Elsa Ruffieux

I also decided to do a little history research and also few tips from a book found on the library website:

Over the summer I have tried my best to learn more about cyanotype. I really wanted to try by myself and it workout quite well. I have created a small amount of work using mainly plants. I  took note each time to remember what work and what didn’t and what I would like to try next.

14.05.2020

As part of the module, we had to arrange a meeting with Elishba to fill part of our critical evaluation. I had mine online today. It was very insightful and help me plan the writing of my critical report.

Here are my notes:

Opportunity are through networking

(Especially in photography)

-> describe how you obtained the opportunity -> recommendation -> Cultural Capital: when you know the right people to get the right opportunity.

Mentioned that the work you did required a level of self-confidence. It also ended up in the newspaper. Also mentioned that it was a good experience. You delivered on time which also gave you professionalism.  

Apply to one art fair and were about to apply to another one, to try and gain further experience and meet people from the industry. Talk about the impact of COVID-19 on the creative industry and how it made me feel.

Reflect on the alternative assessment we were given ad mention how it is pushing you to do further research but without any contact in the industry. Talk about the good and bad side of the situation and having to work from home.

Can reach to other photographers through LinkedIn and Instagram to talk about their work and make connection. Showing what you are up to (photography wise) can also bring you attention and show that you are committed to what you are doing. Show any personal project you might be working on and you could also join photography related group chat.

Also the possibility to start a course through LinkedIn learning (as the University gives you full access to it)

You can talk about the freelance talks you went to and the Ideas’ café and that it taught you (or at least try) essential business skills and how it gave me a insight to the creative community.

Career Planning

-> Talk about future goals and plans you might have (working on a personal project or taking a course can be mentioned there). This time we are living in is all about self development. 

-> Can look up Virtual internship

11.05.2020

I made my little book! They are tiny and look a bit ridiculous but I didn’t have a great printer so I used what I could. At first, I made one black and white and one colour to have a better idea of what they would look like. I really enjoyed making them. I found this part much more fun. I prefer the colour one. I like to believe I remember in black and white (it’s much more romantic) but I don’t think I do. Sometimes, I would even say that I remember moments with specific colour. I have one specific memory from when I was very young, of coloured windows from a memory link to my father’s death and at first I linked it to the fact that maybe I’d remembered those windows because someone told me about them, but no one could remember coloured windows and I know it might sound weird because it was a few weeks before I turned 3 but I can remember those coloured window... 

Well anyway, I think I will go with the coloured degradation I have done last. It is to me, what looks best once the book is “mounted”. Also, I feel like it brings the memory alive a little bit more than the black and white one.

I then applied all the changes to the other images I selected. Oh and once I build my first book, I really like the concertina so I have to say that I ejected the idea of making a proper book. This idea works best to see this fading away that I am trying to highlight.

07.05.2020

After last week’s work review with Rachel, Andre and Gavin which was full of suggestions, I took a little break off the project to finish and submit my written assignments for the other module which were due yesterday. This small break also gave me the time to reflect on what to do next for this project. I was given the following point to think about over the review:

People in the photograph, keep them or not

Concertina or actual book?

Colour or black and white?

1. So, when it comes to people appearing on my images, I decided to keep them. I like this idea that it was a scene we were looking at together as it was the case. Most photo were taken at a specific moment when we were there watching it and often commenting on it. I was gifted with a boyfriend who always ask many, many, many questions and of course one of them was why do I always try to get strangers in my images which always makes me laugh because I have absolutely no idea, I said it was to make the image more alive.

2. For the concertina or book matter, I am still not quite sure yet. I had decided from the start that it would be a concertina, it made sense in my head because that how I’ve first imagined it. I am not against the idea of a book, but I feel like it might change my project a bit too much into something different. I would definitely try it but I also keep in mind that a concertina can also be open and look at in the same way as a book. I like the idea of being able to open completely the concertina on a table to see each changes without having to turn the pages of a book. I would be the kind of person to keep going back to the previous page to compare the changes. Maybe trying to print a mini book to see it printed would help.

3. For the last matter which is colour or black and white, I still don’t know... I am going to do the degradation in colour today and compare it. I wish I could just print it... I’ll see if I can but the printer here is terrible and really doesn’t work so well.

27.04.2020

Last week, I sent my first “book example” to Andre to get a review. I found it very helpful. I also send it to Denise and tried to showed it to people in my house. I find it difficult not being able to just show to one of your friend randomly at Uni when you meet them. After receiving a similar feedback about the changes of colours in my work, I decided to start from a black and white image. It’s true that when I was planning on doing it on the photocopier, I had tried in colour too and didn’t see any meaning behind it. Also I had realised even before I showed it to other people that the transition from colour to black and white was very distracting and I remember working quite hard on photoshop to make it less obvious. It’s only after Andre asked me if the colour where important that I realise that no, they weren’t.

I think the project is coming together slowly and I’ll be finished on time. I have restarted the whole process of degrading the images (again). I felt it was necessary. I have probably done it about four or five time after thinking I had found the right way to do it.

I have a tendency to either worry that my transitions are too slow or too quick and I think that’s why I keep going back to it. I feel like by doing it digitally, I risk having a very quick process or a much longer one on which I have a lot of control over which is something I didn’t have when I was doing it on the photocopier. With the photocopy process, even so I was pressing the button to start the photocopy, I didn’t have any control on what was going to happen to the image. In a way, it only made me an observer. Now, with this other technic, I have more control over it. I am the one making the decision which is much more scarier to me. I found it risky, more control means more responsibility. If I mess up, it’s on me not the computer.

Oh, I also came across something that reminded me of my project and maybe unconsciously, it might have started from there. I was going over an old lecture from earlier this year to write my essay for ACP module, and while listening to the lecture and going over the power point this just pop up.

Other book layout that I have tried

22.04.2020

Over the last few days, I have been working to create my books on indesign. After creating the first and finding a away to degrade the photographs by using different technics which I have mentioned in my previous post. I started to import the images to Indesign to make my book but one small issue started to appear: each images had reacted differently to the degrading I had done to them. Some were loosing their quality much quicker than others and vice versa which unless I am able to explain it (which right now I can’t, because I don’t have an actual reason behind it) might be confusing. I need to either:

not care about it (which I found very difficult) and also I would need to find a reason why I did this.

Or I do try to match everything and see what happens (but then I would also need to find a reason why I did it this way).

15th April 2020

I have created 3 different “test” book to se how I would slowly laying them out. I have talked about doing a concertina but I have also tried to use other layout to see if it would work.

This means that I have also find a way to degrade my images. I actually use different method to make it completely disappear. I first used the technic that Andre showed me which was in the a way to slowly reduced the amount of colours in the photograph (Image->mode->indexed colours) I slowly reduced the amount of colours by half each time (256 - 128 - 64 - 32 - 16 - 9) using the local selective mode. After being stop at number there and not being able to reduced the quality more, I pretended that I wanted to export each image as a PNG (File->export->save for web) and kept deleting the last few colours left on the image until I am left with just the black and the white (saving the image each after deleting each colour).

Once I did that I was still left with information on my image so I open it on Lightroom and tried to make it disappeared completely.

01.04.2020

Going over my notebook and my blog I realised that I never really talk about what my idea was. At first, I wanted to work using photocopy and photocopy the same image over and over to slowly making it fade away. I had done a little concertina already as a test which worked quite well, I just needed to have a more concrete idea of what image I wanted to use.

This is where It became a bit more complicated and that’s probably when I usually start to procrastinate a little thinking that the idea is going to jump at me from no where which lets be honest never happens. But by looking at other people’s work, doing some self-reflections and looking at what I have done before, I realised that I could do, not only one little concertina but a couple, to create a sort of “memory box”. The idea to do it manually is still much more appealing than on my computer but I guess I don’t really have a choice this time. I was looking at some books yesterday on www.photobookstore.co.uk and I just found it so interesting to watch the small video of the different books they have that I think it triggered my brain a little.

I had already done some visual research earlier in the module and stuck them in a small sketchbook to be able to go back to it if needed. These research had more to do with the design of the book than the project itself.

I had already got the paper for the cover of the books and a biding kit and I am still hoping to use it later when we get access to the facilities at Uni.

I had chosen the paper above as I thought it would work well with this idea of memories because of how the paper looks old and and thick and you can find those tried flower fixed in the paper. They can’t move they are almost stuck in time. I’ll keep it safe until I can do the rest at school.

Let’s go back to the actual idea because I think I got myself distracted there. The memory box stay in my head for a while and I still think it is a good idea but I needed to get more specific. And then, I received a letter from my boyfriend (I know that sounds completely out of context) but we have been exchanging letter through the post to exchange memories we have got from time spent together since we’ve met. We had noticed that time was flying by and that sometimes unless one of us would remind the other of a specific time, we had a tendency to forget special moments spent together. This is why I thought I could choose images that reminds me of time spent with him (knowing that we are in a long distance relationship so compare to most couple, we don’t spend that much time together). I was also reminded lately by Miro that the only time I would actually touched my camera without being necessarily ask by clients or Uni was if I was with Aron and he said something like my inspiration was link to love in some way, whether it’s true or not doesn’t truly matter (at least not right now) but I was thinking of highlighting those memories moment thought what ever images I capture over the different trip I made with Aron since I have met him. I truly hope this was understandable!

30.03.2020

Original Image:

After being simply copy and paste a couple of time: Number 15 Not much changes and in the file info, no difference in the size of the file.

So after talking with Andre, I went onto Photoshop and try a different way. I took a screen shot of everything to remember the technic in case that’s what I would like to use for the final images. The “Colors” could only be between 9 and 256 which made a huge different but I wanted a gradual change so I slowly lower the amount of colours in the image from the maximum to the minimum as you can see on the few tests below. It worked quite well to be fair but I was stuck at some point. I talked about it over our last tutorial with Andre and Ollie and they both gave me ideas on how to take it further. 

Local “selective” / Colors: 256 (original)

Local “selective” / Colors: 128

Local “selective” / Colors: 69

Local “selective” / Colors: 40

Local “selective” / Colors: 20

Local “selective” / Colors: 10

Local “adaptive” / Colors: 9  I tried to change local “selective” to “adaptive” but it didn’t do any thing different.

I couldn’t go any lower using this technic so I tried a different way which was to try and export the photo as a PNG 8 and change the settings from there.

It worked too but it still wasn’t as much as I wanted to so I need to keep searching.

Andre’s lesson - 19.03.2020

Communicate, do not just decorate (There is always exception!) Place is precious / having empty space isn’t a bad thing. Thing about a written story, if too much info is given, it can be confusing.

Fonts No more than 2 families

Typefaces No more than 2 too BOTH FONTS AND TYPEFACES NEED TO BE CONSISTENT

Font Size Don’t change font size -> use italic, upper case to achieve a different weighting (not font size) -> title don’t need to be massive (First page usually contains the photographer’s name or the title) YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND YOUR AUDIENCE!

Terminology -> Tracking (correct space in between letter)

Leading (spaces between each lines)

Width of Text 40-80 characters, including spaces 65 characters for a single column

Alignment Use different alignment

Colour (pick them for a reason) Need to make sense -> part of the idea/concept

Positive & Negative Space Make use if your compositional skills

Type as an image Understanding conventions means you can break them! Do thing on purpose/ be decisive! Understand your audience! 

I was asked by my boyfriend’s mum to photograph some socks for a project she was working on. It was a bit last minutes so all I had with me was my camera. I shot the product using what I had at the time which was natural light. It taught me how to make the best of what I had. I waited until daylight light arrived and shot everything close to a window, sometime using a white curtain to diffuse the light. The shooting part all together took me an hour and a half which is probably quite long but I just wanted to make sure I had everything I needed. There were two pairs of socks plus a setting including someone’s feet in the frame. I photographed those socks from each possible side. I probably spent too much time shooting but I first tested the light and from where I wanted to take my shots to create something consistent. Also I knew I wouldn’t be able to reshoot if I didn’t have what I needed as I was in the Netherlands and would be able to take the products back with me to England.

I was asked to produced those photographs quite quickly as it was something they wanted to sell for Valentines’s day. I don’t have the email asking me from the images as my boyfriend asked me if I could do it on the phone and it’s only when I went to pick up the socks that I talked with his mum to be able to get a sense of what she wanted. She showed me an example online and asked me to do something similar. It’s only later on when I send her my work that I have screenshot of each emails we exchange.

Once I sent her the images, she used them in an online article about it and also on the website they were selling them on. One of the photo was also used in an article from a newspaper called “Netheralndsdagblad”.

It took me quite a long time to process the images. I wasn’t really confident about it as I am far from a master at photoshop and even I had already done similar things in the past, I wasn’t quite sure which technic to use to do it. I tried different one, asking Denise on how she would do it. I once I found the right way to do it it went quite quickly and was able to finish them. I shot everything on Tuesday the 28th of January, processed the files on the 29th and 30th and sent them on the 30th in the evening.

I will had all the emails in my submission folder.

The address of the website the socks can be purchased from is the following: https://www.intimitijd.nl/a-58782624/romantiek/sekssokken-2-paar/#description (I did not take the first 2 images, they were added later on).

All together I have spent half an hour testing and shooting plus 2 hours of postproduction for two following night, which makes 5 hours and a half.

These are the two example I was given when I asked about what they wanted:

Book Works Studio - 24.02.2020

I took the book workshop and went to the Book Works Studio to learn how to build my own book from scratch. It was really interested and I do intend on creating my own book in a similar way, at least using my hands. Here are the two books each of us had to make. I also had a few images taken at the studio of book example for inspiration.

-> There is a side of the paper that bend more easily. Grain parallel to the spine = easier to bend.

-> Book binding might be different when we already have something printed on our paper, ask reflection.

1. Soft Cover Book

-> Line the paper up to start with a straight age (! Make sure you hold your papers all together and then using the folding instrument (white sort of stick) to fold it properly. Do the same for the cover. (The more pages you’ve got the more section you’ll get (multi binding book) -> Fold each section together not each page separately. Indesign set it up automatically (also making a mockup would help knowing) BUT a double spread might require to fold pages each page separately.

-> Crop marks help (3mm bleed to make sure we don’t get white edge.

-> Hold inside paper + Cover and make the hole at 45 degrees. Use linen string to make the binding. Enter middle on either side ( make sure there is a little bit of the string that stay out on the inside. (refers to the lovely drawing below)

-> Once the book is bind properly, we need to cut the trim line off. Use a triangular ruler to make sure we cut our paper straight. Also we use little paper guide that we created to help us. (image below)

2. Hard Cover Book

For the hard cover, we have to fold each section separately. Then we have to sew all the sections together (attach them one by one).

Use the same sort of paper help used on the soft cover book. and also below you’ll find the paper that was given to you at the British Library by one of their member of Staff. which cover most of the things we’ve done for the hard cover book:

Book Example (for Inspiration)