Hamish Fulton uses a combination of text and imagery to evoke meaning and a deeper narrative from his long travels through various countries. I wanted to experiment with my own photographs using text to create a more compelling photograph as well as give more context and understanding to the message behind the photos.
I picked the above image because the composition enabled a lot of open space to place borders and text. The image also didn’t have a main focus point enabling to leave more focus for the text over the top. The tones of the image were also fairly dark so white text would stand out more. I tried a selection of colours but found white worked best. I started by placing a white-border what was a similar thickness to the font I panned on using. I used the font Segoe UI Bold Italic to create a simple effect that still evoked impact. I found the photograph was already fairly busy with the texture selection of small details to didn’t want to add too much that would make the image too busy.
I picked a selection of words that linked into what was happening in the photograph as well as the message I want to show the viewer. The first set of words in the top corner of the first image represent the more serene elements of nature whilst the words below evoke the industrial, man made side. I used these words to represent the combination of nature and man made.
For the above images I removed one of the words and put them into order of length. I then became more experimental with the layer types. For the first image I selected the layer of the text and the border and changed them to exclusion, which inverted the white, making it contrast from the background image. For the second I again used the exclusion feature by creating a second layer of orange and blue then changed it to exclusion. This gave the image a new more abstract style.
I then moved onto a second image featuring a huge amount of warm tones. I wanted to include the phrase ‘The juxtaposition of nature and man made’. I picked a cream colour that was present in the image and found it worked better then white.
I used the same colour and font for the text in the two images above from the previous image. Similar to the previous, I think the cream worked better as was softer then white and could contrast the blue tones in the unlit areas. I sued extracts by the poem ‘As I walked out one evening’ by the English poet W.H Auden. The poem discusses important themes such as love and time, mixing in references and imagery of urban and rural settings. I picked lines that referred more closely to the transition of time. I found the text worked well in this image was it wasn’t too overpowering, making the image not too overly busy. I also found a border wouldn’t have worked with the composition as crucial features of the image such as the window in the lower left corner would have been covered.
I used the same cream text for this image but changed the font to regular as opposed to italic like the rest. I picked a word that related to what the focus of the image was, the work nocturnal refers to the idea of being active and awake during the night, which relates to the light coming from the window. I used the exclusion feature similar to my previous pieces.
I used the colour filters and the exclusion filter to create the above images using different coloured layers. I find they work well as a series.
Water is the building block of life, it is essential to the survival of all life on earth. All living organisms are made up of water in their cells, this water allows them to hold shape, allows chemical reactions to occur and in the makes up about 70% of mammal’s and 80% of fish’s body mass. Because of its importance it is something that has been intensely studied. Much of the information on this page is not that relevant to artistic work but I will list off some specific points about water and its properties and will look at a few in-depth.
Modern measurements are based on water: 1 cubic meter of water weighs 1 tonne, 1 liter of water weighs one kilogram, 1cm³ of water weighs 1 gram, the boiling point of water is 100°C, its melting point 0°C and it takes 1 calorie being burnt to raise the temperature of a liter of water by 1°C.
71% of the earth’s surface is water and 95.5% of that is salt water.
It is the largest single environment on earth and contains all of the top 10 largest animals alive today.
Each molecule is made up of three atoms. Hydrogen is the most abundant atom in the universe and the third is Oxygen.
“Light entering or exiting a water surface is bent byrefraction. Theindex of refractionfor water is 4/3, implying that light travels 3/4 as fast in water as it does in vacuum.”[1]
Water takes a lot of energy to go from a liquid state into a gaseous state. This is called having a high latent heat of vaporization. This keeps water at much the same temperature all of the time and means that it is a stable habitat for organisms like fish, plankton and some mammals.
For all animals that have lungs it is important for them to have moisture on the inside of their lungs otherwise they would not be able to take in Oxygen. Oxygen from the air has to be dissolved into a very thin layer of water coating the inside of lungs so that the Oxygen can get into the bloodstream.
Excess water intake can kill someone. About 6 liters taken in quickly can kill an adult male. Water intoxication as it is known causes cells in the brain to swell and burst, often being fatal if it has got this bad.
Drowning is incredibly easy and needs a terrifyingly small amount of water. As a lifeguard my self this is something that I am incredibly aware of, we need water to survive but it can also kill us so easily.
