Final Post

Everything's been handed in now so, until the viva, I suppose that this project is over. I do intend to carry some ideas through to my next project but in the meantime I think its time to evaluate this project, exploring what it is I have learned and what it is I would improve upon, were I given the time.

Firstly, learning outcomes. I think I have actually learnt quite a lot from this project, chiefly is the experience that I gained from using the Bronica, the first time I've used a 'proper' medium format camera (as opposed to the Holga). Early on I decided to use high-iso film and that has been a choice that has paid off. Not only did the fast iso allow me to capture images in particularly low-lighting situations, it gave me the grain, (which was the real reason for my choice), and gave a particularly good texture to skin-tones which would otherwise have appeared a little plain. As well as this I feel much more confident in using Photoshop as a tool to lightly manipulate images, such as using the levels etc. to make images a little clearer, as well as more major work with things like the selection tool, which allowed me to shift about the various quadrants of my Polaroid images.

If I had more time for this project I would have liked to further refine my final images, either choosing to shoot solely in black and white or colour, most likely black and white as I felt that these images captured a more distilled sense of 'looking' at a specific subject. I would also have liked to pick a single final strand to follow, whether to leave clues of identity through small idiosyncratic details in minor clothing or to completely erase any clues as to the identity of the person and have the study of their body being the sole focus I am still unsure.

Until the next project when I hope to further pursue these avenues of investigation, Goodbye.

Darkroom Prints

After having bought some 10x8 pearl photographic paper (resin-coated, not fibre-based), I headed down to the darkroom with negatives in hand. The image I printed was one that's already been scanned in and uploaded here before, so I didn't see the need to scan in and upload the image again, I did however, include some darkroom test-strips (below).

The paper I used was Ilford MGRC Cooltone Pearl, I chose this particular paper because I didn't want to use glossy paper for the low-contrast, high-grain skintones that I'd captured. I felt that the pearl paper really did improve the feel and quality of the images. Though I had scanned the negatives in digitally before I feel that there's always something lacking in the digital prints and copies that the analogue prints have, there's a solidness and the satisfying tangible quality that digital never seems to capture.

Ideally I would have blown these images up to life-size too, had I the time and photographic paper to do so. I don't feel that the 10x8 size quite does them justice but for the time being it is a reasonable substitute.

Full Scale Colour Print

I have just the one full-scale print, which is A1 in size, done on the slightly older (and much cheaper!) printer in the print room. Whilst I was advised that a file size of around 100mb is the ideal for an A1 print it was less of an issue with my Polaroid scans as no matter what the quality of the file, the image can only reproduce the original quality of the Polaroid. As a result of this I soldiered on with my 16mb file and produced a single print. Due to visual acuity, the larger an image is blown up, the further we stand from it to be able to see it all, and therefore the lower the image quality you can get away with, which definitley worked in my favour.

I haven't bothered to reproduce the print here as it would be a photograph of a much larger print and, other than for the sake of scale, there would be so many changes in its appearance by the time it arrived on my blog that it would not be worth it. I have included the original image below, though its been posted on my blog before I thought it would be worth showing it again anyway.

The printer, as I have said before, is particularly old so the results were not completely perfect, darker areas tended to have white lines running vertically down them and the skintones, as the printer was not attached to a calibration unit, have come out rather more pink than the original. If I were to print again using the same machine the skintones could quite easily be corrected manually, reducing the red values of the image with Photoshop before printing, however, the white lines would still be very apparent and so I did not pursue any further prints with this printer.

Belated Video Stills Post 3

This is the third and final video which I took, following the previous post on the multi-angle video.

The video differs from the previous example as it is not all the same object, shot from various view-points, instead it is more a montage over four different panes or streams of video, the main focus was the ultra-macro closeness of each shot, particularly the opening four shots of skin, this is further intensified by the HD quality of the video. The HD aspect of the video is also the reason I cannot upload it to Youtube again, and so there are only the stills below.

Again I decided to use the empty panes as part of my idea, the videos often overlap, 'cascade'- where the same shot follows at a slightly delayed rate, and occasionally occupy only one quarter of the screen, leaving three quarters empty.

To achieve the extreme close-ups with the macro I taped a 6mm focal distance macro lens (designed for the holga) over the lens of the camera. This means that many of the shots tended to hover in and out of focus and gave a very shallow depth of field.

Belated Video Stills Post 2

This second video was taken after the 'Bellmer Legs' shoot. It plays with an idea which I borroed from the music video 'The Bucket' by Kings of Leon. I particularly wanted to experiment with the multi-angle, multi-view type idea, incorporating four different shots of the same object into a single frame.

The subject of the video is my face, at less than flattering angles but it puts the idea across. Each shot was taken at a different distance and angle and they all almost meet up in the centre. The changing-scale of the facial features was a particularly interesting facet as the distortion and mild sense of disorientation it creates was a key idea.

The black panes in the video were also quite interesting, the images below are only stills as the video could not be uploaded to Youtube due to it being shot in HD- the uploading times are appaulingly slow. In the video the panels appear and disappear, leaving blank space which was interesting in and of itself, and could also be crossed-over to my Polaroid work, using the passport 4-shooter.

Belated Video and Stills Post 1

This post is long-overdue, the videos concerned having been made and edited atleast a month ago, there are more to follow but I felt it would have been a bit lengthy to include all of them in this single post (not to mention they were all made at different times- they will be uploaded chronologically).

The first one is a result of my earlier posts on Hans Bellmer, based on his sculpture wherein two pairs of mannequin's legs are joined together by a ball-and-socket joint at the waist (below). My video work for this mostly revolves around the 'has and has not' a crotch element, wherein the legs finish before they reach the crotch, but the joining of them using the mirroring technique creates a v-shaped pseudo-crotch. Other than this the video itself was quite simple to make, it was shot in HD on the Kodak Zi8 in ambient, natural light and the slightly low-budget 'mirror' effect was added in using Final Cut. The shoes and socks were designed to mimic Bellmer's dolls and also give an inkling of information about the identity of the model.

Polaroids in Colour and Black and White

I took a few more images using a different model with my Polaroid passport camera, following the style of my previous images, cutting up the body, and doing minimal photoshop work to re-arrange the images so that the lines meet-up better. Again, keeping the skin-tones particularly smooth and softened was important whilst maintaining the rough contrasting frame.

The first few were in colour, finishing off the pack of film I had in previously, the second series, which can be seen further down the page, were taken with a high-iso black and white film. I had hoped that, with using the 3000 iso black and white film that they would yeild somewhat grainier results, more like my previous Bronica images, unfortunately this was not the case, not that I was particulary disappointed with the images I did manage to capture. The lack of large-grain despite the fast film speed may be due to the limited size of the images, 31/4" x 41/4", and the process of making the Polaroid is more or less a contact-print, rather than an enlargement as you would get from a conventional film.

All these images will be included in my selection of 10 final Polaroid images which I intend to enlarge in prints upto A1 size for display (whilst I may blow-up a couple of images as examples, the cost of enlarging and printing all the images without an actual venue to display them is a little excessive).