Tag: project

Final Project: Uses of Photography

by jasonhendriks on June 5, 2017 in media 3 • 0 Comments

Alas, the final photography project has been done. The title I have chosen for my photography project is : Digital Heroin. I chose the name because it has become a phenomenon. When read article about Iphone dependence on the internet, a couple of words kept popping out; Digital, addiction and addicts, drugs, heroin, malaise, technology. The phrase “digital drugs” are used several times which inspired me to use ‘Digital Heroin’.

Starting from the presentation, I was very eager to start my photography project. Like any other startups, I have lots of imagination where I wanted my project to head to. I was inspired by the TV show black mirror, that taught me the harsh reality of human nature with digital technology. I was a fan of the show and thus it gave me the Idea to do this project.

Over the blog I have updated some progress I had done. I pursued the project slowly, due to procrastinating and and threatening deadline. I had many conundrums trying to brainstorm and create a concrete plan for the project. The most problematic one was trying to decide if I want to capture life-candid observational shots, or scripted but true-to-many people images. Brian suggested I tried to go outside and try if the candid one worked. After practicing for a couple of days, I concluded that it was utterly hard to do so. I managed to take a couple of great shots, but no more than even remotely enough to communicate my message. I decided to scale back to the first inspiration.

I asked many friends & colleagues about things people do on their phone that people find annoying, and used my own experience. Although I want to show our reliance the best way possible, I still want to add aesthetically value to the image, to communicate my own style of photography.

These are some of the sketch I did for the project. There are multiple scenarios involving a person and a digital phone, mostly singular photos. I also wanted to add abstract images, mostly associated with light pollution (or simply too much light). There are basic scenarios , like a person doing selfie, a person holding their phone at mainstream places, but there are ideas that I like to experiment with, even though when it comes to the day in the studio, many of the ideas didn’t work out.

One of the technical challenge I experienced was coping with my the dark nature of the project with my own camera. I used the RMIT studio 2 times. During the first, I experimented and played with my own camera. It was incredible an fun and I managed to get a lot of good pictures. I figured if using my own camera would make as good pictures as this, then borrowing high quality camera from RMIT would make even better pictures. But, the exact opposite happened. I loaned a canon 5D Mark but the results were very different from what I anticipated. The quality is better, but I can’t seem to get the pictures that I wanted. Maybe because I was more accustomed to using my own camera, and using 5D is trickier and more complex.

When I presented the particular style of photo I wanted to pursue, I coined the term “chiaroscuro” as a principle. One of the panel judge suggested I looked at Philip Toledano because my Idea sound vaguely familiar (first left picture on the left page). Philip toledano photographed people’s candid expression while lose themselves playing games. With their comment and advice I continued to think of ideas. The pictures on the right page are some of the shots I took. You can see there I did what I planned, I used the mobile device as the primary source of light. Sometimes the phone’s brightness isn’t powerful enough/sometimes too powerful, that post-production has to play it’s part. The studio provides lighting equipment and reflectors that I utilized in some of the shots.

After producing and post-producing the photos, I started to assemble & arrange the photos into a photobook. I had no knowledge how to create a photobook, but I saw examples from Bella Capezio (guest lecturer) and together with the readings it gave me some perspective on how I should assemble mine. A further trip into Pinterest and with the help of a friend I then juxtaposed the pictures together and try to make a coherent narrative. Since my photobook didn’t exactly have a narrative, I decided I would arrange it more categorically. The photobook is an even greater medium to communicate your photos, so figuring out this part was an interesting challenge.

I created an empty space within the first few pages and i put a rectangle that resembles the size of a phone. Here I wante to implement the idea the digital phone is part of life, hence it is part of the photobook as well. Besides some of the picture I also put small captions about typical social media behaviour. I continued putting my images in using tips my friend gave me. My self-portrait and the phone platform is the opening I wanted to give. And the ending (with the picture of a person holding 2 phones) I thought the image serves as a candid closure that binds the rest of the images together. I feel that my book overally jumps around with the image and the message, it didn’t create a linear narrative, and it’s more like “the image speaks for itself”. I hope that people who ‘read’ the book can relate and also find it entertaining & aesthetically pleasing.

Overally I was very proud and satisfied with what I have done. I prepared, presented, and consulted with Brian about the message I want to send across. Even though I would have done a lot better If I didn’t procrastinate as much, I feel like I’ve achieved my goal for the project. Photography has taught me how to communicate with people explicitly & implicitly through visual images. It is challenging, and needs focusing on the many minor details. But effectively sending the emotion that you wanted is a rewarding work.

Planning and Launching the Plan

by jasonhendriks on May 14, 2017 in media 3 • 0 Comments

Today most of the class consulted with Brian regarding their project’s process. I talked to Brian more about the project, I found some challenges. I find it hard to move a the social aspect of ‘reliance on the digital screen’ to the studio, because then it would feel scripted/not candid. If you want to capture people’s dependence toward their digital screen, isn’t it best to caught them candidly, in the middle of the act ? This question made me rethink my concept of my work now. It definitely isn’t a regress, but a review on my current Ideas. Taking pictures outside with observation is a definite answer to this, but one of my goal is to try to work in a studio environment. I might have to somehow rethink a concept that allows me to do both.

Mimesis: An Imitation

by jasonhendriks on March 27, 2017 in media 3, Uncategorized • 0 Comments

Mimesis, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the principle of the creation of art. Plato believed that all artistic work is a form of mimicry/imitation, that God is the only creator, and human art are ‘shadowy’ representations of their ‘ideal type’. “Thus, an artist, by skillfully selecting and presenting his material, may purposefully seek to ‘imitate’ the action of life”.

And through Project Brief 1 and 2, Brian wanted us to find an mimic an artist, not for just for the means to imitate their prowess , but also to find our own ideal type. To know which ideas and people that inspire us is crucial in forming our own photography.

And so each of the student has to make a series of Five photographs that ‘imitate’ a photographer of our choice. For me, as said from the previous post I chose Duane Michals.

I find Duane Michal’s work to be very attractive, artistically and ideally. To rebel the photographic norm and include text, to me is beautiful, because he broke out of the box and challenges what is considered not normal.

In planning to create the series of photographs, I dug through may of Duane Photos and tried to seed which relevant elements can I group together. I searched through museum websites, Pinterest and also articles about Duane. Duane’s images bears the philosophy of youth, Death, gender and sexuality. After a brief thought I decided not to imitate Duane’s philosophy, only his photography style, because I think to try to do that would cross the line of imitation. Rather, I wanted to do things that concerns/surprises me, that I have been pondering for a while. I didn’t go in to the specifics and started to pour out ideas into my sketchbook

I had a lot of Ideas, but only some can be realized. To check the final photos I’ve made, visit my portfolio here

These two pictures are some of the ideas that I managed to create. The first picture is the idea I had in mind of life “Everybody’s questions” . Because I was taking my photos in natural-light, I had little control about it. So instead I focused on the composition, juxtaposition and the framing. I already had a quote in mind, made by myself and I want the picture to represent it to be someone lying down and sleeping. I included the IPhone so that people knew that this picture was more recent, and the book complimented the idea of ‘thinking’.

When I took the pictures, I obtained 2 similar but very different photos. Both have the same composition, but each has a very different light and angle. One has a slight lower angle to it, but when I took the photo, the sun was shining bright, and it casted the leaf’s shadow over my friend. The other one, is the opposite of it. This result in soft and contrast pictures. In the end, I chose the picture with the shadow because I prefer the separation between the light and dark areas. But in taking pictures of both, I used my Panasonic Lumix G7 with a 50mm lens. You can see the picture I chose from the link I put above.

The second Idea about happiness in solitude “Free me from myself”. I wanted to do a sequence photo for this one. The story about a person finding happiness through his/her own self. The initial idea was to be at a cafeteria, with a high school thematic scene. But when I was at the Summit Camp. I found a pathway that sloped over beautifully, and I improvised the Idea from there. During that time I was using a 5D Mark III borrowed from the A/V Loan with a 50mm f1.4 lens. The first few photos from the sequence, I set the Aperture low to accommodate the intense light, and to also show clearly the whole scenery surrounding the subject. The last photo’s Aperture was higher so I can blur the background and focus on the now-closer subject. In this sense I’m changing the focus of the foreground as the subject gets closer.

