DSDN144 Project 3 "Light" Final Images

Here is my final set of images for the DSDN144 Project "Light", titled "Edible Abstractions"

For “Edible Abstractions” my aim was to use light and shadow to abstract four different items of food such that their images no longer reflected their original functions.

The choice to use food objects came from the reactions I had when walking through a supermarket past the fresh produce and bakery sections. I found that when looking at the produce my first and only reaction was one of hunger and how I could transform the ingredients before me into a tasty meal, and thought that anyone who viewed images of food would think the same. Consequently I decided to attempt to transform or abstract these ingredients so that not only their images were changed but a viewers reaction to them.

These images are all abstracted using different lighting situations, presenting each object with a select combination of coloured lighting, low exposure, shadowing and long exposures to achieve abstractions of transformations to varying ends. This series also used principals and concepts  from Sian Bonnell’s series “Scenic Cookery” which attempted to capture a similar aesthetic. 

I feel the series is relatively successful in regards to abstracting the objects, though in attempting to transform the objects into something different I found that simply modifying the lighting was alone not enough for an effective transformation, but putting a transformed object into a related situation (for example,  if it were a piece of fruit transformed into a building – placing it with a city as a backdrop) would have strengthened the transformation and thus the image much better.

Shoots for DSDN144 "Light"

Here are some of the images from my first shoot for the DSDN144 Project "Light".

My aim with this project is to use light and shadow to abstract food items and ingredients so that their images no longer reflected their original functions.

The choice to use food objects came from the reactions I had when walking through a supermarket past the fresh produce and bakery sections. I found that when looking at the produce my first and only reaction was one of hunger and how I could transform the ingredients before me into a tasty meal, and thought that anyone who viewed images of food would think the same. Consequently I want to attempt transforming or abstracting these ingredients so that not only their images were changed but a viewers reaction to them.

My intention is to present each object with a combination of coloured lighting, low exposure, shadowing and long exposures to achieve abstractions of transformations to varying ends. I really like the images  from Sian Bonnell’s series “Scenic Cookery”, the narrative of which is very similar to the concept I'm trying to achieve, and a lot of the techniques she has used in her images I will try to use for images of my own.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/liamgilbertsondesign/sets/72157631832465029/ 

For my first shoot, I tried using both natural lighting and low-level studio lighting for my images. For the broccoli photos I found that the images where I tried transforming the heads of broccoli into a forest worked best with the natural lighting, as a forest would usually be lit by natural lighting so it worked well for my transformation. The photos which worked best for this were also the ones where I only caught small parts of each piece of broccoli in the shot, as that was how trees would often be photographed in nature if you were in a forest, and it didn't immediately give away that it was broccoli in the photographs.

The low lighting for the broccoli I felt worked quite well, to me the shots looked quite eerie and organic, maybe like you might see in a scene out of Alien where some creature had created a nest. I also think that it was best to keep the lighting the same way without applying any colour filters to the light or the lens so that it would maintain that organic feeling.

The low-light photo of  the egg came out really well, though I originally intended it to look like lunar eclipse, but because of the kind of glass that I had it on also refracted the light a lot it didn't come out with the ring of light quite as I had intended it to.

As for the fennel bulb photographs, I feel there is still work to be done. I like how the lighting outlines parts of the object in a 2-dimensional way so that it doesn't necessarily give away what the object is, and I feel like it's a kind of alien spaceship that just landed, or like a agricultural water-tank at night, though I still want to investigate more angles of this setup. I think the lighting for it seems to be okay though.

For my second shoot, I like the angles I took for the fennel photos, and I thought that setting the image up so that it only caught certain parts of the fennel bulb abstracted the bulb even further, which I liked.

For the second attempt at abstracting the fennel bulb (after hacking the inside of it out and gluing it to retain it's shape) I thought it looked quite like a heart, so I tinted it red to look like one, which I felt worked really well. But because it lacked context, I decided to mask it onto a human. I only wanted the outline of a person just enough so that the position and colour of the fennel bulb indicated that it was a heart. The result of this was what I felt was the strongest image of my set yet.

As I needed another abstraction of an egg, I decided this time to open up the egg so that I could abstract the internals. I pulled out the yolk and fashioned an egg so that I could shine a light up through it and somehow suspend the yolk in the middle so that it was lit from below. Unfortunately I found that the egg yolk wasn't translucent enough when it was cooked to let the light through, so I instead cut the yolk into pieces and photographed it from above so that it would retain the same shape. This I felt worked really well, though my depth of field was too low to get both the egg and the shell in focus.

For my third shoot, I intended to clean up the technical mistakes that I had from the first two shoots, and involve another fruit; the capsicum.

Ever since I was a child, I've always wanted to turn capsicums into a traffic light. I mean, just look at the colours of them. I couldn't help myself. So even if it came out as an image that didn't work so well for my set, I've at least satisfied one of my childhood dreams.

I was tempted to photoshop the traffic light image onto an actual traffic light pole, but I thought it was obvious enough from the image alone that it was what I had intended, and maybe putting the image into a context would have detracted from the image itself so I decided against it.

I found that the image I had done with the egg with the lighting from below had worked really well, so I decided to do the same thing for the seed-head of a capsicum. I felt this abstraction worked really well, as it was really hard to work out what it was for many people, and it looked like so many different things as well, like a brain for example.

Project 2 Shoot 1

Here are the images from the first shoot for DSDN144 Project 2 - Time.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/liamgilbertsondesign/sets/72157631741711550

So far I have only composed one of the sets of images into a final composition, though it was enough to show me the general aesthetic of the kind of composition I have attempted to make. I found that the image painted on the canvas did not show enough of a progression through the painting from start to finish, and was not particularly interesting as a composition on it's own which I thought was because the painting did not have enough layers to mix together. I did find however that the progression of time was evident in the surroundings of the painting, with the movement of the artist and the paint on the palette. I want to do another shoot that includes both this progression of time with the artist and their tools, and also a painting that has more layers.

DSDN144 Project 2 Precedents

Here are a couple of time lapse videos I found that look like good examples of the process I want to use for my shoots. Bear in mind that my intention is not to create a time-lapse video per se but simply to follow the process of making one and superimpose all of the frames shot into one image.

This is a time-lapse of a Colorado artist Jeff Jagunich, who does a lot of these kind of videos for his illustrations and paintings. This is the right idea for the techniques that I want to use, although I imagine I'll have to set both the camera and the canvas up as stationary, otherwise the final image will just be a blur. I do think that the type of image he is drawing would work really well because of all the colours - through the blending I would do in photoshop the colours will hopefully mix together so that the image would look different from the final product.

Another video of an artist drawing for a time-lapse, this time by Alex Young. This would be an interesting composition to see done with the technique I intend to use, as I think it would show the progression from start to finish very well with the opacity of the lines drawn toward the end. I do really want to add a lot of colour to the pictures though, as I think they would make for a better photo.

I added this video because i think that it would work really well if all the frames for the video were superimposed down to one image, as you could see the movement of both the stars and the camera, and the blending of dawn, night, and dusk all together. I am interested to see what it might look like if I choose to make the camera move at a steady rate throughout the composition.

DSDN144 "Time" Final Images

Here are my final images for the DSDN144 Project "Time"

For “En Process” my motivation was to capture the creative processes of an artist while making a composition such that we can identify particular techniques and processes used in the making of a final product, and the change in time over it’s creation – in this case, the graffiti-ing of the walls of my home.

For this concept I chose the art of graffiti because in the making of a graffiti piece there are often many layers in the building up of a finished piece, and often many mistakes that you would not usually see that are shown using this method.  Firstly a time-lapse is set up in front of a bare wall before any painting has been done, and is set to take photos as the piece is progressively finished. Then the photos are superimposed into one composition to effectively capture the artwork “en process”.

These images are an attempt to identify the techniques and the process of the artwork; the darker and fuller colours show where the piece was started, and both the final layers and the mistakes will appear as ghostly transparencies. They are such that the final images are not a snapshot of a final product, but more a hybridised reflection of the initial and final points, and the time and techniques used in between.

Shoot 2 Proposal

The idea behind this project is to capture the creative processes of an artist while making a composition such that we can identify particular techniques and processes used in the making of a final product, and the change in time over it’s creation.

For this concept I want to photograph artwork that has many layers that make up a composition, so that in the final image creates a new and different composition that relates to the final product, but does not exactly mirror it.  Firstly a time-lapse would be set up in front of a bare wall before any painting has been done, and is set to take photos as the piece is progressively finished. Then the photos are superimposed into one composition to effectively capture the artwork “en process”.

These idea is to identify the techniques and the process of the artwork; the darker and fuller colours will hopefully show where the piece was started, and both the final layers and the mistakes will appear as ghostly transparencies. The final images will hopefully not be a snapshot of a final product, but more a hybridised reflection of the initial and final points, and the time and techniques used in between.

World from the Water Tower

World from the Water Tower, a photo by Liam Gilbertson on Flickr.

This is my polarised panoramic shot from atop the Maungaraki Water Tower for DSDN144 Digital Photographics. Suprisingly as nice as it was having a clear day to do the panoramic shot, I think it may well have been easier to make a world out of a photo that had clouds in it! Maybe next time :)

DSDN144 Project 1 Shoot 1

Here is the link to the first shoot I did for DSDN144 Project 1. I've never used flickr before so please bear with me while I find the best way to show these photos on my blog :)

DSDN144 Project 1 Shoot 1, a set on Flickr.

DSDN144 Project 1 Proposal

For my first project for DSDN144 Digital Photographics, I have chosn to investigate and photograph elements of retirement homes, in particular Parkwood Retirement Home in Waikanae.

To me, retirement homes house an innate sense of mortality overcast with a distinctive facade of happiness; my grandad has always made reference to the birds in the birdcage outside his window stating that all who find themselves within the walls of the rest home are trapped and simply waiting to die. Everyone I have met there is under no illusion as to the intention of the facility - to house and oversee the elderly until their time has come and to provide every assistance required to get there, yet both the people and the place provide an image of escapism. Exotic trees in white plastic pots and colourful birds line the hallways of cells, cuisine in white plastic trays speak of faraway countries never to be seen again, yet oddly what would seem like a hellish tragedy to the young is a sacred sanctuary to the old.

It is my intention to understand and portray these notions within my photography, to show from the eyes of our elders what it means to be old and the space manufactured to aid them comfortably into the next life.

Panoramic Photo

Here is the link for my panoramic photo, taken from the top of the Maungaraki Water Tower