Cleand-Up Photos and Bronica Attempt 2

Firstly, I've cleaned up some of the photos I uploaded in a somewhat unfinished state last time and am uploading the finished versions on here now. I wanted to keep the grain but removed all the smaller pieces of dust and scratches, as well as some light leaks and slightly adjusted the levels to turn some of the darker grey tones into true blacks. The images below are the results of this.

Secondly, my second attempt with the Bronica was for the most part unsuccessful. With these photos I attempted to shoot in natural light rather than using the unpredictable flash, still using a high iso film and using close-ups of the body. Unfortunately I achieved only 3 images, none of which were particularly astounding, these can be seen below. The rest of the images were very heavily under-exposed, leading to almost black images which could not be salvaged, despite numerous attempts to fix them in Photoshop. However, I still wish to continue to use the Bronica and high ISO film as the first images were such a success in their texture and grain. My next step is to re-shoot after re-educating and re-acquainting myself with the lightmeter so as to get more correctly exposed images. I think the difficulty I have been having is that I still want the images to be very dim and 'Henson-esque', which is a difficult way to light photos.

In the meantime I still need to shoot some more 'cut-up' images of the body with my polaroid camera and then intend to move onto using black and white 3200 iso and eventually chocolate 80 iso film. Here's the latest in the set below.

Bill Henson and The Bronica

After having written my essay on the work of Bill Henson I decided to attempt to use some of the techniques which he employed in my own work, more specifically, the way in which he controls light and uses a high ISO film to acheive particular skin-tones and textures. The large grain of the ISO is particularly effective when the subject is light with very low-key lighting and so I used a 3200 ISO Ilford Delta film and a single Metz flash and set the Bronica to an apperture between f/13 and f/22, depending on the image. Below is an example of Henson's work.

I chose to work in black and white for convenience rather than for a particular atmosphere, however the images did, for the most part, work as I had hoped they would. The large grain adds a distinct and almost palpable texture to the skin and the low-key lighting, in the first image below atleast, has worked well. The images do require some cleaning-up, as there is a lot of dust and some small scratches which will either have to be fixed with the clone-tool in Photoshop or the negatives will have to be scanned in again, using the digital-ice filter.I have also left the right-hand edge on these images, whilst it will most likely not be left on for the final images I thought it added a grittier feel, as well as the scratches and large grain, there is something almost dirty about the photographs which I had wanted to capture, following the work of Bellmer. The close framing of the work was something I decided on so as to photograph around the body, using the edges of the image to cut up the body.

Something I particularly struggled with in these images was the control of the flash, in some images the lighting worked as I had hoped however in some the image appears much brighter than I had expected, this may be to do with the controls I had the flash set to, not having used this equipment before. In the future I intend to preview the images and use off-camera flashes or natural light rather than using a sync-cord for the Metz flash.

The image below is another example of my inexperience with this camera and film-type, either when loading the film, taking it out or processing it the film was partially exposed to the light, leading to the fogging of the negatives and the white patches which are visible on the edges of the photograph below. This is one reason why I intend to re-shoot some of the images from this roll, as well as to become more familiar with using the Bronica.

Bellmer and the Polaroid 403R

I recently revisited the work of an artist by the name of Hans Bellmer. Bellmer's work deals with adolescence and deformity, as with the previous post I suppose the more general heading is 'Deformation of Beauty' (which can also be linked to Bill Henson, see later post for more of this). Bellmer took shop mannequins and began to reconfigure them using the simple ball and socket joints so as to create figures which had a kind of 'ruined innocence' about them, as can be seen in the images below, the moving around of the body parts into new arrangements deforms the typical concept of the beautiful and healthy body into something more resembling the work of Francis Bacon or H R Giger. The expressions and the way in which the pieces were photographed originally suggests a particularly sinister theme, perhaps more like rape victims, which give as unsettling an heir as the maquettes of the Brothers Quay (still from the film, The Street of Crocodiles, furthest below).

Taking into consideration Bellmer's work and combining it with my initial concept of dividing the body using the framing of the image I took out my Polaroid passport camera and began to do just that. The first image is my first attempt as it appeared on the original polaroid image. Though it illustrates my point I felt that by lining up the edges of the limbs etc. in the image I could more clearly express my intentions and influences, which is why the lower image has been doctored in Photoshop. Lighting when using this camera for this kind of work becomes more important and, as the flash provided with the camera only lights for the passport-portrait style image I intend to experiment with off-camera slaveflashes so as to use the light more expressively. If this is successful I also plan to shoot some shots with Polaroid chocolate film, which has a large grain and gives brown-sepia toned images which would further resemble early Bellmer photographs. I also left the edges of the polaroid image on rather than peeling them off so as to further the idea of the rotting or decayed texture, particularly when compared to the smooth and even skin tones within the image.