The Brief
Revisit one of the exercises on daylight, artificial light or studio light from Part Four (4.2,
4.3 or 4.4) and prepare it for formal assignment submission:
• Create a set of between six and ten finished images. For the images to work naturally
as a series there should be a linking theme, for instance a subject, or a particular
period of time.
• Include annotated contact sheets of all of the photographs that you’ve shot for the
exercise (see notes on the contact sheet in Part Three).
• Assignment notes are an important part of every assignment. Begin your notes
with an introduction outlining why you selected this particular exercise for the
assignment, followed by a description of your ‘process’ (the series of steps you took
to make the photographs). Reference at least one of the photographers mentioned
in Part Four in your assignment notes, showing how their approach to light might
link in to your own work. Conclude your notes with a personal reflection on how
you’ve developed the exercise in order to meet the descriptors of the Creativity
criteria. Write 500–1,000 words.
Include a link (or scanned pages) to Exercise 4.5 in your learning log for your tutor’s
comments.
I have decided to revisit Exercise 4.2 with an interesting twist.
I’m going to experiment with Moonlight. The idea came to me one night when I wasn’t able to sleep. I got up a midnight, went downstairs and realised there was a lot of light coming from a full moon in a cloudless sky. I was intrigued to find out what exactly I could record by the light of the full moon.
After looking at my results Assignment 4 Contact sheet (1) I started to think about what the difference was between daylight and moonlight, after all moonlight is only sunlight that has been reflected to earth via the moon. From a purely photographic point of view the reflected light is many many times weaker than that of direct sunlight, and therefore needs slower shutter speeds/wider apertures/high ISO. This first tentative step into ‘nocturnal light’ had whetted my appetite though.
A quick visit to ‘Google Images’ showed lots of romantic backlit couples, big moons & airbrush fantasy. This isn’t what I want to produce. I want to see what subtle use of the moon’s light can produce, and how low an ISO I can use to avoid image ‘noise’. As I am progressing through this course, I am finding more and more that my interest lies in the nude. I am starting to see every exercise projected through the medium of the nude. It is becoming a ‘datum point’ from which I can measure everything.
Atget’s (Born 12 February 1857, Died 4 August 1927, aged 70) images of the Parc de Sceaux have a very ethereal, gothic quality about them which suggest they may have been taken by the light of the moon. In truth, many were taken later in his life when he had moved into a phase of photographing early in the morning. Atget was a self taught photographer, and his development can be seen clearly in his images. His early work, up to and a little beyond the end of the nineteenth century, can be clearly seen as recordings of facts, as an architect would want. Shadows would only obscure fact. This is why he shot much of his early work around midday when the sun was directly above and fewer shadows cast. Good examples of this time and technique can be seen below. There is a veritable feast of information within this image, recorded in fine detail, with little shadow to obscure even the tiniest shred of information. As you look through Atget’s work, year on year you can see a slow but definite leaning towards more contrast and shadow. His images have more depth to them and more of an artistic quality, both in his use of light and his framing, also in his composition.
1.
Twenty years further on and we can see Atget’s stunning use of light (and shadow) to create a film noire feel to his work. The atmosphere and tension in this work are palpable.
It is this feel/atmosphere which I would like, initially, to replicate/imitate and use as a keystone or starting point for this journey.
2.
Having found somebody that was happy to model during unsociable hours and (possibly) conditions, I then had to check the calendar for the moon cycles. Junes had just passed and that was what had given me the initial ir=dea and inspiration, so I then had to wait out another frustrating month, hoping that the full moon phase was going to be cloudless. Having checked the calendar I could see that my window of opportunity would realistically start on Tuesday 24th June 2018. Although not a full moon, the forecast was sketchy and my model’s diary was getting full, so I had to start just before the full moon phase, which would last until 31st July (starting 23rd, with the full moon on 27th).
In ‘Professional Photography’ magazine, Brian Bowen Smith said “….Models are presented naked, but wearing masks to hide their identity. Some may be celebrities, some may be waitresses, and others are friends of his wife.” Covering a face with a mask brings out remarkable results, Brian has discovered. “It’s really weird to see when somebody covers their face, and doesn’t reveal their identity, how open they become and how cool the pictures start becoming because of that,” he says. “They aren’t worrying about covering up so much any more; they aren’t worried about hiding any parts. They just go with the flow, and then you see them starting to get super sexy. You see a side of them you didn’t know they had.” This can be clearly seen in the image below.
Untitled by Brian Bowen Smith (circa 2014).
This is a tight crop of a larger image, but it shows clearly that the women, who don’t necessarily come from the same walk of life, or even know each other, are all free of inhibition, and help make for an exceptional photograph.
A small amount of work in Photoshop, and I was able to produce the images below, combining Atget’s lighting/feel, & Brian Bowen Smith’s idea which I am very satisfied with. I think that to a greater or lesser degree I have succeeded in producing an atmosphere and air of tension about these two images below.
During my first window of opportunity I took 93 photo’s. I encountered a number of problems which had to be overcome. The first was setting up and operating the remote control. Sometimes it would fire, sometimes it would not. Sometimes it would fire twice, leaving me to fire it again to shut the shutter. This took me two nights to figure out that the switch is very sensitive and requires a very quick press to trigger the shutter.
Even though the light of the moon was good, looking through the viewfinder registered nothing, and so made it very difficult to focus. This was overcome by using a light from my mobile phone. To get the image pin sharp I then had to switch to ‘Live Image’ mode to view on the camera screen, then magnify x10 and fine tune the focus from there. The biggest drawback for this project is the slow shutter speed necessary to record any information. Using any ISO of 6,400, and an aperture of f4, I was still having to keep the shutter open for 6-10 seconds. With a ‘live’ subject, this proved difficult to get a sharp image. It did though provide material for my project ‘The distorting lens’ https://eledhwen.blog/projects/the-distorting-lens/
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Assignment 4 Contact sheet (2)
In light of the long exposures required, I decided to try using some inanimate objects. I still wanted to have a link to the human flesh, so predominantly used pottery/porcelain. The results were interesting and very satisfactory. The ISO remained the same, 6,400, the aperture was between f4 & f5.6, whilst the shutter speed was counted manually and varied between 18-30 seconds. I found the best time for the white porcelain was around 21 seconds, whilst for the terracotta pot it was 30 seconds.
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Assignment 4 Contact sheet (3)
As I started to see the results of the images that were taken by the light of the moon, it became more important to me to use the moonlight rather than try to simulate it. I feel that the images have a distinct and unique feel to them that would be difficult to simulate, and if they were then the whole process would be cheapened and the point lost. When the images were transferred to a Mac, I found that many of the images had to be furthered exposed by between .5 and one stop in preparation for printing. Even having ‘falsely’ increased the light fall, in particular on the pottery, it is still clear to see that the lighting/light source is different from the norm and offers a lot of potential for further investigation.
Reference:
1. Atget, E. 1902. Au soleil d’or, Place de l’Ecoles, Septième Arrondissement. Eugene Atget/George Eastman House.
2. Atget, E. 1925. Parc de Sceaux. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden
3. Roberts, W. 2017. ‘The life of Brian’. Professional Photography. Issue #19. Pages 40-53.
I see! 