UNIT 1 - MORPH

For my fourth photo shoot I wanted to continue with dynamic depiction of motion and time typical of Ernst Haas but in a new different way. I was inspired by the work Metamorphosis of the cinematographer Stefan Nitoslawski which does long exposure portraits in studio. He uses time as a shape force - which in his photographs shifts the shape of the body - something that intrigued me a lot during this unit.

Meta-morphosis, Stefan Nitoslawski, 2007

I wanted to try and recreate the work of this artist and so I tried to understand what emotions he wanted to achieve whit his works. To achieve those animal and supernatural body shapes I need to use slow shutter speeds in studios with a low key setup. The motion of the subject sculpts and defines the resulting form and therefore defines the emotions that the composition can cause. The subjects appear to be in conflict with their body and in many of their pictures they appear wanting to escape their inner self and their limits.

From sketchbook

From my sketchbook

On my sketchbook above I summarised the artist work and planned the studio photo shoot. Obtaining similar looking pictures required careful control of many things: light intensity and position, model choreography, shutters speed, ISO settings, aperture, etc. In the first attempts the compositions where underexposed and the anatomy of the model was too clearly visible. Blurring was also minimal.

Increasing light intensity and using slower shutter speed started producing decent pictures. In the next first attempts the blurs were too many or the body of the model stays immobile for too much time.

In the and final attempts I managed to find balance between motion and subject standing still. I started trying different poses and moves. I also chose which anatomic parts to clearly show to cause different emotions. I decided to keep the subject not moving for a short time during the exposure showing his backbone, his hands or his ribs. The conflictual poses give an angry, animal, anxious look to the picture. The poses where the model appears scratching himself are the most effective.

In my best edits to achieve natural skin colour I lowered the temperature and increased the greens using Lightroom. I also increased the clarity and lowered the saturation.

In my next and final photo shoots I will finally move on from the depiction of motion and I will start to capture old, abandoned objects and places to investigate the relationship between time, people, places and objects. I would like to photograph abandoned places and objects to create connections with the past and to portray time like an unstoppable degrading force. I will therefore use a new artist as inspiration for the final photo shoots of this unit.

UNIT 1 - LOOP

A GIF

Thinking about new ways to photograph and capture time flowing I decided to experiment with a different image format, called GIF. The GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is a bitmap type of image that was first introduced in 1987. It's better known for being used as animated pictures, that have a limited color range (only 256 colors) and that support a maximum of 8 bit per pixel. With the GIF I wanted to capture looping animations and cyclic action that could seamlessly continue for an infinite time. On my sketchbook I jotted down any ideas of actions and movements to capture:

Ideas on my sketchbook

To create GIF's I used an app on the iPhone called DSCO which takes videos of maximum 8 seconds and automatically creates the GIF. To capture cyclic actions  in most of my attempts I used a tripod to eliminate camera movement and shake during the video-take. By doing that the background is fixed in position and doesn't move when the animation of the GIF restarts. Firtsly I captured one of my friends doing actions back and forward to create an animation without any perceptible stutter.

In this first attempt the background stays in a fixed position, but there is still some animation stutter due to the fact that she doesn't return to the original position with her head.

The result here is better. The background stays fixed and there is no animation stutter. I used the filters of the app to give a vintage look to the image.

In this two images Giuseppe is moving from one side to the other of the frame. As each animations ends he continuously renters from the other side for an indefinite amount of time. Due to the compression and the low frame rate of the video choose by the app the moving subject appears blurred and not in focus.

In this picture I captured a cyclic motion - the spinning bike tire - that  seems to never stop. This picture required many attempts due to the difficulty in obtaining a non stuttering animation. 

The concept behind this picture is the same. The pages of the book infinitely flow creating a surreal effect that suggest the book is made of infinite pages. 

At home I continued to look for everyday objects and movements I could use to create GIF and I also tried to shoot some of them without tripod trying not to move the camera too much:

UNIT 1 - BLURRED

For my third photo shoot I wanted to capture time and its relationship with motion in a different way. Inspired by Haas pioneering photography and by the Futurism art movement I wanted to move on form the static depiction of motion and start representing movement and periods of time using long exposures and slow shutter speed. By doing that I wanted to create abstract blurs  that give a sensation of speed, dynamism, energy, noise, force, motion and time flowing.

From my sketchbook

Choosing the locations for my third photoshoot I decided to capture large groups of people moving. Therefore I've decided to shoot at the West Quay shopping centre in Southampton and in the busy streets of central London.

