Project 3: The beauty of artificial light – Exercise 4.3

Exercise 4.3

Capture ‘the beauty of artificial light’ in a short sequence of shots (‘beauty’ is, of
course, a subjective term). The correct white balance setting will be important; this
can get tricky –but interesting – if there are mixed light sources of different colour
temperatures in the same shot. You can shoot indoors or outside but the light should
be ambient rather than camera flash. Add the sequence to your learning log. In your
notes try to describe the difference in the quality of light from the daylight shots in
Exercise 4.2.

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When I first read this exercise I wasn’t quite sure how to attack it. I had my Nikon D7200 set to manual and ISO to 800. I used a wide aperture to get shutter speeds fast enough to get acceptable shots handheld. Firstly I tried some shots indoors handheld and then some from the end of my road on my tripod. Examples are shown below:

Indoors

Outdoors

I was fairly pleased with results shooting in RAW, and setting white balance to fluorescent which gave pleasing results straight from the camera which required minimal post processing.

Thinking about the exercise I was taken with the idea of the loneliness of takeaways during midweek and thought that I might prove to be a good subject. During this shoot I used my tripod and toyed with narrower apertures for greater depth of field knowing that this would require longer shutter speeds. I selected a local parade of shops that offered a variety of takeaways. I took a few test shots to ensure I was on the right track, before getting into better positions for the shots proper. The results are shown below:

Each shot required minor adjustments to aperture or/and shutter speed to get the shot right. Getting this right as best as I could in camera meant (like my test shots) a minimal amount of post processing.

I was very pleased with the final shots and felt that I had been able to get the white balance right, also the voyeuristic look I had planned for with the takeaway views.

Comparing this exercise to exercise 4.2 we can see that:

• The quality of light with natural light will vary depending on factors such as time of day and weather. While artificial light such as above is of a fixed quality.
• With natural light you will need to change your shooting position to vary how light appears on your chosen subject. With the artificial lighting  of the shops the way the light falls is constant and consistant, this is very important to the way the takeaway advertises to its customers.
• Shots using natural lighting are limited from dawn to dusk. While artificial lighting shots can be taken during the day, but are better taken late evening or night.

 

 

 

Project 2: ‘Layered, complex and mysterious…’ – Exercise 4.2

Exercise 4.2

In manual mode take a sequence of shots of a subject of your choosing at different times on a single day. It doesn’t matter if the day is overcast or clear but you need a good spread of times from early morning to dusk. You might decide to fix your viewpoint or you might prefer to ‘work into’ your subject, but the important thing is to observe the light, not just photograph it. Add the sequence to your learning log together with a timestamp from the time/date info in the metadata. In your own words, briefly describe the quality of light in each image.

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For this exercise I decided to take images of a rather large tree close to my home. I looked at the online tool ‘The Photographers Ephemeris‘ to see which direction the sun would rise and set. The results are shown below.

Monday 16th October 2017

I decided to take images at 2 hour intervals from about 07:00 to about 17:00. I used my Nikon D7200 with 70 – 140mm lens and set on my tripod in portrait orientation. The camera was set to:

• Manual mode
• ISO 100
• Focal length 48mm
• Aperture f/4.5 – f/5.6
• Shutter speed varied to attain balanced exposure

The weather forecast was supposed to be mixed due to the aftermath of hurricane Ophelia. The results of the images are shown below:

From all the images it can be seen that the quality of the light changes through the day. My personal favourite of the set is tha one taken at 17:08, after the wind cleared the sky and provided a warm and fairly soft light.

Natural light is a beautiful thing but can as this experiment shows be moody and unpredictable. Whilst wonderful images can be obtained but these are at the cost of time, energy and potential (probably regular) disapointment. But it is probably the unpredictability of this form of light that attracts certain people who revel in the results of a cocktail of cercumstance no matter how well planned.

Please note: In the image taken at 15:17 had sky had pinkish/orange hue which was due (I found out after) to debris in the atmosphere caused by hurricane Ophelia.

