Ralph was a photographer that pursued photography primarily as a passion as oppose to a source of income. He experimented with a variety of abstract techniques within his photography. One of his more notable photo-shoots ‘zen twigs’ had a strong focus on experimenting with focusing on branches and twigs with a very large aperture leaving all background subjects as simply a blur. His photo-shoot ‘no focus’ is a very expressive shoot with a lot of ambiguity as to what the subjects of the photos are. Most of his work has a very strong contrast as with the lack of focus I believe it is important to focus on tonal work.

In this example, Ralph used a large aperture leaving all subjects in the image entirely out of focus, creating a sense of ambiguity about the image. The image is rather formless with no distinct subject. It is difficult to discuss the technical aspects of the image however due to the large aperture required for such a photo, it is safe to assume that the shutter speed used would have to be rather high.

Response:

I took more inspiration from his work with the ‘Zen Twigs’ project as opposed to the ‘No Focus’ project. While I experimented with focus to a degree, I didn’t find much success with the no focus experimentation.

Ralph Meatyard

Ralph Meatyard was an american photographer from Illinois.  Meat yard worked as an optician who also practised photography.  One project of Meatyard’s work is looking at photographs out of focus,  and spent months just looking through an out of focus camera to learn how to ‘see no focus’.  Meat yard began the project because of his initial attraction to the out-of-focus backgrounds in some of his images.  Meatyard eliminated the “thing” and looked only for the background, which he would then throw out of focus. Eventually, feeling that the background was still too recognizable, he stopped this practice and began to see his surroundings through an unfocused lens.

My Own Experiments

Chosen Four Together

Other Experiments: Into Black and White

A lot of Ralph Meatyard’s work is seen in a black and white tone so for my photographs I decided to also experiment with them in black and white as something different to add on to just experimenting with the camera itself with the focus and shutter speeds.

While experimenting with the black and white I also adjusted and experimented with the exposure and contrasts of the photographs as to add more tone and different highlights and darks into the photograph.

For one of my photographs I also experimented with cropping to get rid of unwanted dark space and the side of the photograph to just leave the objects shapes against the light.

Chosen Four: Experimented

Final Chosen Photograph

I have chosen this as my most successful photograph as I feel it shows the most connections to Ralph Meatyard’s own work, which was where my inspiration was coming from.  I have chosen my edited version as my favourite as I feel it works the best and has the best contrast as the photograph unedited is as well very dark and doesn’t show much colour so to put it in black and white eventuates this and I feel works next to Meatyard’s work best.