Final Project - Part Four - Result

Above - Final image Large Print

Below individual images

Final Project - Part Three - Combining liquids and film

Throughout my process I found that by combining the 'mixing liquids' and layering the film in front of it I found that the unique patterns made by the liquid added some nifty effects into the film.

Final Project - Part Two - Research (pt2)

Mixing Liquids

Final Project - Part Two - Research (pt1) http://www.lomography.com/

What is X-processing?
http://www.lomography.com/about/faq/1376-what-is-cross-processing

Cross-processing (also known as “xpro”) is the procedure of deliberately processing film in a chemical solution intended for a different type of film. As the chemical mixture is optimized for a special kind of film, you will get unpredictable results when combined differently.

Before anything else, let us brief you on the different chemicals used for some of the common types of film that we use:

• Color negative film (also known as “negatives”) uses C-41 chemicals for processing. You get negatives as a result to these.

• Color reversal film (also known as “slide film” or “transparency” film) uses E-6 chemicals for processing. You get “slides” as a result of these. Think of slides as the slides that your grandparents used for slide projectors (hence the word “slideshow”) to bore everyone with their photos from their last trip.

Now comes the fun part. When you cross-process, you use the chemicals for color negative film with color reversal films, and vice-versa.

• If you process negative film thru the slide chemicals (E-6), you will get slides. Although the colors will not be as wacky; you will just get a kind of slide film with no big color shifts.

• If you process slide film in the negative chemicals (C-41), you will get negative film, but with the Lomographic burst of colors! This is because the color layers of the film were not optimized for this. As a result, the photos turn out saturated or grainy or with high contrast and you get all kinds of unexpected results. Different films have different characteristics when cross-processed. Some turn out more yellow or more green while others turn purple or red.

http://www.lomography.com/about/the-ten-golden-rules

Final Project - Part One - Reworking the concept

The original concept was to use my smartphone as a makeshift lightboard and do some 'manual filters' with the negative film. However when I tried this out I encountered several problems.

So I reworked the concept.

I looked around my house for items that I could use to play around with the film.

My inventory:

- A Vase
- Water
- Food colouring dye
- Film negatives
- Camera with tripod (55-200mm lens)

The new concept

"I will fill the vase up with water. Then attach my film to the vase and place it in front of a window. I will then add drops of food colouring in the vase and take photos, observing the effects the colouring has in the water plus change of colour".

Final Project - Expanded Photographics

Ah film photography. I haven't used you since I was about six years of age. Perhaps it's time to revisit those golden years. 

"What I purpose it to take images of the landscape around me. I will then take the negatives and rephotograph them while they are on a light box. But my hope is that I can change the colour of the light being projected into the negatives. My theory is that could drastically change the tone of the photo that is produced. And that is what I'm most interested in seeing. If that doesn't happen, no worries. I've planned on taking multiple photographs of each light source just incase my initial plan doesn't work out. For the final product I think a large print would be worth doing. "

I don't have any images to show you yet, as I haven't been able to afford to get my images processed. But I have taken a rolls worth of images. 


That's the best I can say for now. I don't think I'll be able to make it into class today. Was a bit sick this morning and subsequently missed my bus. So even if I were to catch the next one I would likely still miss the whole class altogether. 

Expanded Photographics (Images)

Expanded Photographics The results

Here are some examples of both my attempts at producing a time-lapse

1st Attempt

2nd Attempt

Expanded Photographics Research

During my research stage of this project I focussed heavily on videos that photographers have put together to show either how to do a time-lapse or an actual time-lapse of sorts..

Below is a tutorial video created by Preston Kanak. It outlines three different ways to create a day/night time-lapse.

The three options outlined in the video are

1. Aperture Priority and then de-flicker in post production

2. Shoot at least one shot during the day and one at night and then blend in post.

3. Ramp the exposure/iso

http://vimeo.com/68251055

Next I looked at what people were creating to help me get a sense of what my time-lapse could potentially look like. Below (yet again) are some examples of what people have done.

Houghton Bay - Day/Night Project

It's a bit rough at present but I'm still learning how to use the software. I'm confident that this will look and play much better than it currently is.

