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: