01 Visual Recording

Page 1 Visual Recording

City of Bristol College:

BTEC Photography Course:

Title of Unit:

Date: 06/09/13 Activity 3

Report on my visit to the M-Shed, Bristol, 04/09/13 visiting the Taylor Wessing Exhibition and the venue:

Before I came to visit the M-Shed in Bristol and see the Taylor Wessing Exhibition, I have never really seen a proper exhibition that is just specifically based on photography.

In the past, looking at other photographers work hasn’t always been very easy for me, because I have been advised to compare a lot of my work. On Wednesday, I saw a lot of very beautiful and attracting photographs that really caught me interest.

These two were the ones that really caught my eye and peaked my interest.

The reason why I like these two specific photographs out of all the others that were in the exhibition, is because they capture the most detail in photographic terms of aperture, time, exposure, colour clarity and most of all they tell a really powerful story. The one of Ai WeiWei with that ginger cat, leaning against his chest, is showing the artists true compassion for the cat and the cat has nine lives so there for Ai WeiWei has nine lives. The colours and the clarity of the photo are really strong. That’s what I like about photography, the strength and vibrancy of the colour and the clarity.

The second photo, what I like about that one,  is the setting of the photograph. It really does look like Arjanit is on the run and keeping out of Kukes County. He is amongst all of the rubble and has taken off his shirt, revealing all of his scratches and scars. This photo tells a real story. Story telling inside photographs is one of the main aspects in photographic terms.

Apart from the work I liked at the exhibition, there was a lot of work that I think completely ruins the art of photography that was there, at the site, that day. That’s just my belief though. Other photographers may find it attracting. It’s the kind of photography where people are not wearing anything. That kind of photography to me, says that the photographer is publishing things on display that I think should be kept private.

The Venue its self:

The Venue its self was actually very impressive. The spacing of each portrait or landscape was very spread out so moving around the venue to see each photograph was very good, however there was one feature that I think that the M-shed could have improved. The lighting inside the venue where the exhibition was very dim and when you were looking at dark images it is hard to see beyond the dark detail. I would personally add more light to the exhibition, but adding more light can have effects on photographs that have bright patches of light. It makes the photographs fade.

All in all I really enjoyed the Taylor Wessing Exhibition. Its in a good location, easy to get to, not to complicated to find your way around and some of the work that was on display was really beautiful, inspiring and magical.

City of Bristol College:

BTEC Photography Course:

Title of Unit:

Visual Recording

Date: 15/09/13

My Research and Recreation of the painting “The Scream” by Edvard Munch:

The Painting. One version of it

Artist: Edvard Munch

Year Created: 1893

Type: Oil, tempra and pastel on cardboard

Dimensions: 91cm x 73.5cm (36in x 28.9in)

Location: National Gallery, Oslo, Norway.

The Scream is a name given to each of the four versions of a composition, created as both a paintings and as a pastel, by the expressionist artist Edvard Munch between 1893 and 1910. Der Schrei der Natur (The Scream of Nature) is the title Munch gave to these specific pieces of work, all of which show a figure with an agonized expression against a landscape with a tumultuous orange sky. The artisit “Arthur Lubow” has described The Scream as "an icon of modern art. It turns out that all four of these paintings have become very valuable, as in the past ¾ have been stolen, but then recovered, several months later.

What I think of the piece of Art:

Personally as a photographer, having to make decisions on pieces of art that isn’t photography it’s quite difficult. I can see what Munch has tried to create in his painting/pastel piece of work, but what I find weird about the painting is how it is set out. What I’m trying to say here is, that it’s a beautiful creation, but I don’t know why Munch decided to have someone in the foreground looking like he was about to die. I can see why he called it “The Scream” though, an image of something beautiful with something very dramatic in the middle.

My Version (1) of “The Scream” recreated photographically:

Comparing my photo to Edvard’s painting/pastel, there is quite less detail as quite a lot of the image is whitened out by over exposing the image slightly, but I quite like that because then I see the two different images as a comparison.

My Photo, which is quite small in detail, but has too much light in it, compare that to Edvard’s painting/pastel, which is really detailed but doesn’t have that much light in it.

