Unit 32 Experimental Photography Sun Prints

Sun Prints

Materials required 

Ilford resin coated photographic paper

Ilford Hympin (1:9) solution - Sodium thiosulphate

Dark room

Method

In the dark room place paper shiny side up, onto a board 

Place objects onto the paper. I used a snow flake Christmas decoration, a butterfly, a leaf

place glass on top, tape the glass down

Expose the paper to sun for 20 - 30 minutes

Still in the dark room.

once the colour has changed , place into the fixer for 1-5 minutes

wash under cold water

Dry

This process can be repeated using acetate with images, just dont expose to the sun too long 10-15 minutes   

Unit 32 Images and Evaluation for Experimental photography

Unit 32 Images and Evaluation for Experimental photography

Here are a few images created for experimental photography

Please also refer to my sketch book

David Hockney Inspired

Abstract Experimental Image

Uta Barth Inspired 

Jo Casson inspired

Jo Carson Inspired

Jo Carson Inspired

Playing with filters

Composite Image

Composite Image

Jo Casson Inspired

Double exposure and playing with filters in Photoshop

Evaluations for Experimental Imagery in Photography 

Experimental photography was really  very interesting and creative unit. I really enjoyed the different techniques and processes which enabled me to produce a series of images that were unusual. 

I played with light, texture, Photoshop filters, physical manipulation , double exposures, long shutter speeds etc.

The arts that influenced my experimental work were John Baldessari, Jo Casson, David Hockney, Rakin (with his destroy series) and Steven Gill.

My work for this project is on my Blog and in my sketch book.

Evaluations

Baldessaria inspired image ( blog 20/5/2013) works well because the original image was mundane. Normally you would disregard the image quickly, but my adding primary colors, the image is trans formed to contemporary art. I used a quick selection tool and outlined the figures and then used the paint bucket tool to fill with colour.

Uta Barth 

Blog 13/6/13

I love the way Uta Barth uses light in her images. Although the images are abstract there is real movement of light that travels through her images.

My image is composite of three taken outside the colledge with slow shutter speed . I feel the light travels through the image leaving ghost like memories of the original objects.

Steven Gill

Blog 23/5/13

I find Steven Gill's work fascinating. I love the way he uses photography as a documentary and conceptual art form.I was interested with the idea of digital imagery and the introduction of the environment into the pictures to convey realism. Steven Gill captures more than the image, he seems to capture the essence of the place (eg Hackney  pictures). He is one of the experimental photographers that I would like to more research on and develop more work in his style.

My image inspired by him works well. I would like to do a whole series of images of an area to create a documentary using his inspiration. This is an area of photography I would definitely like to develop. 

Rankin

See my Rankin inspired image in my sketch book

An other experimental idea I had was to recreate something inspired by "Rankin Destroy" series. Here Rankin got 70 musicians to destroy their own portrait to raise money for a youth charity. The concept was to allow the subject to express their personality by expressing their emotion through destruction.

I was interested in the concept to actually get someone to destroy an image I had taken of them. This allowed me as the photographer, who has control, to relinquish it to the subject.

The idea being;the photographer usually has full control over the image, like composition. Allowing the subject to express a view over the image makes a connection between the photographer and the subject can result in an interesting connection between the two.

David Hockney    

 Blog 13/5/2013 Please refer to my Sketch Book

I really like the Hockney pictures of the trees in my sketch book I found one that, in my opinion is pure genius. I love the way he uses colour but retains a feel that is true to landscape photography. Also the sheer size of the image gives it a powerful presence.

I really found the colour and different way of looking at landscape and trees intesting. The image created by David Hockney inspired me to create the composite image above. I really like this image because the flow of colour through the image gel together to appear contemporary.  Another reason I like it because the texture of the trees from the original image is still visible in the final product.

Jo Casson

Please  refer to blog dated 13/5/2013
Jo Casson's work looks amazing, she uses mixed media. I would like to develop this further for myself. I have created several images that are inspired by her. I love the way the is subtle but draws you in. I like the idea of painting on pictures to create  mixed media art. I have used Photoshop to create my images but would like to develop and experiment with paint.
In Casson's work and in the images I created, inspired by her, light plays a key role. They are enchanting to view.

