Task 1

For this task, the brief says that I must "Play with possibilities to see what happens, and where it can take [me]". I am choosing to understand this to mean that I should try lots of different things just to see the outcome of the idea, whether that be good or bad. I think that this is a very important philosophy when it comes to photography (and art in general) because if you never try new things, then you will never be able to grow in skill.

The task given was to choose a place to photograph. This could be a hairdressers, a bar, a supermarket, et cetera. I chose to shoot in my own house, because I felt as if I would be a bit more comfortable with it, and I wouldn't appear a bit dodgy.

Since we were asked to think like a poet/writer (as it says on the brief), I started to think unconventionally. I could have just started to take the camera around the house and take pictures, but I don't think that where I live is too visually interesting. So, I decided to take an A3 white piece of glossy paper, the flash on my phone, and objects around the room, and shot the shadows that were cast. I framed it so that the object itself isn't the star of the frame, rather the shadow is instead. I turned the lights off, and closed the curtains (It was 6pm so I was treated to total darkness), and began my shoot. I think that overall the shoot could have gone a bit better. I reckon that a bigger piece of paper would have been nicer, because that would allow the whole frame to be white, and instead of it being glossy it should have been matte, so that the light from the phone didn't reflect off of it. I ended up taking around 50 photos in total in that shoot, however only a few look good. I think that the problem there was that I set it all up on the floor, so I was in an awkward position on the floor the whole time I was trying to take the photos, which means that they were mostly weirdly framed. I reckon that that could be fixed by setting it all up on a desk or table instead.

Below are a few of my favourite images.

Image 1 (IMG_3587)

This image is set up so that the Foster's pint glass is sitting on the right hand side of the paper, with the flash of the phone resting on top of the glass. This makes the light refract out of the glass, and all of the indents and printed images on the glass come out as shadows on the paper. I really like the gradient of the shot - how it is so much darker on the left of the photo than it is on the right. I'm not too sure on the greenish colour of the shot. When I edit this photo, I think I will increase the contrast to make the difference in lighting more dramatic, and I think I will make the image black and white because I think that would improve the aesthetics.

Image 2 (IMG_3589)

This photo is the same principle as the first one, except the flash is in a different place. This caused the refractions to be a little softer towards the top. Again, I'm not too happy with the green colour, but I do like how the text looks as it gradually gets blurrier and bigger the more towards the top. I would probably edit this one in the same way as the first.

Image 3 (IMG_3590)

I put the flash behind my keys, so that the shadow was cast coming towards the camera. This creates quite an eerie sense of foreboding, because it looks like the character on the keyring is bigger than it actually is because of the lack of context of the background. Also, the happy expression on the keyring is a big contrast to the feeling created by the shadow. I also like the directional spotlight look with the curved gradient in the top left and right. I will most likely edit this in the same way as the first one.

Image 4 (IMG_3602)

I set this one up a little differently than the others - I set the paper up at a 90 degree angle so that the shadow will be at a different angle. Pictured is a roll of reciept paper. It isn't really an interesting object to photograph, but the shadow created is quite nice. Also, in the middle is a brighter spot which was made by the flash light refracting through the plastic tube in the middle which looks quite nice. I would also edit this in the same way as the first photo (just assume that I'm going to increase the contrast and make black and white every photo from now on).

Image 5 (IMG_3606)

This probably is one of the weaker photos that I took. You can see the floor, and it's really dark. I think that the colour and the shadows are pretty strong, but I don't really like how it is set up. I probably won't end up editing this one, there's not much point as it won't really be using it as a final piece.

Image 6 (IMG_3612)

This one looks quite cool. It's simplicity really plays into the strength of the photograph too, I think. I placed a sand timer on top of the flash, and as it started to run, the sand slowly covered the light which started to deprive the shot of light. I think I might increase the contrast of this one just so the subtlety of some of the greys might be more pronounced, and I will make it black and white just to eliminate any colour that might have leaked in there.

Image 7 (IMG_3621)

This is my favourite photo of them all. It looks kind of like a sunglasses advert, except the glasses are out of focus. That's on purpose though, like I said the focus is more on the shadows than the objects themselves. I also like how there are a bunch of lines created.

Image 8 (IMG_3623)

This one looks nice too, but it's a little too dark in my opinion. I think it would be better if the paper was a little brighter. I do like the shadows though. I also enjoy how the object is still ambiguous.

Image 9 (IMG_3630)

Last but not least, image 9. This one is framed well, however it is too dark, which means that the shadows can't be seen as much, which shifts the focus back onto the object, which is what we don't want here. Maybe if I increased the brightness then we could save it.

And there you have it, those were the images. Once the images are edited, I will choose two or three of them to be final images, and they will be below.

EDITED IMAGES

All of the edited images are in the small collage up there, but I will go through my three favourites (and final pieces) below where the photos will be a bit bigger.

Piece 1

This piece is my third favourite of the edited bunch. The abscence of colour looks a lot better than the weird yellows and greens. To edit this image, I increased the contrast by 45%, and I increased the brightness by 15% as well, to achieve the tones that you see. I changed the saturation to -100%, and then I straightened the image so that the grey bar at the top was parallel to the top of the photo, just to put me at ease.

Piece 2

This piece looks so much better than it's unedited counterpart. The shadow is much deeper, and the light is brighter. Also, the creases in the paper on the sides and the bottom of the photo are more visible now since I increased the contrast, which I quite like, as it adds another layer of detail that wasn't there before.

Piece 3

Here's the last of my favourite pieces from the shoot. The increase in contrast has also made the darkness created by the lenses more opaque, which I thought made the photo look fuller in it's composition. Also - and I don't know if this is due to the edit or not - I noticed that you can see the reflection of the shadow in the lenses, which adds a whole other layer to the picture which is always a good thing.

I think that these final pieces are pretty strong. They also all fit with the theme of 'Altered States', because the shadow of the object itself is being changed by the direction of the light. Since the shadows are the focus of this shoot rather than the objects themselves, this is quite perfect. These images don't just look strong on their own, they also look quite nice next to each other in a little collage.

There was a part two to this task, where we had to go out to a location of our choice (preferably inside) and take photographs with our phones. The twist is that we had to place them on the floor at a 90 degree angle, so that we could take a photograph really close to the floor. This odd angle is representative of our 'altered state'. I ended up taking four or five images in a local Tesco Express, but I ended up with three that I liked and/or weren't blurry. These are below.

Since these photos were taken on my phone, the image quality isn't that great. However, I don't think that this will affect the finished result. For this part two, we have to select three of our best images (fate just had it that I had three to work with) and work into it with "paint, bleach, drawing, text, letraset, etc". I could choose one of the mediums listed on the brief, however, I think that printing the photographs in a water soluble ink and working with a water-brush might create an interesting result. After working with the images and letting them dry, I will scan them back into the computer, and maybe edit the photos digitally, maybe increasing the vibrance, and contrast.

EDIT: I have completed the experiments, and it's safe to say that I don't really think that they worked. The first thing that I did was to take the piece of paper with the print on it, and applied water to it using a waterbrush. This worked to an extent, but the ink didn't really move around that much, and all it really achieved was a desaturated look, which wasn't ideal.

The next thing I tried was to place the photo in a bath, and leave it in there with some cold water. Again, this didn't work, as all it did was remove all colour from the photo. It looks interesting, but not the look that I wanted. A problem that was occurring quite often too was that the paper was tearing when I tried to pick it up due to the weakened structural integrity of the paper.

The next thing that I tried was to wick water up on the paper by filling the paper by filling a glass halfway with water, rolling up the photographs, and place the photos in the glass. This achieved the best effect, because when the water wicked up the paper, it took most of the colour from the bottom of the photo up to the top, creating a wonderful colour display. however, it is still quite desaturated as the ink is mixed with water and therefore diluted, so I will have to scan these in and digitally edit them.

So, the experiments were unsuccessful, but we ended up with something at least.