Refraction is something that could be very useful for my project. There are an immense number of different ways that you can use refraction of water artistically. The image above shows one of these examples, refraction of the light that is reflected of the background has passed through the water and because of the double curve of the glasses and the water the images have been flipped and all three are different due to the relative angle of the viewer to the background and the glass. This is really interesting and something that I could look at in more detail.
One of the typical uses of refraction in photography is to show a clear image that cannot be seen in the background. The example above shows this really well. The background cannot be seen clearly, it is simply a yellow blob. But when you look at the droplet of water that is in focus the background is now visible. Brought forward and flipped the spherical shape has created this new version of the flower, almost trapping inside this droplet of water and seemingly preserving it. The bonds that hold water together are called hydrogen bonds and from between the hydrogen atoms, these bonds are not very strong but when in a body of water so many of these bonds form that they become a relatively strong bond, this is what creates surface tension and holds water molecules together to form droplets like the ones above. This allows for these kind of photographs to be taken.
One other use of refraction is in this kind of photography. Half-and-half photographs in water show this effect very clearly, the distorted effect of the light entering at different speed and angle make the two halves of this duck look like they are separated, alternatively the bottom half of the image looks like it is bigger or closer than the other part, I see quite a few different artistic uses of this, it can give some really surreal effects.
I wanted to explore and respond to the dark portraits of Bill Henson as well as how Todd Hido used lighting to evoke a sense of ambiance and human presence as well as how both these artists used this as a way to build meaning and narrative.
After looking at Todd Hido I wanted to use low light as a way to add drama and narrative to something that would have otherwise appeared mundane. I noticed how the mirror in my house allowed for someone to be seen looking in, but only show the reflection of a person, I wanted to test this use of reflection and how this could evoke an eerie form of narrative but with the lighting style of Todd Hido. The blue lighting comes from Christmas lights whilst the lighting in the second photo below comes from regular house lights.
Due to the very little light and single light source, the photographs are made with a long exposure of about 8 seconds with an ISO of 200. This long exposure creates a ghostly effect from when Ryan moves slightly, although this was not intentional, I think it works really well. For the photographs above I made them both have a ratio of 8.5×11, I wanted it to be a smaller ratio to give more isolation to both the figure, the mirror and the door. For the below photograph I made a longer landscape photograph.
Bill Henson, Untitled # 115, 2000-03
The above photographs is the photograph I have based the below photographs on. I planned on including a lot of dark tones and black space to leave focus on the figure in the photograph. I wanted to evoke the murky cool tones that Henson had shown in his work as well as evoke a dark, melancholy tone as well as the fearful expression on the girl face. Before the shoot I used blue and red eye-shadows on Ryan’s face to evoke a more eerie effect, the red was a cream consistency which added a glossy effect, I also used these on his cheekbones to give a more dramatic effect.
The above photograph came from using a too long exposure with lighting from an iPhone. I found the blurriness added to the eerie ambiance I wanted to reflect in Henson’s work. I was very reluctant to use the flash from my camera at first because I was concerned it would make the images too bright or flat. All these photographs were taken outside in almost complete darkness, even with the camera set to manual, the camera often wouldn’t take the picture due to there being not enough light, to override this I used the iPhone lighting to trick the camera into taking the photograph. I went back to locations I had previously taken pictures of such as the house and garage from my HDR photographs. When editing the above photograph I changed the levels to add more contrast to add more depth.
All photograph are of a different ratio that suits the individual photograph. I preferred how they looked in a longer landscape ratio as it gave them a more cinematic effect, as if they were a still image from a film. Whilst editing in Light room I upped the contrast as well as decreased the shadows whilst increasing the highlight levels, making Ryan stand out more but also defining his features more, this also brought out the tones in his skin, making him look sick, evoking an uncomfortable narrative to the audience. The dark, grungy backgrounds added with the rugged threatening look of the character gives the photographs a harrowing effect, similar to that of a horror film.
The above photograph is a good example of how I could use media techniques use in films to evoke a narrative to the viewer and add more context to what I am trying to show. The low angle of the camera looking up at Ryan makes him look larger and more frightening. The dark low lighting also makes him look more uninviting, the low key lighting with harsh shadows creates a chiaroscuro effect, which evokes tension that would typically be used in a horror film. His body language makes it appear as if he has just turned to face the viewer, the use of eye contact directly at the camera also creates a connection with the subject and the viewer, the resentful expression adds to the melancholy effect created in this photograph.