Perspective points about the Scream:
The perspective side of the painting "The Scream" and how I have recreated it photographically is the lines of the protection bars, behind the person. They lead off at a 1 point perspective angle, so at some point all of those perspective lines from the top, middle and bottom of the person, in line with the protection bars will lead off and will join together by meeting at the centre point, beyond the picture, but they will eventually all meet up at the same point.

Camera Settings for Image:

Shutter: 1/15

Aperture: f/3.0

ISO: 200

Focal: 25mm

My Version (2) of “The Scream” recreated photographically:

After having a tutorial with Steve Crawshaw, it best thought that I gave it another go, by redoing the assignment of reproducing my own version of "The Scream", photographically.
This time, instead of taking just one photo, I have taken a couple photos and selected the ones that I think represents THE SCREAM in a photographic way.

This photo, personally represents the Scream photographically.

City of Bristol College:

BTEC Photography Course:

Title of Unit:
Stop Motion Animation (SMA)

Date: 05/09/13

Homework Research on

• Peter Gabriel Sledgehammer
• Aardman Animations
• One of my Own

Peter Gabriel Sledgehammer:

After watching a couple of Peter Gabriel’s videos on YouTube, his sledgehammer and his steam videos I can see how he accomplishes his cool techniques in Stop Motion Animation (SMA). Apart from doing freeze frames, like you would normally do in animation, he combines very short video clips of himself and imports them into the stop motion animation and merges them together. I find that very interesting. Also some of the objects that he uses in his SMA’s are very interesting to look at and interrupt.

A lot of Peter’s animations have a lot of colour in side as well. That kind of adds a vibrant feeling to his animation. It creates a very strong atmosphere to his videos of clever animations.

Aardman Animations:

Aardman animations immediately take me to seeing things very similar to Wallace and Grommet, Chicken Run and a couple of others.

When creating all of these incredible animations, the producers have to build and reshape the characters to exactly what their storyboards show. It makes the scene of the animation more dramatic, more interesting and more real. It makes the viewer want to see more of what the animators have researched and created.

These kinds of animations, I don’t really see much power coming out of it, but I can see a very creative side to the animation. The creators have put a lot of thought into the type and structure into the scenery and into the characters, animated within the show. That shows that they have had to do a lot of planning, creating and editing out.

One of my Own:

Before learned about Stop Motion Animation (SMA) last week, I had already learned a small aspect of it from previous years and some friends of mine created this really interesting animation called “When students go home”.

When students go home, is an animation that starts off with a normal video clip with my friends in the image, packing up and heading off home. And then leads into and actual animation of the computer room come to life, kind of like in Toy Story, when Andy leaves his room and his toys come to life. I find it very clever that, instead of doing just one plain animation, we combined a very short film clip in at the beginning to make it look more real.

This animation didn’t take very long to make, probably as far as I can remember it took about a day to make, edit out and finalize, but we didn’t use Photoshop, like Peter Gabriel or Aardman animations did, we used a program called “ I can Animate”

YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwH86pMiX9c

Evaluation:

Stop Motion Animations (SMA) are a very cool and creative way to create videos and slideshows of things.

I have never had much experience with them up until now and I can say, even though it has only been a week of learning about them so far, it has been a rather interesting and fascinating process to see how great films like “Wallace and Grommet”, “Chicken Run” “Peter Gabriel” and normal human animations are actually made. 

City of Bristol College:

BTEC Photography Course:

Title of Unit:

Visual Recording

Date: 17/09/13

Illustrated Research on Ansel Adams (Natural Photography) and Andreas Gursky (Constructed Photography):

Two very different photographers, both with different styles of work.

Having had a look at some of Ansel’s work, I’ve seen that he has done quite a lot of landscapes. Personally, I really love landscapes. They have a huge impact on the viewer’s imagination of natural places. He captures the moment just at the right time. Particularly the one of the waterfall, its smoothness of the water is so wonderful, it makes the viewer want to go and see the place for him/herself. The other photo, the one of the bent tree and the two large boulders in the foreground and the mountains in the background, this demonstrates a use of a low aperture setting, with a lot of light being let in so that = a very quick shutter speed of a second. I also saw that Ansel only takes black and whites photos.  I like black and white, but when working with really beautiful landscapes, I personally think that working in colour is much better.

Looking at Andreas’s work, I must say that, I don’t understand what he has photographed, neither, what it means. Generally in photography, the photos have a meaning to them. I can’t see what it is that Andreas has tried to create. The one thing that I do notice about Andreas’s work, compared to Ansel’s work is that his work is comprised of constructed things, where as Ansel’s work is natural things.

Andreas’s work isn’t the most pretty to look at but it certainly does have a lot of art inside it. It is true that not all photographs have to have a full photographic aspect about them. They can be arty.

Evaluation of both these photographers work:

Both Ansel and Andreas’s work have given me a lot of ideas and inspiration for my future photography. It is true that they both specialize in different scenery types. One specialized in Natural Photography and the other specialized in Constructed Photography. These two are the two main aspects of photography that have sub-aspects coming from them, like animals and cars.

I have really enjoyed looking at both their works. That has given me, two new photographers to refer to when looking for certain artists and to use their ideas in my own way.

City of Bristol College:

BTEC Photography Course:

Title of Unit:

Visual Recording

Date: 22/09/13

My Experimentation of using www.camerasim.com:

This photo, shows what the site, camerasim.com can do. It is a program on the internet which allows someone to try different experiments with the aperture, shutter, ISO, distance and using a tripod or not.

It is a really clever way to experiment  with taking and learning the internal use of one's camera functions.

All of these experiments have allowed me to experiment with my own camera settings for all of the things that I mentioned above. The only downside of camersim.com is that you can't seem to change the image.

City of Bristol College:

BTEC Photography Course:

Title of Unit:

Visual Recording

Date: 23/09/13

Perspective drawings:

The Corridor I used to draw from. 

My corridor perspective drawing of the Corridor photo above. 

Example Drawing of the Corridor, from the photo. 

My perspective drawing of a model plane, Model Unknown 

My perspective drawing of a box, laying on a table top.

Drawings have always been very hard for me to try to accomplish. They always seem to catch me out and I can never manage to get they completely right. However with these drawings, I think that I did quite well. I can honestly saw, that it has been a long time since I have done proper drawings to represent photography.

City of Bristol College:

BTEC Photography Course:

Title of Unit:

Visual Recording

Date: 30/09/13

Evaluation on "Storyboarding, Natural & Constructed Images and "The Scream":
Storyboarding:
It had been a while since I had done proper storyboarding. It was about 7 years ago when I last did proper storyboarding. Before I came to COBC, I didn't really understand that much about storyboarding. Now I can say that it is a really good way to get your ideas down on paper in a sequential way. If it wasn't for storyboarding, films like "Chicken Run", 'Wallace and Grommet" and plenty others wouldn't have been made.
Natural & Constructed:
Natural & constructed images, I have already had quite a lot of experience with. The natural & constructed images I learned a lot about when I did m AS level photography exam on decay. I based mine around the ancient, distraught and rotting away houses, in the deep and old countryside of Andalucia, Spain.
The Scream:
Analysing other artists work, as I have said before, has always been very hard for me. This was probably the hardest one I have had to do because it wasn't actually a photograph. It was a painting, created by a very well known Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch. It was our task to analyse "the Scream" and then try to recreate it photographically. My first attempt I had done really well, but the only error that I had made was that I had used the wrong camera settings and that I didn't have enough light captured inside the frame. My second attempt went much better. I managed to capture a good Depth-of-Field and O positioned myself in the right way. Analysing other artist work will always be a very tough challenge for me. But as time has gone on I have found angles to try to overcome it.

City of Bristol College:

BTEC Photography Course:

Title of Unit:

Visual Recording

Date: 30/09/13

3 Images EACH of Natural and Constructed things, THE DOCKS:

3 Natural Images

Some beautiful and bright green leaves, with them, as the foreground in focus and then the background of the tree in blur. This image demonstrates the use of a low aperture, with a lot of light coming in.

A naturally formed rainbow. This is something that can only be formed when sunlight shines through the rain and this creates a lovely rainbow. 

A water illusion. Just like the rainbow above, light shines through the water and creates a these amazing colours. 

3 Constructed Images:

A building under construction repairs.

The Matthew Ship. A very old piece of work constructed by man.

Brand new, bright and colourful houses, built along the harbour side of Bristol.

Evaluation of all 6 images:

I have chosen quite a few of these photos for my Location Techniques, based on Natural and Constructed things around the Bristol Docks. I believe that they capture the true meaning of the Natural and constructed things, that I have shot in Bristol. These are also some of my most colourful photos of the lot and just in my personal opinion, colour always brings the photo alive with feeling strong feelings. Bristol is said to be a place to learn creativity. I believe that colour increases the sense of creativity. It just adds that little bit extra to the scene.

My Street People Images:

My Father, standing outside a Museum, looking at me quite happily.

The British police ladies on their police horses in the streets of Bristol.

A woman sitting on a river side walk bench whilst on her mobile phone.

A hard working man, taking a break, whilst answering a text message and having a cigarette.

Evaluation of my four Images:
I chose these final four images as my best for the Street People assignment, because I believed that they represented the theme as best as they could out of all the other photos I had taken for the assignment. Street People is a very hard task for me to try to accomplish because you just never know the retain of the people that you are photographing. It isn't really an assignment that I practice and practice and over and over again, because I don't find it that as enjoyable as photographing countryside or spectacular views.
I admit that the photos are a little grainy and you can't see their full detail as much as you can see my Docks images, but these were the best four out of 20. The last two as you can see, I turned from colour to black and white, because it is well known that most street people photography is viewed in black and white, it's said it just adds that little bit extra of feeling to the image.

City of Bristol College:

BTEC Photography Course:

Title of Unit:

Date: 30/09/13

1 point and 2 point perspective Images:

1 Point perspective Images:

2 Point perspective Images:

Evaluation of the 1 Point and 2 Point perspective Images:
1 point and 2 point perspective images are some of the really fun things to photograph. 1 point perspective images is shooting up long distances in a straight line. Imagine if you were standing at the bottom of a really tall building and you look up and photograph it, as if you were looking up like an ant's eye-view. 1 point perspectives is also, as you can see from my photographs, looking up a train line. Imagine you are standing at one end of a corridor and you look up it. At some point there will be a centre point in that image. 1 point perspective are all the lines in that image leading to that point. Like a vortex. A 2 point perspective image is quite similar except you focus on a a different point. Imagine that you are standing at the tip of a triangle shape of buildings and you can look both ways. You have the centre line and then going off the right and to the left. The lines leading from the centre line in both directions is called 2 point perspective. This kind of photography I have always found quite interesting. HOW DO THEY DO IT? When I get the chance to go somewhere like Dubai, that seriously offers really good 1 point perspective images and also some really good 2 point perspective images.

City of Bristol College:

BTEC Photography Course:

Title of Unit:
Stop Motion Animation

Date: 13/10/13

Research on 2, 1 minute Stop Motion Animations (SMA’s)

These 2, one minute Stop Motion Animations (SMA’s) were the two that rather got my attention whilst I was looking for stop motion animation ideas.

Stop Motion Animation, Magic Water:

YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSzCLf8tjP4

This particular SMA I find rather interesting, due to how it is planned out and how slick it looks. To have the blue gunge or whatever it was, do all of those amazing movements and stunts was really clever. Also the sink at the beginning of the SMA, just having that little drip continue to drop and drop, with the sound effect that matches the sound of dripping water, really gives the atmosphere to the whole SMA.

This is a really cool and clever way of demonstration Stop Motion Animations. However, I must say that it must have been quite a tricky process. Normally tricky processes take a long, long time and it’s also quite hard to capture the right number of frames, with a tricky, possibly short SMA. Most of the time people do experiment with tricky Stop Motion Animations, only thing with them is, they have to be done over quite a long period of time. I am guessing that this one could have take at least 2-3 days to complete.

