Exhibition Review, David Bailey.

As part of 152MC we are mainly focussing on light in photographs and other forms of light when creating alternative darkroom processes so for the exhibition review I’ve decided to talk about the lighting in a few of David Bailey’s images from his current exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, titled “Stardust” that I visited on the 18th of May.

http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/bailey/exhibition.php

For this review I’ll be looking at two iconic photographs by David Bailey and analysing the lighting that I think he has used in the images.

The first image is of famous actor Jude Law. The photograph is similar to the one also taken by David Bailey  of Michael Kane. The model is lit from the right hand side wish creates the harsh shadow on the left side of his face. I’d say the light is positioned above and pointing down on the model so that his hair is lit as well. I think the lighting is what makes this image, as the harsh shadow on the side of his face adds a mysterious tone to the photograph.

The next photograph is of David Bailey’s most iconic model and muse Jean Shrimpton. The image is lit from both sides of the model either at face height or just pointing down slightly towards the models face. I worked this out from the small shadows on either side of her cheeks suggesting her hair around her face are causing shadows from the lights.The lighting is flattering to the model and i feel that the image wouldn’t work work without any other lighting as using only one light would be unflattering to the pose the model is pulling .Both the images are extremely iconic and I feel that David Baileys lighting techniques show his experience in lighting his models perfectly.

 

Throughout the gallery there is a huge variety of Bailey’s work and that didn’t always necessarily work with the flow of the photographs. His series of nudes positioned next to his “box of pin ups” seemed to somewhat lessen the authenticity of the images for me as seeing Jean Shrimpton next to a rather large naked woman just didn’t seem right.

I also felt the rooms displaying Bailey’s work in Africa, Australia were almost out of place next to the iconic portraits he is most well known for, although the images were somewhat out of place I could still appreciate the significance of these images and the importance behind them. I think that if I were to change the exhibition in anyway I would have the environmental images in a separate part of the gallery to separate two completely different types of work.

152MC Inspirational Library Session…

152MC Inspirational library session Pre-task class

The aim of this session is to inspire you to think creatively about the way light can be used to emphasize a particular meaning in photographic work.

Pick one of following books that we looked at in groups and write a short reflective blog post (about 300 words is ok) about one artist of your choice. 

For this task I’ve decided to look at Mario Testino.   The Peruvian photographer is known worldwide for his portraits of some of the most famous faces – from the Royal Family to Kate Moss.  Having  shot campaigns for the likes of Burberry, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and Versace he is well known and in demand in the fashion business.

 His style can vary but most of his fashion photography can be very raunchy and eye catching. He’s known for photographing such people as the Royal Prince Charles and younger Brother Harry as well as some huge celebrity names like The Rolling Stones and Beyonce. Testino tends to use bold bright colours in his images and they can appear to be very alternate, some with the model in a pose that is not always considered “normal” for fashion photography.

The Guardian Magazine describes Testino as ” The man who makes models super” and he mentions several times throughout the interview that he never stops taking photographs. His years of experience can clearly be seen throughout his work and the fact that he’s still photographing at the age of 59 is truly incredible.

The one image of his i’ve chosen to look into is his iconic photograph of the royal engagement.

I’d say the light in this image was natural from the right side by using  the window however I think on the left side their would have been some form of reflector so that the left side of their bodies are not in shadow from the natural light.

I think he would have used natural light for two reasons. Firstly natural light as it is very flattering and if the setting is right it sometimes works better than artificial light and the window allows a perfect amount of natural light. Secondly the natural light makes the couple appear natural themselves and I thin Testino would have made the conscious decision to use natural light to make the Royal Couple to appear like a normal, happy couple celebrating their engagement.  I also think that the use of artificial light in this image would be to obvious and metaphorically they are in the “spot light” too much anyway.

I think the lighting in this image is incredibly flattering and works wonderfully alongside the location that the Royals were photographed.

Task 3- Portrait Task.

Applying the knowledge gained in the technical lighting workshops and the pre-visualisation techniques learnt, in Task 3 you are required to interrogate representation through portraiture.Taking into consideration the appropriate lighting and location, you are required to create a photographic portrait series to represent one person in 4 images, two/three portraits and two/three objects. Your interpretation of this brief can be as broad as you like but the images need to cohesively fit together and should collectively increase the audience knowledge and/or understanding of the person represented.I’ve decided to photograph myself for this project and an idea came to me when thinking of consistency within my life.

I’ve decided to take two Self Portraits and two portraits of objects that are most important to me. I started thinking a lot about my routine in the morning and whats most important to me so i’ve made the decision to photography myself just before I go to bed to show me at the end of a busy day and first thing in the morning to show the beginning of my routine. I chose these times of the day because these are the moments where i am truly myself, I have no make up on, my hair is not done and i am alone for the evening till the next morning to contemplate whats most important to me.

 

 

This first photograph was simply taken in my room just before I went to sleep and so i used only the light from my macbook and my bedroom light to light this photograph. I changed it into black and white to re-present the feeling I had before going to bed. Currently suffering insomnia the night time is very dark for me in more ways than on in that i very rarely sleep so I decided to use black and white to show my mood. Looking away from the camera and with my eyes closed with my macbook open in the background represents the moments where i wish that sleep would come however i’m stuck working or trying to find something to lapse my mind into some form of sleep of an evening. 

 

 

 

This next image was taken not long after I had woken up, again not looking at the camera and staring off out of the window is to represent the idea of a new day ahead and contemplating what the day will bring and the tasks I have to do. 

I decided to keep this image quite light and I took both photographs within my bedroom to show my natural environment and the one place that remains key throughout my life. 

 

 

 

 

The next two images in my series are of the rings that I wear everyday. The first image depicts the ring from my boyfriend and my  parents for my 18th birthday and the second photograph is of my ring also from my boyfriend for our anniversary. 

The rings are something that are constant in my life as I never take them off so i decided to focus them central to my images to show there importance.I’ve also printed these images and will mount them before displaying them 

 

 

 

 

 

Task 4: Review of Easter Task.

Task for 152mc we had to review our Easter Task and what we have learnt so far through out the module regarding lighting. 

For me the easter task really helped me think about how lighting can be so key in artists or photographers work and how to re-create that light. It also really helped me whilst researching to come up with my own photographs and how i can light them. 

At first i found it quite difficult to think of photographers that I found interesting and images containing light that I could talk easily about. However after doing some research I started to get into linking the photographers together and thinking about different aspects of light whether it be natural or artificial lighting like Gregory Crewsdon’s photographs which are more like movie sets rather than photography location shoots. 

 

In class we re-created certain images with different lighting and with only the photograph itself and no other information we had to re-create the image. I think this really helped me to understand studio lighting so much better and how to really look a photograph and understand the lighting. Although I learnt a lot about the studio whilst at college having to recap it recently has taught me new things such as using a beauty dish and how changing the lighting just slightly can make a big difference to the photograph. 

Before I started this module I didn’t have any experience in using lighting outside or how to use a portable lighting kit. 

Learning about the outdoor lighting kit really helped me because I realised just how easy it is to still take photographs even though there may not be electrical equipment available at the time. 

 

 

During this module I have also learnt a lot of interesting alternate process’s such as Salt Prints and Cyanotypes and I have also added to my skills in pinhole photography and photograms. I enjoyed Salt Printing so much so that I decided to use this for my human presence project because even though the process is complicated I love the look of the image afterwards and I think it looks really earthy and I also love the contrast in the images. 

Cyanotypes were really fun to learn about also however I found the blue and white to be slightly to unflattering and I didn’t find the final effect all that interesting. 

I found working with pinhole really quite interesting and making my own pinhole camera for the first time was really quite interesting and although it didn’t work every time I do love the after effect of the process. 

 

I also think that my understanding of lighting in photography has increased greatly and I’ve really began to think a lot more now how the lighting is going to look before taking the image as well. Using the lighting diagrams has helped me greatly in remembering all my lighting set ups so that I can re-create the photographs again. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alternate Darkroom Printing.

As part of 154MC we have learnt and experimented with other forms of dark room process’s such as photograms, cyanotypes, salt prints and pinhole.

Salt Prints. 

Thomas Wedgwood (British, 1771–1805) and Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (France, 1765–1833) developed the concept of the salt print process but did not provide a solution for fixing or stabilizing their test images.

In 1832–34 Hercules Florence, working in Brazil, developed the concept of silver- and gold-based photography and a primitive way of image fixing using a urine-based solution. His use of a camera is known in literature, but only copy samples are extant.In 1834–35 William Henry Fox Talbot  developed an advanced concept of photography on paper and a method of stabilising both photograms and camera images using a solution of sodium chloride.

Salt Print Recipe.

Salt Print Recipe: 

1litre of water

20g of sea salt.

Silver Nitrate

Purified Water

Citric Acid

Process:

1, Soak paper in salt water for 5 minutes.

2, Once the paper has soaked dry with either a hair dryer or simply leave to dry on its own.

3, Mix chemical 1 of 12g of Silver Nitrate and 50ml of distilled water.

4, Mix 50ml of distilled water and 6g of Citric Acid.

5, Mix chemical 1 & 2 and place in a small brown bottle and shake to mix together.

 6, Coat the salted paper in the mixed chemical and dry off.

 7, Place the object/negative onto the paper (with a glass plate below and on top of the print) and place under the UV light or place in daylight for 10-20 minutes (do small test before final image)

8, After the picture has been exposed place in the fix to expose the print for 5 minutes.

9, After the photo has been in the fix for 5 minutes wash the print in the water for half an hour to wash.

10, Once the paper has washed for half an hour, leave to dry.

 I found the salt printing really interesting but the process is quite long however the end results are really great.My first test went quite well and I simply used two small negatives on a small piece of paper.

My first test isn’t the best but I think the images have come out really clear and I really like the contrast. The only thing I would change is the way in which i spread the chemicals across the paper as you can see the brush strokes and a few specs where the chemical hasn’t been spread properly.

I enjoyed Salt Printing so much that I have decided to use this process for my human presence images because of the grainy affect that chemicals leave.

Cyanotypes.

The English scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel discovered the procedure of the cyanotype in 1842.

Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print. Engineers used the process well into the 20th century as a simple and low-cost process to produce copies of drawings.

Ingredients:

Combination A:

10g Ferric Ammonium Citrate (green kind)

50ml of tap water

Combination B:

4g Potassium Ferricyanide

50ml tap water

Cartridge or Water Colour Paper.

Brush

Saucer

2 Brown bottles

Measuring jugs.

Hairdryer ( optional)

UV Light (daylight if uv light is unavailable)

Process:

1. Pour mixture A into a brown bottle.

2. Pour mixture B into another separate brown bottle.

3. Mix equal amounts of the mixture A & B in a serrate measuring jug (e.g.10g) and pour into a saucer creating combination C

4. Coat the thick cartridge paper in combination C.

5. Dry with hairdryer or leave to dry completely.

6. Once the paper is dry place the object or negative you are using for the print on the paper and sandwich between two sheets of clean glass.

7. Place the paper (still between the glass sheets) under the Uv light and leave for 20 minutes. If using daylight slightly longer might be needed depending on the weather.

8. After 20 minutes is up use water to rinse the paper.

9. Once the paper is clean, leave to dry.

Photograms.

A photogram is a camera less image in which we use light sensitive paper to expose objects or negatives by using the enlarger or daylight.Anything can be made to use a photogram however objects with interesting outlines or gaps in which the light can pass through will always make an interesting image.

The most common way of making a photogram is by placing certain shaped objects on top of the light sensitive paper however you can also use pictures printed onto acetate and negatives on top of the paper as well.

For my tests I used both objects and acetate to create my photograms.

              

Pinhole. 

A pinhole camera is a simple camera without a lens and with a single small aperture.They can be made out of anything as long as it can be made light tight and is large enough to hold the light sensitive paper in which the picture will be printed onto.

For the pinhole process we made our own pinhole cameras out of beer cans. We simply cut up the beer cans and made them light tight with black tape with a small pin sized hole on the side of the can. To cover the hole in the can we used a small piece of black tape so that the light did not seep though. Once the can was made we used small light sensitive paper ( loaded in the dark) and took outside to create the images. To take the photographs we had to lift the tape away from the hole (letting the light in) for a set amount of time e.g. 5 seconds.

At first it was slightly difficult to get the right time for the lighting however after a few tests the images came out rather good:

I really like the warped effect that the pinhole photography has however the process is quite difficult and takes a lot of patience and paper to get the perfect image. Pinhole photography also isn’t very clear and not everything in the image is in focus so if I were to be photographing something specific then they wouldn’t be the most idea form of dark room process.

Human Presence

Task 2 requires you to investigate photographically, human presence. You can interpret this in its broadest form; your puzzle is how to investigate how to depict human presence, without a human present?

You could look at the personality of place/space (it may be a public space where people convene or a more private space) and how it is momentarily transformed when certain individuals or groups of people populate it and consider how you can document this ‘non’ space (Auge 95). You could look at the presence humans have left on the landscape.

When we think of human presence we might well think of peopled landscapes and situations – crowds gathering, meetings taking place. However a human presence can also mean a landscape affected by humans, a significant artefact left by a human or really anything that we get a human sense from.

We began looking at photographers and artists who have captured this human presence in many different ways.

L.S Lowery  The Bedroom Pendlebury, 1939.

Lowry’s father died in 1932. For the next seven years, his 73 year old mother became ‘bed fast’ and completely ruled her son’s life. After her death in 1939, Lowry painted The Bedroom Pendlebury – in memory of those long hours he spent looking after her. Even though the mother is no longer in the image or anyone else for that matter, because of the story that goes alongside the image we begin to look at the bed differently. We begin to create a story in our mind of Lowry looking after his mother and the moments they may have shared in this room before her passing.

The image must challenge, ask questions,  involve, allow a more subjective reading and move away from the utilitarian.

Utilitarian images are designed to be obvious, and to make us ask questions. Utilitarian images are usually used on news papers and magazine to tell the viewer a story.

Some images that we researched needs the stories that are alongside them to be fully understood. An example of this is Joel Sternfeld’s project On This Site.

The project looks into areas that people have died and the reason behind it, some being very ironic such as  the photograph of the place of a woman who had frozen to the death the night after being rejected from a homeless shelter had died in front of the department for housing.The image is simply of the bus stop in which she had died however with the accompanying story we get a completely different view of the photograph.

Still Life and Structure.

Human Presence is also seen in objects left by others, Harry Watts project “Finds” is a perfect example of how random objects can also have a human presence.

Corrine Vionnet, used all the tourist photographs of famous attractions such as the leaning tower of Pissa and merged them all together to make a somewhat blurry image. These images show just how many people photograph these landscapes a day. I think even though the images are blurry they really show just how many people pass through these places in one day.

Scarred Landscapes. 

Scarring can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time, scarring can offer sober reminders of tragedy or celebrations of successes.

Jason Vaughn’s series “Hides” is a group of images depicting hides in which people have built to blend into the landscape however we can still see the human presence in which the huts have.

 

Katherine Wolkoff- Deer Beds.

This series of images shows fields in which deers have slept in and warped the grass. Even though the deers are not present in the image we imagine the deers sleeping in the space they have left.

Romanticism vs Representation.

 Ansel  Adams’ photographs are very idealistic and beautiful and up until the time of the New Topographic’s all landscapes were very  pretty however Robert Adams’s landscapes show a brilliant human presence and we get a real feeling that people are living here.

Human Presence Task

As part of researching Human Presence we have to create our own images.

The inspiration for the idea came from studying artists who have used human presence in their images, specifically Harry Watt’s project “Finds”.

 

Looking at this project made me come up with the idea of photographing things that have been left by humans in a certain place and that have been left there with nature to surround it. The idea also came about when my Dad told me about an abandoned farm that has been left with everything still there that is waiting to be cleaned out.

Here is a small selection of my favourite images.

I’ve decided to print the photographs onto acetate and use salt printing to create my final images. I think because of the natural feel of my photograms the salt prints will add an earthy effect to the photographs.

Here are my final images:

Outdoor Lighting Experiments.

