Long exposure experiments

Nude and Naked

When I saw this task, I thought ‘Whaaaat? There’s no way I’m doing that!’.

When I thought about it a bit more, I felt like nude and naked could be anything. Not just completely naked. When I see a photo of a part of someone’s body and can’t see any clothes, it seems as though they have no clothes on anyway. I decided to take pictures of parts of mine, close ups, so that you couldn’t see any other part of me.

After taking these photos and looking at them, I felt like I’d been exposed even though I was no where near naked. I am not used to people seeing me so close up even if it is only my hands and feet.

I love the detail in the photos of how you can see each crease in the skin and the colours of the veins and every single hair.

‘A View From Inside’

This weeks task was to take intimate photographs of someone close to us. I chose my partner. He has a birth mark on his chest that is very unique. I feel like this is very personal to me.

Stranger

This weeks task was to photograph a stranger without showing them the photos.

I asked a friend to ask one of his friends if they’d mind if I could photograph them. She kindly let me so I asked her a few questions about herself and between the questions I took some photos. Here are the photos that I didn’t show to her:

 

After taking these photos, I decided to show her what was being taken, which made her more conscious of her appearance and enabled her to look how she wanted in the photos. I took a couple more and these were the ones that came from that.

In the last few images, you can see how much more comfortable she is.

Work, Rest and Play

Ok, so we all know what these are and we know which ones we prefer.

But what happens when we add ‘digital’ to the beginning of each? What does that mean?

Lets go to Wiki for some definitions.

Digital: Digital usually refers to a data technology that uses discrete (discontinuous) values, in contrast to analog.

I have no idea what that means but I do know that is has something to do with technology.

I pulled out a bit more information just to see if I can get a better understanding of the term ‘digital’.

A digital system^[1] is a data technology that uses discrete (discontinuous) values. By contrast, non-digital (or analog) systems use a continuous range of values to represent information. Although digital representations are discrete, the information represented can be either discrete, such as numbers, letters or icons, or continuous, such as sounds, images, and other measurements of continuous systems.

The word digital comes from the same source as the word digit and digitus (the Latin word for finger), as fingers are used for discrete counting. It is most commonly used in computing and electronics, especially where real-world information is converted to binary numeric form as in digital audio and digital photography.

dig·it·al/ˈdijitl/

Adjective:

Relating to or using signals or information represented by discrete values (digits) of a physical quantity, such as voltage or magnetic…: “digital TV” Involving or relating to the use of computer technology: “the digital revolution”.

After reading this, I felt like I understood the term a lot better.

Now lets look at some more definitions of work rest and play.

Work:

Work may refer to:

Human labor

• Employment, a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee
• House work, cleaning the rooms and furnishings of a home
• Labor (economics), measure of the work done by human beings
• Manual labour, physical work done by people
• Wage labour, in which a worker sells their labor and an employer buys it
• Work (project management), the effort applied to produce a deliverable or accomplish a task
• Working the system, using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system in order, instead, to manipulate the system for a desired outcome

Rest:

Rest may refer to:

• Leisure
• Human relaxation
• Sleep

Play:

Play can take the form of improvisation or pretend, performance, mimicry, games, sports, and thrill-seeking, such as extreme or dangerous sports (sky-diving, high-speed racing, etc.). Researchers Roger Caillois (Man, Play and Games) and Stephen Nachmanovitch (Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art) ^[5] expand on these concepts in their works.

Structured play has clearly defined goals and rules; when this is the case, such play is called a “game.” Other play is unstructured, without rules. Both types of play promote adaptive behaviors and mental states of happiness.