In the spirit of things, I also am going to print out two images. The first being a stacked image of the star trails, and the other being an image showing the bay throughout the period of the time-lapse. Sounds good yeah?

One project down... One more to go. Luckily it's still photography based.

^^late

Some Videos from Youtube.

Miniature Wellington - Tilt Shift Time Lapse - Jared Gray

StarGazer 5 - Spectacular Timelapse Night Skies in HD V10394 - JC Megabyte

Making Progress - Expanded Photographics

This was shot over a one hour period last night. I had intended to go for longer but me being the silly person I am forgot to use a fully charged battery. However - it's really interesting to note what's in this image. Having been shot over an hour there was quite a lot of movement on the ocean as well from planes and cars, not to mention the star movement itself. So I'm hoping that by extending the time period of the shoot to lets say 3-4 hours we will get a greater star trail as well as more additional light movement from boats and planes etc.

Star Trails (First Attempt)

Star Trails (First Attempt), a photo by Allan Scadden on Flickr.

Expanded Photographics!

Last night was clear enough for me to attempt to do this so I had a go....

It mostly worked out

Enough said really.

Testing Time-Lapse

Expanded Photographics Project 02

The Proposal

I'm a bit conflicted on this project so bare with me.

I'm keen on looking at weather patterns over a period of a week.

(revised) I will present a time-lapse of a typical day in Houghton Bay. Starting early in the morning and continuing into the evening. My aim is to show what happens during a day as well as during the evening. I will also stack my evening images together to create a star trail image as well as combining images throughout the timelapse into one composite image. Followed up by merging the two images together to show star trails during different periods of the day


(mine)              

 



Otherwise I thought going from what my original project was I could look at old wellington and new wellington. Showing change etc.

Example below
Town Hall from roughly the same perspective. (http://www.venueweb.co.nz/wcc_townhall/townhall_venues.htm)

      




Further detail.

Weather Patterns:

For this proposal I wish to explore how the weather changes over a period of a week. I can do this either by taking several photos throughout a day and create a time lapse or take one photo each day at the same time.

My goal would be to ultimately create either a time-lapse of the weather changing  or to create a photo that merges all the elements of a weeks worth of ever changing weather.

Location: Houghton Bay
Camera/Equipment: d5100, tripod, shutter-release (if I can get one on the weekend), Either using my 18-55mm or 50mm lens. Most likely with the 18mm as I can get more into the frame.
Time: Either from sunrise to sunset or in the afternoon depending on which one I do.


Historical Wellington:

For this proposal I wish to explore the change Wellington has gone through over a period of time. 50 years ago streets, buildings, etc were different to how they are today. It would be interesting to compare today's world to the past through photography.

My goal would be to create an image or series of images that have elements of both. Although I am unsure on the details of how to get the older images.

Expanded Photographics - Revisiting Research - Final Post

And finally it's time that I take you through some of the research that I looked into.

First up I want to break this down really into something nice and simple. What I looked at during my research was a combination of Films, Television Mini-Series, Games, and even a War Photographer.
Now without going into detail about each and every thing I'm going to give you the cliff notes on what I looked at. Specifically the style of portrayal.

Band of Brothers

Band of Brothers is an 11-Hour long Mini-Series set during World War II.
When I approached this piece of media I looked at two things in particular. Firstly, how the colours looked and secondly what sort of shots they used to portray intense action sequences. This was necessary for me to gauge what sort of shots I should be taking in my photo-set.

Findings:
I found that the colours they used in this series were very pale and dull. This was probably due to the fact that it is set during an older time period, while this remains true there was noticeable 'darkened' colours whenever Easy Company were in battle.

Most of the shots were fairly linear although when in battle the camera would shake quite a lot and as I was trying to produce a still I found that to bit less useful. However what I took from that was scenes that have a slight disposition tend to increase the drama.

The Pacific

The Pacific also echoed a lot of the same elements that were initially set up in Band of Brothers. So the colour pallet remained largely the same although there were more noticeable darker shots and one thing that I found that stood out in particular was the use of "simple colours" in the title card. Lots of black, pale background, red smudge.


