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.

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.