Stop Motion – The Growth Of A Game Collection In 1 Minute.

YouTube Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmXAhjB0QpQ

This Stop Motion Animation really blew me away. I couldn’t believe the animation, nor could I believe the amount of Xbox, Videos, DVDs, PS2, PSP, PS3, Intendo Wii, Computer Games and Music that this one person had collected. It is at least a 10 – 12 years collection of different things. Then the Animation, it starts off with all of this boy’s shelves all empty and then one by one, all of the shelves fill with all of these games, Xbox games, Play-station games and DVDs.

This is one very clever and extremely cool Stop Motion Animation. The young boy who did this must have put a lot of thought into how he was going to do this, because that is a lot of games and films to unload from the shelves and then reload them again, however he had one advantage. His idea was simple. Simple ideas get the job done much more quickly and you know what it is that you have got to do. One other thing that I really like about this SMA is that it starts off really dull with colour and then at the end it is full with colour. I always it wonderful to see things start off dull and then ends with deep, vibrant colours.

Evaluation of these 2 Stop Motion Animations:

Having researched Stop Motion Animations for a pass grade, this level for merit/distinction is far more advanced and the artist has to explore much more contextual influences in order to succeed. If I was the judge of these two SMA’s they would definitely get a merit or even possible distinction grade. They have thought about what they wanted to do and they demonstrated the true meaning of Stop Motion Animation.

I personally prefer the one of the DVD collection than the one of the magic water, not because it is quite a simple thing to do, but it just really shows what Stop Motion Animation is. Magic Water is also very amazing and cleverly done, but that took a very long period of time to finish. As I said in my evaluation for my pass grade level SMA, The simple ideas are the ones that enable you to capture more frames and gives more photos per second once on the computer.

City of Bristol College:

BTEC Photography Course:

Title of Unit:

Date: 15/10/13

Typography: = the style of Fonts:

Typography = the style of different fonts. All of the Fonts that we use on a Word document, Powerpoint Presentation, Excel charts, Blogs, Emails and the Internet, all of these fonts are different. In total there are about 265,978 fonts that are used. All used for different things. If you were typing a formal letter or you were writing out a proper document, you would use an appropriate text such as Calibri, Arial or Cambria. These are the best type of fonts to use when carrying out something out like this. This is also known as sans serif fonts. If you were advertising, using posters or using flashy fonts you would use fonts like Arial Rounded MT Bold, Times New Roman, or Apple Chancery , these are classified as serif fonts.  Lets talk about colour effects in fonts. If we use the colour Red this instantly gives out a message that whatever has been written is important and must make you aware of what has been written. It's like the expression "That's put the cat amongst the pigeons" If things are written in Green then that can generally mean it's linked to something to do with medicine. Words in Black, then it's obviously just normal text, but if the fonts are different, like if they are bold, Italic, Underlined. These generally mean that these are key words or that they are quite important, within a text.

Evaluation:
There are many different things that we can do with fonts. They are a key part in digital technology. I have had some idea of how fonts work in the past, but this has been the first time I have learned about them in this much technical detail. Fonts create many things for us. Even now for this blog I am using a certain type of font and learning how it works. It's like learning the inside of a computer's internal software.

Examples of the two different types of Font, SERIF & SANS-SERIF:

• SANS-SERIF:

A clear and simple Sans-Serif font, but with the picture given us the impression of what type of music it is.

A clear and simple Sans-Serif font, but with the picture of the harp and the mist around it and the gold colour of the word "Trance", that shows what type of music it is.

A clear and simple Sans-Serif font, but with the different colour giving the poster life. This is an information poster, and in general information fonts are sans-serif

A clear and simple Sans-Serif font, this time the background and image, giving the impression of what it is all about.

• SERIF:

A weird style font that overlaps the the next line down. serif fonts are generally more artistic 

Weird style fonts all mixed and forming the shape of a vortex. 

A font the is quite squeezed together with the letter s S in each word with a long tailed effect. 

One of the more simple SERIF types of font where all the letters , simply have tail curves at their end points