The idea of creating auto chromes came about when there was a high demand to create colour images.

The first practicable method of colour photography was the autochrome process, invented in France by Auguste and Louis Lumière. Best known for their invention of the Cinématographe in 1895, the Lumières began commercial manufacture of autochrome plates in the early 20th century.

AN EXAMPLE OF HOW AUTOCHROMES CAN BE MADE TODAY:

Above is an example of how autochromes can be made at home using fairly primitive and easy to get items. Although a lengthy and sometimes difficult process, autochromes can still be made today.

These are close up shots of the makeup of an autochrome, the tiny specs of pigment can be clearly distinguished from one another, all working together to create an image. Although most photos look extremely colourful, made up of various tones and shades, in reality most images are made up of just different combinations of the same three primary colours, red, blue and yellow.

EXAMPLES OF AUTO CHROMES:

IMAGE ANALYSIS:

VISUAL:

In terms of the visual aspects of the image, the first impression which comes to mind is the graininess of the image but this is very typical of the photography style. There is also a slight vignette around the border of the image which may be a result of the technology of the time or due to the fact that the image has aged slightly and therefore the coloraturas around the edges of the image has faded drastically. There is a very clear foreground and background with the family and kids being entered around. large cannon in the foreground and the trees and buildings being situated in the backdrop. This is quite an interesting image in terms of the composition and the subjects as this was taken during the early 20th century, when coloured photography was in its infancy. Seeing the men and women dressed in period specific clothing being displayed in a coloured image is very conflicting as they almost look out of place and strange within the image. As this is an auto chrome, and early version of coloured photography, the colour scheme is subtle and we can see any variations of soft beiges and other muted tones.

TECHNICAL:

As these images are auto chromes and early versions of colour photography, the standard setup for photography as we know it today has not been used in this case, in order to create an image. The process, called autochrome, involved covering a glass plate with a thin wash of tiny potato starch grains dyed red, green, and blue, thus creating a filter. A thin layer of emulsion was added over that. When the plate was flipped and exposed to light, the resulting image could be developed into a transparency.Like early black and white photography, autochrome was a slow process. Because exposures were long, subjects had to stay still—sometimes unsuccessfully—to avoid a blurred image. But with autochrome, the blur had an unusual aesthetic effect: Paired with the soft, dyed colors, it made the photo look like a painting.

CONTEXTUAL:

Color photography was available long before the technology for color printing came along in 1941, when Kodak made it possible to order prints from Kodachrome slides. Because printing wasn’t an option, Autochromes were best viewed as projections or with the aid of special equipment, such as a diascope.  The Autochrome process was used to produce color photography well into the 1930s, but fell out of use as advances in subtractive color film processing allowed for a wider spectrum of color to be captured.

CONCEPTUAL:

When photography was invented in 1839, it was a black-and-white medium, and it remained that way for almost one hundred years. Photography then was a fragile, cumbersome, and expensive process. In order to practice, photographers needed a lot of extra money and time, or a sponsor. 

In that early period, the people advancing photographic technology tended to focus not on achieving color photographs but on making improvements in the optical, chemical, and practical aspects of photography. For many, the goal was to make photography more suitable for portraiture—its most desired application. For that, photographic technology needed to be more stable, portable, and affordable, not more colorful. There was a steady demand for the need of colour photography therefore experimentation with the topic came about, kickstarting the invention of auto chromes and other various methods of achieved colour through photographic imagery.

First Edit:

Edit 2:

By Fri 18 Oct – COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING WORK:

• Each student must have been in the studio at least once experimenting with coloured backdrops.

• Show experimentation with the above images using cutout figures from archive photographs as a response to Rafal Milach work: The First March of Gentlemen – see this blog post here under week 6

• Have a folder with 10-12 images of both PORTAITS and OBJECTS (including any montages – if relevant) in high-res TIFF files (4000 pixels on long edge) ready for zine design and layout first lesson Mon 21 Oct.
  