I wanted to evoke this in these portraits as I wanted to explore how low, night lighting could completely change the ambiance of a photograph and add narrative to something that would have otherwise been very mundane. This use of low light has also been used in the work Henson to evoke meaning and ambiance. For this shoot I would have preferred to use natural lighting such as moonlight as well as surrounding street lights but found this was unreliable and there was still not enough light available to create a good image.
The above image is probably the most jarring of the selection I have taken. The use of chiaroscuro is very present in this image, giving it the eerie effect. Using the flash gave the background a very textured, grungy effect as well as adding to the mise-en-scene of the image, giving more context to what might be happening within the image, adding narrative. His troubled expression and his complexion suggests a troubling narrative. Again I have used a long landscape ratio to create a more cinematic effect. The juxtaposition of natural and landscape is also subtly shown in this image, such as the weeds and moss that have grown through the wall.
The relevancy of this shoot to the rest of my exam coursework is not exactly obvious, but it could be argued that the juxtaposition of nature and urban is shown from the human present within the image, considering that people are in fact living, natural things. It could also be said that the raw and jarring expression evoked in the photographs is created by human emotion, which is innate within everyone. The unnatural aspect comes from what we have created around us such as the buildings and walls, the images themselves are also not natural from how I have added in lighting that was not present in the surroundings, for subject I have also used makeup to add more emotion and character. These also share a lot of similarities to the artists I have looked at such as the tone and composition as well as how they have used these to evoke narrative and ambiance to the viewer.
This idea is something that came to me from a video that I saw on youtube. In the video a group leave a disposable camera in public areas with a note that says to take a photograph with it. The video is from 2011 but still has the same connotations as it did then.
Although it is not the specific intention of the people who did this they are giving an unusual look at the environment. The camera that the people are using is the same. The location that the photos are taken in is the same. The only real difference is the person who frames up and takes the photograph, it shows how different people all see the world differently. This concept is something that I am keen to investigate further. I would not need to copy the project but I likely would end up doing that for one of the shoots. Other than that I could give people in the same family a camera and have them take a set number of exposures each. This would give an interesting insight into the different way that family members would see their family and home environment. Similarly, looking at different people in certain clubs and social groups could be interesting, I could use the rowing club members for this, using my own photographs and images that they would take could give an impression of the club from many different angles and personalities. Again looking at how individual personalities interpret the same environment.
An interesting possible development on this same vein would be to compare photographs taken by someone who is considered an “insider” of a certain group and someone who is an “outsider” of that same group. This would probably work best by using ether two photography students to compare or two non-photographers so that the images do not differ too much in quality of framing, lighting ect…
I wanted to move onto portrait photographs after looking at ones created by Bill Henson and Todd Hido. Who both used portraiture as a way to build on the narrative of the photograph, often their work is psychologically charged and designed to connect the viewer to their own experiences. I plan on using my brother Ryan as a model, in the past he has proven very good for taking photographs and his slightly mysterious persona and ambiguous expression is perfect for the role.
There is a particular mirror in my house which allows you to see the reflection of someone without actually seeing them. With the correct lighting I plan on creating eerie photographs evoking a sense of human presence which both Henson and especially Hido’s work convey. I also plan on using this shoot to convey a feeling of enigma, engaging the audience to think about the character in the photo and what might be happening within the photograph.
I plan on using a tripod and creating a long exposure shot as I will be using a very low light source. I have found blue Christmas lights which I will place above the staircase, meaning light will come and reflect our of the mirror. Using this type of lighting means i will have a lot of control over the amount of light in the frame, unlike when i have worked with natural lighting. I plan on removing distracting features from the frame such as paintings to leave the viewer more focus on the figure, lighting and the mirror.
I also plan on responding to Bill Henson’s dark and jarring portrait photographs. I plan on taking these outside using the built in flash on my camera and a very quick exposure time with a low ISO to replicate the dark and high contrast tones in Ryan’s complexion, this will also mean I don’t haft to worry about over shaky images that come from using a slow exposure. I plan on using makeup such as red and blue powder to exaggerate the fleshy tones in his skin.