From my sketchbook

My first shooting location was the shopping centre in Southampton. I fixed my camera with the Gorilla Pod (flexible tripod) at the first floor directed to the busy stairs. I used long exposure - ranging from 1 to 5 seconds of shutter speed - to capture the flow of people going up and down stairs. To achieve correct exposure I used ISO 200 setting and the narrowest aperture possible (f 22). Shooting in RAW meant that modifying exposure could be easy and without any substantial image-quality degradation. In post production on Lightroom on my best picture I used VSCO 07 filters, specifically the Kodak 50 Ultra II to recreate the popping colors and contrasty look typical of Haas' photos of the time.

In these pictures the blurs give a sensation of noise, caos and busyness. The flow of people in discrete directions is emphasized by the fixed background in focus. That's achieved using a tripod, which eliminates camera shake during the exposition. The sharp blur of people descending the stairs gives a strong sense of speed and dynamism.

Contact Sheet

For my second location I went in the busy streets of London in Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus. The pictures I've taken in Southampton, mainly due to the overall focus of the composition, don't look abstract or painting-like. Because of that in London I experimented with the second technique of Ernst Haas' photos to capture motion in an abstract way: moving the camera during exposure. Therefore I decided to try not using the tripod to achieve the desired effect. In the first pictures I simply started capturing cars or people crossing the streets. Using long exposure - and balancing ISOs and aperture - the subjects leave a light and ghostly blur:

I then moved in front of the underground entrance to capture a more dense group of people moving. Using long exposure and camera shake  I was able to create an abstract composition, where different blur and different shapes of different colors sinuously mix. I think I achieved the effect desired: a painting-like abstract photo that depicts shifting time and continuos motion. To recreate the colors of Ernst Haas' photos I used Kodak filters with popping colors and high contrast in Lightroom, here too.

I then continued photographing people walking in front of stores and in the underground using this time the tripod and experimenting with different shutters speeds. As the light began to diminish and the sun started sunsetting the lights of cars and buses began producing light trails in the pictures, another famous effect achievable with long exposure photography.

Going back home I took this picture in the underground. The strong leading lines of the composition, the symmetry and the depth emphasize the sense of motion, speed and dynamism of the blurred motion. These characteristics are also emphasized by the fixed and in focus background and location.

Contact Sheet

In my next photoshoot I want to apply blurred motion to portraits and landscape photograph. I would like to experiment with other types of image formats (like GIFs) to capture flowing times in different times. I'm also starting to think about ways to depict the relationship we have with time through object and places, that could enable connections with the past, the old and the forgotten.

UNIT 1 - FUTURISM

For my third photo shoot which deals with blurred motion and time I was also inspired by the Futurism movement, which was a short-lived Italian art movement, launched in 1909, that included artists such as F. T. Marinetti, Giacomo Balla Carlo Carra, Umberto Boccioni and many others. These artists move on from the static representation of motion and approach abstraction in their depictions of dynamic motion and shifting time, which reflect the dynamic speed and noise of the changing modern age. In many ways that is what pioneers in photography like Ernst Haas did, experimenting with shutter speed to paint with their cameras and create abstract blurs to portray motion. 

In Boccioni’s Dynamism of a Soccer Player (1913, above) the use of abstraction in its portrayal of motion is evident. He doesn’t represent a fixed moment, but a “dynamic sensation”. The work isn’t just a painting of a football player but a way to represent the player’s energy and dynamism.

In Giacomo Balla’s Girl Running on a Balcony (1912, above) the artist uses pointillist technique to represent a figure in motion. He doesn’t put anything in the work in particular in focus, in fact the work appears to be continuing outside the canvas, emphasising the girl’s continuos motion.

Creating abstract composition to portray flowing time and continuos motion really intrigues me. It's really fascinating how long exposure and moving subjects create painting-like photos. I think it's an interesting idea, that I would also like to apply to portraits and landscape photography.

UNIT 1 - ERNST HAAS

For my third photo shoot I want to explore another technique to capture and portray time, one that doesn’t capture an instantaneous movement but a period of time: long exposure and slow shutter speed.

Ernst Haas by Glenn Beier

One artist that for long time during his experimentation dealt with motion and time and slow shutter speed is Ernst Haas, which is the second artist that’s going to influence my next photo shoots. He was born to artistic parents in Vienna, in 1921. He became in interested in photography after his father’s death, which was an amateur photographer. He moved in 1951 in the United States and started experimenting with Kodachrome color film. He quickly became one of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century and he is considered one of the pioneers of color photography. He is best known for his vibrant and colorful compositions, which were in contrast with the black and white photographs typical of the time. He saw the shift form black and white to color as a metaphor for what he saw around him during the war years in Europe:

 “ […]as the black and white ones, or even better, the gray years. The gray times were over. As at the beginning of a new spring, I wanted to celebrate in color the new times, filled with new hope.”

