The Blog of an Alevel Photography Student Part 81!

The Blog of an Alevel Photography Student Part 81!

So today lesson was spent brain storm which one of these topics we where going to do for our exam:

1. My Generation
2. Circles
3.Pointillism
4.Dash
5.Pouring
6.Figures in the Window
7.Ubran Garden
8.Pick and Mix
9.Reading
10. Backstage

I think i am probably going to go for reading, because it allows me to work with some thing new rather than doing a topic which always has to have some sort of portrait in it, broaden my horizon!

This year for my exam i have to do 15 hours work in the dark room and as soon as that 15 hours is up you have to hand it all in. So in theory ill be finished my A-level course by May 17th my birthday!

I have written some more of my course work essay now am about half way done 1500 words out of 3000 read the continuing bit below

My fifth photograph is from my third set of photographs, within my third set decided to make my techniques and photograph styles my own representations of movement. So I chose instead of using film to photograph human movement but instead to photograph objects, and this is what this photograph – “Eleven” represents. This photograph portrays to me the final result of taking all the elements from each artist I looked at and combing them together to make a photograph that portrays my perception of movement through film photographs.
Sixth Photograph is my final result from digital movement that I came up with through exploring movement through many different digital techniques both in camera and using editing software. This photograph was a combination of 5 different photographs and techniques drawn from both film and digital, it shows the key path most human movements take, whist keeping the raw emotion of the subject showing a childlike emotion. One that bring back memories for a most of us. I have learnt that very simple movements can create the most beautiful detail photographs, and the simplest of subjects (People) and often create the most interesting photographs all down to the movement both objects and people give off. I also learnt that the colour doesn’t always matter it is more the movement that does, back when Harold “Doc” Edgerton was photographing he didn’t have colour he relied on the movement to show the passion and emotion, this quality I like and kept however to show we have a growing and changing world I introduced colour into some work to show we have to create our own legacies within photography and this is one within movement photography.

I started my set one of photographs I started by analyzing the techniques used by Carl Rosendahl in the series of his photographs “Time Warping”. I used his technique of using very fast shutter speeds, lights and objects to recreate similar photographs but with my own twist to them.
One photograph I took “Speed” of the dice in mid movement showed cased the techniques he had used using the light to show the trail of the movement. I chose to upload this photograph into the editing software Adobe Photoshop, to create my own twist on the technique of using a sharper focus than he had making the movement seem more powerful. I learnt that the technique of side lighting the rolling dice was actually quite a simple and easy technique but create beautiful powering photographs, which could easily be interpreted as a modern abstract piece of work.
Also in set one of photographs I chose to experiment with another house hold object of cards, inspired by Carl Rosendahl’s work with them, I focused on the soft floating movement they created because I did not have many cards I adopted the technique of using digital manipulation of cloning to make it seem as if there were more. I learnt that even if you couldn’t get it exactly right there was a simple way in digital photograph to manipulate the photograph to get an accurate portrayal of how I saw the movement should have been.
I chose at the end of each set of my photographs that I was going to do an end of set evaluation to evaluate where I was on my journey of the topic movement, review how I was feeling and what I felt I needed to do next. Within this set I chose to I evaluated how my work with digital had gone, which was inspired by research on Jacob Carter, Jonathan Lucas and Carl Rosendahl. I found that focusing on object movement inspired by Carl Rosendahl and then using Adobe CS6 helped me start by journey as I realized I could retouch the imperfections that didn’t meet my perception of movement. I also reflected that I felt confident in my journey that I had mastered creating light trails. However to advance my journey with movement I felt I needed to broaden my horizon by exploring the human movement and also by looking at other artist research I had done such as Harold “Doc” Edgerton and also Bob Martin.

For my set two of photographs I planned to explore other mediums and techniques that I had available to me, one aspect I like the idea of was motion blur which Alan Babbitt and Bob Martin had both done, but also sticking with digital to photograph the object movement as it seemed to be working well with the digital manipulation skills I was learning. However I also stated in my set one evaluation that I wanted to broaden my horizon so I chose that I wanted to try film and take inspiration from Harold “Doc” Edgerton’s work with film and people doing movement being the contents.
One of my first photographs in set two of photographs for object photography was “Movement in Colour”, this photograph focused on the motion blur like Bob Martin, I chose to bring in the modern element of colour as I feel it helped complement the fountain, and the blurred water. Like Bob Martin and Alan Babbitt did in their work with motion blur and colour. With this photograph I learnt the digital and film technique of creating motion blur in camera using long exposure.
Within set two I also did film photographs of human movement inspired by Harold “Doc” Edgerton’s work one photograph in particular which I spent a lot of time focusing on and working on to try and really understand how hard it was for him to capture the movement was “Capturing the Spirit”, with this photograph I decided to start simple with just one movement being captured to first get a feel for how he caught the exact movements, I then processed to doing a lot of testing and experimenting within the darkroom developing process to get the right tones and contrast over the overall photograph, using new techniques I learnt of dodging and burning using light and then filters within the enlargers themselves. I found that I could highlight the movement by making it the focus of the photograph using darker contrasts around the edges and then lighter around the persons movements.


Off out now for a bit of free time (the pub) needed after a very busy day today and yesterday! Blog soon!

Tags: Photography Dark Student Exam Alevel