Similar to the previous shoot, I used a tripod and took a selection of photographs to create HDR photographs. For these night photographs I needed to take extra care when taking photographs as I needed to take photographs with a longer exposure, some as long as 8 seconds long to fully capture as much light as possible. Similar to the previous photographs I kept all of these at the same 5×7 ratio. Unlike much of Todd Hido’s work, all of these photos are in landscape as I found worked better with the HDR and the composition. Hido often works with portraits to creates sense of isolation and keep a single house in the frame, but I think working in landscape creates a more cinematic effect. Similar to Hido’s work I only used the light that was available.
In the first one above there was a variety of different lighting, the largest being from the two windows to the left. I wanted to capture the green tones from the window and the green walls which evoked a fairly spooky undertone. In the second, I wanted to retake a photograph I had taken before, which was taken in overcast daylight, making the image flat and mundane, the cool, low lighting contrasted to the warm light in the foreground made added a compelling effect.
These two photographs were the most difficult to take with many of the photos being out of place, meaning the HDR could not work fully, this being said I am still really happy with the results. I liked the composition of the first with how depth was created with the light from the glass door in the foreground, this being the brightest part of the photograph made it the first thing the viewer will notice, secondly the light from the garage added depth in the mid ground and lastly the natural light created a silhouette of the trees in the background. In the second I also like the two different light sources. The contrast of colour such as the yellow with the blue adds and interesting effect.
The two photographs above are the most interesting from the selection as well are the best at evoking a Todd Hido style of narrative. Considering composition, the high angle enables only the house and sky to be in the frame, creating an isolated, dramatic effect. Using HDR gave the first image a really interesting texture on the wall. On both photographs, the warm light contrasted the cool blue tone from the sky. The most intriguing part about these images is the light coming from the windows. In the first, the TV light created a low, purple light which reminded me of cinematic, 70’s style light, this also evoked a sense of mystery. Again with the second image, I like how there is only one window light on, which adds contrast and mystery.
Considering the exam theme and my starting point, the natural aspect comes from the low lighting and how it changes the whole ambiance of the image and how this affects the narrative and how the viewer feels towards the photograph. This is then added with the man-made structures and street lights, creating a harsher more dynamic effect within the environment. The last four photographs were a direct response to Todd Hido’s work with the subject matter as well as use of available lighting.
Night photography using HDR is something I plan on exploring more thoroughly in my work as well as using the light available within a scene rather then adding my own light.
The Crow Speaks 1986, 1991 Hamish Fulton born 1946 Purchased 1993 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/P77616
Bill Henson
Bill Henson
After the previous successful shoot I wanted to explore the same area and challenge myself to make more HDR images using dynamic and dark lighting, similar to that of Bill Henson’s dark nocturnal landscapes. I decided to take photographs from a time beyond dusk where there was very low natural lighting and use man made lighting that was available in the scene to add intensity and narrative. After the previous shoot I noticed there were a lot of different light sources such as motion censored lights as well as lights from windows. Similar to the previous shoot I plan on using HDR techniques and multiple exposures to emphasize areas that lacked light. I plan on referencing Todd Hido’s work with his use of lights from windows and using the composition to isolate houses in the frame. I also plan on creating edits using the images similar to Hamish Fulton by adding text and filters over the image in Photoshop.
Based on my first shoot I have identified a theme that I am considering pursuing further. Water. Water is something that is an integral part of all environments, civisialiations are based around water, in the desert the only places that permanent communities are set up are are near to water. 40% of humanity live near a coast line [1] and throughout the rest of the population they almost all live near to some source of water. Human beings need water to be able to survive and so it is an essential piece of our environment. Living on a small island as I do my life is also more connected to the water than most people would be, I have spent my whole life around the sea, I feel lost if I am too far away from the coast. The world and places that I have visited seem incredibly far away and distant from other civilization unless they are near to the coast. It is incredibly difficult to explain but I feel isolated and alone if I am a distance from the coast, even if there are people all around me I feel like the community (village, town, ect…) are isolated and alone, unless the are near to the sea. There is a great degree of comfort that I gain from being near to the sea, this is probably linked to my family history, my Grandfather on my mother’s side was a fisherman and his father before him, all the way back for a long time. My mother also had these close links to the sea and drove me to this with a lot of my childhood being spent at the beach and out on the water.
