‘Music is a narrative that narratives nothing.’
(Theodor Adorno on Gustav Mahler’s music)
Aerosmith ‘Crazy’
This idea of music videos do not contain, as Varnallis puts it, ‘complete narratives or convey finely wrought stories for numerous reasons, some obvious or less so’ seems self-evident at first. But when Varnallis uses the example of Aerosmith’s music video ‘Crazy’ the conventions become more apparent, though I will stress not in a rigid ’cause and effect’ linear narrative. The scenes are episodic and each one ups the ante of what the girls are going to do from driving in the underwear to finally doing a homoerotic striptease. While the narrative drive is ‘blunt[ed]’ by the appearance of the band, the band itself is part of the narrative, mirroring at times the gestures of the girls, one of which is Liv Tyler, the daughter of the lead singer, Steven Tyler. What I find troubling is that the video is not only very much set in the male gaze (the flash of underwear as Alicia Silverstone escapes the school) but incest undertones. Liv Tyler is fetishised here in a strippers outfit while her father sings ‘I need your love’ . In any case, this narrative video presents a sense of closure as the girls drive off in the sunset, having been set free, as the drive off with a naked man sitting on their laps.
What was interesting and a term that I hadn’t heard of before was the ‘narrative plank’. Varnallis’s asserts that music videos lack the essential ingredients of a film (place names, meeting times etc) so the ‘narrative plank’ becomes a short hand to set the scene or indeed the narrative. For example, in Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing’, Marvin walks into the doctor’s office and begins to talk of ‘his problems’. We know as the viewer that there is an expectation that a solution or a remedy will be given to the patient so already we have already begun the narrative journey in the present and into the future, the director therefore ‘intuited’ our expectations and thus provided a ‘hook’. Music videos simply by their form, Varnallis asserts, ‘encourage us to seek out a narrative.’ When that does not transpire, the experience can be unsatisfying.
It is hoped by doing the Egg Hunting course, I’ll be able to explore the myriad possibilities conceptualising a music video, learning and sharing ideas with fellow students, overcoming obstacles or difficulties positively, brushing up on my video camera skills, and most importantly, experimenting with the form. Overall, push my curiosity out a bit further than usual. I’m not really familiar at all with making a music video, though I’ve seen a fair few over the years. I guess the challenge will be working no budget and achieving our aims.
Anyway, as I was away on Monday (Melbourne Cup weekend), I had to play ‘catch up’. Groups had already been sorted themselves out for the music video project, thus I was allocated to ‘Cool Ridge’, comprising of Sean, Luka and Melody. They’d already decided what artist they’d do the video of which turned out to be Sean’s friend, Willy Dynamo, a local Hip Hop artist in Melbourne. Willy likes to reference a ‘pimp persona’ reflected aptly here below:
With this in mind, Sean and Luka wish to pursue the ‘pimp’ theme, though I think we maybe constraining ourselves in what we can thematically and conceptually if we stick with this.
Another issue which may rise to some conflict is that Luka and Sean wish to do three short music clips as our final. The issue here of course is that we have to come up with three different concepts and somehow link them. This appears to be more work than I am prepared to do and hope to convince them otherwise.
Willy Dynamo with his song Irony:
We sat together working out concepts in Rohan’s brainstorming sessions which were quite helpful in terms of freeing us from judging too much and then sharing these ideas with the rest of the class. We’ve come up with one idea of filming inside a dojo where Willy gets to fight ‘himself’.
After going through Willy’s catalogue, we were able to narrow it down to ‘Who’s World’ something that Willy wants us to make a video of.
As the only mature age student in the class, I always find the first week of the Media Studios a daunting prospect, namely the age difference and all the youth culture references that go with it. Also, as the oldest person in the group, I’m very much aware that my co-students might think that I may want to dominate the group and often try to take a back seat approach when necessary.
Fortunately, with the students in our Podcast class, most of the time this wasn’t an issue and we found ways to work collegially. San and Tessa did take the lead as they seemed quite well versed with the medium of podcasts (like in setting the appropriate levels on the H4N recorder). We also bounced off ideas and there never seemed a point of conflict. We also had a lot of fun using the shotgun mic for recording sound effects and atmos. Thus, I quite enjoyed doing our first studio task together which was a story on my accident with a tram. I’d cut things before in Audacity but not something as complicated as recording voices from fellow students to fill in for characters. The end result was passable but as the voices didn’t quite match up in their energy or acting ability I had to ditch half of them. Time permitting, we would’ve have scripted out the dialogue. In the end with had ad-hoc recordings.