Lights of New York,  New York, 1968 © Ernst Haas

He is also best know for always pushing himself and experimenting. He moved on from static representation of motion and he started experimenting with slow shutter speed to create impressionistic - and often abstract - blurs. He started painting with his camera.

“To express dynamic motion through a static moment became for me limited and unsatisfactory […] The basic idea was to liberate myself from this old concept and arrive at an image in which the spectator could feel the beauty of a fourth dimension, which lies much more between moments than within a moment. In music one remembers never on tone, but a melody, a theme, a movement. In dance, never a moment, but again the beauty of a movement in time and space.”

Swimmers, Los Angeles, 1984 © Ernst Haas

Race Cars, Indianapolis, 1958 © Ernst Haas

Traffic, New York, 1963 © Ernst Haas

Photographing runners, fast moving cars and swimmers using slow shutters speed he created blurred images of the subject giving an impression of speed and dynamism.

Bird in Flight, 1959 © Ernst Haas

In this picture he uses slow shutter speed to photograph a flying bird. The result is abstract and impressionistic. The subject isn’t the bird, but the way he sinuously flies: its motion. Many of his composition, like the one, are so abstract and blurry that appear like paintings. This is an effect that really intrigues me and that I would like to achieve in my photoshoot.

La Suerte De Capa, Pamplona, Spain, 1968 © Ernst Haas

Another technique that Haas used in several of his images was moving the camera during the exposure. His image “La Suerta De Capa” is an amazing example this sense of motion and excitement combined with beautiful colors.

Haas took inspiration from the world around him, whether it was music, literature, painting, or people. In his later years, Haas started experimenting with audiovisual presentations – combining music and poetry with his images. He was continuously trying to find new ways to express himself – pushing the limits of what his camera could do and what he could do with it.

UNIT 1 - FREEZING MOVEMENT

Denis Darzacq to capture the dancers in mid air doesn't use any post production manipulation. He relies on the dancing abilities of the subjects and he carefully controls the shutter speed of his camera to achieve this effect. Shutter speed is the period of time when the shutter opens letting light enter the camera and hit the sensor. Controlling shutter speed can create two distinct and interesting effect: you can blur movement or freeze it.

In this first photo shoot I wanted to play with shutter speed to capture my subjects jumping and capturing them suspended in mid air. To do that I had to use fast shutter speed (>1/125 s) to eliminate as much blur as possible. To do that I tried to shoot in Shutter Priority Mode (S or Tv) to manually control shutter speed, but letting the camera figuring out the correspondent aperture. Because light enters the sensor the camera used for a really small amount of time the camera used the widest aperture possible (smallest f number possible) to overcome underexposure.

In this picture I captured the subject in mid air in a pose that's pretty much a photographic cliche. I used my camera's burst mode to shoot a sequence of photo, so that I could then select the stage of the jump that interested me. To achieve a blur-less movement it required many attempts. The picture turned out without blur usually with a shutter speed of 1/125" or faster.

Contact Sheet 1

I then decided to change pose for the subject, trying to achieve the sense of lightness, typical of Darzacq's photos. In this picture the subject is suspended in air and looks like he is being pulled from above without resisting. The lightness of the pose, like in many Darzacq's compositions, is in contrast with the strong composition of the picture and the surrounding dense urban landscape.

I also tried to change background, because I thought a dense one could distract the viewer. In this picture the horizontal lines of the garage door give the overall composition tridimensionality and make the subject pop out. The surrounding object light the orange cone give a sense of the height of the subject.

Contact Sheet 2

I then tried to capture the subject on a white background at the Tate Modern in London. The low-light conditions made it difficult to overcome underexposure. To do that I had to increase the ISO - which is the sensitivity of the camera to light - up to 800 (not more to avoid unnecessary image noise). In this picture the sense of levitation and suspension isn't so visible, because of the lack of depth and tridimensionality, in fact the subject appears like he is painted on the background.

Contact Sheet 3

In this first photoshoot - where I dealt with the relationship between time and movement - I focused on many technical aspects of photography. I experimented with different modes and different shutter speeds, apertures and ISO settings and learned a lot about how to balance this trio to control exposure. Even if I achieved the effect wanted inspired by Darzacq's photographic series, I think that because I focused too much on technicalities I missed the artistic and creative side of the artist. Most of the picture look soul-less compared to the ones of the artist. Being more confident with the technical side of photography means that for the next photoshoots I could experiment more with poses, backgrounds and composition: the artistic and creative side of photos. Continuing with the theme 'time and motion' I would like to try blurring movement. Moving on I would like to start documenting time as an unstoppable shaping force and I would like to focus on how photography can make connection with the past through object and places.