• Select 2 montages as final prints and save in the folder below. You can choose any montages that you have made from LANDSCAPE, PORTRAIT or OBJECTS modules. If you have a paper collage, then photograph it in the studio to make it digital. All image files saved as high-res TIFF (4000 pixels)

M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Image Transfer\PRINTING\A2\A3 Montages

Still-life Studio Shoot:

Each group of two students work on one station each ie. Continuous Light and Flash Lights and swap halfway through

It takes more time to work with Continuous lights so it may be that each group needs to visit studio twice – which is okay as the studio is booked every lesson the erst of this week and next week too.

You can choose to photograph each object individually or group together several objects for a more complex still life arrangements.

Technical stuff – just in case someone has changes the settings.

Continuous Lights – photograph objects three dimensionally

Camera setting: Manual Mode
ISO: 100
White Balance: Daylight
Aperture: F/16
Shutter: 0.5 sec to 0.8 sec (depending on reflection of each object)
Lights in room must be switched off to avoid relfections

Flash Lights – photograph images, documents, books, newspapers, etc

Camera setting: Manual Mode
ISO: 100
White Balance: Daylight
Aperture: F/16
Shutter: 1/125-1/200 (depending on reflection of each object)
Flash heads set to power output: 2.0
Use pilot light for focusing

NB: At the end of the day – or if someone from media has booked the studio in between lessons – move still-life table away from backdrop and set up again for next lesson.

Uploading images from shoot:

Students can decide to use their own card in camera or use shared card – 10 mins before lessons ends take card out and upload images in folder on computer.

You must take an image of how the lights was set up and annotate, key light / fill light / back light (if used)

Those students who are not in the studio work independently in class editing images from shoot and produce blog posts as per instructions here:

3. EDITING: Upload and process images from photo-shoot using Lightroom and make a rough edit of 8–10 images 

4. EXPERIMENTING: Show experimentation with different adjustments/ techniques/ processes in Lightroom/ Photoshop appropriate to intentions. Produce at least 3 different variations of the same still-life with 3 different images.

Michelle Sank:

“Michelle Sank was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She left there in 1978 and has been living in England since 1987. Her images reflect a preoccupation with the human condition and to this end can be viewed as social documentary. Her work encompasses issues around social and cultural diversity.”
http://www.michellesank.com/about

Insula:

“Working outside of particular demographic scenarios Sank’s Jersey imagery continues to develop a lyrical vision within which the defining influences are place and cultural geography. As a stranger, present for a limited period only, Sank’s ‘residency photographs’ are of course procured under certain psychological precepts. In April 2013 when she arrived at the Archisle Project to undertake a six month residency, geographic and historical influences also loomed large. There were late twentieth century blanks in the archive to compensate, Jersey’s peculiar British-Norman cultural identity to contemplate, economy, politics, community, work, leisure, environment; these concerns together set against a twenty-first century backdrop. As Insula, the Latinate title of Sank’s resulting exhibition suggests, an enduring islandness is a defining influence in this body of work. It also seems fitting that the insula or Island of Reil in the human brain plays a part in regulating self-awareness and emotion.

Insula eschews a specific brief though the work responds to the wealth of nineteenth century portrait photographs within the Jersey Photographic Archive that it now joins as a powerful point of interpretation. The beguiling qualities of these new photographs call to mind the position that Lewis Baltz found for photographic series, ‘somewhere between the novel and film.’ As such, Sank’s photographs offer a visual poem to the island.”
http://www.michellesank.com/portfolios/insula

Technical:

This photo as taken with natural lighting coming from the left with a small aperture, probably around F20. The shutter speed is around 1/8 and the ISO is set around 400-1600.

Conceptual:

This photo is described by Michelle Sank as “responds to the wealth of nineteenth century portrait photographs within the Jersey Photographic Archive”. This conveys the meaning of money and power in Jersey and shows how richer people live and what they have.