One of my favourite in-class prac exercises was recording atmos for our piece where we had to produce a story without dialogue. Choosing the horror genre before we set out saved us a lot of time and we aimed at capturing tropes often used in said genre: doors slamming, screams, heavy breathing etc. I was quite happy with my horror piece – the electric hum of an industrial complex, footsteps then the eerie heavy breathing (enhanced by applying backwards loops and reverb) and all ending with a climatic scream and sinister laugh. More challenging was adding dialogue to it and in a master class, Catherine pointed out that I had the levels up to high on the atmos and sound effects as they drowned out the action and dialogue of the protagonist. Looking at my timeline, she also suggested using fewer tracks so I could see where all my sound effect were (I had them on eight tracks and difficult to find).
Putting together the podcast essay (Project Brief 2) was extraordinarily time consuming. I focused on Shit Town, a southern gothic podcast focusing on a town eccentric in a small country town in Alabama. Finding the central thesis took some time and thankfully the issue of ethics was one I could research. While I think my script was good (bookending the characters talking about the maze) my delivery sounded wooden and stilted and overall sounded somewhat boring (to me at least!). I think I was trying to sound like a radio journalist rather than myself although that in itself is difficult. Though I did numerous takes, practice and learning to relax would solve my awkward voice.
Project Brief 3, the video essay, was far the most challenging task. Our group (Natalie, Armin and Jennifer), decided to go for the web series ‘Bruce’. Making the essay visually interesting was not an easy fix so I thought an interview with the director and the writers would flesh out more of the underlying reasons why they had released the show youtube as they are no financial returns. After all, they’d already had huge success with Wilfred which had been remade in the USA and starring Elijah Wood. I set up the interviews – the director Tony Rogers was more than happy to meet us while the writers were slow to respond but I did manage to interview them over the phone.
As ‘Bruce’ is about the first convicts in Australia, Catherine suggested we interview the director, Tony Rogers, at the Polly Woodside. Tony was most obliging and he met us on a horribly windy rainy day. We started filming but then we realised we had some technical issues – the mic wasn’t picking up any sound and both the batteries were nearly flat. We had to reshoot, charge up the batteries and what’s more, I had to reformat the footage because it had been filmed in MP4 into mp4 before I could send it off to Jennifer and Natalie to edit. This took several hours! What we learned from this experience is to not to use Building 8 video cameras (they’re crap!) and to check everything is working before we begin. Another snag that we had was that Tony, who had promised he had all the time in the world, suddenly didn’t and we had to make do with the footage that we had. Natalie and Jennifer did the best they could with the available footage though the background music, in the end, did need to be taken out completely in parts, though this never eventuated by the time we had our assessment.
The last project, PB 3, pitching a podcast series, was extremely valuable. I’ve been writing a children’s novel for the past three years Invasion of the Bottom Snatchers and so the medium of a podcast was perfect and easy to condense. I pitched my idea to our guests, Bec Hornsby from 3RRR and Steiner Ellingsen from Melbourne Webfest. They were both very enthusiastic about it, which was quite heartening. Bec suggested I approach the ABC while Steiner wanted me to make my show into an animation (he was quite animated about it himself!).
What’s also been mind-expanding are the podcasts. I wouldn’t have normally listened to podcasts if I hadn’t done this course. Some of my favourites were My Dad Wrote a Porno, Wireless Nights by Javis Cocker, Shit Town and Serial. I particularly liked Wireless Nights as I felt like I had been transported into some ethereal dream: Cocker’s hypnotic voice addressing an imaginary character that remains ambiguous – is it really a character or is he addressing us? He chooses to interview people who are ordinary but illuminates their extraordinariness. He is the story while at the same time not being it. Brilliant!
My Dad Wrote a Porno showed how an informal podcast can be – 3 friends drinking wine around a table while Jamie Morton treats them with cringe-worthy passages of his father’s erotic novel. I liked its relaxed conversational tone –a real conversation but entertaining nonetheless.
Finally, what I learned in the podcast studio overall, apart from the technical aspects such as framing, lighting, microphone placement, working in group and story development, was the potential of stories and how they can be told in interesting ways. Both mediums, visual and aural, play to their own strengths, though I would say I prefer podcasting as our imaginations can take us to places that filmed visual imagery cannot. The podcast studio has given me confidence where there had been none before in this field.
‘To live is to be photographed, to have a record of one’s life, and therefore to go on with one’s life oblivious, or claiming to be oblivious, to the camera’s nonstop attentions.’
Susan Sontag (2004) in Photomediations: An Introduction by Jonna Zylinksa, htpp://photomediationsopenbook.net.
One of the most interesting aspects in the Uses of Photography Course is the way people behave in front and behind the camera.