There are many photographers that have used water as a part of their work. Although usually not the main feature there are some like Tanja Deman whose work has the water as a highly integral part of it. Her project titled “Saltwater” looks at the underwater environment is a kind of activism in response to the threat of oil companies wanting to start drilling in this coastal area. This would have been terrible for the environment due to possible oil spills and other contamination from the general process of creating these rigs and housing the crews. Her works usually have some focus on structures; buildings and natural structures and how humans interact with them. A particular connection is felt between her and the sea, in an interview with Süeddeutsche Magazine Deman talks about how closely connected she is with the water, she says that
“the sea has become part of my personality”
and talks about how the people who have lived in the same place as her for over 1700 years have their whole lives based around the sea; fishing and tourism being the main industries in the area make the connection between these people and the sea one of the most powerful connections. This is something that I was trying to go for with the first shoot that I did but it did not properly work out that way, it was difficult to show that kind of raw connection between people and the sea without taking images over a much longer time frame. This kind of time frame is not available to me for this project so I’m going to have to look at another way to explore the water.
Instead I’m going to look at trying some more abstract methods and concepts for representing water as an environment. Looking into the use of colour under the water would be a good way to study this.
I wanted to investigate Travel Photography in depth, researching its foundations and history. Doing this will provide me with an insight into the original purpose of the genre and the reason and artists behind its creation. Travel photography is a genre of photography that may involve the documentation of an area’s landscape, people, cultures, customs and history. The Photographic Society of America defines a travel photo as an image that expresses the feeling of a time and place, portrays a land, its people, or a culture in its natural state, and has no geographical limitations. As travel has become more accessible, the genre is opening up more to amateurs and professionals alike. As a result, this category of Photography is much more crowded in Modern art society. Nevertheless The appeal of photography was as obvious to travellers in the 19th century as it is today. Photography made its earliest steps as a medium when in 1839 Louis Jacques Daguerre introduced a photographic process called the Daguerrotype. The first owners photographed their local area within Paris like the Notre Dame Cathedral, the river Seine and le Pont Neuf. However using a Daguerrotupe was a complicated process that required a lot of equipments and chemicals such as amalgam or alloy, of mercuryand silver. It would be very difficult to transport the camera and equipment around long distances and the travelling photographer had to carry with him a portable darkroom including enough chemical to have a mini laboratory. As a result, Travel Photography was very rare at the time.
A portable darkroom in 19th century Ireland.
In 1851, Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process which became a standard photographic process until 1880. This new process reduced the exposure time to only 2 second , compared to the daguerrotype and colotype. However this did not help many travel photographers in their task as the equipment was still incredibly difficult to transport. In the 1850s the standard photographer outfit was the large sized camera, tripod, glass plates, plate holders, a tent like portable darkroom,chemicals, tanks, and water containers.Photographers carted their equipment around the world. In the mid 1800s, pictures taken for scientific purposes were of great interest to people in general and with the help of the collodion process reproduction of photographs became convenient. With the invention of the printing press, photography became commercialized as the demand due to tourism increased. However, this new era of photography was not accepted well by the purists who debated that commercialization had spoiled the craft. By the end of the 19th century tourists could take their own pictures. In 1888, George Eastman, the founder of Kodak invented a camera using a roll of film.he camera came loaded with a 100 exposure film and a memorandum book that had to be filled in to keep count of the photos. When the film was finished the camera was posted back to the factory. The camera was written with the films and loaded with a fresh film. In the first year Eastman sold 13000 cameras. Kodak had made photography accessible by millions of people across the world. Photography had become a mass medium and tourists were traveling with small and easy to use camera.
