Pavement Poetry

The Streets of Manchester

Pavement Poetry

Xmas Market

Christmas Market - Manchester

Life is busy around Albert Square
In December every year
Christmas market in full swing
For shopping and a glass of beer

Stalls are cluttered one by one
Amid the crowded streets
Vendors displaying their festive wares
In order to compete

Christmas music in the background
To put one in the mood
Aroma of bratwurst sizzling on the coals
Pangs of hunger need some food

People always in a hurry
Last minute presents to buy
Gifts from all over Europe
To tempt the shoppers eye

Energy and money both well spent
To depart it's almost time
But not before a Christmas toast
With a mug of hot mulled wine

Photographing Glass

Photographing Glass

Taking good quality pictures of glass objects can seem intimidating

Taking good quality pictures of glass objects can seem intimidating.  There are some simple techniques which can be followed to obtain dramatic results with minimal effort.   The following examples show three:-
These techniques get instant, fast, clean shots of clear glass. The techniques illustrate dark field and light field photography.

Set up 1

In this technique,  under lighting was used to light some glass objects to give very dramatic, impressive results.

Under lighting works well with acrylic cosmetics. 

The lighted panel will create the same special effect with acrylic cosmetics and perfume bottles. Translucent acrylic and glass respond dramatically to the under lighting technique.
 Bottle with  liquid inside placed on top of the lighted panel. The liquid will really lights up!

Two Lights position on the side. Light position underneath

F29, 1/60 ISO 100

Set Up 1

F22 , 1/60 ISO 100 Picture from set up 2

Set Up 2

Set up 2

Single light source was used to create shadows with the glass, works well with coloured glass.

Set up 3

This illustrates dark filed photography. Here black sheet was lit up from behind. Two lights either side of the glass. The background creates the illusion of light falling off into blackness. Dark card can be held over the glass to create black reflections back into the stem or to top of the glass to further help define shape. 

Two Lights position on the side. Light position in back on black sheet

Set up 3 - F22, 1/60  ISO 100

Set up 3 - F20, 1/60 ISO100

Set up 3 - F20, 1/60 ISO 100

The background creates the illusion of light falling off into blackness. Ensure that most of the light is behind the glass.  This will illuminate more of the glass, from the bottom on up.

Add lighting from both sides ( so it will be soft and diffused without harsh light reflections).

Insert black paper . (This adds nice black reflections back into the stem, to help define the shape).


Glass edges disappear against a light background. Black paper adds definition to the edge of the glass

Reflections in Liverpool

Reflections in Liverpool

Liverpool's Albert Dock provided an great opportunity to capture some fantastic images at various times of the day. The following are a few i thought were interesting:

Taken at 15:31 F5.6 1/800 sec ISO 100

Taken 16:06 F 7.1 Exposure time 1/60 sec

Taken 16:20 F 5.6 Exposure time 1/40 sec

 

Internal Spaces- Liverpool Tate

Internal Spaces

Liverpool Tate's internal space and layout was interesting and some of the following images i took made me think about the way the objects were placed in the gallery and how they force the viewers to walk around them .

Unit 32 Experimental Photography Research Simryn Gill at Liverpool Biennial 2012

Simryn Gill

Forking Tongues (1992)

Simryn Gill

I found  Simryn Gill a really exiting photographer and i was privileged that i had a chance to see her work at Liverpool Biennial 2012.

Forest 1996

Simryn Gill is the quintessential postcolonial artist, less so because of her transnational biography—Indian extraction, born in Singapore, raised in Malaysia and now based in Sydney—than because of her deep engagement with the history of colonial expansion in Southeast Asia. She obliquely traces that history’s effects on culture and landscape through objects, texts and photographs. The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery’s recent retrospective of her work, organized in collaboration with Australia’s Queensland Art Gallery, provides an abbreviated overview of Gill’s accomplished career.

Pearls 2000 - 6

Forking Tongues (1992) demonstrates Gill’s early practice of accumulating and arranging found objects. The installation features alternating bands of dried red chili peppers and antique silver cutlery laid out as a large double spiral on a platform in the Sackler’s entrance pavilion, with a wall text informing us that both objects were introduced to Asia by European colonizers. While the installation acknowledges the role such objects play in the process of cultural exchange, it also demonstrates the differential effects each has had on local culinary practice and by extension cultural identity; the spicy red chili pepper, imported from South America, has become emblematic of South and Southeast Asia, but the cutlery, adopted by the local elite, retains the “civilizing” taint of the West.

