konnorphotography

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Foundation Photography Week 10

I came up with a new idea last week, which is to take photos of a computer screen and hopefully I could capture the moire on the digital screen.

I had taken some landscape photos before, so I opened up on my screen and use the analog camera to take photos of it. And this week, I brought those film into the development room, then later into the darkroom.

I developed the film did some testing in the darkroom, but the result doesn’t come out as expected, those photo doesn’t seem to able to capture the moire on the digital screen. Although it doesn’t have the moire, it does kind of have some very different looking.

It is different than looking at the original photos, I can’t explain that feeling yet, but it’s just different. Maybe because it is a black and white photograph, there is an old photo vibe to it as well. It kind of looks like in the modern day, we take photos of something, then we sometimes put it into post-editing. The result I have now sort of gives me this feeling, but it is an old age photoshopped photos.

Although the result doesn’t come out as what I expected, it comes out with a different unexpected feeling that still sticks to my idea. Which the view of the analog camera (old device) seeing a new futuristic age device.

Therefore, I’ll continue on with this idea for the due on week 12.

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Foundation Photography Week 9 ( 2nd idea born )

As I said before in the past posts, I also find it interesting to use an analog camera to take photos of something digital related. Using the old stuff to capture the new/futuristic/modern thing, so I also came up with an idea in this week’s class that shares the same fundamental concept.

I’m always fascinated with landscapes around the world, I use a digital camera to photograph different places/location/sights. So there is actually quite a lot of landscapes photo taken by myself in my storage. And I was thinking, would be interesting to kind of fake the photograph by taking a photo of a landscape picture? Meaning I don’t actually go visit the site and take the picture, instead, I take a photo of a picture on the screen.

I think this can be more interesting than my original idea, it certainly plays around of how analog sees the digital world. And it also explores the world trend of faking, copy and the reproduction, no matter how perfect it is, there are always tracks that could expose the counterfeit.

Below is the example of taking pictures of a computer screen, see how there are some patterns/wired line on top of the photo (I think it’s call moire)? That’s what I am imagining, but because of it won’t really show on a analog camera, I’ll have to wait for next week to develop it.

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Foundation Photography Week 9 ( 1st idea failing )

This week class I had developed some more test strips, which are simply some test of a photo to see which setting on contrast and detail provide the best outcome for it. I didn’t really develop some more photos because I think this series is not really working?

I had a chance to discuss it with my tutor, and the common I received was to change the framing. As shown in past weeks blog posts, I was targetting people who are using their phone, but the problem is there was too much space around the subject. Which made it quite confusing to understand the photo as it could be also an exploration of space. I was told I can try to fill the frame with the subject without leaving too much space, like the following

So that the subject and the idea are more clear to see. 

I can go out on the street and try to get better shots of those, but there is something telling me it doesn’t work with me? I like photography, taking photos of anything, including streets. Streets have almost the most chance for an accident to occur, which it fits into this assessment and it is also why I had chosen this idea in the first place. But there is something telling me I don’t know where to go with it and maybe my interest just suddenly lost.

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Foundation Photography Week 8 ( 1st idea test strips )

This week during class, I started to learn how to develop the film and started experimenting with the best setting for the best outcome with the enlarger.

The result came out pretty good? Or at least it looks quite good, but I will still have to wait for the next class to fully develop the film as I am pretty busy these few weeks with other stuff.

This week’s class was mostly testing, have different setting on the enlarger to see what is best for the film each student holds. Mostly I think we want the developed result to have the best contrast but at the same time keep the detail in the photo.

The below is all the frame I captured in the past week, by the look of it, it seems good. But it could be different when I put in on the enlarger and project it on the photographic paper.

From my experiment on this week’s class, the focus is really important. As I’ve been testing it for some time, I still couldn’t see the perfect focus with the enlarger, and that could also be the problem when I took the photo with the camera, which I probably didn’t have the perfect focus before I took the shot.

The below was some testing of the contrast.

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Foundation Photography Week 7 ( 1st idea add ons+ )

In the previous post, I was talking about how I took photos of people relying on/using their digital product. I was thinking of Matrix kind of representation/style for my coming experiment on my work. Therefore I have gone online to search for some image for referencing.

It was very common that we might have thought about the below images as the representation, those digital number, the internet. But I have yet to know how am I going to find materials to recreate it on my photographic paper.

But then I also came across some image of a circuit board, which I think it can be very interesting and it might do just fine as well.

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Foundation Photography Week 7 ( test and explore )

This week’s class had us developed our own 35mm film. So last week I was out in CBD photographing streets, random people, and later people who were in used of their phone. This is not the finishing result, I still have to wait for next week’s class to print it onto the photographic paper (from assessment 1).

So then I’m thinking about what material can I bring it? What kind of visual outcome do I want?

I looked back to these photos I have taken, as I was targetting those who were using their phones and there were really a lot of them. The digital world really influences us dramatically, doesn’t matter are they for good and bad uses, we are always sticking to our phones or any digital devices.

Then I’m thinking about I can do a representation of digital age with Matrix style? With the digital numbers/code/words on it? To imprint the idea of human relying on digital products.

Other than that, as a photographer who took those photographs. I’m also using the 35mm film camera which came out very early before the digital camera. It will also be interesting to explore the relationship and the role I am with using an analog camera but taking photos of people who use digital products.

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Foundation Photography Week 6 ( photo taking 1st idea)

This week I had gone out to the city district to take some random photos.

As mentioned in the previous blog post, I’m quite interested in how those street artists photograph their work. Those work contained the most accidental element, they were not staged. Street photography is random, yet, they speak the most of nature itself.

So I went to the street just observing, see if I could get some interesting moment I could capture. Then I saw a pair of couples taking pre-wedding portraits, so I instantly take photos of them. Other them the couple, there were also a few photographers who took photos and also videos. I did take a few not just of the couple, but also those photographers, capturing the behind the scene.

Then I had also walked around and had to wait or just stand in a spot for a while. As I think, one of the challenges of street photography is that it’s all about the “moment”, which happens in a snap. It can happen anytime, sometimes may take just one second, or I have to really wait for quite a few minutes or more just for that “moment” occur in front of me. And if I missed it, it will never come back again.

Later on, I went to a different location, still within the CBD. That location was really crowded because there are shops all around, a busy street but full of opportunity. So I started just walking around again, to see if there were something interesting for me to take photos of.

And really at first, I was just randomly taking photos without knowing what am I looking for and what do I want to capture. But soon, I saw there are so many people sitting on benches to rest or waiting for somebody else. Literally, everyone in every seat did the same, eyes on their phone. Even those who were standing, the same as well. Some were talking to their phone, taking pictures with their phone, looking for the direction through their phone. Everything is about their phone. So this is when I started to have targets and intention I guess? Because then I just started taking photos of people using their phone, some photos even include more than one person using their own at the same time.

It’s quite interesting to see how they are so concentrated on it and just not aware of things happening around. That being said, the role I’ve taken is very much like a mystery man just stalking at people. I’m very careful as well because sometimes people might feel offended when they are targetted in being taken photos by strangers, they might not like it? (at least what I think). That’s why I was not very obvious as well while photographing, just tried not to let them notice what I was doing.

I don’t have the result of the photos yet, I’ll have to wait for next week after I am taught how to process the film. But I’m really looking forward to it.

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Foundation Photography Week 5 ( where my inspiration came from? )

After hearing the first lecture in preparation for assessment 2, there are a few works from artists that catch me or find it quite interesting.

Don’t exactly remember the name of the artist as I think the pdf lecture file is a bit different than what was shown during class.

But there was an artist using the film camera the explore the idea of public space. Which the artist uses the street to make photos, he would follow random people on the street, taking photos of them until he lost them. And by follow, I mean he actually follows strangers to anywhere even taking the same transport, until the point maybe he wasn’t able to catch up. I think what interested me is the way he approaches art? A very bold process of following people he doesn’t and constantly capturing their behavior and how does it related to public space. It is an exploration and a study of human behavior, which the entire process is almost a complete journey of a human behaving on the street. 

Another one is an artist would walk on the street and takes a photo every time he/she blinks. A human won’ t be able to see everything in every second, every time we blink, we lost sight of a moment. So this artist uses the camera to replace the eye so that the camera could capture the moment that he/she wasn’t able to.

Also, there are two artist’s works I want to mention, which is May 2006 (2006) by Simryn Gill, a series of her taking photos of the neighborhood. And Sun Moon Walk by Shan Turner Carrol (2015), which she follows the sun and moon in the mirror she’s holding, this is more like a documentary of it. 

The above mentions have a common method to make their photos, which is they are very street base. Instead of making/constructing what they what to capture, they rather took photos “randomly” that allows the capturing moment to be the art of it’s own. There weren’t really much of staging/constructing, each work is almost the representative of nature.

Capturing nature, let nature tells the story.

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Foundation Photography Week 4/5 (Assessment 2 Begin)

After assessment 1, this week we started to get into the 35 mm film camera, which is the first time I will be using it.

I instantly watched the videos provided on Moodle, artists like Sara Oscar and James Taylor. They both use photography to express and explore their personal interest. Assessment 2 is different from assessment 1 because of the difference between the 2 mediums. Photograms perhaps are more like creating something in front of the camera, but film camera, like other cameras, is more likely for capturing a moment.

To me, I personally quite enjoy taking photos of the landscapes, wildlife, or just some tiny objects (could be toys, products), etc. Taking those with a digital camera and later on putting it into post-production, making some little twist, color correcting. But here comes the challenging part, film camera might work differently. Not like digital, it comes out from the camera straight in a physical form, so that might not allow any further edit in a digital format. Besides, we will be taking photos with it in black and white. That will really challenge me to how I will make the work for the next assessment.

I have no idea what will I do yet, maybe until next week when I can get my hand on using a film camera.

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Foundation Photography Week 3

Following on what Neususs had said about photogram, “it removes and idealizes its subject at the same time”.

In the beginning, I had looked up to Emilie Pugh’s work of she capturing movement/shadow of moving objects. Looking at her work, I wouldn’t be able to identify what kind of object was she using, but the final outcome does create a new form/shape/trail of those objects. On the other hand, Adam Fuss and Floris M. Neususs’ work, I can identify what were those reflecting on the photographic paper, but not necessarily have dramatic movement in it. Those kind of work are more of an exploration and expression of a metaphor, or simply their angel of viewing things. But together they all share the same feature of making photograms through kind of a live performance.

Reflecting on my own attempt, I have been live performing for my entire experimentation by using playing cards. Cardistry is a performing art given to card flourishing, involving the performer to create card display, sequence, and pattern. It very much challenges the dexterity of the performer and the skills on visual displaying cards. Cardistry is not necessarily part of magic performance, but magic does involve some simple card flourishing. They are both related, but they are not the same.

I personally am not very good at Cardistry, but it often catches my eyes and impresses me by just watching someone else doing fancy card flourish. It is a sequence of incredible card movement, but what if I am able to capture the entire performance in frames. A time base performance that now can be seen by just a few frames.

So I began my experimentation with this direction. And I have landed on the decision of making card flourishing into 4 photograms per series. During this week until the due date of the assessment, I am performing 3 different flourishings. 4 photograms for each, breaking them down into stages from the beginning till the end, from the first performing position till the last one.

By squeezing the performance into just a few frames, I’m creating another new perspective on seeing things. Cardistry is timepiece performance, creating various visual amusement through time. But through photogram, it allows me to constrain and capture the entire performance with just a few frames that the flow can be easily seen. And because photogram takes away the detail of the object, that flow/shadow of the movement might in some way recreate a new form of shape, but not necessarily the shapes we are familiar with ( square, circle, rectangle, etc).

I also challenge our human eye and memory. When we look at any kind of time required movement, like dancing, running, even watching sports or even any kind of competition. There will always be moments that secret imprint into our eye and memory, and those are significate, iconic and representative. Like in a magic performance, the moment of impossible will definitely be the most iconic moment to be remembered. On the hand, the process/experience before the impossible is wonderful as well, although it might be vague and they are not as easy to be remembered, it is a necessary stage for building up to the finale.

As a result, my work will pretty much capture the eye-catching moment during the flourish, but most importantly, the flow/shadow behind is the build up. Despite the vagueness in our memory, yet it is part of the craftmanship of the flow of the performance.

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Foundation Photography Week 3

I went on to do some research on Adam Fuss as he has photogram work that related to live performance/embodied photograms. His work pretty much explores and touches on some kind of spiritual, dimension metaphor. Such as below “untitled” in 2007, a snake appears as a shadow, through the movement and the ripple of the water, as snake signifies life force and rebirth. And “Invocation” in 1992, a baby resting on the water. To him the light is a metaphor of growth and he regards as “endless, hugh and unspecific”.

Another artist Floris M. Neususs, he has done something similar as well with a model. And during an interview in 2010, he spoke of something interesting about photogram. He said photogram has no surface detail, so we can’t identify the distinctive features, it removes and idealizes its subject at the same time.

What he said might be pretty obvious, but I wasn’t fully aware of that, which this is the feature and the uniqueness of photogram.

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Foundation Photography Week 2

When the first watch and bubble wrap test kind of came out with not what I am expecting. I changed my material and theme to another idea, which is magic/card flourishing.

Card flourishing is a timepiece performance, so by performing in front of the camera, it certainly allows Chance & Accident to be part of it. Card flourishing requires a lot of movement with hands and the playing cards, by doing so, the camera could also capture the shadow and the entire movement of the performance, converting it into a shadow form and shape into one single photograph. This results in the same outcome to Emilie Pugh’s work, where my inspiration came from. So I started testing it during class.

After doing a few tests, it still wasn’t something I’m looking for or expecting. There are still some interesting move and shadow in the above photos, but the truth is I didn’t even know what I was looking for.

I was even thinking about how should I present the 12 photographic series. Should I do 12 card flourishing for 1 photograph so there would be 12 unique shadow movement?

Or should I break down a card flourish into stages? Like 12 stages, so the combination of the 12 photographs would be a complete card flourish from the beginning to the end. And the way I imagine I will be doing it is, each later photograph/stage will combine the previous photograph/stages’ movement. Meaning, 1st photograph will have only a single move as it is the start, 2nd will start from the 1st move to 2nd move, 3rd will repeat 1st to 2nd and to 3rd move, etc. So I imagine the movement of each later photograph will be larger and more blurry. This is also playing around with the idea of memory, how complicated it became when the brain starts to remember more information, it would have to filter so much information that many times we would forget and so unclear about something.

While I was still deciding or thinking, I kept doing some experiment on the next day. Which result in below.

The result turns out to be actually more interesting. The way I did it was I perform a card flourish, but then I freeze on a unique movement/point that I think it could represent that flourish. In fact, each card flourishing has it’s unique way of presenting/displaying cards. So what I think I did was, I was capturing those points of the card display while at the same time still capture the entire move. This result in capturing the unique representation of the card flourish and also the flow of the card flourishing.

However, I still don’t know very clear where my direction will be, but I will keep experimenting with the above methods.

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Foundation Photography Week 2

Continuing on Week 1′s idea, memory. I have chosen a personal object for testing, which is a watch. I first placed a bubble wrap on top of the photographic paper, this was meant to be a representation of the state of mind and memory, it was a layer of uncertain and unclear, just like how the brain works. Also like memory, where sometimes we find ourselves lost and could remember something. Together with the inspiration from the artist Emilie Pugh, I tried to spin the watch on top of the bubble wrap but the outcome didn’t result as I expected, as I was imagining I could capture the flow and the shadow of the watch, which could ultimately create a circle shape.

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Foundation Photography Week 1

Rule base idea:

Setting rules, then the outcome becomes the work/art. Following the rules could then become a habit and pattern, something we do every day and it later becomes more than just a rule. Repeatedly doing it allow it to be a habit instead of a rule.

For example, putting something back in place, like placing shoes in front of the door. From a rule to habit, to a pattern.

This could then have something to play with the human brain. How the human brain remembers the exact location/space of where to put the shoes. This could be where Chance & Accident placed in, as even the brain remember the exact space, there are chances where the shoes could be placed a little off center, a little left or right than usual.

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http://www.emiliepugh.co.uk/photograms

The above website is a series of work by Emilie Pugh. It is a series photograms of her capturing the moving shadow of objects.

A photograph is one of the representations of memory, as nowadays everyone is carrying their phone, taking pictures of everything and it becomes part of our visual memory of the exact day that we could revisit later.

But everything could fade away, even memories. We often forget something, and we won’t even notice. The above series have given me an idea of capturing a memory. Create a shadow and captures it, and by doing so the shadow could become shape and form that represent a specific memory.