Overall i really enjoyed this project and would like to explore it further.










































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Created in Photoshop, Unit 32 Experimental Unit,

Experimeneal Images

Experimental Image 1

Experimental Image 2

Experimental Image 3

Unit 32 Experimental Photography Uta Barth Inspired Work

Unit 35 Experimental Photography Uta Barth Inspired Work

Utha Barth w introduced to me by Sian Gouldstone in September 2012 at the beginning of my journey on the BTEC L3  Diploma Photography. Her images made an impression on me straight away! I love the way she uses light in her images. The images are abstract but are full of movement because the travels through the picture taking the viewer with it.

The work is refreshing and visually vibrant. Bouncing light in the forefront of the image gives a hint of what is beyond.

She has been a inspiration of my series of images below:-

Image 1

The abstract imagery created in Image 1  plays with the visual memory and perception of what has been created. The composition gives a ghost like memory of the original image that was captured.

Image 2

My favorite is image 2 its a image composite of a bottle taken with a slow shutter speed, overlayed with an image (again with show shutter speed) of light bouncing on a sunny day outside the college.

I feel the image draws you in with the streams light and there is a hint of a car and bottle outline. The colours blend through the image well.

Barth intentionally depicts mundane or incidental objects in nondescript surroundings in order to focus attention on the fundamental act of looking and the process of perception. I tied to recreate this by taking a picture of a green plastic bottle with a slow shutter speed and overlaying it with an equally mundane scene on  the college road.

The images below were used to create image 2

Unit 32 Experimental Photography - Reaserch - Uta Barth

Reaserch
Uta Barth

Uta Barth Photo by David Horvitz

Uta Barth (born 1958 in Berlin, Germany) is a contemporary photographer who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Barth is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004‑05.

Barth received a bachelor of arts degree from the University of California, Davis and an Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles. From 1990 to 2008, she was a professor in the Art Department of the University of California, Riverside, where she is currently a professor of art emeritus. After receiving the MacArthur Fellowship in October 2012, she noted that she still plans to teach on a part-time basis because teaching forces her to "put language to" what she is thinking.


Uta Barth's work is represented in numerous public and private collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Tate Gallery in London; the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts.

 Her work is exhibited regularly and has been shown in one-person and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Europe, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Stockholm, Sweden, Düsseldorf, Germany, Bilbao, Spain, and Tokyo, Japan.

Since the early 1990s, Los Angeles–based artist Uta Barth has examined photographic and visual perception—how the human eye sees differently from the camera lens and how the incidental and atmospheric can become subject matter in and of themselves. That is to say, she is perhaps less interested in where the camera is pointing than the act of looking through the lens in the first place.

The works that brought her to international attention, the series Ground and Field, presented photographic blurs caused by focusing the camera on an unoccupied foreground; these lushly colored images tested connections between the descriptive clarity of photography and the haze of memory.

The 2002 series, white blind (bright red), which was rooted in the process of staring at a tree outside her window, explored optical after-images as literal and metaphorical modes of perception. And in 2007, Barth produced Sundial, a series of photographs in her home at dusk. Made at the moment when light begins to transition and fade, these images operate between positive and negative, visibility and invisibility, and shadow and light.

Barth’s latest series, ... and to draw a bright white line with light, debuts with this Art Institute exhibition. As with much of her earlier work, the domestic setting continues to be fertile ground for nuanced explorations of changes in atmosphere, although for the first time the artist has intervened in the scene she previously had only observed.

 In this new series, Barth transforms a simple observation—the dance of a ribbon of light across curtains—into a complex photographic experience describing perception and the passage of time. The word “photograph” translates as drawing or writing with light; Barth’s new images, then, are quite literally photographs. This newest work is contextualized in the exhibition with select examples from white blind (bright red) and Sundial that have furthered her investigations into perception and light.