In subsequent work Gill further explored the complex mechanics through which outside knowledge is “naturalized,’ using nature itself as both metaphor and subject. Forest (1996), a series of large black-and-white photographs, documents temporary installations in which Gill “seeded” various locations—a mangrove swamp, a beach, deserted colonial buildings, an abandoned army base, the garden of her family home—with cut-up texts shaped to mimic botanical forms like leaves, twigs and hanging roots. In her photographs, Gill manipulates the tonal range, depth of field and focus to blend the text into its natural surroundings. These images visually reverse the colonial discourse of the mastery of “culture” over “nature” epitomized in the sources of these text fragments, books like Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

This interest in books, as both vehicles of knowledge and material objects, extends to Pearls (2000–06), for which Gill meticulously created strands of hand-rolled beads out of the pages of books donated by friends. The text is rendered illegible, the books serving as raw material for this newly created jewelry. Gill originally produced these works as gifts for the books’ owners, but was inspired to exhibit them after encountering similar beads and amulets in the Sackler’s galleries. In this context, Gill’s physical transformation of utilitarian objects into aesthetic artifacts serves as a metaphor for the symbolic transformations that occur within the histories of museums as institutions of colonialism.

Liverpool Biennial 2012

Dalam, 2001
A series of 258 photographs of domestic interiors were taken over an eight week period as the artist travelled across the Malaysian peninsula. Dalam is Malay for inside, interior and also deep.
The following are a few images from the Dalam collection.

The following are my images from Liverpool Tate:-

Martin Parr Liverpool Biennial 2012

Liverpool Biennial 2012 

Liverpool Biennial 2012 presents work by 242 artists in 27 locations. The festival takes place in galleries, museums and sites across the city and includes a dynamic programme  of talks, events, screenings and family activities.

After being inspired by Martin Parr and realising that his work was going to feature at the Tate collection in the Liverpool i had to see the contemporary exhibition for myself! and i was not disappointed.
The following images i took are just a small flavour of the day.

Martin Parr Common Sense, 1995-99

The images were taken all over the world at the height of the 1990s, dissecting modern consumerism. I think this point stands out in the image of Lady Diana with a price tag of £12.60! Parr analyses society by photographing people, places and objects which reflect global tastes, traditions and travel.

I think Martin Parr has a real eye for strange visual imagery. The angle from which he took the image below i found funny, strange(because it looks like the arms of the wind mill are growing out of the old lady's head) and fascinating because its difficult not to take a second look!

Landscape Photography

Landscape Photography 

Introduction

The UK is full of interesting places, from tranquil rural scenes to wild and barren moorland.

Some locations are touristy, and others remote.

Tourist locations are the easiest spots to take good photographs. My friend (Agnes) and I decided to photograph the Lake District. We decided to do some research on the internet before we left and decided on Ambleside and Windermere as the main areas of interest for the project. 

Preparation

  

We visited the local tourist shops as they gave us clues to the best spots to photograph. Here we also bought postcards, maps and collected free literature. All this information gave us an idea of great locations as well as fantastic photography by other landscape photographers.

Armed with food, waterproof clothes, mobile phones, maps and cameras we went in search of inspirational scenery.

The photographers that inspired me to do Landscape Photography are:
Ansel Adams
Joe Cornish
Tim Parkin
David Ward
Richard Childs
Tony Howell (Trees)
Charlie Waite
David Norton

Looking for a view

We decided on a location : Ambleside,  Waterhead Pier.

We arrived here at 10.30 am on 3.11.2012

I  looked around for the best viewpoint. 

I tried to be creative and tried to find a scenic vantage point .I looked at the fore ground, could i include something to give my picture more depth? A tree branch cutting across the picture may add a frame and keeps the viewer within the picture, while a rock or fence in the foreground can lead the viewer into the photo.

