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FINAL MAJOR PROJECT: Further night shooting - 17/12/2017

The use of a flash at night seems like the obvious thing to do, but so far I had been reluctant on doing so. Mainly due to my subject being so far away, requiring focal lengths of 400mm and higher. But, armed with my 24-105mm lens and my flashgun, I took to the streets of Central London to how I could combine artificial light, and a shorter focal length. I did not encounter many phone towers around the area in which I was shooting - Shoreditch and ‘The City’. So I resorted to capturing photos of CCTV cameras, which are frequent in this part of Central London. I set my flash to some of the highest settings it could reach, and started capturing zoomed in shots of surveillance technology I encountered and whatever phone towers presented themselves along the way.

What is most noticeable in comparison to the previous images I have captured is the background, which in this case, is a deep black, caused by the use of the flashgun. All the artificial light illuminates what is in the immediate foreground, bringing out the stark, often white tones of the CCTV cameras and deepening the already dark abyss of the night sky. I purposefully tried to rid the background of any buildings or lights, with intentions to create a 100% black background, that almost looks like it was added in Photoshop. These are not objects that can suitably be shot in a studio, so taking them out of their surrounding context and adding a studio-like background brings focus onto the idle subject. There is one image where the lights of the building I the background were unavoidable, so they appear as an obscure formation, almost like water droplets on the image. Because of the white and grey tones of the technology (CCTV cameras and phone towers alike), the contrast of it is very strong against such a dark background. Often the black CCTV cameras were covered in Bird poo, and this was well showcased by the illumination of the flash gun.

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Night Shooting: 13/12/2017 

My first attempt at a night shoot. There were a range of difficulties I faced - both practically and photographically. For one, the temperature on a December night dips below 0, so despite my best attempts to wrap up I found myself rushing shots using the tripod. Also the wind picked up by night, so my flimsy tripod did not always do the trick, so I had to put it on its lowest setting, being most stable, and shield it using my body and jacket. When its night time it is quite hard to see the technology on top of structures, as the dark of the night sky does a great job of obscuring them from view. Of course as it is night, and despite having a tripod, I had to shoot at a slightly higher ISO to compensate for the lack of light and the wind blowing my equipment, so the image quality is slightly more grainy than the daytime.

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Cropping: 13/12/2017

So at 800mm without a tripod in the daytime I am surprised at how much detail can be taken from a shot when cropped a few times. My camera with such a huge lens on is like holding a sniper rifle due to its weight and its length but with a combination of a fairly high ISO and a steady posture it is possible to get fairly sharp images. Here are different crops of the same image of a mobile tower located on top of a flat near my house in Wembley. As my idea with some of the images was to zoom in really close, there are images that I will have to crop in order to do so, as my 800mm length is not enough in some cases (believe it or not). I have been shooting with a tripod later on in the day when the light is not great but it may be worth me using a tripod in the height of the daytime also, to make sure all images are as sharp as possible. Also, trying to get as close as possible to the subject - finding alternative angles when the easy option is not that close. What does not help also is that the minimum aperture I can shoot with the converter attached is f11, so I am shooting at around f13 instead of wide open to help sharpen the image quality.

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Further shooting: 13/12/2017

While shooting this content, the temperature was verging on zero degrees with ice covering the roads after the snow had began to freeze so it was tempting to just pack up and go somewhere warm. I ended up travelling to West London, near Paddington station and the canals, where there lay some interesting architectural features, followed by the masts, towers, antennas and dishes occupying their usual space on top of the buildings. There was a hospital, a few construction sites and some post-modern looking council flats that took up the skyline.

Due to the telephoto’s 600-800mm focal length, the images taken appear almost flat, compared to the warped features a wider angle would bring if taken closer up to the subject. I managed to find some high-points around Paddington with some multistory carparks and raised platforms helping me find a gain a more parallel view with my subject. I have tried to vary my approach when including the buildings the technology is based upon, with some of the shots cropping off any visual indicator of the structure below and others showing that they are on the roof of a flat for example. 

The top image is probably the closest visual representation I have found of what I hope my installation to become. A raised scaffolding platform with a few masts and antennas attached to the sides and the photographic/video content placed upon it. After a brief browse of the web I have found that if I can not afford the scaffolding or do not manage to find any, there are hire services that people can use to lease the equipment for a certain amount of time. The same goes for video monitors for artists too, with companies leasing old and new style monitors. This will come into consideration with the costings spreadsheet too, as if I do purchase it, it will most likely be one of the most expensive elements of the installation. 