The third picture “Give Me That” also didn’t go according to plan, but the principle Ideas was still the same. It was about obsession over self-image. It was supposed to be a photo-sequence, but I couldn’t make the pictures work, and it doesn’t look overall relatable. Instead I tried improvising and came up with the girl taking the phone directly away from me (the photographer). I used my Lumix camera with a high Aperture to get the blur from my hand. It still delivered the message I wanted say, so I am happy with this picture.

“My camera wasn’t made to capture the stars” happened when I went stargazing with my friends. I captured the picture using my Lumix camera mounted on a tripod, with a high aperture (f1.7), high ISO (3200) and really low shutter speed (3 seconds). I increased my aperture because in the light condition lower aperture would definitely not help with the exposure, and the car was far away, so I put the focus on infinity. Surprisingly the low shutter speed managed to capture the car’s front light spread. It illuminated the path in front and created a dome of light with my friend’s silhouette. Without the tripod, I would never be able to get this picture, because my hand would shake too much to get a proper focus. Here I realized the creative ways I could play with small light in darkness

The last picture “Am I Lonely?” was made in the halls of my apartment. It was also a spontaneous shot, But it was motivated my and Idea I had to do a picture about loneliness. With the fluorescent light condition, I rememberd Duane Michals picture of Andy Warhol

So with a tripod I did a self-portrait with the Canon 5D Mark III 50mm Lens. I set a medium ISO (400), low shutter speed (2 seconds) and high aperture (f2.0). When the shutter clicked, I moved my face left and right immediately until the camera completes itself. And it resulted in a motion-blurred face. The 2 lights beside myself created a sort of frame that sits well in the picture as well.

Going towards post-production, I didn’t edit the pictures extensively. I used Lightroom to edit the RAW images, turn the color images to black & white, and give slight orange tint so it felt vintage. Some of the pictures I took were overexposed, so I reduced it in post-processing. That includes lowering the luminance of overly bright colors. In this case, they were mostly green.

I inserted the text (Duane Michal’s signature style) using Adobe Illustrator since I found more flexibility in using it compared to Photoshop. Most of the text in the pictures were self-made, except for the poem written by Rainer Marla Rilke. At first, I used my genuine handwriting, but after showing the preview on Friday class, I found my handwriting to be terrible. So for purely aesthetic purpose, I used handwritten fonts to write the texts. All of the fonts that I used were Royalty-Free and can be used Commercially.

In the process of doing this Project Brief, I came across many challenges, specifically in the production process. But I managed to overcome the obstacle with on-the spot improvisations.

Reviewing the work I did, I realized that I enjoyed Duane Michal’s photography style. Staged photos are challenging, but fun to do because you can unleash your creativity. I liked to use text as a means to give broader context to the picture, and I agree with Michals that a picture doesn’t worth a thousand words (at least most of it). Because giving context is providing idea to be understood, so that people can relate to your work. It could tell a story otherwise could never be told. And typography as part of the whole picture has it’s own aesthetic style.

I learned many creative process, trying to play with low-light situations, trying different angles and compositions. But I hope for the next project I will pursue more skills in a controlled environment, like a studio.

Thanks for reading, have a good day.

Week 3

by jasonhendriks on August 11, 2016 in Media 2 • 0 Comments

In week 3 I read a blog post about the ethics of creating a documentary. Through thousands of the references that the article made, I learned that there are different approaches of how I want to pursue my subject, and it’s never black and white. The article mentioned the practice similar to what a psychologist would practice, should the subject be informed to receive their consent, but risk the quality of the research, or should you be deceptive (that’s not the right word i think) to get the best result but risk angering the subject?

For my approach I think I will have to tell my subjects because I will be interviewing them. But i am still trying to find ways not to make my video seem very biased, since this involves people that i personally know. Since there isn’t many videos that I can take, I think I will approach the video with photos and b-rolls.