Further research – Assignment Three The (in) Decisive Moment
Additional Note re the below: I was unable to follow through with the additional images due to lockdown restrictions but left the blog unedited as it gives an idea of what my intentions were and I guess more importantly the way in which my understanding of the Decisive Moment and some of what it entails…
Assignment five Photography is simple: Research and planning
The first part of this blog contains my initial thoughts on the way I had intended to go with the assignment. I took a U turn part way through, but I thought I would leave it in as it does give an insight into why I took the U turn. There was an element of the…
Assignment Four Languages of light with additional re-worked material
Brief Revisit one of the exercises on daylight, artificial light or controlled light from Part Four (Ex 4.1, Ex 4.2 or Ex 4.3) and develop it into a formal assignment submission. The submission requirement for this assignment is a set of between six and ten high-quality photographic prints. There are many ways to edit and the…
Exercise 4.1 Daylight
Brief Taking the photography of Mann, Atget or Schmidt or a photographer of your own choosing as a starting point, shoot a number of photographs exploring the quality of natural light. The exercise should be done in manual mode and the important thing is to observe the light, not just photograph it. In our learning…
Exercise 4.2 Artificial Light
Brief 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 – of there are mixed light sources of different colour temperatures in the same shot. You can shoot indoors or…
Exercise 4.3 Egg or stone
Brief Use a combination of quality, contrast, direction and colour to light an object in order to reveal its form. For this exercise, we recommend that you choose a natural or organic object such as an egg or stone rather than a man-made object. Man-made or cultural artefacts can be fascinating to light but they’re…
Planning and additional research Assignment three The (in)decisive moment
After completing the Research point for The Decisive Moment, (Link) there were two areas that interested me more than any others. Cartier-Bressons feeling of intuition, luck and coincidence, coupled with the ability to see, and John Suler’s Psychology of The Decisive Moment, where he breaks things down into ten distinctive features. I am a great…
Research Point: Part Three
Brief Watch the Henri Cartier-Bresson documentary ‘L’amour de court’ (‘Just plain love’, 2001) available on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/106009378 [accessed 19/01/18] Write up your research on the decisive moment in your learning log taking care to give a proper account of the three differing views offered above, and any further research you’ve undertaken independently. What do you…
Research Point: Part Two
Brief Do your own research into some of the photographers mentioned in this project. Look back at your personal archive of photography and try to find a photograph that could be used to illustrate one of the aesthetic codes discussed in Project 2. Whether or not you had a similar idea when you took the…
Research point: Part One Reviews by Campany and Colberg
Brief Read the reviews on Thomas Ruffs Jpegs by Campany and Colberg, and if you haven’t already done so, use them to begin the Research section of your learning log. Try to pick out the key points made by each writer. If you wish, you could add a green grab of an image from Ruffs…
Assignment One The square Mile – with additional re – worked material
The Brief Make a series of six to twelve photographs in response to the concept of ‘The Square Mile’. Use this as an opportunity to take a fresh and experimental look at your surroundings. You may wish to re-trace places you know very well, examining how they might have changed; or, particularly if you’re in…
Assignment One Reflection and Feedback
I wanted to try and come out of my comfort zone as per the brief and attempted to do this by trying to avoid architectural type shots emphasising lines and curves, that seem to be something that pop up in my images all the time. Unfortunately when I looked at the final images I realise…
Assignment one Research
I currently spend about one third of my time in Italy at a house we bought towards the end of 2016. The house is quite isolated, situated on a ridge overlooking several valleys, surrounded by oak forest, small areas of farmland, villages and vineyards. Although we have been visiting the area for a while, there…
Assignment one Square Mile
The Brief Make a series of six to twelve photographs in response to the concept of ‘The Square Mile’. Use this as an opportunity to take a fresh and experimental look at your surroundings. You may wish to re-trace places you know very well, examining how they might have changed; or, particularly if you’re in…
Assignment five Photography is simple
Brief The final assignment is an open brief. Take a series of 10 photographs of any subject exploring the theme ‘Photography is Simple’. Each photograph should be a unique view; in other words, it should contain some new information, rather than repeat the information of the previous image. Introduction My first action on reading the…
Exercise 5.3 Looking at photography