Uta Barth is an artist whose evocative, abstract photographs explore the nature of vision and the difference between how a human sees reality and how a camera records it. In contrast to documentary and confessional modes of photography, Barth intentionally depicts mundane or incidental objects in nondescript surroundings in order to focus attention on the fundamental act of looking and the process of perception. In white blind (bright red) (2002), she investigates both literal and metaphorical modes of perception in ghostly compositions that mimic the afterimages that persist in one’s visual memory after turning away from an object. Her recent series, …and to draw a bright, white line with light (2011), marks the first time Barth has intervened in the staging of her photographs. By manipulating curtains in her home, she created lines and curves of light that expand from a sliver to a wide ribbon across a sequence of large-scale, dramatically cropped images that evoke the subtle passage of time while also highlighting the visceral and intellectual pleasures of seeing. As Barth continues to expand her photographic practice to probe the theme of perception in new and inventive ways, she is encouraging viewers to reconsider the traditional functions and expectations of the photographic image.

References

Wikipedia,  encyclopedia
http://www.macfound.org/fellows/859/

Unit 32 Experimental Photography Foot prints in the sand

Foot prints in the sand

Each of us can leave behind footprints in the sand of time

“Lives of great people remind us we can make our lives sublime and, departing, leave behind footprints in the sand of time.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Digital Image captured on Formby Beach Image 1

Scanned Image 2

Scanned Image 3

Scanned Image 4

Scanned Image 5

Screen Shot of the image developing in Photoshop

Each of us can leave behind footprints in the sand of time

“Lives of great people remind us we can make our lives sublime and, departing, leave behind footprints in the sand of time.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.



There are people who look at themselves and admonish any notion of becoming a person of substance or value, simply because of their circumstances. They adjust their goals and ambitions solely based on the achievements of others in their family or their financial situation. They automatically discount the notion that they too can one day become great, before their lives have really begun.

Greatness isn’t something that’s thrust upon you. You become great by the type of person you are, and what you accomplish during your time here, not by whom your parents are or how much money you’re born into.

You become great by living a sublime existence: by leading a life of high moral and intellectual value. You make your life sublime by inspiring awe and admiration in others, from your deeds and words. You live an existence that’s elevated in nature.

Being famous, rich, or even a leader doesn’t aspire someone to greatness. Throughout history, there are many more rich and famous who’ve been forgotten than poor ones who are remembered.

There are some who are remembered by what they did. That doesn’t mean they’ve become great. It simply means their actions, good or bad are remembered. Their name is associated with those actions.

The truly sublime are remembered for who they are. What they accomplish becomes secondary.

The sand of time is history. When someone leaves behind footprints in the sand of time, they are leaving behind imprints, of themselves or their actions, in history. These imprints, or footprints, last for generations. They become memories, footprints, which may never disappear, or take centuries to disappear.

All of us can leave behind a piece of ourselves to be remembered after we die, by acknowledging the fact that it is within our means to do so. You do so by leading a life whose main purpose is to benefit humanity. When you put humanity before yourself, the path to greatness will open itself to you. When you take that path, you too will leave behind footprints in the sand of time.

This quote is an excerpt from a poem Henry Wadsworth Longfellow first published in 1838 in the Knickerbocker Magazine called ‘A Psalm of Life”.

From Wikipedia

Evaluation and Creation of the Montage

I remembered this poem form a English lesson at school, so when I went to Formby Beach and captured image 1; I developed several ideas. I began to experiment with several ideas for a montage using the digital images and the physical things like shells, feathers, seaweed etc that I had collected.

The poem talks about the foot print that you leave behind as a person and how people remember you after you are gone.

The impact you have made on people and their lives, the memories created that last in peoples hearts and minds.

I wanted to convey the life one has lived. I developed the idea with some meaning full text.

I tried to achieve this by getting my friend Lilli to write about in Persian about life and death. I chose to have the text in Persian because it has elegant curves and it looked different and interesting.

She wrote on white paper, to give the paper texture I crunched into a small ball and then smoothed it out again.