Findings:
As stated the colours were largely the same aside from an increase in darker tones. This gave way to the idea that when depicting possible threats the use of black really makes the scene more intense and when using a vivid colour such as red it tends to suggest that death is imminent.

One thing I forgot to mention in the above info section of "BOB" was the use of perspective shots. This is really captivating as it gives you the scope of destruction that has occurred.


Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 is is a multi-platform video game that places gamers into a photorealistic war that is at best quite thrilling.

This game uses a wide variety of colour tones to depict certain scenes. While the use of blacks is common most of the daylight parts of the game have the same pale effect as the previous two Mini-Series above.

Findings:
Colours were of a wide variety. Lots of blacks and vivid colours such as red, blue, yellow.

Most of the gameplay has what I would call a 'motion camera' where when the player walks or runs the camera shakes and gives off that thrilling suspense that we've all come to know and love.


Robert Capa

Robert Capa was a Hungarian war photographer/photojournalist who covered five different wars, World War II, Spanish Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War. He is also the co-founder of Magnum Photos which is the first cooperative agency for worldwide freelance photographers.




Findings:

Unlike the above info sections with Robert Capa's work he shot in B/W. Not only does this scream 'Historical' but it really does give you that war vibe.

Some shots that I found were slightly blurred but others had that distinctive 'Heroic' shot
Case in point.












So judging from the research I summised that my shots needed to have a form of individuality to them. While I'm trying to create a narrative across frames it was important that each shot had the appropriate colour tone and camera angle/effect. I had already gathered that I would be using a lot of blacks but the use of another dominant colour was intriguing.  That and the use of B/W. Yes I certainly had to have it all. Why? Because it was important that I have a distinct look to this work.

Expanded Photographics - Building the Object.

When it came to outputting this project into a physical object I had planned initially on producing a canvas print of my photos. However when it came time to execute this it ultimately flopped it would have taken too long for the printers to produce. So I opted to instead get a laser printed copy of my canvas print to mount on some black card. I'd like to say this was a success but that would be lying. Because the image that was printed was too small and you couldn't see any of the necessary detail in the image. Bit of a drag.

So my last and final option was to make a pseudo booklet type of object. By printing the images individually and mounting on the black card I could bind them together to create a rough looking old-school photographic book. This turned out quite well.

So the following are some images showing my process on making said book, and some comparison shots between that and my original idea.

 

 

 

Expanded Photographics - Process

Let me talk a little about process. Throughout this whole project I've had a desire to recreate the past within the present environment of Wrights Hill Fortress. And while for the most part I believe I have achieved this goal - it wasn't all as straight forward as I would have hoped. In fact there were times when I felt like I had taken on too much and I should have opted to do something a little bit simpler. But yet here I am, writing this blog post feeling like I've honestly achieved something great. 

So let's recap this process. 

In the beginning I had this plan, and idea that seemed like it could work. After discussing it with my father he too thought it was a good idea to tackle the old fortress one more time.

After a group session with Matt and my peers I had walked away feeling good about the whole idea. However by that very weekend where I had planned on making the trip up to Wrights Hill a little Earthquake struck. Hampering my efforts I buckled down and began to rethink my whole strategy. 

Then came time to present my initial shots to my tutorial group. Oh joy! I didn't have any because of the Earthquake. So I quickly executed plan B. I stood up and talked about my intentions and showed some reference shots that would ultimately inform my final product. I also delved into talking about some alternative sources of inspiration such as Band of Brothers and The Pacific. 

Now came the hard part. 

We managed to get up to Wrights Hill and to my surprise there was little damage from the quake which meant that I could finally get busy. (Just a small FYI the camera I used was a Nikon d5100 with a mixture of a 50mm Lens and an 18mm-55mm Lens, with a tripod) I believe I have already posted up some of the shots I had taken. But please allow me to show you yet again the final results from that trip. 

These photos ultimately chosen because they each represented different aspects to Wrights Hill while retaining a sense of narrative. That narrative being that "Here soldiers once dwelled, preparing themselves for war, the lights flash red and they race to position"

Okay so I might have been able to word that better but forgive me, listening to some sad music does that to you.