Contextual:

This images portrays a deeper meaning of social class in Jersey. This woman appears to be quite wealthy, so it contrasts with Sank’s other images in this series, as there is a mixture of different classes in this project.

Visual:

The colours all match cohesively and this photo has maroon red colour palette. This photo is in colour which shows the vibrancy of the image. The tone of the picture is quite light. The main focus is on the lady as she is in the center and the focus is mainly on her.

Contemporary VS Classic Photography –

The classical Photographer is a man called Francis Foot. He was born in 1885, the son of Francois Foot (1847-1918) and Louisa Hunt, (1843-1934). Francis was a china and glass dealer in Dumar.

Francis Foot was born in 1885, the son of Francois Foot (1847-1918) and Louisa Hunt (1843-1934). Francois was a china and Glass dealer in Dumaresq Street, at a time when the area was one of the more affluent in St Helier. His son started his working life as a gas fitter. However, he soon became fascinated by photography and the early phonographs and gramophone records and realised that he could earn a living from them.

So the family took on a second shop in Pitt Street, where Francis worked as a photographer, while his father and mother sold gramophones, records and other wares in Dumaresq Street. After his father’s death, Francis concentrated the business in Pitt Street.

Francis married Margaret Vernon shortly before the First World War and the couple had four children, George (1914- ), Stanley (1915- ), Dora (1917- ) and Reg (1920- ).

Due to the unintended blur in the images above analysing the technical aspects of his work is harder due to the camera quality he has used at this time. However, I like how the images are more out of focus and the sharpness of key elements is grainy because it makes the photos naturally seem like there from the olden days. The exposure of some of his images is high, this is because details like patterns in the little girls dress, hairs on the mans face from the mood board above are out of focus had this had been lower we might have been able to see smaller details Francois like Michelle Sank uses natural existing environments in their photographs

Previously mentioned Francis takes his pictures in a natural environment, thus taken outdoors which is is suggesting natural lighting as also being used to take this image. The image was taken in the 20th century, explaining the black and white. 

Visual analysis- Visually we can see that there is one child in the photo, presented a little of the left of the picture and she is dressed in a white dress. The white could symbolise purity in the family giving an idea of upper class and wealth. The positing of the child could be planned as she is looking at the camera and has her hand on the baby stroller which could be seen as a posing position, therefore un naturalistic. 

Conceptual analysis- I think that Francis wanted to show the wealth of the child in this image as the little girl can be seen in a clean white dress, a bow in her hair to represent purity, shiny black shoes, and is also captured next to a expensive looking baby stroller. This is showing that the children have a good life due to the financial situation of the parents, showing the contextual factor of how the class system had affected Jersey Channel Islands. This image is showing Francis is proud of his financial situation and what he can provide his children with, almost as if the took these images to brag. 

Below is a mood board for Michelle Sank:

Michelle Sank

Michelle sank was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She left there in 1978 and has been living in England since 1987. Her images reflect a preoccupation with the human condition and to this end can be viewed as social documentary. Her work encompasses issues around social and cultural diversity. Michelle Sank was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She left there in 1978 and has been living in England since 1987. Her images reflect a preoccupation with the human condition and to this end can be viewed as social documentary. Her work encompasses issues around social and cultural diversity.

Nature is a crucial element in her images as they take up the mojority of the photo. However the key focus of her images is the person standing directly in the centre weather they’re looking at the camera or not. I like the way she’s angled herself when taking these images as their not just all straight on. There are some where she has positioned herself higher or to the side and even below the model to obtain these images. She tends to use natural lighting but then seems to have them a little too the under exposed side as the colours don’t directly jump in the viewers faces in particular the top right photo of the shed on the hill, the lighting is dull and dark making the photo less exciting to look at whereas the top right image is exciting, quite out of the ordinary but more intresting to look at due to the contrast in colours between the orange and the blue sky.