Reference

The Photographer’s Ephemeris (2017) Sunrise & sunset information for Monday 16th October 2018 [Online App]. Available at http://app.photoephemeris.com/?ll=51.335694,-0.788661&center=51.3358,-0.7902&dt=20171016211900%2B0100&z=18&spn=0.00,0.01 (Accessed 15 October 2017).

 

Project 1: Exposure – Exercise 4.1

Exercise 4.1

1. Set your camera to any of the auto or semi-auto modes. Photograph a dark tone (such as a black jacket), a mid-tone (the inside of a cereal packet traditionally makes a useful ‘grey card’) and a light tone (such as a sheet of white paper), making sure that the tone fills the viewfinder frame (it’s not necessary to focus). Add the shots to your learning log with quick sketches of the histograms and your observations.

You might be surprised to see that the histograms for each of the frames – black, grey and white – are the same. If there’s not much tonal variation within the frame you’ll see a narrow spike at the mid-tone; if there is tonal variation (such as detail) you’ll see a more gentle curve. If you find the tone curve isn’t centred on the mid-tone, make sure that you have your exposure compensation set to zero. You may see an unpleasant colour cast if you’re  shooting under artificial light, in which case you can repeat the exercise using your monochrome setting (a light meter is sensitive to brightness, not to colour).

This simple exercise exposes the obvious flaw in calibrating the camera’s light meter to the mid-tone. The meter can’t know that a night scene is dark or a snow scene is light so it averages each exposure around the mid-tone and hopes for the best. But why can’t the camera just measure the light as it is? The reason is that a camera measures reflected light – the light reflected from the subject, not incident light – the light falling on the subject. To measure the incident light you’d have to walk over to the subject and hold an incident light meter (a hand-held meter) pointing back towards the camera, which isn’t always practical. If you did that each of the tones would be exposed correctly because the auto or semi-auto modes wouldn’t try to compensate for the specific brightness of the subject.

2. Set your camera to manual mode. Now you can see your light meter! The midtone exposure is indicated by the ‘0’ on the meter scale with darker or lighter exposures as – or + on either side. Repeat the exercise in manual mode, this time adjusting either your aperture or shutter to place the dark, mid and light tones at their correct positions on the histogram. The light and dark tones shouldn’t fall off either the left or right side of the graph. Add the shots to your learning log with sketches of their histograms and your observations. Switching to manual mode disconnects the aperture, shutter and ISO so they’re no longer linked. Because they’re no longer reciprocal, you can make adjustments to any one of them without affecting the others.

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1. I performed this exercise in my workplace that has daylight equivalent lighting using grey card from the back of a note pad, white paper and black card used for binding documents.The results are as follows:

Grey card using aperture priority

White paper using aperture priority

Black card using aperture priority

As the brief predicted the histograms for the three images are all close to the mid tone values. Also as can be seen the images for the white and the black are more grey than their true colours.

1. The exercise is repeated with my Fuji X30 in manual mode. Below are the same three images with adjustments made to shutter speed (whilst maintaining constant aperture of f4 and ISO 800) to adjust exposure to correct for camera metering:

Grey card using manual setting adjustment zero stops exposure

White paper using manual setting adjustment +2 stops exposure

Black card using manual setting adjustment -2 stops exposure

As can be seen the manual adjustments to exposure produce results with truer colours. Therefore one has to be aware of the limitations of the cameras light metre in these type of situations, and to use the histogram as a tool to guide you towards correcting the exposure to produce a correct image.

Project 3: What matters is to look – Research point

Research point
Watch the Henri Cartier-Bresson documentary ‘L’amour de court’ (‘Just plain love’, 2001)
available in five parts on YouTube:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL707C8F898605E0BF
Write a personal response to the film in the contextual section of your learning log,
taking care to reference properly any quotations you use (300–500 words).

• Whenever you read or watch something, get into the habit of putting anything you
  take directly from the source in quotation marks and note down full bibliographic
  details. If you do this, you won’t have to spend ages hunting for half-remembered
  references later – and you won’t inadvertently plagiarise someone else’s work.
  Always use Harvard referencing; print out the study guide on the student website
  and keep this to hand.
• Be very careful about what you put on your blog. Take a moment now to read what
  the OCA learning blog study guide says about copyright law and fair use or fair
  dealing.

Parts 4 and 5 of the Henri Cartier-Bresson video ‘L’amour tout court’ have had the
audio muted by YouTube owing to copyright. However, the subtitles are still
included in the video which does allow the conversation to be followed without
audio.
‘L’amour tout court’ is also available on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/106009378
(accessed 26/09/2016).

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The YouTube excerpts of the Henri Cartier-Bresson documentary ‘L’amour de court’ started with Henri mentioning that he escaped from prison. I looked into this for more details and found out that he was captured during the Second World War. From his confinement in forced labour camps he finally escaped after two failed attempts. He says in the video ‘I always feel like a prisoner on the run.’ (‘L’amour de court’, 2001). It is my opinion that this experience has been one of the major driving forces to his developed style of photography.

Shortly after this Henri comments ‘It’s always luck. It’s luck that matters… just be receptive and it happens’ (‘L’amour de court’, 2001). But this I think is more down to his uncanny awareness, heightened by that feeling of being on the run; always aware, always, looking, always listening, always searching. Using this amplified sense of awareness allows him to instinctively understand the geometry of what he sees and visualise the golden proportions within his field of view, enabling him to take images that seem naturally balanced. In this way he selects his framing waiting for the decisive moment, in anticipation of his target moving into the perfect position.

He lets the viewer into a few trade secrets. When with other people he tunes out, to him taking photographs demands ultimate concentration. Yet to those around him when he is taking photographs he seems to converse as if aware of them, though he confesses to talking nonsense. While taking photos he does his utmost to blend in with and become one with the scene, gentle and unobtrusive. To the point that he painted all the shining parts of his Leica black so that the camera attracts the minimal attention. ’I look, I look, it’s an obsession’, he muses (‘L’amour de court’, 2001).

My overall impression of Henri Cartier-Bresson is one of deep and profound awe. He demonstrates such amazing spatial awareness and a sensitivity to his surroundings, it is almost magical.

Reference

‘L’amour de court’ parts 1-5, 2001 YouTube video, added by Rangefindergeneral [Online]. Available at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL707C8F898605E0BF (Accessed 2 April 2017).

Project 3: What matters is to look – Exercise 3.3

Exercise 3.3

1. What do the timeframes of the camera actually look like? If you have a manual
   film camera, open the camera back (make sure there’s no film in the camera
   first!) and look through the shutter as you press the shutter release. What is the
   shortest duration in which your eyes can perceive a recognisable image in bright
   daylight? Describe the experiment in your learning log.
2. Find a good viewpoint, perhaps fairly high up (an upstairs window might do)
   where you can see a wide view or panorama. Start by looking at the things
   closest to you in the foreground. Then pay attention to the details in the middle
   distance and, finally, the things towards the horizon. Now try and see the whole
   landscape together, from the foreground to horizon (you can move your eyes).
   Include the sky in your observation and try to see the whole visual field together,
   all in movement (there is always some movement). When you’ve got it, raise your
   camera and take a picture. Add the picture and a description of the process to
   your learning log.

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1. Unfortunately the only film camera I have is a Nikon EM, which is an aperture priority semi automatic 35mm film camera. With the back open the shutter speed automatically defaults to 1/1000 sec and all that can be perceived is a brief flash of light. The only other speed settings are bulb (shutter stays open as long as the shutter button is depressed) and manual 1/90th sec setting for using a non TTL flash. Even when set to 1/90th sec the flash of light from the shutter is slightly longer but I am still unable to perceive a recognisable image. So the shutter speed would have to be a lot slower for me (personally) to be able to distinguish an identifiable image other than a vague shape. Maybe as slow as 1/2 sec or 1/4 sec. Without having the camera capable of setting these shutter speeds I am making only rough assumptions which for an experiment is not good enough.

