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).

Bronica Film Roll 3

Continuing with the Bronica and High-ISO film vein of my project I took another roll of film. The results from this were much better than my previous roll, in which I only managed to take away 3 successful photographs, and I managed to successfully take a whole roll of film with near-correctly exposed images. Though some of the images were under-exposed this was in fact intentional, attempting to get some more softly-lit 'dim' images.

I felt that these images worked quite well because the tension in the body of the model helps to add a further texture to the already clearly apparent large grain. Again these images were taken with Ilford Delta 3200 film and processed in the darkroom.

Whilst I am more or less certain that my final images will now be Polaroids, albeit scanned in and blown up for final prints, I felt that using the Bronica was something which I particularly wanted to explore and experiment with. Though they have not yielded any final images they have taught me how to use this camera as well as how to use more basic Photoshop tools to improve the images, such as the Levels tool. I was also particularly pleased that the images had the kind of gritty, grainy texture which I had hoped they would, and which cannot easily be created in Photoshop, atleast, not as convincingly as a photograph taken on film.

Book Mock-Ups

Though I have been leaning more towards life-size prints I haven't as yet completely ruled out the possibility of a book as a means to display my images. I began to mock up some book-covers as possible solutions to this project, below are shown several possible layouts and colour schemes. The book would be comprised of a series of between ten and twenty images, and an introduction, detailing the intentions and briefly mentioning the methods by which I created these images.

I particularly like this one above, I feel the colours and simple layout tie in well with the images whilst not upstaging them. The scanned-in textured piece of paper which is taken from the piece of the polaroid which is usually discarded (and contains instructions and temperature development times) however, slightly detracts from the overall sleek look of the design. I may remove this in later layouts, though I found its absence made the design feel a little barren and flat. I wanted the pink lettering to tie in with the fleshy pink tones of the image and the dried caustic paste at the top of the frame without looking too feminine, the off-white background helps with this and offers a slightly less stark and 'rosy' feel.

This second design is not too dissimilar to the first, however the pink has been replaced by two shades of grey and the scanned-in piece, image and blurb have been re-arranged, whilst the portion devoted to the image and text works better the scanned piece had to be rotated, meaning that the text no longer faces the right way.

The blue in this layout is a little stronger than my previous colour schemes, as well as this the entire front cover is now an image, though, with enough empty space on the image the title and author labels fit in easily. The back panel is similar to the first design however the scanned-in panel is now on the left rather than the right. I liked the idea of incorporating the title into the image however I'm not sure that the images is 'clean enough' to be a cover image, what with the rough edging of the frame that I left on the original. This could easily be removed however the image itself then lacks the contrast of texture between the rough frame and the smooth skintones.

While the layout on this design is the same as the first the colour is radically different, the deep red is far too strong and tends to detract from the image, which should be the main focus of the cover, equally, the white lettering looks too officious and does not have the conotations of some of the more reserved colour schemes.

I've also taken some more photographs in a similar style, using the Polaroid 403r, experimenting with some black and white film. Unfortunately I am away from my scanner at the moment, but will scan in and upload them in a later blog post. I have also taken more photographs with the Bronica and intend to develop atleast two more films once I get back to uni and can access the darkroom, again these will be updated in a later post.

Large Scale Prints

I had originally envisioned the outcome of my project as being a book of some sort, however, recently I have been leaning more towards a series of prints as the final display for the project.

I intend for the prints to be life-sized, rather than the original polaroid images and so with this in mind I began to experiment with large-format prints. The image below shows an A1, near life-size print in relation to myself. The image was printed using a poster-printer which is fast apporaching 20 years old, as you can see it only prints in black and white and its tonal range is limited, hence why these prints are solely for scale.

Though these images will be printed much larger than the original polaroids I still intend to use the Polaroid 403r passport camera as it is the most consistent and efficient, if not the most cost-effective, means of creating these images.

The idea behind a life-size scale is to create a more visceral engagement with the viewer, for the apparent deformity of the model to be more tangible than the original 31/4" x 41/4" images could be.