Formal Elements

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 Rossler

My paper experiments

Jaroslav Rossler is a photographer who works with paper to create interesting formal elements in his work. This is achieved by the folding and cutting of paper to create shapes. His work includes a lot of tone which I tried to build in my own paper images by photographing my designs on white and black backgrounds. I also created the visual noise seen in Rossler’s photos by turning up my cameras ISO when shooting my photographs. This helped to create grain and texture within my pictures. I believe that my photos taken on the black background were more effective due to the stronger creation of space within the photos. The negative space may have also been enhanced by a more harsh and artificial light as opposed to the natural light I used in my shoot.

Gradient Overlay Experimentation

Final Edits and Presentation

For my final composition, I worked with my photos on the black background due to them being more successful. This worked well as it allowed me to create a triptych display. I altered my pictures to have the sepia effect which is seen in Rossler’s work. I also adjusted the green colour balance of my images to make them more accurate to his work’s colour palette. To display my photographs, I arranged them in a purple grid as this is a harmonious colour to the sepia tone and therefore does the images more justice. This also helps to add my own flare in comparison to my very Rossler based work. As well as colour edits, I worked on creating more dramatic value by upping the contrast and exposure of the photos in photoshop. The use of leading lines also helps to highlight the dark and light tones.

Guy Bourdin

Guy Bourdin was a French artist and fashion photographer known for his highly stylised and provocative images. His work focusing on unique and detailed texture is interesting due to the visual noise and desaturated effects it presents.

My Texture Photoshoot

Best and Edited Photos

For my photographs, I tried to include some aspects of Bourdin’s composition including zooming into interesting textures to where an object becomes unrecognisable. With a few of my images, I focused on creating the broken effects that are shown 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 that helped to show shape within the photographs.

Photo Manipulation

In this phase of experimentation, I used the polygonal lasso tool on photoshop to manipulate my images into various triangular shapes where I then contrasted them against a dark background to show negative space. Furthermore, I stuck with a specific and light toned colour palette to make the image fragments harmonious with each other. The repetition of shape compliments the three photos I have worked with and further emphasises the formal elements of the composition. The sharp lines also help to create a contrasting abstract visual to the original subjects.

Final Presentation

I decided to display 6 photographs together in a grid as I discovered that these few worked nicely together as a collection. While editing the pictures individually, I chose to edit them in a black and white filter which I pulled from the desaturated effects of Bourdin’s work. I focused on creating harsh shadows and definition in my photos in order to make the contrast and texture of the images really dramatic. For the display, I stuck with the monotone visuals and went for a plain black background. This allows for a simple and non-distractive presentation where the photos can be focused on and attention is not drawn away from them. I chose to display pictures that created a sense of decay and wreckage due to the visual elements that are shown; this is also in reference to Bourdin.

ISO Definition

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 is often used in low light situations, especially when a fast shutter speed or a narrow lens aperture is essential to achieving a creative goal.

My ISO Experiments

The Meaning of Shutter Speed

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 while very long shutter speeds are used to intentionally blur a moving subject for effect.

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 a camera capable of a shutter speed as brief as 1/1000 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 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 speeds 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.

My Shutter Speed Photographs

Camera Obscura

The camera obscura is a natural phenomenon where rays of light pass through a small hole and into a dark space, forming an image where they strike a surface. This results in an inverted and reversed projection of the view outside. Because this is an act of nature, it is hard to pinpoint its exact origins in photography.

Nicephore Niepce

Nicephore Niepce was the first person who utilised the camera obscura to make an image permanent. In 1826, he first managed to fix an image that was captured with a camera, but because at least eight hours of exposure was needed, his earliest results were very crude. 

Henry Fox Talbot

The process of a photogenic drawing, which Henry Fox Talbot discovered, uses a sheet of writing paper coated in salt and a solution of silver nitrate. He discovered that this paper would darken in the sun and wherever an object would block the light would remain white. In 1835, he then went on to create ‘Mouse Trap’ cameras where this light sensitive paper would be placed into the wooden box and left in front of the subject photographed for several hours to expose. The paper was later treated with chemicals to stabilise the image. 

Daguerreotype

Invented by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre in 1839, a daguerreotype is a unique image on a silvered copper plate. They were very detailed but heavy and fragile. Unlike Talbot’s process, Daguerre’s images were one-offs and therefore could not produce multiple reproductions of the original image.

Richard Maddox

Richard Maddox invented lightweight gelatin negative plates for photography in 1871. The advantages of this process were that photographers could now use commercial dry plates off the shelf rather than having to prepare everything themselves. These photos also did not have to be developed immediately. 

George Eastman

In 1879, George Eastman obtained a patent on his plate-coating machine where he later sold manufactured dry plates to the public. He made sure his business had mass production at a low cost and would later have worldwide distribution. After eventually announcing the roll of film in 1883, he created the company ‘Kodak’. 

Kodak (Brownie)

The roll of film became the basis for the first Kodak camera, the ‘Brownie’, which was a basic box camera with a single lens. Users received the preloaded camera, took their photographs and then returned it to Kodak where they would develop the film, print the photos and reload the camera with new film before returning it to the customer. 

Digital photography

Russell Kirsch developed the first program computer where he managed to build a drum scanner that allowed him to make the first digital images. In 1969, Willard Boyle and George Smith developed a charge-coupled device and later discovered that if you pair this device with something photosensitive it can become a camera sensor. In 1972, the first digital colour photograph was published.

Focal Length

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.

Depth of Field

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.

Camera Focus

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

Aperture is the opening in a lens where light passes through to enter the camera. It can shrink or enlarge in size to change what reaches the camera sensor.

Canon Camera Simulator

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

My Raw Photographs

Edited Pictures

Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s collection of photographs named ‘Zen Twigs’ inspired my focus experiments due to his use of a small depth of field within these photos. His photographs have nothing in focus but the twigs and I tried to reflect this by using a very wide aperture when taking my photos. After, I edited a few of my best pictures into black and white to copy the contrast and tone seen his photos; this is highlighted by the sharp focus on the plant in view. I also cropped them into squares to really recreate the composition of his work within mine.

My Photos

Harry Callahan

Harry Callahan inspired my work due to the focus on natural forms within his photography. He is able to capture patterns, texture and repetition in his photos which are all features I have tried to achieve in my own work.