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1: Aesthetic themes and colour (Cyberpunk vs Dieselpunk) - 8/12/2017

Two cinematic themes that interest me due to their interesting takes on utopia and dystopia - often topics with a heavy relation to where technology will take us. The two films I have chosen as examples are Cyberpunk ‘Ghost in the Shell’ and Dieselpunk ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’. The former focuses on a ‘hi-tech, low life’ society where neon lights flood the sky scraper jammed night-scape in a futuristic tone. The latter revolves around a more diesel/industrial, muted colour, often daytime and post-apocalytptic scene. The difference in colour is evident with Cyberpunk often being based in a night-time, ‘tech-noir’ setting aided by the illumination of artificially clean and sterile blue light. While Dieselpunk tends to display a more grey-ed out, sepia toned feel with a more industrial filled backdrop. 

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Focal length and ‘visual style’: 8/12/2017

I have taken two sample photographs for a brief study on success. The one is of the technical devices close-up anatomy of wires I am basing my project around, with the other being a wider view of many of the devices planted on top of a building. I am trying to establish which style is more successful in conveying my project identity and if not, how they can work together to bring their own qualities as pairs, or in sections. Both shot on DSLR, with 500-800mm telephoto lens capabilities.

Top image (Zoomed-in): 

Initially my ideas were to capture the anatomy of this obscure technology, in the eyes of a normal person without any special access to them. These masts are out of public reach for safety reasons due to the harmful, high EMF (electromagnetic frequency) and also because they operate best at high points, so the waves transmitted and received are blocked by objects such as buildings as least as possible. This would require me to get close up photographically, via long telephoto lenses that isolate my subject, and help me study their details which is something I have not been able to do in first person. When looking at the wires and cables attached to these information machines, it is not just the hardware you are seeing, but a means for your own and millions of peoples most intimate of conversations, photographs, and even encrypted bank passwords to be transferred. Like the smart-phone, these machines act as an extension of our mind, giving us the wireless digital means of communication. A study of their technological anatomy resembles a study of our own biological one. The wires as their circulatory system, the receivers nodes as their ears and the transmitter nodes as their voices. Like any technology though, they act as a double-edged sword with the ability not only to help us, but to harm us. You can not directly take a photograph of the EMF they emit as it is invisible to humans, resulting in the study of their index, their hardware and their software. I want with these images to show off the stark nature of what is often so far from our vision, a distant technological silhouette that yet is so prominent in ur everyday lives.

Bottom image (zoomed-out): 

As a contrast, this style of photograph resembles what we are more used to seeing as the general public. A distant array of white/grey geometric-shaped masts and dishes that generally do not know much about. We do not know how they work, instead having confidence simply in the fact that they DO work, enabling us a service of digital communication. In a city like London which is so hectic on the ground, it is often easy to forget to look up and realise how much technology lays above the buildings. For the intentions of my project, I do not think this visual style can work as a stand-alone, like the above image does, as it is too similar to what we are able to see with the naked eye. Also it doesn’t illustrate the anatomy of the technology in the same way the zoomed-in visual style does. But, the value of these images is that if they were to be displayed without textual context then a viewer would be able to discover the theme of the project quicker, without less of a challenge as it resembles what the general viewer is used to. On the other hand though, they  may mislead the viewer into architectural themes, or office themes - if they were to go by this image example alone. The value in images like this may lay in its function to assist the more zoomed-in ones in giving some clarification of what the case study actually is - avoiding too much confusion and ambiguity. Also they illustrate how they work with their immediate environment, giving viewers cues to look up more and study them for themselves once they have encountered my work.

Conclusion:

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Installation Sketches: 4/12/2017

I have indeed jumped the gun in terms of the development process, by skipping right to the end and planning out in total how I see my installation to be. With an elaborate ‘sculpture-like’ piece. What is the most important factor for me if I am going to go down this route is that the photography I include in the installation does not get shut to the side, or suffocated by the other functions. The photography needs to work either as centre piece to the work, or work evenly as effective as the other aspects, so it is vital that it forms the basis of he installation, for the rest of it to follow up from. 

The three main elements to he installation draft consist of visual, audio and physical. Visual, being the imagery displayed on screens (typeset to be decided) in whatever way I decided to showcase them. Audio, being the reactive audio that resembles that of electricity and technology, that could also effect the imagery on the screens with changes in is intensity. Physical, the inclusion of a performance model for opening night, hooked up to the rest of the installation in some way (my thinking at the moment is wired up). I know for a fact that the audio/visual strategy will definitely be part of my final piece and as for the physical, that is an ambitious addition I would like to incorporate, and hope to have there. But, over the next few months, If I find he performance aspect not to be of value to the project, then it will be scrapped. My goal now is to justify its inclusion within the installation and weigh up what it brings to it, and what it may also take away from it.

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Iris Van Herpen: 4/12/2017

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT - Scaffolding and Mobile Masts: 4/12/2017

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Connecting up a human: 4/12/2017

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Daniel Shea/Hotshoe Magazine: 4/12/2017

Daniel Shea is a photographer who has been on my radar over the last few weeks. After encountering his work firstly on Instagram and then in this edition of Hotshot magazine, I am keen on his way of taking photographs. In this series he documents a certain area in a similar way In which I work, with a telephoto highlighting aspects of the area from the people, to the birds, to the machinery and the buildings. As well as straight documenting the surroundings he has also created edits where images are merged together and so on.

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Hacienda Manchester branding: 4/12/2017

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Gran Canaria: 19/11/2017

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Further shooting: 17/11/2017

So going back out with the telephoto lens I decided to try and gain a vantage point higher up this was one of the things I wanted to do post first shoot. The Tate Modern’s viewing platform which was built a few years ago served as an ideal 360 degree high-point for me to look around central London, helped out by the high focal length of the 600m lens. Being at a similar or higher height to that of the masts I could expose additional detail that I might not have seen being on ground level, looking up at the structures. Details like the amount of wiring actually involved in the powering of the masts and the types of foundations they are built upon. Also I was able to capture a more uniform, flat perspective of the masts rather than from below. I am definitely going to scout some more high-points in London (especially central) as a healthy mixture of masts shot from different angles will be essential for my project.

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Gran Canaria: 15/11/2017

I recently took a 4 day vacation to the Canary Islands and despite the location not being a part of what I want to base my final project on, it was an opportunity for some shot experimentation. Out there, were Maspalomas sand dunes, accompanied by a nudist section of the beach which I happened to encounter. The shots involve the winding landscapes and the individuals using the beach for many reasons with some people socialising with fellow nudist, whom they may have never met, and others going to selected parts of the dunes to urinate. I would like to add that I was not nude during my journey through this section of the beach.

People, in their rawest form are all naked, yet the clothes shielding their posterior seem like they are permenantly attached to their skin. It has been drilled into our minds socially that to be naked is unacceptable despite us being born that way and it being a completely natural doing. Whilst photographing these people I thought back to the scenes in the Matrix movies where it was revealed that the humans were being used as batteries to fuel the machines that dominated the world in its dystopian future. The wires and cables all hooked into the backs, necks and skulls of the enslaved human batteries, whilst they lay submerged within a vat of goo-like fluid, with their minds experiencing only a digital reality which they perceived to be a real one. I feel humanity in a similar way is starting to become enslaved by technology, sold to us based on convenience but aiding in taking away freedoms such as privacy and freedom of speech with censorship. There are those pushing for Virtual Reality within industries such as gaming, to craft their own digital world as a form of escapism. Just like in the Matrix movie, there were those that knew they were enslaved to the system, yet chose to live in it opposed to the hardships of real life. The pureness of a naked body (without any form of sexuality involved upon viewing it) is the purest form of the human aesthetic, yet its the least seen for most of us. As I have plans to involve a performance model into my proposed installation, the eerie surroundings and stark naked bodies of the images I captured on the dunes serve a purpose for me.

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Experimentation: 11/11/2017

FINAL MAJOR PROJECT 1 - Artist inspiration - Nam June Paik: 10/11/2017

Whenever I have used CRT monitors in my work I can not help but think back to Paik’s works of the last century, where he helped usher in a new type of art form, video. His lo-fi video installation work shone the light on emerging technology at the time and changed our perceptions of visual image culture, helping us realise that it is an adaptable, malleable thing. One aspect of his work that is fairly inaccessible unless seen through recordings was the sound element the CRT monitors themselves emitted. These screens make a buzzing noise when on that brings nostalgia to my mind, making me instantly think back to times when I was young and Cathode Ray Tube televisions were the norm in everyone’s household. These monitors usually had a large cube back to house all of the wiring and of course the light tubes that produced the image on the screen.