As Sontag states that we regularly document our lives. From birth, our parents take snapshots of us growing up, documenting our evolution into family photo albums, a visual history of who we once were, an undeniable memory. In turn, we become the photographer, and now, especially with smartphones, we can capture ‘incessant fleeting moments’ (Sontag) then distribute and post on our social media timelines for that insatiable animal called ‘acknowledgement’. Like the tree falling in a forest, ‘If it wasn’t photographed then it didn’t happen.’ We have become, in a way, been conditioned to crave for a sense of legitimacy and as technology continues to develop we will feel increasingly compelled to record everything and consume it. This is not so far from the truth. Digital recording lens are soon to become a reality and we will be all able to replay and watch the day’s events or indeed share it (see the speculative fiction TV series, Black Mirror).
This leads me into the issues of consent. While we are already being ‘captured’ by CCTV, satellites, surveillance and drone cameras or other people what then when we don’t see the camera at all? Because when we see someone with a camera we can request that our pictures not to be taken but if the camera is hidden in an eyeball, then what?
As we experienced in ‘Asking for Permission’ prac, people do behave differently in front of a camera and we lose the ‘freshness’ of the moment when we make them aware of the camera. Today, people are far too aware of the potential of their image and the loss of control over it. As Victor Burgin points out that it is not camera technology that has revolutionised photography but rather the broadband connection to the Internet. The photo is no longer a single image on photographic paper. It is now data to be shared with billions of others across the world.
However, while everyone now is a ‘photographer, distributor, archivist and curator’ (Joanna Zylinksa) there does remain an orthodoxy of what a ‘proper photographer’ is. Art establishments decide what is art photography and I wonder whether their rubric is still located in the pre-digital world of Henri Cartier-Bresson or Richard Avedon who were using the less ubiquitous form of analogue film. Of course, even today one can see the brilliance of these artists (the composition, the lighting, the subject choices) but I think the ubiquity of photographic images has in a way (though not absolutely of course) eroded the uniqueness of ‘the photograph’ that we are constantly trying to put head above the flood of ‘data’ that is constantly being shared.
Still, all said and done, we know a brilliant photograph when we see one whether it is taken by a professional or indeed amateurs and if anything new technology will perhaps make us better visual communicators.
2 . THE PHOTOBOOKS
[Of movies] ‘It must have a beginning, middle, and end but not necessarily in that order’. Jean-Luc Godard. Gerry Badger, ‘Reading’ the Photobook www.aperture.org/pbr
What I found most appealing about the photobook is that it didn’t have to be primarily narrative focused. This is especially useful for foreign readers who start from the beginning of a book. The form is open to the author/photographer to determine. As John Gossage, the great American bookmaker said, ‘It doesn’t matter, you can do absolutely what you want. It’s all fiction anyway.’
Which is true in my case. For my compendium, I detailed that my neighbour is fond of cutting and hacking at my trees. This is true. However, what I photographed for the photobook was a reconstruction. I cut the branches and left them on the ground! And for obvious reasons. My neighbour’s infraction occurred many months ago.
Gerry Badger’s reading was also liberating because while the photographs are important, they are not the be all and end all. As he states here:
‘It’s how the basic building blocks are put together that makes for success. You can have great photographs in a weak photobook. And quite ordinary photographs can be the basis of an important photobook’.
This was especially true of my project. My neighbourhood isn’t aesthetically speaking, particularly interesting or ‘photographable’. I was stuck with flat straight lines of the Melbourne suburbs. Difficult to make interesting. Thus, I borrowed a fish-eyed lens and a lens with a long focal length and overall of better quality. It made a huge difference. The fish-eyed lens took away the flatness of the houses but also helped show what was in the neighbour’s front yards and suggested with the natural vignette at the edges of the lens that I was spying on them.
So while my photos don’t stand out as being remarkable, putting it in a photobook did. While I understand I didn’t have to use a narrative I chose to in this case. It appears this is how my mind works. There’s always a narrative going on there! Having that kind of structure helped me choose what photos to use (I had over 500!) and what to throw out. It had to fit within the theme (absence, loss – suggested by Daniel Binns) and the story itself.
3. Reflection on how your media practice has been influenced and/or changed by ideas, exercises and/or experiences in this studio
Having had no DSLR photography experience the Uses of Photography subject was very useful in giving me a grounding in basic photographic skills. I had used cameras before – compact cameras and when travelling so composition wasn’t so much of an issue. But using settings like exposure, aperture, shutter speed and different lenses was all new for me.
One the most favourite aspects of the course were the documentaries on Vivian Maier and Sebastião Salgado. Maier managed to capture spontaneous ‘without permission’ moments in cities while Salgado was able to make works of art on the human condition across the globe. I’m more drawn to Salgado because of travel and my own experience of being in those countries and travel photography in general.
