Self-directed Project in the individual RMIT google drive folder
Uses of Photography – Assignment 4
on Category: Uncategorized
on Use of Photography-Week 8
on Topic-Prompt: ‘What use is the term “expanded photography” for thinking about (the possibilities of) contemporary photography?’
Expanded photography requires the photographical entering a
mutual relationship with other economies, including art, mass
media, architecture, science and law, while constantly shifting
society’s perception of itself through non-photographic
disciplines. Its vehicles of communication are curatorial
practices, education, media and publishing, but they concern
projects that are ‘implicitly’ rather than ‘explicitly’
photographic.(Cramerotti, 2011)
I agree with Cramerotti, photography as a media form transcends its established definition. In my opinion, it is essential to solve the problem that photography practice has become a medium of applications through technological advancement and cultural change. That Soutter said that photography is “being exhausted as a medium” (Soutter, 2016) It’s “regarded as a medium for transmission perhaps more frequently than as an art medium” (Soutter, 2016). Photography for me refers to history , experience and arts. Extending the idea of photography “make the photographic image itself an autonomous subject, independent of any function or relationship”. Expanded photography reflects the relationship between the virtual space of the photographic image and the living space in which it is located.
In class, Brian showed us a few mins of ‘Last Year When the Train Passed By’ (2018) by Huang Pang-Chuan.“What were you doing last year, when I took this photo from a train passing by your house?” Carrying a picture taken in the train a year ago, the director revisits places he had photographed, asking the subjects what they were doing then.It combines photography and non-fiction film which is emotional and makes me think about the change of time and spaces. Feel different to meet strangers, talk to them and know their stories.
In class we don’t have time to do the exercise so we were asked to upload it on a blog post. The exercise we need to do for this week is to make a cinemagraph which I think is quite similar to I did some cinematography practice before. I chose a place nearby to create some cinematic architecture. I stopped by there for about two hours to get the good light and shadow and finally I got what I wanted. I went back home and edited it in Photoshop. I want it to look like a suspense movie so I reduce brightness and increase contrast. I got more information and knowledge from the videos that Brian shared with us in google drive. At the same time, this aroused my interest that encouraged me to do more practice.
References
Soutter, L., 2016. Expanded Photography: Persistence of the Photographic. PhotoResearcher, 25, pp.34-63.
Cramerotti, A., 2011. The Truth Of Experience. Notes Of Expanded Photography. [online] Digicult | Digital Art, Design and Culture. Available at: <http://digicult.it/digimag/issue-066/the-truth-of-experience-notes-of-expanded-photography/> (Accessed 27 November 2020)
‘Last Year When the Train Passed By’,2018, directed by Huang Pang-Chuan, MUBI,[online], Available at: <https://mubi.com/films/last-year-when-the-train-passed-by> (Accessed 26th November 2020).
Use of Photography-Week 12
on Finally last week, so far I finished all the shooting and editing in Lightroom so it comes to edit in Premiere. I tried different editing ways to tell the story and my friend helped me to choose the best one. I also use some radio online without copyright and add it in the video. It’s the easiest way for the audience to understand the whole story. I don’t want to make it obscure and boring. I want to let people release their feelings while watching this film.
From this project, I gain more about the experience and knowledge of photography. And from pre-production work and production work, I am actually more comfortable and organised with the process. It’s important to take good photographs but more essential to get more ideas from the research, get more inspiration. Overall, from the course I learnt much about the technique of photography and got to know the photography and narrative which I had shown what I learned according to the film.
I am satisfied with what I came up with but it also leaves me some space to improve that. It won’t be true if I say it was not difficult to do that. Even so far I am not that professional. I need to practice more and get more experience to be professional. I also found out shooting raw is a good way for the edit. That leaves enough space for colour correction.
Above all, I learned a lot from both projects and online courses thanks to Brian. From the beginning, struggling with topics, content, editing and also some other production work, I encouraged myself to do risks, to see what I could do. I will pay more attention to refining lens language and gain more professional camera work. To see more artists’ work that helps me to improve my art appreciation ability. Photography is an artistic communication media and I will find myself a way to get connection to the audience.
Major Project:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_8bScZFcddwjvxDi92e_ovlA6RCvbOT_
Use of Photography-Week 11
on
About my project progress, I have done all the research and also prepared all the props needed to be used in this project. I invited my friend as my model and came over to my apartment for three days.
For the project I choose, it will demonstrate the blues as I shared in my last week’s blog post. After finishing some research online and checked on some artists’ excellent work, I am going to use plastic wrap to create a blocked area at a corner in my apartment. Which is a metaphor for being locked down at home. I used a dome light at the top left to make the light and shadow on the model’s face. Luckily, plastic wrap created a depressed atmosphere with the light reflection. And after editing it in Lightroom, the black and white portray the model’s blue mood. I also put some noise on the photographs to help create the feeling.