2. Looking out of the study window I perceived the:

• flat roof
• caravan
• driveways
• cars
• trees
• roads
• houses
• telegraph pole & lines
• sky

Taking in the whole scene there appears to be some natural framing and negative space. There is no wind so there is no movement in the trees and the clouds also have no distinguishable movement in the bright sky. I listen and hear a car door slam down the close and its motor start. From that I know it must come out of the close in front of me. I raise my camera to focus on the space between the two trees near the entrance to the close. I press my shutter as the car moves through this framing as shown below.

I believe that the purpose of this exercise is to help us to attune ourselves to our surroundings and to gain a level of spacial awareness that helps us to detect and act on movement within our peripheral vision. But for me it is not just sight but sound (as in the sound of the car, or people talking, sound of the wind in the trees etc.) and a level of gut feeling. All this Henri Cartier-Bresson called luck, but for me he was a man with amazing spacial awareness and sensitivity to his surroundings that borders on a 6th sense.

A link to my handwritten notes on my opinion of the Decisive Moment is below:

Notes on the Decisive Moment 

Project 2: A durational space – Exercise 3.2

Exercise 3.2
Start by doing your own research into some of the artists discussed above.
Then, using slow shutter speeds, the multiple exposure function, or another
technique inspired by the examples above, try to record the trace of movement
within the frame. You can be as experimental as you like. Add a selection of shots
together with relevant shooting data and a description of your process (how you
captured the shots) to your learning log.

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As part of Assignment 2 I took a number of images around Waterloo station in which I was attempting to capture images that evoked the chaotic movement of commuter crowds. The following images were all taken handheld due to the restrictions regarding tripods within Waterloo Station. I tried various combinations of; height, angle, focal length and exposure. I think that the images evoke movement and provide the traces of time I was attempting to create.

Blur 1 – Focal Length 450mm, ISO 400, Exposure 2 sec at f/22

Blur 2 – Focal Length 123mm, ISO 400, Exposure 2 sec at f/22

Blur 3 – Focal Length 123mm, ISO 400, Exposure 2 sec at f/22

Blur 4 – Focal Length 90mm, ISO 400, Exposure 1 sec at f/22

Blur 5 – Focal Length 217mm, ISO 400, Exposure 2.5 sec at f/22

Blur 6 – Focal Length 450mm, ISO 400, Exposure 1/15 sec at f/6.3

 

Project 1: The frozen moment – Exercise 3.1

Exercise 3.1

Using fast shutter speeds, try to isolate a frozen moment of time in a moving subject.
Depending on the available light you may have to select a high ISO to avoid visible
blur in the photograph. Try to find the beauty in a fragment of time that fascinated
John Szarkowski. Add a selection of shots, together with relevant shooting data and
a description of your process (how you captured the images), to your learning log.

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The following series of 3 images were taken at covent garden during the performance of a street artist. I was lucky to have a seat and be able to carefully use my tripod discreetly.

The 2nd of the three really captures the action but  the 1st and 3rd provide context and the series works really well as a triptych.

Artist 1 – Focal Length 27mm, ISO 800, Exposure 1/1000 sec at f/4.0

Artist 2 – Focal Length 27mm, ISO 800, Exposure 1/1000 sec at f/4.0

Artist 3 – Focal Length 27mm, ISO 800, Exposure 1/1000 sec at f/4.0

Post processing involved aligning and cropping images in photoshop. Followed by conversion to black & white and a few minor adjustments.

Assignment 2 Report

Link below to my Assignment 2 Report:

Assignment 2 Report

Assignment 2 Images

Image 1 – Waterloo

Image 2 – Waterloo

Image 3 – Euston

Image 4 – Euston

Image 5 – Euston

Image 6 – Euston

Image 7 – Waterloo

Image 8 – Waterloo

Image 9 – Underground

Image 10 – Underground

Assignment 2 Contact Sheet

Link below to my Assignment 2 Contact Sheet:

Assignment 2 Contact Sheet