Often play with rules will take place within specific play spaces, such as sports fields where, for example, players kick a ball in a certain direction and push opponents out of their way as they do so. While appropriate within the play space, these same behaviors might be inappropriate or even illegal outside the playfield.^[6]

The National Institute for Play describes seven play types^[7]:

1. Attunement, which establishes a connection, such as between newborn and mother.
2. Body, in which an infant explores the ways in which his or her body works and interacts with the world, such as making funny sounds or discovering what happens in a fall.
3. Object, such as playing with toys, banging pots and pans, handling physical things in ways that use curiosity.
4. Social, play which involves others in activities such as tumbling, making faces, and building connections with another child or group of children.
5. Imaginative (also called “pretend” or “fantasy”), in which a child invents scenarios from his or her imagination and acts within them as a form of play, such as princess or pirate play.
6. Narrative (or storytelling), the play of learning and language that develops intellect, such as a parent reading aloud to a child, or a child retelling the story in his or her own words.
7. Transformative (or integrative), by which one plays with imagination to transcend what is known in the current state, to create a higher state. For example, a person might experiment to find a new way to use a musical instrument, thereby taking that form of music to a higher plane; or, as Einstein was known to do, a person might wonder about things which are not yet known and play with unproven ideas as a bridge to the discovery of new knowledge.

Old and New

Old Media

Old media are things that have been around for years such as charcoal, lead pencils, newspapers, magazines, books, radio, and television. These have been around for a long period of time and some of them will become traditional media. New media a few years ago, with things like the internet have now become old media because they have now been around for a good while.

New Media

New media are things that have been released recently and that are coming soon. Such as the latest technology on smart phones or augmented reality (things that tell you about the places around you just by pointing a camera at it), or face recognition. In a few years, these will become old media too.

Traditional Media

Traditional media is media that is still being used by people these days or changed so that it has a modern day spin on it such as this digital map  on this website.

Evaluation for part 2

For my second part of the project, I decided to use only one of the scarves as the other scarves were either too plain or too colourful. At first, I didn’t know what I wanted my final image to be so I was contemplating using different types of ways to photograph them, getting too caught up on putting all three scarves into one photograph.

I couldn’t find a good solution to this as they didn’t go well together, just like in part one of the task where we did the group shoot. I decided to pick Michelle Whites scarf because it seemed the most visually pleasing. I love the dark brown colours and how vintage-like it looked.

After choosing this one scarf, I didn’t know how to photograph it, I had many different ideas coming to my head but none of them seemed to work fully. I own a wooden chess board which has similar colours to the scarf and though they would look good together if the vibrance was changed a bit.

First, I creased up the scarf a bit to give the final photo more texture, then placed it flat of the floor and placed the chess board on top of it with the chess pieces on top and the chess box beside it. I did this to give it some depth and something more to look at in the photo.

I am pleased with the final picture I took, I edited the chess board to make it less vibrant and the scarf to make it brighter and stand out more. If I could do this project again, I would actually take photos of my other ideas instead of just jumping into one and using that as my final piece.

Final Image – Scarf Shoot

This is my final image of the scarf shoot.I chose to use Michelle White’s scarf because I liked the theme of darker, earthy colours. I am pleased with my final photo, I think it goes really well and ties in with the chess board, that I used, for more than one reason. The board and box is made out of wood and the scarf had a wood type theme, with the bird who lives in trees. I love the composition of how the chess board is the more insignificant object in the photo as it it coming out of the frame and is less vibrant than the bird. The bird is the centre of attention and leads your eye over to the chess board.

Photos for part 2

Here are some of the pictures I took and had to choose from.

Scarf shoot Ideas

For my scarf project of photographing a scarf on its own, I do have a few ideas that I think would work well. As I only need one image, I only want to use one scarf to not complicate things for myself. I really like the colours on Michelle Whites scarf, the dark, earthy type of look.

I think I could do something with nature with this scarf like hanging it near a tree and letting the wind blow it to make it look like the bird on it is about to fly away.

It also has a really vintage look which I could play with, like using a handbag as a prop, tipping it on its side and letting things fall out of it, including the scarf.

I would like to use a mannequin if I could get hold of one, taking the photo by pinning the scarf to it in a dress form, although that might be cheating as we arent allowed models.