The other aspect of my process as a photographer was working in the studios. I was lucky enough to have some great students on my table like Taylor and Chynnae who were always and helpful for someone like myself with less experience. I especially liked the ‘Stranger and Stories Project’ where I got to meet Miguel Meirelles, the antique furniture restorer, as not only did I get some great shots but we had very interesting conversations.
Doing the prac activities outside were good to familiarise myself with the camera form. Even simple things like portrait shots with the light illuminated from behind or in front helped construct more interesting shots.
Furthermore, the portrait shots of strangers, street photography were fun because I got engage with people (not one person said no) and got at least one good shot from the exercise (The Chess King). I think what is valuable here with Uses in Photography is playing. Playing and experimenting with different angles, compositions, lighting, exposures and focal length.
I found this very much with the Projects. The first project where I tried to emulate Steve Curry was reasonably successfully though felt short of the exoticness of his travel photographs. I did however, start to see what makes a good photograph, what attracts the eye and what doesn’t.
I think looking at lots of photographic books like I did at the RMIT library helped to form a better understanding of photography. I don’t think I’ve found my style yet but with perseverance, it shall come. Of course, going out and doing it also put me on a huge learning curve (along with software programs such as Lightroom and Photoshop). Of all the subjects I have done I would say this has been the most enjoyable and the most labour intensive.
In a nutshell here is what I’ve learnt:
Photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sebastiao Salgado and Vivian Maier
Familiarity with a DSLR (I’ve had no prior experience) and general competence
Prac exercises using light from behind and in front, portraits, street photography
Asking permission and the question of ethics
Framing and composition of the subject, including edge framing which I found interesting.
Capturing the essence of someone in a moment
I need to get closer to the frame of my subject – the social actors.
Using better quality lenses – dramatic difference
4. Reflection on Photobook presentation in Week 10
This week we had to pitch our Project 4 ideas to the class and receive valuable feedback from Media lecturer Dan Binns and Program Manager of the BA Photography Program, Pauline Anastasiou.
It was great to see other students’ work as this help stimulate or add grist to the mill for our own projects. I particularly liked Hannah’s presentation on ‘bedrooms’ and whether to have the owner of said room present or not. Pauline followed up with reference to Ashley Gilbertson and his photographs of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan (http://www.ashleygilbertson.com/bedrooms-of-the-fallen/).
Diyy had some interesting double exposure images which were quite colourful and interesting and Daniel suggested she could use monochrome sepia as well as colour.
Other photographers to take note of are Patrick Clair (does title sequence) and Elliott Erwitt who photographs dogs that look like their owners.
My presentation
I didn’t have the requisite 3 slides…I had 10! I needed to do that so that Daniel and Pauline would get some kind of idea of where I was heading.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Pitch 1 – Love of Distraction
I’m curious how we’ve all accepted this kind of behaviour as normal – staring at a 5 by 4 inch rectangle – the ubiquitous smartphone. We’re on it all the time, constantly checking it, walking with it, driving with it, eating with it, going on dates with it and yes, going to the toilet with it.
I wanted to look at the absurdity of such a thing and either change the object completely to something so off the wall (like a subject staring at a live squid rather than a phone) or have the phone removed completely. Like this shot here:
Or there’s an opportunity to be self-reflexive with it and play with the form and media itself:
TEST SHOT – My daughter on the train:
Pitch 2 – In the absence of Neighbours
This is my house. I’ve lived here for five years. In this time, my neighbour, Nick a sixty-something Greek man, has for some reason always put his bin on our nature strip. I’m not sure why. He has ample space on his princely lawn that he keeps short and manicured.
He also reaches over and cuts the branches on my tree. The tree is not overhanging his property at all. Nick simply hates leaves! Anyway, I asked Nic to not reach over and cut the branches on my tree and dump them. This seemed like a reasonable thing considering that we have got along so well for some time (what I mean of ‘so well’ I mean we say hello to each and sometimes chat briefly). But no. Nic was having none of it and he cracked the shits and hasn’t spoken to me since. Interestingly, he hasn’t put his bins on our side for some while and I sometimes think that if I grab his bins on bin night and put them on our nature strip then somehow, metaphysically, solve his disquiet.
In any case, I woke one morning to find this:
Nic had only mown the bit on the lawn that offends him the most. I don’t cut the lawn often because I just don’t care. I am the worst neighbour!
I thought I could take this further by taking a group portrait of my other neighbours in the street standing in front of their houses.
But then, when we get to Nic’s place, they’ll be no family portrait. Just a mysterious absence.
Daniel and Pauline suggested I focus on this idea of boundaries, presence and absence, that I could even chalk out on the pavement of where my house begins and ends.
Assigned to Taylor, we workshopped who would be best to interview and shoot for our photo essay. For Taylor, I suggested a friend of mine Adam Hoss Ayers who is a glass and steel sculptor and who I used last time for my Media 1 project profile and excellent for the visual aspect of this media.
Taylor suggested I photograph a family friend of his, Miguel Meirelles, at his antique/restoration shop in Malvern. I had an idea that I’d photograph Miguel in his workshop clothes, wood shavings curling around his feet as he worked on his latest creation. I thought I’d shoot him in black and white as to me this always looks more interesting and use a fish-eye lens for close ups. I wanted to capture the action of what he was doing and an essence of his character.
However, on the day that we had planned to shoot, Taylor hadn’t turned up to class, and so I didn’t borrow a fish eye lens thinking he wasn’t going to show (he did in the end).
At the antique shop, the first thing I saw was Miguel in his kitchen with his workers having coffee and a bit of lunch. It seemed this is where the energy, the centre of Miguel’s actions came from and I was intrigued to take a shot of this. Taylor, having more experience with DSLR cameras, helped me get the settings right, and we aimed for a dark, almost film-noir look.
I got some close ups of some of the antiques on sale and made sure I got some of the French signage as Miguel often travels to France to obtain new pieces for his showroom. Thankfully, Miguel quite accommodating and quite easy to talk to, regaling us with stories of his escape from Mozambique in the 1960s, his time in Europe and finding his love for restoring antique furniture.
At some point, a middle-aged couple from Adelaide came in and started talking about new pieces they wanted. Miguel was, of course, relaxed and friendly with them and I sensed they trusted his judgment. I asked him how he coped with the competition on the street (there are at least five other antique shops in the vicinity) and he said that there is no competition if you have the right product.
While Miguel was a natural bon vivant, I also could tell he had a hard- nosed business sense and this seemed etched into his face. I think I saw this as he was walking back into the workshop while the Adelaide couple were in the showroom.
The last shot of him selling the table seems so natural that I could tell he just loved what he did.
In Lightroom I didn’t do that much to the photos other than adding the vignette feature, darkening or cropping where I felt it was necessary to emphasise an aspect or lead the viewer to the suggested subject. eg. The first shot of the chair in the kitchen.
What I liked about this project was working with Taylor as he’s quite affable and helpful and meeting Miguel who imbued a passion for life. It was also interesting that Miguel and I had some things in common like he knew a friend of mine Nicholas Dattner who had a furniture shop a while back in Collingwood, as well as sharing stories of our travels to Africa. There was, in the end, a great swapping of stories.
This was a challenging prac . Going out and focusing on the edge of frame which seems counter intuitive to photography. While it was easy to photograph the mundane and difficult because of the rain (and the shortness of time due to other commitments), in the end what was the hardest thing was how to make the composition interesting.
I experimented with a high number F-Stop (around 22) so that the background and foreground would have a chance of being in focus. Because of the rain I was limited to taking shelter on the stage at Federation Square and opted for a bigger lens. Bigger lens meant more fuzzy shots so I had to discard a third of my shots. I was trying to aim for some kind of action, or moment from unwary participants including seagulls who were as easy to shoot as herding cats.
In post, I was able to cheat a bit. Like this one below. I was hoping to connect the image of the man on the far left with the refugee poster. I dampened down the clarity to highlight the man and the light to draw the eye to the poster. Not sure if it works as the colour of bins distract.
One image I am happy is this one here which is the roof of Flinders Street Station:
By cropping, upping the sharpness and using vignette I was able to get some interesting textures out of the roof, the luminescent green glistening like the underside of a blue whale. Well, a green whale in this case.
When the subject, in this case, a seagull, wasn’t doing much except being a seagull, I upped the tint and saturation which I think adds a nice texture here to the normally dull terracotta.
I like this next one just for the starkness, the almost absurdity of the lady with the umbrella standing in the background like some kind of rare toadstool.
What I learnt from this exercise was that objects on the edge of the frame become the subject even if they are not properly centred. These objects then become associated with other objects and a kind of story or containment develops. It reminded me of Danny Singer work:
Excursion to National Gallery of Victoria
The Bill Henson exhibition was challenging for some students due to the subject matter, one remarking that they thought it was voyeuristic and inappropriate. But I did not see this but rather the captured fleeting moments of youth and sensuality.
I love this infrared stock that the Richard Mosse used here for his shots of the Congo. Knowing the genocide that has occurred here adds a poignant and disturbing beauty to his compositions.
Today we watched the Wim Wender’s documentary about Brazilian/Magnum photographer Sebastiao Salgado, The Salt of the Earth (2014).
The documentary resonated with me because I have to travelled to some of the places he’d photographed such as the Congo, though I’d been there before the Hutus arrived enmasse in 1994 (I was there in 1990). Kasingani, Goma…towns that I had stayed in that would later be places of slaughter.
‘Each man had gold in their souls’
While Salgado captures extraordinary shots such as Brazilian gold mine workers, the famines that gripped Ethiopia, the atrocities of the Yugoslavian war or the horrors of the Rwandan slaughter, he is also able to capture the humanity, a topic that became more of a travail of his soul.
Some are reminiscent of Steve McCurry’s work but I would hazard that Salgado got there first.
It was interesting how it was his wife that was the one that was the catalyst for his career after coming home one day with a camera for her studies. Even more surprising that she stuck with him through the years where he disappeared for years at a time.
Damaged by the horror he’d witnessed, he went back to Brazil and on his father’s farm he and wife planted millions of trees, thus recovering the depleted ecosystem. This adventure led him to focus on a new subject Genesis where he focused on the environment.
I really got a lot of this documentary. It really covered not only his life of a social photographer but his own spirit. It gave me a sense of hope about reversing the damage done to the planet.
Brian’s notes:
After you’ve seen the film read this short extract from Susan Sontag’s landmark book, On Photography.
If the film and Salgado intrigues you, it is worth watching an earlier documentary, Spectre of Hope (here on youtube) where he talks with John Berger about his photographs (particularly the work on globalisation and migration). Berger puts forward an interesting and perhaps optimistic viewpoint about why such photos of suffering are important and necessary and how they work.
Photo essay
Having been allocated to work with Taylor, we both set out appropriate subjects for each other. Taylor has a friend whose father runs an antique shop. He restores furniture so I hope to get some interesting shots of him planing a chair, his shoes covered in splots of varnish while he shuffles around the curls of shaved timber legs.
Taylor also has a DJ as an alternative but he was not sure how well that would work out as it wouldn’t be as visually interesting.
For Taylor, I suggested an artist, Hoss Ayes who makes glass and steel sculptures. This would be very visually interesting as he has a big workshop. My second choice was a Nepalese friend who works as a carer but we worried about the issues surrounding consent.
Photo Essay Prac – 7 Images
We looked at various photo essays in class such as ‘How other half live by Jacob Riis (1890), ‘Country Doctor in Life’ Eugene W. Smith and 100photos.time.com.
We looked at how they captured the human condition, that the aim should be to leave the viewer with a particular emotion. Also to consider was narrative structure – beginning, obstacles, conflict, protagonists interacting and resolution.
Other photographers worth investigating are Cindy Sherman, Tracey Moffat, Gregory Crewdson (interwebs), Melanie Pullen. Furthermore, there is a great book to check out: Storytelling with Photographs: How to create a photo essay (book)
With that in mind our group went out and photographed The Exchange. Ours was about friends that bump into each other. One of them has a fatal communicable disease which she passes on to her friend and they both very quickly die within 7 frames. Fun!
‘Finding Vivian Maier’ is a documentary about the discovery by the director, John Maloof, of more than 150,000 negatives of an unknown photographer in a storage facility.
Impressed by their artistic merit, Maloof eventually tracked down who the mysterious photographer was – Vivian Maier. An eccentric and reclusive person, Maier was a nanny for most of her adult life who took street and travel photos.
Having died in 2007, Maloof pieces together what kind of person Maier was and tries to achieve posthumously recognition from the art establishment. Alas, her work is rejected but it did receive popular acclaim in various galleries around the world.
Why did her work eventually recognised? While she had a remarkable eye, I think it’s her ability to capture disarming portraits of her subjects. There’s always something interesting about each one.
This one has a real warmth and cheekiness to it. I’m not sure if the woman knew she was being photographed. Indeed, Maier used a Rolleiflex camera which her allowed her to looked down at the mirror view finder without having to lift the camera up and alert her subjects.
A lot of Miaer’s subjects were the working class and sometimes the people she worked for like Phil Donahue.
She was brilliant at getting the candid shot:
A conflicted and secretive character, Maier was a gregarious loner, a person who it was claimed had a fake French accent and someone who did not want to be recognised. Maloof struggles with the intrusion into exposing her work only to be relieved that she was planning to have her photos printed in France, a place she had spent her childhood and some of adult life in.
Maloof struggles with the intrusion into exposing her work only to be relieved that she was planning to have her photos printed in France, a place she had spent her childhood and some of adult life in.
Leaving no family to speak of and scant recollections from friends of who she really was, Maier left a body of work comparable to some of the greatest photographic artists of the twentieth century. In the end Vivian Maier is an enigma.
Street photography
In class, we discussed street photography based on the readings of this week by Palmer – Mobile photograpy. Susan Sontag states ‘through the camera people become customers or tourists of reality’. Palmer discusse s that with the advent of the iPhonea and smart camers, this has taken Sontag’s quote to another leve. That is images a grabbed quickly and shared around the world that is ready for visual consumption.
We also investigated the relationship the photographer with the subject on the street. Being a public domain are people more suspicous and protective than what they were during Maier’s period of he 1950s? I would argue that we are, that we are concerned who is taking our picture and for what purpose. You become aware of your identity on the street and the type of camera you have and this may prevent or give access to moments or experiences with your subject.
For example, Eric Kim (http://erickimphotography.com/), uses his Asian appearance to fool his subjects that he is a bumbling American tourist thus he gains access.
PROJECT 3
We worked in groups discussing what out photo essay would be. We need to provide a classmate with a person unknown to them to compile 14 photos to tell a story of the subject.
ETHICS OF STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
We discussed the ethics of streets photography in regards to consent. Bruce Gilden, it would appear, does not quite believe in such a thing, and wildly takes photos of people on the street in New York without permission nor consent.
The issue is that people behave differently in front of the camera, thus a ‘sneaky approach’ achieves the artistic purpose as opposed to the stultified ‘consensual’ photo.
We debated in groups, traversing through the minefield of various contexts such as surveillance, the evaporation of privacy, and the intention of the artist.
We then went outside in pairs and sought permission from 16 strangers to photograph. At first, I was quite apprehensive but relaxed once I got talking to people.
Contact Sheet
Of all the portraits I liked this shot below, ‘The Chess King’. He was in the middle of an argument with another chess player and I interrupted with ‘Hey, you look interesting. Can I take your photograph?’ He nodded and told me I was a great man because I had asked for his permission. Turned out, he knew the same people I did. There’s a sense of his arrogance in his posture which I like. I tried to highlight this with the way his knee is framed in the shot. I should’ve perhaps got lower to get a sense of his towering personality.
One of the greatest challenges of mimicking photo journalist, Steve McCurry, is the sheer brilliance of them. Each photo captures the right moment, the right place, the right time, the right light, the extraordinary colours and the right story. They are picture perfect. Too perfect as some have said. This has been shown in his blatant removing of people in shots or placing in different people in the background of his shots.
They are picture perfect. Too perfect as some have said. This has been shown in his blatant removing of people in shots or placing in different people in the background of his shots.
Too perfect, as some have said. This has been shown in his blatant removing of people in shots or placing in different people in the background of his shots.
Apart from this, I didn’t quite have the budget nor the time to fly off to exotic locations or wars to cover. So, I had to make do what was at hand. At first, I thought I’d directly mimic McCurry’s work in some of my test shots using my daughter as the Afghan Girl:
As you can see, this didn’t quite work! So, rather than directly mimic McCurry I thought I’d aim for the essence of his work which for me would be trying to encapsulate a story my photos – ‘The Extraordinary in the Ordinary’. I would also focus on using a deep focus and lower shutter speed to get a sense of depth. I would also choose vibrant backgrounds that McCurry is famous for using Melbourne locations. I chose Coburg Mall and Degraves Street and Central Place, the former for its multicultural mix and the latter or its graffiti. Furthermore, the subjects had to be ‘gritty characters’ or ‘the average person’ which McCurry uses quite often.
The Five Images
After shooting 125 images, it came down to these five:.
Ghost in the skull
I came across this woman who I thought was at first homeless but as I watched she seemed to be seriously drug affected. I chose her as my subject mainly because where she was sitting. It’s vibrant yet the picture to her left is somewhat a foreboding future for her – a skull. I was going to use another shot of her which included a sign advertising crepes next to a cafe but the light of that sign was too distracting and didn’t balance the shot.
I shot this at 1/5, F-5.6, ISO 100. It was a rainy day and I couldn’t get the F-Stop further up. I should’ve taken a tripod or upped the ISO. In post I increased the exposure and cropped it which is always challenging as cropping can totally change the flow of the eye.
The Dirty One
The Dirty Dozen DogThis was purely accidental this shot of the dog. It immediately reminded me of McCurry’s Dog in a Monsoon:
Alas, I didn’t have a white background to silhouette my dog subject. Anyway, I did have the sign ‘The Diry Dozen’ juxtaposed with the dog which is amusing.
I tried playing with the colour saturation in photoshop but it looked too surreal and instead increased the exposure and cropped the shot. I found by cropping this too much ruined the vulnerability of the subject. Camera set at ISO 400, 1/30, F-4.
Subway Hawk
I chose this shot because I like the light coming down the stairs and the woman to the right is actually in a barbers shop. I like the starkness as it suggests that the lady is here all day by herself, her only link to the outside is a landline phone. She’s also covering her face which could suggest two things: she didn’t want her photo taken or she’s hiding from something. It also reminds me of the Ed Hooper painting, Nighthawks. Something art deco about it.
The camera was set at ISO 400, 1/20, 6.3 and in post I cropped and adjusted the exposure levels.
Three Wise Monkeys
What I liked about this shot is that the three ticket machines almost seem to be characters themselves. The arrows are pointing in one direction to a no entry signal. Almost like Monkey See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil. I shot this at 400 ISO, 1/20, F-6.30. I like the greeny tinge to the image here. For some strange reason, one of the green arrows was in reverse and on the man in red in the background. I had to clone out the green arrow in photoshop. I also cropped and adjusted the exposure. I guess I could’ve cloned out the people in the background to give this more dramatic effect, in retrospect. After rall, this is what McCurry does! I could’ve also waited and then used a flash on the man in red but it wasn’t until I looked at this at home did I think of this.
You’re always being watched! The Hiding Eye in the Rainbow
Here I was trying to tell a story of a chef taking a break in the alleyway and checking his phone. By choosing to have the eye in the shot (I had originally had just the chef cropped in the doorways only) suggests that he is being watched while he is on his break. I love the vibrant colours that fill most of the shot, then curve into this washed out dark grey. Great contrast. I had the camera set at ISO 400, 1/60, F6.3 and played around with cropping and exposure levels. Below was an alternative shot but it just didn’t quite work as well as the one above. The eye is not connected to the subject as much as the previous image.
Conclusion
While I set out to capture human stories and The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, I didn’t quite get what I wanted. In Coburg, by the time I got there on my shoot day, most of the restaurants were closing up and there was barely any life to shoot.. Also, people these days are always looking down at their phones so it can be quite hard to get an unguarded moment from them or one that is at least interesting.
Where I did succeed is getting some amazing colours contrasted with the greyness of the city. In addition, this exercise helped me brush up my skills and learn DSLR camera which I knew nothing about previously.
My chosen photographer to emulate for next week will be Steve McCurry (as per presentation) as I want to see how much I need to manipulate my images to achieve similar results in post editing. I’ve always been amazed at the richness of colours of McCurry’s work and the way he frames his subjects to tell a story. I’ll probably try to use F22 for greater DOF, shutter speed at 17/80, ISO 100.
Light Room
Using lightroom was again something I really hadn’t any experience with. What I learnt from this experience is that I could bring a stronger sense to the subject by cropping as I’ve done here with my daughter. I tried to tone down the light in the background but it just didn’t look particularly good, even though I used the ‘tool’ to try and dampen it down. Also, I wanted to try and connect something with my daughter in the foreground and the man in the background who is looking on. He’s actually a friend and keeping him in the shot helps tell a story that there is some connection (which there is as his daughter plays with mine!).
The other images, such as the chair and the Sadhu, I simply wanted to experiment with the more kooky effects in the Lightroom toolkit, so I distorted the chairs which I think makes it more interesting. The Sadhu, with its now bleached out look, reminded me of the T-Shirts I’d seen while I was travelling in India. Actually, the original portrait shot came runners up in the Intrepid Photo Competition back in 2002.
Outdoor Prac
The outdoor prac was a good way to familiarise myself with the DSLR camera as I’ve never used one before (I spent a lot of my time pressing the wrong buttons). With the subject standing with the sun shining behind them created some interesting effects with the light streaming through the shot.
Subject backlit with sun
1/25, F-32
I had to play around with the exposure as I kept either over exposing the image or under exposing it. I also noticed that I had to either up the aperture levels or reduce them. I spent quite a bit of time trying to even this counter-intuitive elements.
With Flash
1/25, F-9
Using ‘flare’ to fill the portraits face.
With Flare
1/25/ F-9
No flare.
1/25, F-9
Indoor Prac
I enjoyed this more as the lighting helped attain more drama in the shot. With the cross light, the subject ,Taylor, looks stronger and more defined – a true Rembrant! Also, with the second subject (I forget her name!) I liked the way the coloured light is coming from behind, giving the image an eerie quality.
It also added a mystery to the shot. The light was softer and highlighted elements of the subject, drawing the viewer in.
Or there’s an opportunity to be self-reflexive with it and play with the form and media itself:
