Club Promo

I liked the idea of physically making something to be photographed, because of the many money issues of being a student, I couldn't afford to be really ambitious. So I set about making objects and creating nets for little typeface cubes, with the name of a friends night. When I showed my friend the little boxes, he mentioned that the colour scheme reminded him of school jotters and maths homework, so I decided I'd make a little set up with that sort of theme. I felt lowering the clarity on the NEF in photoshop added a nice cheesy softness to the picture.

Lightboxes

I was asked to take some photos of lightboxes for a collective of artists as self promotion, we set them up on stage in Nation of Shopkeepers (where they work had been commissioned). We played with a few different angles and positioned the boxes in a few different ways. I used my own tripod to get the best shot. Because it was pretty dark in the bar, I spent a while trying out different iso sensitivity's and white balance etc. These are some of the best one's....

Photography as Instructions / Enhancing look of work

I was asked by the Blink Media Group to create a net for a fold out/interactive flyer design. I thought it would be a good idea to take a sequence of photos, to show how it folded out, so my client could work out what it looked like. I shot these raw so I could edit the them a little afterwards, I feel the photography also enhanced the appeal of him using the design.

I sent the photos to him as a PDF, so he could scroll through and see how it looked, with the net for him to use at the top.

Outdoor photography

I find photography of trees and landscapes kind of cliche but I wanted to do this just to get a feel for taking photos outdoors. These were all shot around Lauriston Castle grounds in Edinburgh, it was a pretty dull day but some of the shots came out really well.

Photographer Research: CM Wells

Really liked the playful use of miniatures, and the way the use of light and depth/aperture create a certain feel to each photo.

The Ghost (excerpt) from Zeesy Powers on Vimeo.

Stills from this were used in an exhibition, the fun use of the projector creates an illusion that I feel works better in still image. She performs these works live in front of an audience and says of different outputs ie. video/photography that "There is no way documentation can replace a live experience, but it can definitely become an experience in it’s own right." Which I think is true as much of set-up photography as it is of reportage. Subjectivity is still evident when documenting an event or experience as impartially as possible, and the output in which a photograph is contained creates a viewing experience, as Zeesy says an experience in its own right.

Full interview here.

Photographer Research: Corriette Schoenaerts

Love the set ups in these, I appreciate that photography isn't the content of the work, just the output - or a way of containing/communicating content.

Using NEF files / Experimenting with shapes

I placed some little paper platonic solid models I made on a lightbox as an experiment with scale and light. Taking photos in RAW format allowed me to edit the exposure and contrast of the picture, creating a more accurate version of the kind of photos i wanted to produce. Although these are obviously hand made paper-models, I feel these photographs create an illusion of size and also hid the imperfections on the models that were more tricky to glue together.

Projector Experiment

I played with the light from my flatmate's projector, frantically moving a thin object like a stick or a pen close to the projectors lens broke up the light and caused some pretty weird results. I used a high shutter speed and played with the aperture setting until I only really captured the light from the projector, they don't look that great but it helped me get to grips with these particular settings.

Photographer Research

Georges Rousse's work is really inspiring, he plays with the idea of the illusion of reality in photography, the fact that the camera only captures one particular angle gives his work a dynamic that appears manipulated post-production. However if you were to approach these in real life, it would be very clear that these are all physically painted within the interiors. This would work well for some of my physical design work, and would definitely be interested in producing work that would only function successfully if photographed.

Photographer Research

I liked the way these had been set up, much of the work Christian Hagemanns photographs could be installations/pieces in themselves. However, photography allows a controlled space for him to output his imagery, and I appreciate that these were set-up for the purpose of being captured by camera. This interests me because I plan to make something to be photographed, rather than work in a kind of reportage style context.

Photographer Research

These are photos by a friend of mine who usually produces illustration and collage orientated work. I want to use photography as part of my work rather than a the work itself, these in a way, are still collages, using computer generate polygons to reflect suggestive shapes from landscape photography.

Shutter Speeds

Just to make sure I remembered what we learnt about shutter speed, I took a few shots on a grey morning from my balcony experimenting with the different settings. Anything below 1/20 produced nothing but white light, I kind of appreciated the bright grainy look of the slower shutter speeds though. 1/125 - 1/200 aided the most accurate reproduction of the true image.