Untitled, Chloe Zheng, 2020
I also come up with the ideas that ask my model to be like an o’clock to show the time flies which were shot at a wide shot overhead. The object is small which shows she was in the general environment by the bad influence. I used masks to show the situation and the inspiration is from Tangled (2010), the princess uses her hair to escape and I choose to knit a long mask to escape from this pandemic situation.
Another idea from BTS’s music video Blood, sweat & tears Japanese version (Lumpenss, 2017) that for me is quite psycho, the character that looks like in a high contrast colour psychedelic world. So I turned down the shutter to see my model struggling.
After I finished shooting at night, I edited it in Lightroom and tried to see some archival clips in my phone that I could use in this project. I mixed all the stuff in Premiere to see if it worked or not. The next challenge is to find the appropriate background music to build up the story line.
Reference:
Greno, N., & Howard, B. (2010). Tangled. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
Lumpenss. (2017). Blood sweat&tears. Sony ATV
Use of Photography-Week 10
on For this week, I focused on searching for more ways to shoot photographs that express emotions and also read some articles and watched some videos that lectures using shadow and light. I asked my friend to be my model and schedule the time. So far everything went so well following the plan.
Alicja Rodzik’s work And Love Me When I Gone was my inspiration, I am going to create some black and white photographs that are narrative. Which could share the feelings during lockdown that people felt lonely, insecurity, anxiety and this kind of feeling has been normal in daily life under so much pressure. I wish my work could somehow be a way to get the connection between people who have these problems and also a way for me to release the emotion.
Basically, I don’t have professional lighting kits and my lamp is warm light which I don’t like. In class someone told me I could switch the light bulb and that’s a really good tip. I was thinking using dark light because according to my research “one of the most emotion-filled types of light is dark, intense lighting” (Cox, 2019). For my project which I want to express blues at the beginning, I want to shoot photographs in black and white and use lights to create a unique sad lonely atmosphere.
Also, I have more ideas for the site setting like using chairs and some pros like masks to remind the lockdown time. To see the chemistry between the products and model. The model that I invited is my friend and she is not that professional. But she is really good at listening and quickly getting the ideas of what I need.
More ideas jumped from my mind and I wrote it down on my notebook and also finished my storyboard.
Reference:
Cox, S., 2019, How light Creates Emotion in Photography, [online]viewed on<https://photographylife.com/landscapes/how-light-creates-emotion-in-photography>
Use of Photography-Week 9
on This week’s class we had a class presentation to introduce our plans and ideas about the final self-directed project for assignment 4. For my project, I am going to develop more about the last project, assignment 3-Mimesis Project which I found myself interested in emotional photography. So I did some research of emotional photography and found some great photographers’ work about it. Brian and Rohan also gave me some good suggestions and answer my question about the form. Our classmates also did their brainstorm and shared some brilliant ideas which is also a way helping me to approach my production.
I think I already had a concept about the project which I want to express an emotion of insecure and anxiety during the lockdown in the pandemic situation. Using both videos and photographs to share my feelings during curfew to get a connection to the audience. I already collected some archival clips which I shot during lockdown and got some simple ideas for the photograph shooting.
Starting focusing on my plan which should be done by the 16th, considering the editing time, I arranged my shooting in three days and editing in two days. Overall , I am pretty clear what I should do for this project so I hope everything goes well.
Use of Photography-Week 7
on In this week’s class, we mostly discussed the relationship between photographs and narrative. Photography has a “sheer power of description” ,‘A single photograph can depict a scene with a verisimilitude which pages of written account would still fail to capture. It is this quality which led photography to be first employed for practices like crime scene photography, in place of the unreliable memory and incomplete notes that had previously been relied upon.’ (Bush, 2019) During the meeting, took High Fashion Crime Scenes (2003-2017) by Melanie Pullen and Gregory Crewdson as an example, which is based on vintage crime-scene images Pullen mined from the files of The Los Angeles Police Department and The LA County Coroner’s Office. For my opinion, Pullen’s visual aesthetic is infused with of film noir and the audaciousness of the French New Wave and according to her interview, she was also inspired by her grandmother’s editing eye.These photos are all posed with models for effect, not actual crime scenes, which tend not to care about prettiness or proportion or having the right light. I recall artist and model, Cindy Sherman, who creates similar scenes, where viewers might feel themselves entering a strange, staged scene where things had gone horribly wrong.
Untitled, Cindy Sherman
Through the text, we got a chance to understand the meaning described in the photographs which connect to the aim of today’s class, photographs and narrative. Narratives have several different ways, but when it comes to using photographs to describe something behind those, it seems to be difficult. I think it was hard to share the whole story or emotions to the audience using a few words. But it is worthy to share both photographs and text for them to see if they seek the opportunity to dig in. Which reflects and illustrates the value of sharing photography with other media. We could have more influences than other forms of media.