Brief ‘When somebody sees something and experiences it – that’s when art happens’ (Hans-Peter Feldman) If photography is an event then looking at photography should also be an event. Look again at Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photograph Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare in Part Three. (If you can get to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London you…
Exercise 5.2 Homage
Brief Select an image by any photographer of your choice and take a photograph in response to it. You can respond in any way you like to the whole image or to just a part of it, but you must make explicit in your notes what it is that you’re responding to. Is it a…
Exercise 5.1 The distance between us
Brief Use your camera as a measuring device. This doesn’t refer to the distance scale on the focus ring. Rather, find a subject that you have an empathy with and take a sequence of shots to ‘explore the distance between you’. Add the sequence to your learning log, indicating which is your ‘select’ – your…
Exercise 4.4 Personal Voice
Brief Make a Google Images search for ‘landscape’, ‘portrait’, or any ordinary subject such as ‘apple’ or ‘sunset’. Add a screengrab of a representative page to your learning log and note down the similarities you find between the images. Now take a number of your own photographs of the same subject, paying special attention to…
Assignment three The (in)decisive moment
Brief Create a set of between six and ten finished images on the theme of the decisive moment. You may choose to create imagery that supports the tradition of the ‘decisive moment’ or you may choose to question or invert the concept by presenting a series of ‘indecisive’ moments. Your aim isn’t to tell a…
Exercise 3.3: What matters is to look
Brief Alberto Giacometti had already mastered the art of drawing when he discovered the problem of seeing both the whole figure and the detail simultaneously. When he concentrated on the whole, the details disappeared and conversely, the whole disappeared when detail took over. He didn’t know how to draw without compromising one or the other.…
Exercise 3.2: Trace
Brief 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…
Exercise 3.1 Freeze
Brief Start by doing some of your own research into the photographers discussed above. Then, 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. Add a selection of…
Assignment two Collecting
Brief Create a series of between six and ten photographs on one of the following subjects: Things Views Heads On reading the brief before starting part 2, I was instantly drawn to “Things”. I kept an open mind, however, as I looked at the examples during breaks from the exercises. On coming back to the…
Exercise 2.4 Woodpecker
Brief Find a subject in front of a background with depth. Take a very close viewpoint and zoom in; you’ll need to be aware of the minimum focusing distance of your lens. Focus on the subject and take a single shot. Then, without changing the focal length or framing, set your focus to infinity and…
Exercise 2.3 Focus
Brief Find a location with good light for a portrait shot. Place your subject some distance in front of a simple background and select a wide aperture together with a moderately long focal length such as 100mm on a 35mm full-frame camera (about 65mm on a cropped-frame camera). Take a viewpoint about one and a…
Exercise 2.2 Viewpoint
Brief Select your longest focal length and compose a portrait shot fairly tightly within the frame in front of a background with depth. Take one photograph. Then walk towards your subject while zooming out to your shortest focal length. Take care to frame the subject in precisely the same way in the viewfinder and take…
Exercise 2.1 Zoom
Brief Find a scene that has depth. From a fixed position, take a sequence of five or six shots at different focal lengths without changing your viewpoint. (You might like to use the specific focal lengths indicated on the lens barrel.) As you page through the shots on the preview screen it almost feels as…
Exercise 1.4 Frame
Brief Take a good number of shots, composing each shot within a single section of the viewfinder grid. Don’t bother about the rest of the frame! Use any combination of the grid section, subject and viewpoint you choose. Select six or eight images that you feel work both individually and as a set and present…
Exercise 1.3 (2) Line
Brief Take a number of shots using lines to flatten the pictorial space. To avoid the effects of perspective, the sensor/film plane should be parallel to the subject and you may like to try a high viewpoint. Modern architecture offers strong lines and dynamic diagonals, and zooming in can help to create simpler, more abstract…
Exercise 1.3 (1) Line
Brief Take a number of shots using lies to create a sense of depth. Shooting with a wide angle lens (zooming out) strengthens a diagonal line by giving it more length within the frame. The effect is dramatically accentuated if you choose a viewpoint close to the line. I took image 1 first and wondered…
Exercise 1.2 Point
Brief Take three of four photographs in which a single point is placed in different parts of the frame. When composing the shots use these three rules: . the place of the point shouldn’t be too obvious(such as right in the middle) . the composition should hold tension and balanced (the golden section or rule…
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