These images have been influenced by a lot of media portrayal of war. This isn't meant to look happy. This is dark and gritty and is very much not a somber moment in our history. As we begin we have a nice dark natural colour tone. Lots of greens, grays, and yellows. As we move on so do the tones. The images become more intense and darker. Focussing on single colours to empathise "war" was my aim. Mostly yellows but that changes towards photo 04 where the yellow light turns red signaling that an attack could be immanent.

The images still get darker and progressively single out that one dominant colour. By the time we hit the final image a drastic change in the tone. We now have a B/W image. This was done for two reasons. Firstly to show that this was history, something that happened long ago and secondly to convey a sense of unknown. We see the cliché "light" but what happens next?  that is ultimately for you to decide. A little bit open ended I know but I think it adds a nice touch to the whole narrative.

Expanded Photographics - The set nears completion

Okay so I've made further adjustments after re-reading the brief. I think the following works quite well. But you will ultimately be the judge of that.

I will upload my research and other required info tomorrow before the image hand-in.  Right now I'm tired and need a nap before I tackle my other work.

. Expanded Photographics Photo Update

Nearly finished the sequence of photos.

I've had to rework the entire project to include a mixture of footprints and silhouette soldiers. So the aim is to really show Wrights Hill is different contexts while retaining that sense of this is the past and present combined.

I've got a pseudo storyboard which I'll upload tomorrow as I want to finish up this set.

I'll be printing these out on canvas which I'll get done tomorrow and hopefully have it ready in time for Thursday.

Here's a reworked image that includes some footprints

Some details about the image.

Grayscale
Footprints "walking towards the light"
Reason for this is  I wanted to give a sense that this was ultimately the questionable "fate" that awaited us during the time period where Wrights Hill was used to defend Wellington from oncoming threats.











As for the whole photoset I've really taken to giving each photo a sense of individuality. So there will be a mixture of colour tones.

For example.

 The natural colours have been darkens down to give more of a sense of "darkness" and a military feel. This was the base of operations the hub for all the work that the soldiers did. It only made sense to portray this in that manner.

 This photo is a good example of using silhouetted soldiers. This is set in the infinity tunnel which was originally going to have footprints however it felt empty which is the reason why this photo in particular has people in it. lots of blacks mixed in with the warm glow of the ceiling lights.

Death and destruction await us all. The red floor was actually done not by photoshop but by the natural light from what appeared to be a warning light. This is another example of using footprints.






I'm still working on the final photo which oddly enough is the second to last in the set. These photos that I've uploaded are still work in progress but once it is all finalised I will upload the full and proper set.

Update

Okay so for the past few days I have been quite sick. But that hasn't stopped me from doing me work.

So for Expanded Photographics here is a little photo update.

The initial concept was to represent the past through the use of bootprints and handprints however that turned out to be a bit of a disaster so I've slightly altered it to using silhouettes of soldiers. Even though my attitude towards that is still a bit negative I do think however that it does show a bit more substance to the whole narrative process. The above image hasn't got the silhouette soldier/s in it yet.  As for the output, I'm still deciding whether or not to use canvas or print these out as a book. Either way it'll get done over the weekend.


For Design Ethnography, I will email my tutor later tonight with my project ideas.

And finally Identity and the Internet, I will be in the tutorial tomorrow to work on my project and whatever else needs to get done. I will however  be leaving a bit early as I still am not well. But I'll talk my tutor about that.

Okay cool.

So not everything has gone to plan but I do believe I have salvaged something of this wreck of a week.

Expanded Photographics - Project 01

The photoshoot up at wrights hill went alright. However there were a few complications with what I had set out to achieve so I believe I might have to modify my initial concept. Instead of focussing on handprints etc I might have to tell the narrative through the architecture and some other bits and bobs that are up there. So hopefully it'll work out. I might need to confer with my tutor on this though. However - what I can do is show you some shots.

For reference the original concept was to "merge" the past with the present through details such as bootprints, handprints etc. This was to allow for the history to really show and give people an idea of what this place is about.  However because of the condition of tunnels this wasn't ultimately viable and the shots didn't detail those prints. In fact you can't even see them.

As for now I'm still going through the photos seeing what can be done and once I've done that I'll put up a post amending the concept and detailing my plans for the physical object.

Thanks.