A visual element is any characteristic that can been seen in a photograph. This can include, line, shape, space, repetition, texture, colour and tone.
Jaroslav Rössler
Jaroslav Rössler is a photographer who works with paper to create interesting formal elements in his work. His work includes alot of tone which I tried to experiment with in my own paper images by photographing my paper on a white and black background. I also created the visual noise seen inRössler’s photos by turning up my cameras ISO when shooting my photographs. This helped to create grain and texture within my pictures. I believe the photos taken on the black background were more effective due to the better creation of space within the photos. This also may have been helped by a more harsh and artificial light as opposed to the natural light I used in the shoot.
Guy Bourdin was a French artist and fashion photographer known for his highly stylized and provocative images. From 1955, Bourdin worked mostly with Vogue as well as other publications. His work focusing on unique and detailed texture is interesting due to the visual noise and desaturated effects it presents.
My texture photoshoot
For my photographs, I tried to include some aspects of Bourdin’s composition including zooming into interesting textures to where an object can become unrecognisable. With a few of my images, I focused on creating the breakage effect that he has in his work as I believe this visual is effective. I mostly focused on photographing natural forms and street found objects in order to show a variety of colour in my contact sheet. I also cropped my images into squares to really bring attention to the formal elements within my photographs. These elements were also highlighted in my edits of my best photos. This was mainly due to the contrast and clarity adjustments as this helped to show the shape of the pictures.
ISO is the number that represents how sensitive your camera is to light. A lower ISO value means there is less sensitivity to light and more light needed when taking a photo. On the other hand, a higher ISO means there is more sensitivity and less light needed to take a photo. This can affect the visual noise of an image, meaning the graininess of a photograph. High ISO often used in low-light situations, especially when a fast shutter speed or a narrow lens aperture is essential to achieving a creative goal.
Adobe Lightroom is a photo editing and storage application available through the Adobe Creative Cloud. This program allows users to quickly and easily edit their photographs with tools to alter contrast, colour and change brightness. This can be done on mobile devices immediately after taking the picture.
I started with the creation of a catalogue which involved setting up my own station for the application.
I selected a few of my own photographs from my computer which I imported into the software.
I created a collection of these images called ‘shutter speed’ as this is what my selected photos present.
I used selection functions to categorise my photos and group them into ones I wanted to work with and those of the same colour pallet.
I then played around with the quick develop mode where I eventually made my photographs black and white.
I then moved onto exploring develop mode for working individually on my images. Here I experimented with many adjustments and interesting effects.
For some adjustments, I went for a more dramatic edit while I was more gentle for others. This was just to see the variety of edits I could make to images.
Contact sheets, which are easily made with the help of Adobe Lightroom, are pieces of paper featuring a set of thumbnail images. These are used so photographers can better compare each single image against the others.
William Klein conceived his original series when he was in the process of reviewing other photographers’ contact sheets for a film he was making. Referencing the age of film photography when photographers selected images by circling individual negatives on a contact sheet, Klein’s works invent a new kind of art that merges painting and photography.
In photography, shutter speed is the length of time that the film or digital sensor inside the camera is exposed to light when taking a photograph. The amount of light that reaches the film or image sensor is equal to the exposure time. 1⁄500 of a second will let half as much light in as 1⁄250. In addition to its effect on exposure, the shutter speed changes the way movement appears in photographs. Very short shutter speeds can be used to freeze fast moving subjects, for example at sporting events. Very long shutter speeds are used to intentionally blur a moving subject for effect.
Slow shutter speed
Medium shutter speed
Fast shutter speed
Eadweard Muybridge – fast shutter speeds
Muybridge was challenged to settle the old dispute about whether all four of a horse’s legs are off the ground at one time during a gallop. In 1872 he took a single image of a trotting horse with all hooves aloft. But his eventual solution was to capture moving objects with cameras capable of a shutter speed as brief as 1/1,000 of a second.
Hiroshi Sugimoto – slow shutter speeds
Sugimoto has spoken of his work as an expression of ‘time exposed’, which serves as a time capsule for a series of events in time. Sugimoto often uses large format cameras and long exposure times (slow shutter speeds) to capture light behaving in expected but controlled ways.
Harold Edgerton – fast shutter speeds
In 1950, Edgerton worked with Herbert Grier and Kenneth Germeshausen to design a camera shutter device devoid of mechanical components. This allowed the exposure times for his photographs to be taken at four to ten millionths of a second.
Francesca Woodman – slow shutter speeds
Woodman uses slow shutter speed and double exposure when photographing so that she can actively feature in her own work. This also meant that she could capture different stages of movement, in a way that could trace the pattern of time. As a result, her images are blurred, which suggests motion and urgency.
The focal length of a lens is the optical distance from the point where the light meets inside the lens to the camera’s sensor.
The depth of field is the difference between the nearest and the farthest objects that are in sharp focus in an image captured with a camera.
There are two ways of focusing a camera; autofocus (AF) and manual focus (MF). Autofocus is for general use while manual focus helps with close ups and detail.
Aperture is the opening in a lens where light passes through to enter the camera. You can shrink or enlarge it’s size to change what reaches the camera sensor.
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Ralph Eugene Meatyard – Zen twigs
Meatyard’s collection of photos inspired my experiments due to the interesting use of a small depth of field. These photos had nothing in focus but the twigs and I tried to reflect this by using a very wide aperture in my photographs. I edited these photos into black and white to copy the intensity of his photos that are highlighted by the sharp focus of the plant in view.
