Alternative image making
- Tami
- Nov 26, 2020
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 3, 2020
Thursday 19th November 2020
The objectives of this workshop were to :
Understand depth of field
Use aperture to control what is in focus
Use the photocopier as a scanner of images
Think about 'altered state'
I really enjoyed this workshop and found it fun to experiment. I like photography and that was the path that I had chosen to enter the course with but I moved my interest to film as I thought I would be better with that, my photographs never have a theme or motivation for them, I usually take landscape photographs and that is usually because I like the scene but that was all so I thought it may be better to do film, however neither of them will be what I am doing in future, or at least not the main focus, and that is because I do not want to continue with CMPT related things. However, I will do research on some courses.\
"The BA Film and Television Production is a dynamic production-focussed course for aspiring filmmakers. The skills you acquire will allow you to work in specialist and broad-based media roles. You'll produce a wide range of film and television productions, creating a portfolio of moving image work spanning diverse genres and formats including short fiction film, documentary and multi-camera TV studio production alongside constantly changing new and emerging practice such as client-led, online and interactive content.
This long-established course has a strong employability and industry focus, consistently supporting and developing student filmmakers to produce work of the highest standard. In 2019 our students were nominated for two Royal Television Society awards for their graduation films, going on to win the factual (documentary film) category."
This is interesting because for my final project I want to go with the documentary route and the fact that this is focused on production is also interesting because this is what I had thought the CMPT course would be about because I failed to do enough research maybe. And this course is at the London Met so it is not too far. However, I don't think that I am good at the practical elements. My tutor recommended doing a "studies" course since I seem to like research, however I don't actually like history but I did some research on it anyway.
This course is also at London Metropolitan University because I already started to research it.
"You'll gain a strong understanding of the film and television industry and its significance across the globe. Through practical learning you'll develop an array of transferrable skills, preparing you for a huge choice of roles in the cultural industries or for further study.
The course shares a common first year with our Film and Television Production BA, which covers essential knowledge of the film and television industry and basic audio-visual skills. You'll specialise in academic, historical and cultural analysis of film and television. You will be assessed through a variety of coursework and in-class assignments. These will include essay plans, summaries, presentations, textual analysis, essays and screenplays."
This course seems even more interesting and I think I like it a bit more than the other one and it seems to be a mixture of that one and general studies. However as I already said, I don't like history that much. Additionally, I am actually tired of essays and school in general.
That is it for researching on further education in this blog post but I should also consider both study and employment so employment is what I need to work on researching again later.
Back to the actual workshop and not the results from a tutorial, I tried to detail the things I did and the little changes I made for each picture. I actually don't know where the pictures are right now but if you can see them then I found them on my laptop.
I first took a picture with f/11 and shutter speed of 1/2 (ISO 200) but the picture came out very shaky.
I then took a picture with f/2.8 and SS 1/320 (ISO 2000) very not shaky, and the background was slightly blurred.
Next, I took a picture with the same setting but of some clays. The foreground was clear while the background was blurred, I did not like the effect created. The ISO was 3200.
Next, f/2.8, SS 1/60 (ISO 2500). I tried to improve the image and it gave a nice effect and I quite liked it.
f/4.0, SS 1/320 (ISO 3200). The result was a very dark image. I took the same picture but with different settings (f/2.8, SS 1/60) and I preferred the dark image though there was no effect on the focus, it was an overhead picture.
The whole process was very technical and very interesting but was slightly/very hard to understand.
f/2.8, SS 1/60 (ISO 1600). The effect of this was that the immediate foreground and the background were blurred but the middle was not fully blurred.
I liked the setting a lot and moved to capture more complex pieces, there was an improvement of positioning to find the perfect one. I didn't manually change the settings, they were auto changed because of the light.
I then experimented with using the scanner to capture images/scenes. It came out exactly as expected but I should have fully utilised the space.
It is below, I guess you have to download it or something.
I tried to experiment by turning the camera upside down with the settings but found nothing interesting.
I attempted to take no-context pictures with the settings. I realised that the less I put into the scene/frame, the better it was or at least the more I liked the pictures. I also zoomed in for most of the pictures, I preferred that to moving closer, if you use zoom, the depth of field gets narrower.
f2.8, SS 1/30 (IS0 3200). I did a thing and used the space in my pen as a keyhole/viewfinder thing.
Some extra randoms :
After completing this workshop, I researched some photographers that worked with aperture and focus in order to look at "real-world"/industry application and I came across the work of Jim Richardson.
I find his work very fascinating as the images seem to tell a story but as usual, I can't quite figure out what it is. As part of my research, I read the article 'Out of Focus—On Purpose'.
Richardson notes that taking pictures "out of focus takes work". During the workshop I certainly noticed this, while it was fun experimenting with different aperture settings, it was quite difficult to really get the hang of it. He talks about things that can be intentionally done to "limit the depth of field" in pictures in order to make the backgrounds nice and soft, leaving just the subject in focus and standing out dramatically from its surroundings" and I find the information very useful. However, I prefer to take pictures in the moment and as they come, I guess that's why his pictures look like how they do and my mine look like how they are. These things take work.
I also came across the work of Rita Kochmarjova who is a professional animal photographer. A lot of her photographs really work with a narrow depth of field and really put the animals in focus. They sort of give the images a surreal-type of look, at least in my opinion. The photographs also really make you smile.
Comments