Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Project Updates

These images are of the pages that I worked on today documenting the ideas that I have about how to properly structure my project so that matching the images up in the end is as easy as possible. Some of the questions that are considered in this work are whether to use a box as a housing and how to properly light the objects.

Approaching my project in a lab setting

I have a couple ideas about how to continue with my project in a laboratory setting. I need to experiment with different lighting for the subjects as I shoot them. I also must build some sort of housing for the subjects. The housing is required so that the background is kept constant though out each picture as I will be overlaying multiple images into one final image. The focus of the final image should be the one subject(ice cube, flower) not the changing backgrounds. I was thinking of building a box out of wood and lining the box with either a white sheet or white poster board. The subject could be placed in the center of the box and the camera held at the same position on a tripod.

I could plan an test run with different backgrounds and see which one provides the most interesting way to view change over time. Should the background change, will this create a more engaging way to frame time? Or in contrast should the background be plain?

The Lab

The lab setting breeds discovery. The purpose of a lab is to safely bring together tools, equipment, and people so that they can all function in unison to ask questions and attack these questions in a thought out, purposeful method. Having an engineering background, I am inclined to say that the lab is a place where discoveries can be made about something that is not understood. My experiences in lab settings have included asking questions about how cells respond to insulin, about how certain gelatin compositions can mimic human brain tissue, about how a orthopedic implant can provide strength to an injured knee. Although these experiences involve questions related to medicine, obviously a laboratory setting is not limited to medicine or engineering. A person can step into an art studio and I think this is a lab. One has a goal in mind when creating a piece. Whether they question how people will respond to the final work, or even how their mind will flow, the thought process, that it will require to make the final work, one always has the desire to understand something when working.

Many times, when I am using a camera, I feel like an investigator. Even though my surroundings are never what I picture as being a "laboratory", I find myself conducting mini experiments to obtain the image that I have in my head. I make educated tests with lighting, surroundings, and positioning of the subject, framing, etc to create the picture that you desire. I may try a flash setting and see what happens, then change the angle of the flash, put a filter on the camera, change the approach to the subject, experiment with a deferent way to frame what I see through the lense, all of these are mini tests in which you acquire data through the resulting image. By looking at this data, my brain takes in information so that gradually I can create the exact image that I want. I guess this means that any time I am using a camera, I could potentially be in a lab. Although this is true, I must say that some of my best images require no such preemptive thought in which I think of.

An example of my laborious approach to photography is in the following images. I had a picture in mind, but initially could not find the right way to frame subject. I think I finally got what I was looking for. Can you tell what the subject is and why it looks the way it does?



As this discussion on how I have formed images in the past demonstrates, I think it absolutely necessary to view a print poam as a lab specimen. I think it is advantageous to do so. If you understand that you are working towards an end product, and are capable of stepping back with each step you make, whether it be forward or backward, and draw information from what you have done, I mean to draw conclusions about what has been understood by what you have done, you can then try again to move in the intended direction. If you have this kind of mentality and understanding of a work, you can make no mistakes and are less prone to frustration. If something does not turn out the way that you plan, do not simply trash what you have done, attempt to draw some info from it and move forward. This can be said about scientific experiments performed in scientific laboratories as well. Often times an experiment will not work as planned but you are still able to draw some conclusions from the outcomes, even though they may not lead to the exact answer in which you were searching for. These conclusions will help you get there.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Project Progress 3.11.08

This class period I spent working on the developing project that I has come to my mind. The ideas that I currently have involve photography. I want to use photography to try to frame changes that occur around me in extended periods of time in a single image that one can view. I have the idea of shooting things that change in different time frames. Some things changes appearance within seconds, some within minutes, and others take days and weeks. I would like to take consecutive photographs of things that change and merge these images to frame this change. The way I would like to show this change is to make the consecutive images transparent so that they lay on top of the original image. Hopefully taking anywhere from five to twenty images and overlapping them will create an interesting, innovative way of viewing change. In class I learned how to use Photoshop to create the certain effects that I am looking for. Here are a couple examples of how I plan to overlap the images. In this first example I merged the following two pictures. The first picture of of a silhouetted plane flying over trees as the sun sets on a spring day. The second picture was taken as I was experimenting with slow shutter speed while riding down the interstate as my roommate was driving us to Florida for spring break. Both of these pictures were taken on the same day.



Here is the image that I created by merging these two images:

This next one was created by merging a picture of a car from the Detroit autoshow with picture of tree bark. I liked the juxtaposition of this image
I plan to shoot things that change within a relatively short amount of time and superimpose the images upon one another. Some ideas that I have right now are the following: a melting ice cube, a wilting flower, blooming tree....I'm still thinking of others.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Folding and Framing

What is the role of location due to folding?

To fold into suggests entry, convergence, to fold into does not mean force...rather ease into.
To fold to the interior may mean to preserve vs exterior. Unfolding the paper shows that it now actually has an interior and exterior. There is evidence for this in the presence of creases. Some creases point inward while others preserve the location that is no longer exposed when folded. There is only so much that can be removed to try to mask this evidence, but after folding impact has been made.

The impact of Mardi Gras Beads

beads have been passed around the classroom. i see that people engage the beads in different ways. Some hold them, some actually wear them. What do people think when they physically touch these beads? Is it of what they are made of, or is it why they were made?

Shiny spheres held together by string. Circular in simplest form. When acted upon the interactions of the individual beads becomes more complicated. Overlaps begin to form but the original unbroken connection can be traced if one focuses long enough. But upon casual glance, the simplistic nature of their connectivity is easily lost. Lost in the complex forms that are taken. These complex forms arise due to external forces and they continue to exist due to external forces. Once acted upon by an individual, the beads are then left for gravity to preserve what has been created. But there is an intrinsic ability to preserve shape in the nature of the connection of the beads, for if the string was not present the spheres would roll away to exist individually. The structure of the table provides the canvas for the beads to exist together. Gravity held the connection of the two strands in between the table, while the support of the table allowed the connection to exist in the air.