Outdoor Lighting

For our outdoor lighting workshop Jon took us to the underpass near our building and taught us how to set up lighting equipment outdoors so we could understand how to metre for the extra light and also so we could learn to balance two sources of light at the same time.

We experimented with several shots and lighting set ups and these were the results we got:

For this shot we had the light fairly close to our model and we used quite a high power flash. This mean it exposed the left hand side of the models face more so than the right hand side. I really like the shot however i do think the light on the left hand side of her face is a little to bright. The outdoor lighting was really easy to use and I found it really easy to change the style of lighting by simple either reducing the power of the flash or moving it further away or closer to my model.

This is the second experiment we did with the outdoor lighting and as you can see we reduced the power of the flash so that the left hand side of her face isn’t to over exposed. I think the light looks a lot more natural than the previous one.

For this next image we had the light directly to the right hand side of the model but bouncing off the wall, which has created this spot light affect. I think the lighting looks really good however its not very natural. This method created quite harsh shadows and makes it appear to seem like night time.

For this next experiment we went out from underneath the under pass and simply used the natural light ( which was quite dim due to the weather) and the flash gun. We metered the camera so that it photographed at the right settings for the artificial light and therefore made the natural lighting a lot darker than it actually was. The picture tricks you into thinking its evening time when actually its mid afternoon at this point. The shadowing on the models face is slightly un-flattering but depending on the meaning for the image that could work really well.

For the last image we combined natural daylight and the flash gun and this was tricky as we had to find the right balance between the natural light and false light for the camera to capture the picture perfectly. I really like the image as the underpass appears to have a pool of light flowing from it.

 

Still Life

For the second part of our studio workshop we were tasked with recreating the light for two images. Using our own observations and drawing from what we have learned we needed to make two still life images using similar objects to the original and as accurately as possible match the lighting.

The first image was an undated image by Barbara Fox.

 

Barbara Fox (Undated)

We felt there was only one light source coming in from the top left but there was some sort of object or objects that are off camera and these are casting the shadows. We used a perfume bottle as the object and used the lighting covers from the studio lights to create the shadows. We started with one object but it needed two to make both shadows. The above attempt was reasonably accurate but we wanted to go one stage further.

 

Final Image.

  

We experimented with flash and continuous lighting and found that the flash was overexposed in some areas and was too dark in others. We also chose to lay the bottle flat to round off the shadow it cast and place it on a reddish cloth. Although it is not exact we felt this was a very close approximation and we had succeeded in re-creating the light.

The second image (above) was by Raphaelle from 1817.

First Attempt.

We borrowed a book and purchased some oranges from the local shop as we felt this would be better for a realistic recreation. We had to carefully peel the orange and it took some careful balancing to get the Orange to sit where we wanted it. Although we felt this was a two light setup we started with one and measured the exposure for the Orange. We placed the light at around 45°to the left of the photographer and we were quite happy but the light on the back ground was incorrect.

Final Version.

We initially introduced a 2nd light for the background but this proved overpowering and it lit the whole backdrop. We decided to take a different route and placed a black kicker behind the scene and went back to using just the single light. This time the light lit both the Orange and the back drop, we then used another book to cast a shadow over half the backdrop. This time we went with flash although we used the modelling lamp to help us pre-visualise the set up.

Once we had recreated these two images we decided to try one of our own.

Using the Oranges we had bought, an old wine bottle and a book I arranged the objects as in the image above. We also borrowed a patterned scarf which we used as a base and I felt this really added texture. I tried other styles with the book lying flat but this left a large black void, with the book stood up the overall balance felt better. I decided to use a large soft box modifier which I placed very close to the bottle. I was after a very soft light which although I wanted it to light the other objects I also wanted it to fall away quickly leaving the back ground black. I went with a small f/16 aperture so the light fell away quickly and set my exposure for the bottle, I also shot at the same height as the subject as the change in angle made everything more interesting.  I have added the lighting diagram below.

 

 

Flash Gun Experiment.

As part of 152mc we had a small workshop based around using small flash guns on and off the camera and experiment with using a small source of light when large lighting kits are not available.

I decided to use the flash gun on top of the camera against two bright coloured walls. The photographs came out really well and I loved the bright light against the coloured walls.