For the class exercise, I haven’t done Sequencing – Series -Storying before, never tried something narratives. So I Started my story from a pigeon outside my window and followed him downstairs to the garden next to my place. Probably I have done something too obvious and there seemed no chemistry between the photographs. So I considered more about the framing, to figure out a way to tell some meaning behind the photographs, more poetic and more connected. Connecting but not that easy to see leaving the audience a room to discover. Although chasing a pigeon was super fun, I even caught the moment a parrot flew away but it turned out so dark because I didn’t adjust the shutter.
Went back to class, we discussed our photographs and to see what my classmates did for the exercise, I learnt something from that which was I should try more close-up frames or extremely close-up rather than just shoot a wide shot or mid shot although that was good but missing something I assumed. Paying more attention to the details should be my first task. Considering the coming assignment, I still have no ideas but I am thinking to continue what I did for the last assignment. To develop more about emotional photography. About the form, either photo essay or photo book is in my option.
Uses of Photography – Assignment 2
on Uses of Photography-Week 5
on At the beginning of this week’s class, we talked about assignment 2 ‘Mimesis Project’ which is about intimate photographer and Brian showed us some amazing examples in class. These examples help me to get more details about this project.
Chasing the light-why and how does it matter?
Then we discussed reading ‘Light and the Aesthetics of Abandonment: HDR IMaging and the Illumination of Ruins’ by Alyssa Kushinski (2016). This reading is really meaningful to talk about the lights and lighting in photography. Lighting is an important factor in photography. For photography, light has a great effect and influence, mainly reflected in the following aspects: First, light can meet the basic illumination requirements of photography. Second, it can show the structure and color of objects as well as the specific location of objects. In photography art, if you want to present a perfect photographic work, the use of light is indispensable, the proper use of light can achieve the artistic modelling of the picture pursued in photography. Light is the medium through which information travels between continents within the thousands of miles of fibre optic cables beneath the surface of the earth, but it is also the medium through which visual information is transmitted from right before our very eyes into our bodies.(Kushinski, 2016)
By distorting pictures and abandoned tonal range, it will usually get visually exciting shock, present a totally different from we can see every day the chaos of the reality in a contemporary image, this sense of shock is usually done by distorted pictures tonal range through tonal mapping is shown with a high dynamic range of optical image.
I had tried to shoot HDR images with my phone before. The reading inspired me to try with a camera. HDR images look incredible in colours, texture because they increase the amount of detail in shadows and highlights.
I went to see the dentist so I missed the class in the afternoon. When I went back I checked my classmates’ work, the lighting exercise, and I got some useful lighting information from them.
Mimesis：
About this project, I am considering that I don’t have lighting equipment at home but I already asked my friend to be my model which is a good process. I intend to imitate Albinsjodin or Arnaud Montagard from Instagram. Portraits are very interesting to me. Considering the editing and some production work. There is a lot to do for this project.
Reference:
Kushinski, A., 2016. Light and the Aesthetics of Abandonment: HDR Imaging and the Illumination of Ruins, Transformations (28). (online) Available at: <http://www.transformationsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Kushinski_Transformations28.pdf>
Uses of Photography-Week 6
on Mimesis Project Reflection
In this ‘Mimesis’ photography project, I chose a photographer I am interested in from Instagram named Albinsjodin. His work is always cinematic, with dark tones and a shimmer that highlights the subject. Each photo is telling a story, expressed through light and emotion. He never mind put the subject in the dark or supposes to say the dark is an essential part of his work.I n order to show the level of the photos, there must be bright and dark, light and shadow, then there must be dark part in the picture, If not handled properly, the picture will often become relatively flat without layering sense, or make the picture look unclean. Albinsjodin is really talented in adjusting the lights and expressing his feelings to tell a story from the photograph. I also want my photograph to demonstrate something, through the lights and emotional expression. I don’t want to focus on his specific work and duplicate them. What I did is to get the information from his work, imitate his style and learn about his skill and his way to tell a story.
Albinsjodin 2020, untitiled
Chloe, Z,.2020
I used the shutter in my apartment to create the back light and it was a rainy afternoon at around 5 o’clock where the natural sunlight is kind of grey. As Albinsjodin, I put my model in dark and lower f stop to f 4.5 and shutter was 1/800.
I don’t have lighting equipment at home so I used my lamp which could not create the atmosphere that dedolight may achieve and in this photo, the light was scattered. I am not happy with that but I will figure it out next time.
Edited these photos with Lightingroom, I focus to edit with the highlight, shadow and brightness. Adjust the tonal curve to achieve the different level of the lights in the photographs.
From this project, I tried to imitate my favourite photographer and do some practice focusing on his work and learning to take photos according to their ideas. I learned some basic knowledge and skills about photography and still need to do a lot of experiments in controlled lighting. To be more creative, jump out of the comfort zone and take in more knowledge of artworks from well-known photographers.
Reference:
Albinsjobin, 2020, Instagram photos, available on