontal striped shirt makes a hard break from the background, and the colour difference also makes him stand out so greatly. Overall I really like this image due how the background and model work off eachother. 

This image shows an example of shutter speed experimentation. I set my camera up on a low shutter speed and took an image of a skateboarder doing a trick. The result was an interesting blur of motion that I feel works nicely, and represents qualities almost similar to a painting. I wanted to experiment with some layering, almost similar to the way Idris Khan brings images of similar subjects from different moments in time together into one photo. However, I only wanted to blend two images together. in which I used the last photo and an image I took of some grafiti at the skatepark. The outcome looks even moreso like an urban influenced painting.

Presentation

Shoot 2 Contact Sheet

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This contact sheet shows the images I made during a short skateboard session I had with Zac. I experimented with shot angles and different types of skateboarding photography to represent the sport, with the influence of skateboarding magazines and typical skateboarding short films such as the film in my previous post. I also briefly experimented with shutter speed  the capture whole movements, and I am happy with one of the outcomes of this experimentation.

 

Planning

Shoot 2 / Video Specification

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A large part of ours lives was once occupied by skateboarding, and this is something I want to reflect on briefly in this shoot. Skateboarding is an amazing past time that is an extremely social sport with no rules to stick by, and as a result it became such a big part of my life (not as much in the past years) and so I want to portray this almost social environment.

I also think it would be fitting to experiment with a short video of Zac skateboarding. I have an old handheld video camera with a fisheye lense, and these lenses are commonly used to film skateboarding  videos.

Below is a video made by a group of older Jersey skateboarders. It shows the fun of skateboarding around jersey with friends, and I may use it to inspire my video techniques when making this film, and doing the shoot.

This is an example of this typical shooting style for skateboarding. It focuses on shooting from low down to get a good angle showing us the best view of the skateboarder. I may use this technique when photographing Zac skateboarding.

Presentation

Shoot 1 Contact Sheet

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This is my contact sheet for shoot 1, focusing on Zac is his room. We spend time in his room and at his house often, and so it was a good environment to photograph. I wanted to try make a couple of still life photos focusing on personal objects and features of his room such as the star gazer, the bin and his photo shelf. I tried to do this by shooting some close ups and experimenting with flash. I also wanted to experiment with the natural light available through the blinds to produce more atmospheric outcomes of the room. I am fairly happy with this shoot as I managed to create some interesting images that I may use in my final prints.

Planning

Shoot 1 Specification

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For my first shoot I want to spend time with my friend Zac. His room is an environment he, myself and friends spend time in fairly often. We watch TV, play playstation, and sometimes have small gatherings there. I want to represent Zac’s room as a personal environment by focusing on the liveliness between friends and the personalised features that make it Zacs room. I will use both flash and natural light, swapping between the two depending on whether I am photographing still life, portraiture of wide angle images of the room.

 

 

Uncategorized

Theo Gosselin

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Born near Le Havre in Normandy in 1990, Théo Gosselin grew up in the deserted streets of this grey city from the north of France. Passionate about drawing, music, and cinema, he chose a path through the art school, and graduated in 2012 as a graphic designer in Amiens. He started photography around 2007, and it Became his reason to live. He loves to capture the simple life, love, good and bad moments, his friends and his adventures. Eternal traveler, Europe and USA and share his way of life with the people He loves ; because the truth is in wide open spaces and in the heart of the characters that meet  along the way.

Gosselin’s photography reveals friends in the act of escaping from their regular lives into newly enticing and perilous modes of existence, ever in search of the persistent though elusive idea of freedom. His interest in cinema is reflected throughout his work with the cinematic style photographs he creates.

Painting by Titan

At times, Gosselin´s work approaches something similar
to poésie bucolique; his photographs representing modern day pastoral landscapes that resemble 21st century equivalents of Poussin’s Et in Arcadia ego, Manet’s Déjeuner sur L’herbe or Cézanne’s Les Grandes Baigneuses. At other times, his images capture moments more similar to, Rubens or Levêque.

The triumph of the Pan – Nicolas Poussin

The subjects in Théo Gosselin’s images are friends rather than models, and the situations are not mythic constructions but glimpses of an underground lifestyle in a post-9/11 and post-AIDS world in
which social media has blurred the boundaries between public and private, and between being documented and just being.

In august 2012, he made his first motion picture, “Goodbye Horses”, a road movie in which he is an actor with 4 friends. They bought a van and departed from New York in a van traversing the United States by 20 000 km from East to West to deliver a package in Los Angeles. An unprecedented adventure that changed the way they saw life and helped them explore themselves by discovering the beauty the American land has to offer. They were living the life of nomads in their van, they documented every moment on the road and shared many memorable moments, which created their special bond on a journey that they never expected.

Exploring various aspects of the American lifestyle, the youth, and the excitement of life on the road are some themes he covers in his work. The youthful style in which he entices his photographs towards representing an instagram-esque filter style, using warm temperatures and snapshot style straight shooting.

 

 

Planning

Shoot Ideas

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The idea that appeals to me the most is looking at my personal environments. A personal environment could be very different from one person to another. For example, someone may think it is your mental state, whereas others may think it

Using mainly documentary photography and portraiture I want to explore the differences between peoples ‘Personal Environment’, as exploring some of my own personal environments.

I D E A S –

  • Shoot documenting girlfriend // photographing in a more intimate way to portray the environment of our relationship, using close ups and possibly shoot in monochrome – inspired more by Jacob Sobol.
  • Documentary shoot of my home // focus on what makes my home my personal environment – feels safe, the personal elements of it.
  • Abstract shoot in car // I am always travelling around in my car with friends, so I could portray this environment in a more motion-full way experimenting with low shutter speeds, flash and zoom.
  • Friends // portraying my social environment made up by connections between people – theo gosselin style photography  – could also look at the social environment of skateboarding, and photography in both the style of tradiotional skatboard documentation as well as more modern cinematic skateboard documenting styles – looking at the sport and culture around it itself.

– this video above gives some information on the uprising popularity of skateboarding in southern england, and how the culture of the sport has had to fight to stay alive. This video helps portray the social and cultural environment that skateboarding has become today through motivation to keep the sport alive, and the fast spreading popularity of it.

  • Landscape and documentary shoot in North Yorkshire // when I go to Yorkshire at the end of this month it will be a great chance to experiment with cinematic-esque landscape  and portrait photography. The North Yorkshire Moores are meant to have some of the most breathtaking landscapes in England.

 

Experimentation

Photoshop experimentation / Layering and Blending

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After looking at Idris Khan’s work I began experimenting with different techniques on photos in photoshop, attempting to give similar effects as to what we see in his pieces.

Using the image above made by Hilla Becher, I edited it in the style of Idris Khan. By taking the image and layering it multiple times, each time moving the image a few steps to the left or to the right. I then blended each layer into each other to give this fading effect.

I used a street photograph i took on a trip to Paphos in Cyprus last year for my next experimental edit. I wanted to do the same layering and blending technique but in a vertical rippling motion. I also rubbed out all the layers covering the girl on the bike apart from the background layer giving a focused part of the image.

After looking at Khan’s images I noticed that many of them are edited to seem almost like a general essence of the true original images. I interpreted this into another image from my trip to Paphos. By sharply adding and blending about 10-12 layers together it created this essence effect, only revealing and repeating rough outlines of the peoples bodies.

 

 

Analysis, Research

Idris Khan

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London-based artist Idris Khan was born in the UK in 1978. Since completing his Master’s Degree with a Distinction in Research at the Royal College of Art in London in 2004, he has received international acclaim for his minimal, yet emotionally charged photographs, videos and sculptures and is one of the most exciting British artists of his generation.

Drawing on diverse cultural sources including literature, history, art, music and religion, Khan’s work contains a unique narrative involving densely layered imagery that inhabits the space between abstraction and figuration and speaks to the themes of cumulative experience and the metaphysical collapse of time into single moments (METAPHYSICS – the branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, identity, time, and space). His work can be considered both abstract and figurative as it takes lots of singular straight shot images and layers them, creating an overall slightly abstract collage of different moments in time condensed into one.

Since 1959 Bernd and Hilla Becher have been photographing industrial structures that exemplify modernist engineering, such as gas reservoirs and water towers. Their photographs are often presented in groups of similar design; their repeated images make these everyday buildings seem strangely imposing and alien. Idris Khan’s Every… Bernd And Hilla Becher… series appropriates the Bechers’ imagery and compiles their collections into single super-images. In this piece, multiple images of American-style gabled houses are digitally layered and super-imposed giving the effect of an impressionistic drawing or blurred film still.

Khan’s work interests me because of how he completely changes how we perceive everyday structures, among other things, and turning them into more ghostly, alien compilations of multiple moments in time condensed into one.

Image Analysis –

Prison type Gasholders’ – Idris Khan

The image above (Prison Type Gasholders) shows a ghostly arrangement of some of the topographical series made focusing on gasholders by the Bechers’. The structures in the Bechers’ original photographs are almost identical, though for Khan the images’ contrast and opacity is adjusted to ensure each layer can be seen and has presence. Despite Khans work being very mechanised and of industrial subjects, their effect is of a soft ethereal energy. They have a spiritual quality in their densely compacted details and ghostly outlines. Prison Type Gasholders conveys a sense of time depicted in motion, as if transporting the old building, in its obsolete black and white format, into the extreme future.