May 2014
From aperture to shutter speed....the semester has been one that has been a slow process of technical learning. With best practices as a guide, practicing and improving the skills learned to explore and experiment with the Photoshop tools is what is required to become more familiar and comfortable with them to improve an image.
A perverse resistance to overtly Photoshopped images
I have to admit to having a perverse resistance to overtly Photoshopped images. The tools are fantastic for creatives, but in a world of over worked images where there are already so many facets of life that are obsessed with perfection it has been a relief to rediscover chance in the Shutter Speed assessment exercise....and to leave it alone
Technical control and chance
While I have learned that photographing in RAW captures the maximum data on the camera's sensor giving finer adjustment control when processing in Photoshop, and aperture and aperture gives control over depth of field, shutter speed opened a new door. It was a discovery of mark making with light, of chance and the luck of spontaneous decisions that really exited me.
ISO speeds of 100 and 200 were mostly used for this project. The aperture was manually adjusted from the lowest fstop of 5.6 to around 8-11 and occasionally 16, depending on the light from the passing view. I was looking to find the blurred effects of close subject matter captured at speed and used shutter speeds from around 1 second to less than 1/25 second, which gave some distant views good focus when the view had good light. The aperture had to be fully open in darker situations, which resulted in less focus of more distant glimpses and more blurring in the close foreground.
Chance
It was a revelation to me that I could be satisfied with photographs where chance played a dominant role over the result, which became the starting point for the concept of documenting the idea of a journey at speed.
The images were as much a result of chance shutter release timing as much as manually controlled aperture and shutter speed settings chasing light meter balance in fluctuating light. Small exposure adjustments were made processing the images-exposure, sharpness and a layer mask to increase the level of tone in the washed out sky, while preserving the tonal values of the landscape. Over-processing of the images was not part of the story.
Using and accepting chance as a means to an end reminds me of Edna Walling's technique for positioning trees to be planted in a copse. Edna Walling was an influential landscape designer working in Australia in the early to mid 20th century and in her practice she looked for a naturalness in a landscape and would allow plants to ramble. When planting copses of trees her method was to throw a handful of potatoes into the air and where they landed was where she would position the trees. As much as we design, control and organise, life and nature are dominated by chance. It is the way of things. Chance can make design natural and comfortable.
I used Edna's technique when positioning the scattered cast metal Nothofagus gunnii leaves into the deck and at the bottom of the reflecting pool of the Antarctic garden I designed at the Antarctic Division, Kingston in 1995. In the same way I revelled in the element of chance when capturing the images at speed from the car window.
Using and accepting chance as a means to an end reminds me of Edna Walling's technique for positioning trees to be planted in a copse. Edna Walling was an influential landscape designer working in Australia in the early to mid 20th century and in her practice she looked for a naturalness in a landscape and would allow plants to ramble. When planting copses of trees her method was to throw a handful of potatoes into the air and where they landed was where she would position the trees. As much as we design, control and organise, life and nature are dominated by chance. It is the way of things. Chance can make design natural and comfortable.
I used Edna's technique when positioning the scattered cast metal Nothofagus gunnii leaves into the deck and at the bottom of the reflecting pool of the Antarctic garden I designed at the Antarctic Division, Kingston in 1995. In the same way I revelled in the element of chance when capturing the images at speed from the car window.
Perfection
Aiming for perfection has been an innate practice for me, whether matching stripes in a sewn garment, cutting and matching a 45 degree timber joint for a home renovation project, raking leaf litter, cooking and presenting a meal or finding focus in a photograph or drawing a form. I have tried to challenge it's time consuming nature and curiously was draw to a recent post by Maria Popova on her Brain Pickings blog where she wrote an article about Anne Lamond's book Bird by Bird, particularly focusing on a section about perfection:
“What
if you wake up some day, and you’re 65… and you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative
life?
Perfectionism is always lurking nearby, like the demonic prowling lion in the Old testament, waiting to pounce. It will convince you that your work-in-progress is not great.
Perfectionism is always lurking nearby, like the demonic prowling lion in the Old testament, waiting to pounce. It will convince you that your work-in-progress is not great.
Echoing
Neil Gaiman, who councelled young artists to “make glorious, amazing misstakes "Lamott concludes with a recipe for an
antidote — the only real antidote to perfection is to make a LOT of mistakes".
Painterly blurred light
The
concept for this series of 14 photographs came slowly after experimenting with
various ways of using shutter speed. It had never occurred to me to
deliberately try to blur photographs as I have an innate desire to find the
sharp edges of form, light and shade and distance from mentors like Edward
Weston and Ansel Adams.
The mark making of the streaked light and shade was very
reminiscent of some painters that I admired - Fred Williams, Sydney Nolan and
Cy Twombly. Not only did I enjoy the textures of the images, the blurring
in the photographs told the story of the trip by capturing speed and the
concept of the journey that had been. The blurred landscape textures became a discovery of mark-making with light. Finding Narelle Autio's work To the
Sea consolidated
my feelings about the images I had taken and the idea of the journey started to
gel.
I also have an interest in pattern and texture and for ideas that stitch images together to create patterns or to tell a story, and the fused textures and scratches of light highlights gave a surprisingly satisfying impression of a short speedy road trip.
The journey
Images from three different road trips were combined to loosely stitch the idea of travelling in a moving car. The images do not stand alone, but are rather meant to be seen in a sequence. Being a match maker I looked to find visual connections in the images I had chosen for the series, and after shuffling them around I eventually came up with a run of images that had a linear connection where there was a vague join or line connecting one image to the next giving an undulating rhythm to the set as will as expressing the concept of time passing quickly.
Images from three different road trips were combined to loosely stitch the idea of travelling in a moving car. The images do not stand alone, but are rather meant to be seen in a sequence. Being a match maker I looked to find visual connections in the images I had chosen for the series, and after shuffling them around I eventually came up with a run of images that had a linear connection where there was a vague join or line connecting one image to the next giving an undulating rhythm to the set as will as expressing the concept of time passing quickly.
Rather than trying to perfect each image with over-photoshopped processing I was happy to maintain the chance occurrence of mark making, which I found quite beautiful in some images more than others.....although better Photoshop skill may have improved these images!
A journey has a rhythm
Images have rhythm, just like music. When I drive I often listen to Colin Stetson. His music a has a continuous melody underlying other threads of different rhythms appearing and disappearing, weaving through shifts and turns of other sounds and blasts. For me it is a musical interpretation of a bit of a wild journey...sometimes smooth, sometimes rough, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, with climbs and dips.....but always continuous....just like following a line from beginning to end. Colin Stetson's circular breathing technique for playing the saxophone reminds me of the rhythms of a journey and the changes of scenery and colours that could be encountered.
A journey has a rhythm
Images have rhythm, just like music. When I drive I often listen to Colin Stetson. His music a has a continuous melody underlying other threads of different rhythms appearing and disappearing, weaving through shifts and turns of other sounds and blasts. For me it is a musical interpretation of a bit of a wild journey...sometimes smooth, sometimes rough, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, with climbs and dips.....but always continuous....just like following a line from beginning to end. Colin Stetson's circular breathing technique for playing the saxophone reminds me of the rhythms of a journey and the changes of scenery and colours that could be encountered.
April 2014
NOTE - publication additions to the UTAS TCotA library :
- Graphis Photography Annual 2013 - B. Martin Pedersen (Editor)
- Photorealism - Otto Letze (Editor
- What Photography is - James Elkins
- Branches - Nature's patterns: a tapestry in three parts - Philip Ball
- Flow - Nature's Patterns: a tapestry in three parts - Philip Ball
- Tourism Art and Souvenirs - David L. Hume
- Landescape Installation art - ifengspace
March 2014
I hope I can learn to take one or two.
Advances in smart technology make photography almost foolproof today. Once taking a photograph was a new technology to be discovered, technical skills to be learned, practiced and perfected... and technical control was to be admired. Some photographers became masters of the craft and recognised for having a good eye....but what makes a good photograph, or an exceptional photograph? What makes a photograph worthy a second look? Why are some photographs more beautiful than others? Why have some photographs passed the test of time and become classics on par with fine art?
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder or are there image qualities that transcend different tastes and preferences? We are all attracted to different things because of our genes, learning, location and experiences.
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