Thursday 28 November 2013

Motion Sequence








  • a low ISO, we used ISO 100
  • F-stop 11
  • Timer on 15 sec.


We need
  • a camera
  • a tripod
  • a flash gun
We needed non-reflective wall so we used a small coridall in the dark room. Model was in the end of corridor, camera was opposite with someone with the flash gun. 
We've been thinking of creative ideas. Turning our heads from left to right was the best.
I think the outcome of our photographs are really intresting and effective. This workshop went really well.



Monday 25 November 2013

Man Ray

Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky, August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American modernist artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.

Thomas Ruff



Thomas Ruff (born 10 February 1958) is a German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf.
Thomas Ruff, one of six children, was born in 1958 in Zell am Harmersbach in the Black Forest, Germany. In the summer of 1974, Ruff acquired his first camera and after attending an evening class in the basic techniques of photography he started to experiment, taking shots similar to those he had seen in many amateur photography magazines

Portraits

In his studio between 1981 and 1985, Ruff photographed 60 half-length portraits in the same manner: Passport-like images, with the upper edge of the photographs situated just above the hair, even lighting, the subject between 25 and 35 years old, taken with a 9 × 12 cm negative, and because of the use of a flash without any motion blur. The early portraits were black-and-white and small, but Ruff soon switched to color, using solid backgrounds in different colors; from a stack of colored card stock the sitter could choose one color, which then served as the background. By 1987 Ruff had distilled the project in several ways, settling on an almost exclusive use of the full frontal view and enlarging the finished work to monumental proportions. Because he found the effect of the colors too dominate in these, he chose a light and neutral background for the portraits he made between 1986 and 1991. Ruff started out reconstructing faces but soon found it more interesting to construct artificial faces, which often combine features of men and women, that do not, but could conceivably, exist in reality; this resulted in his "Anderes Porträt" series (1994-1995). Ruff intended that large groups of the approximately eight-by-ten-inch color portraits would be hung together, so to add variety he photographed each person against a colored backdrop.


Photograms


The photograms series depict abstract shapes, lines, and spirals in seemingly random formations with varying degrees of transparency and illumination. Both the objects and the light in Ruff’s photograms derive from a virtual darkroom built by a custom-made software program.
After a number of collaborations with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, the firm designed a studio building for Ruff and Gursky in Düsseldorf. Ruff is represented by Gagosian Gallery, David Zwirner, New York, Johnen Galerie, Berlin, and Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf, Frankfurt.


Thursday 21 November 2013

Light Painting


Light painting is a photographic technique in which exposures are made by moving a hand-held light source or by moving the camera. The term light painting also encompasses images lit from outside the frame with hand-held light sources. Light Painting Photography can be traced back to the year 1914 when Frank Gilbreth, along with his wife Lillian Moller Gilbreth, used small lights and the open shutter of a camera to track the motion of manufacturing and clerical workers. Man Ray, in his 1935 series "Space Writing," was the first known art photographer to use the technique and Barbara Morgan began making light paintings in 1940.
 
Techniques
  • By moving the light source, the light can be used to selectively illuminate parts of the subject or to "paint" a picture by shining it directly into the camera lens. Light painting requires a slow shutter speed, usually a second or more. Light painting can take on the characteristics of a quick pencil sketch.
  • Light painting by moving the camera, also called camera painting, is the antithesis of traditional photography. At night, or in a dark room, the camera can be taken off the tripod and used like a paintbrush. An example is using the night sky as the canvas, the camera as the brush and cityscapes (amongst other light sources) as the palette. Putting energy into moving the camera by stroking lights, making patterns and laying down backgrounds can create abstract artistic images.

Photograms

A photogram is a photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light. The usual result is a negative shadow image that shows variations in tone that depends upon the transparency of the objects used. Areas of the paper that have received no light appear white; those exposed through transparent or semi-transparent objects appear grey.
The technique is sometimes called cameraless photography. It was used by Man Ray in his exploration of rayographs. Other artists who have experimented with the technique include László Moholy-Nagy, Christian Schad (who called them "Schadographs"), Imogen Cunningham and Pablo Picasso. Variations of the technique have also been used for scientific purposes.

Rayographs

A photogram or a rayograph is a photo taken without a camera.
they are made by placing objects on a photo sensitive surface and exposing them to light.When the object is on the surface its blocking the light and will leave a pale whit or grey colour where the light hasn't reached the surface. If the light can reach underneath the object then it will turn a lighter tone. Also if the paper isn't protected at all then the paper will turn black.

Tuesday 19 November 2013


Continuons lighting





Flash / Brolli light




Butterfly lighting




Monday 11 November 2013

Solarization



Solarisation (or solarization) is a phenomenon in photography in which the image recorded on a negative or on a photographic print is wholly or partially reversed in tone. Dark areas appear light or light areas appear dark. The term is synonymous with the Sabattier effect when referring to negatives, but is technically incorrect when used to refer to prints.
In short, the mechanism is due to halogen ions released within the halide grain by exposure diffusing to the grain surface in amounts sufficient to destroy the latent image

In the darkroom

Careful choice of the amount of light used and the precise moment in development to provide the additional exposure gives rise to different outcomes. However, solarisation is very difficult to manage to yield consistent results. 
As a guide, an exposure of 1 second to a 25Watt lamp at 2 metres distant at around the end of the first minute of a 2 minute development can produce acceptable results. If the exposure is made with the developing print still in the tray of developer, it is important to stop agitation at least 10 seconds prior to exposure to allow any bubbles on the surface to disperse and to ensure that the print is lying flat. Solarising colour prints is more difficult because of the more careful control of temperature and timing that is required and because most amateur processing is undertaken in a processing drum rather than a dish.
In colour photography, different coloured lights can be used to effect solarisation, but the results become even less predictable.
It is possible to solarise a negative and subsequently solarise the print made from that negative. The results of such double solarisations are rarely successful, usually producing muddy and poorly defined images.


Solarisation in digital media

Graphs describing solarisation curves typically place input range of tones on the x axis, with black at 0 and white to the right, and the output range of tones on the y axis with black at 0 and white up. A curve then defines the input to output mapping.
Early video synthesiser technologists concerned themselves with achieving arbitrary curves not limited by film chemistry. A goal was to extend the range of solarisation effects possible to a computer specified curve. They then applied the defined solarisation curve to real time video images. A video lookup table was often used to implement this. Using this enhanced solarisation technology, still photos could also be passed through a grey scale or colour lookup table with the advantage that the effect could be previewed and progressively improved, instead of a procedure based on darkroom exposure calculations applied on a one time basis to a volatile light sensitive film or print, as described above. This was an especial advantage for creating colour solarisations with 3 primary colours.







Two versions of the same digital photograph, the version on the right is digitally solarised using Corel PHOTO-PAINT 8.

Photomontage and Solarisation







Observational drawing
(positive)















(negative)



























































_____Photograms_____


These photograms are images I did in the dark room. Having done the test strips I decided on an exposure of 2.5sec. After doing that I developing the photographic paper using wet process.
1. Developing
2. Stop Bath
3. Fix
4. Wash
At the end I dried my final photograms.






Test strips
6sec / 4sec/ 2sec


















and two final photograms