A tree branch cutting across the picture keeps the viewer in the picture

A fence in foreground leads viewer into photo

a rock in the foreground leads the viewer into the photo

 I took a series of pictures of landscape shots by placing points of interest in the foreground. When i did this it gave the viewer a way into the image, and also created a sense of depth in my shot.

Depth of field 
Landscape photography desires an image that appears sharp throughout the scene, so elements in the foreground interest, such as rock in a lake look just as sharp as the distant horizon. This can be achieved using the principles of depth of field, here the smaller an aperture used, such as f/22, the greater teh area both before and beyond the point of focus also appear to be sharp.

When you use small aperture you'll need to compensate with slow shutter speeds, so a tripod becomes essential.
There are times you want to get a little creative and experiment with narrow depth of field for landscape photography (as above) - the normal approach i used to ensure that as much of the scene is in focus as possible.

The simplest way to do this was to choose a small APERTURE SETTING ( a large number) as the smaller the aperture the greater the depth of field in my shots.

I kept in mind that smaller aperture means less light is hitting the image sensor at any point in time, so that will mean that i need to compensate either by increasing my ISO or lengthening the SHUTTER SPEED (or both). For this project i experimented with f values of f/9, f/16, f11 , f/10,f/5.6 and f/6.3
The shutter speeds were between 1/80 to 1/500.
The ISO 160 to 400

FUTURE projects I would improve my pictures by using a tripod. As a result of the longer shutter speed to compensate for a small aperture (a value of say f/22), I would in the future use a tripod to ensure the camera stayed completely still during the exposure.

To improve the shot even further in the future i could consider a cable or wireless shutter release mechanism for extra camera stillness.

Looking For a Focal Point

All shots need some sort of focal point even landscapes. Some photos i took without a focal point look rather empty and did leave me wondering through the image, nowhere to rest my eyes on. The ones below are some without a Focal Point:-

These pictures were discarded quickly.

For this project i used Focal Points such as:-
Boats
Buildings
A striking Tree
A boulder
A Pier
A rock formation
A silhouette

focal point pier used leading you into the picture 

The lines above give the image depth and the pier lines themselves create pattern of interest in the above shot.

Focal point a tree

My project was based on enjoying sailing on Windermere. In relation to the i not only thought What the Focal Point is but where I placed it in the picture. Here The Rule Of Thirds were useful.

Lines

I asked myself the question as i took the Landscape shot "How am I leading the eye of those viewing this shot?"
I used a number of ways of doing this for the Composition of the photos.

1.Foreground

2.The best ways into a shot is to provide viewers with lines that lead them into an image.

Lines that lead you into the image

The lines give an image a depth, scale and can be a point of interest by creating patterns in the image above.

Considering The Sky

Another element i had to consider in landscape photography was the sky. Since i was taking photos at Windermere the sky became a very important part of the composition, if not the most important. This was evident at 5 pm. The following photographs show the importance of sky, light at 5pm and the sun and the result it has on the final image.

sun and cloud creating interest

     Most landscapes will either have a dominant foreground or sky - unless there is one or the other images can end up being fairly boring.

If i had a bland, boring sky; i didn't let it dominate the shot. I placed the horizon in the upper third of my shot - and i made sure that my foreground is interesting.This is what i tried to achieve in the following shot:-
  

Foreground is more interesting than the sky

However when the sky was filled with drama and interesting cloud formations and colours i let it shine by placing the horizon lower.

The Sky creates drama

 Capturing Movement

When i used to thing of landscape; i thought of calm, serene and passive environments. However landscapes i found are never completely still and to convey this movement in my image that will add drama, mood and create a point of interest. I have tried to do this in the image below:-

The ducks create movement and interest in the image 

Other examples that could be used:-
wind in trees,waves on a beach, water flowing over a waterfall, birds flying overhead, moving clouds etc.
In future projects i hope to capture this movement by using longer shutter speeds. 

The Magic Hour

Beautiful landscape photos are often defined by the quality of light they were taken in. As a consequence, photographers tend to shoot early in the morning or during late afternoons when the sun is lower, less contrast and often displays a subtle colour palette of moody hues. For this reason, the hours after dawn and before dusk are known as the "magic hours".

10.07am

10.13 am

Rising at dawn was difficult but early morning pictures did have a magical quality. For future projects i hope to capture the light at dawn!

Landscape Photography mind map