I then stained it with coffee and scanned it to create a digital image.
The shells and various other thing collected on the beach were also scanned.

The final montage image was created with layer blending, masking and opacity density composting tools.

I used the colour burn, overlay, darken to get the yellow texture tones in the image.

Unit 23 Notes on different types of paper

Notes on different types of paper

I have just started doing digital photography, I am still be printing onto plain white paper with slightly dull results. I know printing my images on and how different papers can transform my photos. We had a chance to see and feel the texture and tones of different types of paper of the same image.
Below are research notes of different types of paper. Advantages and disadvantages are discussed and how they effect the image.

Matte Paper

Matte Paper looks dull and lusterless. It is used in industry to produce good quality prints but it doesn’t have a vibrant colour finish. Matte paper is not glossy and therefore finger marks or glare from the sun are not a problem.
A good use of matte paper would be inside a shop in which the lighting might cause reflections. Due to the non-reflective nature of this paper, it would be ideal.
Disadvantages of matte papers include the fact they soak more ink into the paper, this will effect the sharpness of the image. When printing macro shots, portraits or other images that rely in small details, you may be better off using glossy paper.
There are many different types of matte paper so pay close attention to what you purchase. A semi-matte or luster paper may have totally different look than traditional matte paper.

Glossy paper

Glossy paper is the most common paper for printing photos. It produces a sharp and vibrant image. Glossy paper is also very smooth to touch.
Disadvantages include the fact it is easy to mark them with fingerprints or dust. Glossy photos are best framed so that no dirt or fingerprints can touch the image. Glossy paper is also more reflective and shiny which is a problem if you plan to view the image in a sunny area.
If you need your images to be as sharp as possible then you might want to think about using glossy paper.
Glossy paper is cheaper than matte paper (on average),

Semi-gloss is cheaper and more affordable than glossy paper. As the name suggests, it is simply less glossy.
Premium-grade is a higher quality paper and will produce the sharpest results.
Brand specific papers are produced by companies to be be used with their own printers. (eg: Canon, Epson)

Gloss Laminated

The best example of a gloss laminated paper is in the form of a postcard. The main photo is on the front, along with a gloss laminate coat applied, which makes it even shinier. The back has the texture of plain card stock
Laminating the paper makes the colours even more vibrant. If you plan to do any sort of advertising, then glossy laminated paper stands out above others and should be your choice of paper.

UV Gloss

It is possible to print an image on standard glossy paper then coat it with a ultra violet garnish before finally drying it by exposure to UV radiation.
It makes the image extremely shiny and glossy. UV gloss can also be used on specific areas to make them appear bolder and stand out above the rest of the design. This is often advertised as spot UV.
You can use UV gloss for business cards (often the logo stands out) or just as easily for fliers.
Because of the process involved printing at home becomes near impossible and therefore you will need to use a printing company.

Stickers

Stickers are often printed onto glossy paper with a sticky back which you simply peel off. The glossy paper gives the stickers the shiny look.

Pulp

Pulp is a dry fibrous material prepared by chemically or mechanically separating fibres. Pulp is normally used for business cards and beer mats. When using this style of paper, you often have to make your photos slightly lighter to compensate for the darker style of paper.
Images are not as sharp on pulp and they don’t appear very vibrant.
Recycled pulp
Recycled pulp is the same as pulp, but made with fully recycled paper. If a business is promoting a ‘green’ image, then using this paper could help maintain that principle.

Silk coating

Silk coating produces a result somewhere between matte coated paper and glossy paper. The colours are still vibrant, but the shininess is reduced.
Using silk coating over the top of glossy paper is also common. It can enhance text without compromising the final image.

Iron on transfers

For designs on a T-shirt, then iron on transfers are the cheapest way for you to do it yourself. Using a standard inkjet printer you are able to print your designs and then iron it onto your T-shirt.
The paper itself is not too expensive,  but you will need a high quality printer. Companies charge a lot of money for transfers, and this will be due to their ink prices rather than the paper costs.

References

photo.tutsplus.com/.../quick-tip-understanding-printing-paper-types/‎