Du Camp and Flaubert
Flaubert in Egypt is a book composed of excerpts from the journals of two young Frenchmen, Gustave Flaubert and his rich Parisian friend Maxime Du Camp. Flaubert, in 1849, had dropped out of college and was at loose ends. Du Camp suggested that they go and photograph the monuments of the “Orient.” Flaubert jumped at the opportunity, and that autumn the two hopped aboard a ship bound for Alexandria, Egypt. Travel as we know it did not exist in the early 19th century. Only the very rich, mostly aristocrats, could afford the time or money for a visit round Europe. Most people had no idea of what the world looked like because, before photography, travel books featured only line drawings at best.Du Camp had studied photography, and for the trip took along his wooden Calotype camera, a tripod and jugs of chemicals. Invented by Henry Fox Talbot, Calotype photography was never very popular because Talbot strictly licensed his patented process. The fees he charged made it less attractive than the free public domain Daguerre process. But Du Camp smartly realized the advantage of the Calotype for travel. His camera was relatively small and easy to carry around. It used ordinary, readily available, high-quality writing paper as the media for its negatives. The writing paper itself could be partially sensitized in a hotel room or even a tent, and once dried, be conveniently stored and carried around until needed. The big drawback was that while the Daguerreotype is incredibly detailed, a Calotype print is much softer because the print is made from a paper negative. However, by shooting paper negatives, Du Camp could make any number of contact prints from them upon his return to Paris. By comparison, the Daguerreotype was a singular photograph from which no copies could be made. Du Camp was planning ahead to produce multiple copies of his travel albums.
Du Camp and Flaubert traveled through North Africa, Egypt and the Middle East, taking photos and keeping detailed diaries. It was a landscape as dangerous and chaotic as it is today. They had to fight off bandits and the occasional anti-government rebels who fought from camelback. Naturally enough, their exploits also involved dangerous liaisons with native women, belly dancers and prostitutes, and the consumption of quantities of alcohol and exotic drugs. Despite these distractions, the men stayed focused on their mission, producing hundreds of photographs that captured, for the first time, some of the great manmade wonders of the ancient world such as the pyramids, the statues at Aswan, the Sphinx and more.
Arriving at a site, the work of making photographs would begin. Flaubert apparently would do his best to avoid actual work, letting the porters put up the darkroom tent, while Du Camp would scout out locations. After placing the camera on a wooden tripod, Du Camp would duck under a black drape so he could frame and focus his image on the groundglass.Then he would go into his mostly light-tight darkroom tent and brush the sensitized side of the writing paper with a solution of gallo nitrate of silver — a mixture of silver nitrate, acetic acid and gallic acid. This was an accelerator that increased the paper’s sensitivity to light. After blotting the paper dry and placing it in a light tight holder, he would go back and load it into his camera. Now came the trickiest part of 19th century photography. Exposure was learned strictly by trial and error. Once he found the right exposure time, Du Camp would remove the holder’s light slide and take the lens cap off. Using his pocket watch, he would time the exposure and then replace the cap. Exposure complete, he would return to the darkroom tent to develop the negative. This required brushing the paper with gallo nitrate again while gently warming it over a hot pot. This produced a visible silver image that was fixed with hypo, the same hyposulphite of soda modern film development uses. This dissolved the unexposed silver iodide, which was then washed away, leaving a pure silver image on the paper.
The prints were mounted on heavy paper, and then bound in albums that Du Camp sold in 1852 under the title “Egypte, Nubie, Palestine, Syrie.”This was arguably the world’s first travel photography book and the images amazed the public. It made Du Camp famous almost overnight. Hearing and researching this story has been really insightful and enlightening in my investigation on travel photography. It makes you realise how much photography has developed and how lucky we are today. Today’s snapshooters have no idea how hard it once was to photograph the world, something they can do now so easily with just the press of a button.
For my second shoot, I photograph my girlfriend, Lizzy. Within this shoot I attempt to capture the relationship we share and my perception of her. I see Lizzy as both very innocent and sensitive, sometimes shy, but can be herself around me.
This can no be entirely represented through the lens of a camera, as people often become embarrassed, or even overact. Despite this, I feel that within this shoot I have captured some sense of both emotion, in terms of feeling comfortable and uncomfortable. We see photographs where her face remains unseen and others where this is not the case. I think this reflects her personality greatly, as often in certain situations she will become reserved, but around me she is able to open up in such a way that is expressive and emotive.
Ultimately in terms of my environment, as well as hers, I am trying to show that wherever we are together, the two of us will feel comfortable in our surroundings.
I then moved onto a second image featuring a huge amount of warm tones. I wanted to include the phrase ‘The juxtaposition of nature and man made’. I picked a cream colour that was present in the image and found it worked better then white.
