tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33500849955831554092024-03-13T01:57:45.678+00:00OCA Learning Log - Landscapenpmimageshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11325544772783926152noreply@blogger.comBlogger126125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-66562779639363007012013-11-30T18:48:00.001+00:002013-11-30T18:48:08.960+00:00The last post<p>This is the final post on this blog – I got my results, and it’s fair to say I’m very happy with them a first for the module certainly exceeded my expectations by some measure. I would like to record a public vote of thanks to my tutor Simon – without whom I’d still be floundering around in the dark. I’d also like to thank everyone else who has taken the time to comment on any of these posts – although it may not always seem like it I have valued your contribution and the reassurance that I am not always talking to myself.</p> <p>If you’d like to keep up with my continuing journey I’m now approaching the first assignment of the Documentary module – and recording my thoughts <a href="http://nmoncktonsocdoc.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">here</a>.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-85648637214888266032013-11-04T21:21:00.001+00:002013-11-04T21:21:07.348+00:00Moving on…<p>…I hope. In case anyone is interested my next course – Documentary - has its own blog <a href="http://nmoncktonsocdoc.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">here</a>. My thanks to everyone who has contributed here over the last year or so.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-9939331544244635602013-10-17T22:18:00.001+01:002013-10-21T17:24:39.806+01:00A journey through time<p>A final tick for exercise 15 which required me initially to shoot one shot per season from the same location and with the same composition. As explained in <a href="http://nmoncktonland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/making-sense-of-my-portfolio-submission.html" target="_blank">this post</a> this morphed over time into my final portfolio submission – with the four shots/one location coming from elsewhere. This final group of three are a selection from the shots I took nearly weekly during the spring and summer months and represent June, July and August respectively. They are also the shots entered for portfolio so I’m not going to say too much about them.</p> <p>The exercise asked me to think about how close I was able to keep the framing throughout the year and to reflect on the changes. The framing is easy – while they are not perfectly aligned – they are close enough that a good stitching programme could make them into a single image – but that’s not the purpose.</p> <p>Clearly the seasonal variation across all these shots is very noticeable, but for me the most interesting non-photographic observation is the way that changes in the country side are non-linear – for a very large portion of the year very little changes in these fields without human intervention such as ploughing – but between early May and the end of August a crop appears, ripens and is harvested. I knew this intellectually but sometimes we need to discover these things experimentally.</p> <p>I’m contemplating repeating the process for a second year – probably only monthly if I do – ultimately I could end up with a typology of years perhaps.</p> <p>Anyway…the pictures:</p> <p><a title="Cereal-10reduced by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/10317278684/"><img alt="Cereal-10reduced" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5488/10317278684_10dae5b9de_c.jpg" width="800" height="163"></a></p> <p><a title="Cereal-11reduced by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/10317460863/"><img alt="Cereal-11reduced" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2874/10317460863_8e30863c8f_c.jpg" width="800" height="164"></a></p> <p><a title="Cereal-12reduced by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/10317461463/"><img alt="Cereal-12reduced" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7298/10317461463_30889b9868_c.jpg" width="800" height="163"></a></p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-36195099535808573192013-10-06T20:48:00.000+01:002013-10-07T20:49:24.772+01:00Assignment 5 – message or study?<p>I’ve been a bit tardy in writing up my thoughts on Simon’s feedback for Assignment 5 – mainly because its been a particularly busy few months but also because it raises some questions which I’ve not fully resolved in my own mind even now as I head for assessment.</p> <p>The practical stuff first – I’ve corrected a couple of images in terms of horizons and alignment as he suggests and replaced a near duplicate image with one from a different location. I’ve not sought images of the same location with stormy seas or skies – that feels like a separate project. On reflection, and following on from my Assignment 3 shoot I think I prefer the comparison images under similar conditions. The final set is shown on the page tab at the top of the blog.</p> <p>The are, however, two bigger questions that Simon’s comments raise. Am I trying to convey a message or am I simply studying something? And, do I include an artists statement and what should it say?</p> <p>These images interest me – or more accurately the locations do. When I started I wasn’t sure why – I just knew they did. As I’ve noted in a previous post, I feel they fit with assignment 3 but I certainly can’t fully define the attraction. So the set had no message – it was, if you like, a presentation of my research.This does not feel unreasonable in the context of a single module in a course that lasts about a year. It seems to me perfectly legitimate to regard photography in this manner as a form of research, and IIRC Caruna and Fox make a similar point in one of the course books. The assignments can surely be a launch pad as well as a destination.</p> <p>However…I think I agree with Simon’s point that some supporting text would be useful – and I’ve spent quite a lot of time pondering that in the interminable car journeys that form a chunk of my life. The result is the supporting text that accompanies the final image set, but it has a caveat. It’s my current best statement of what I feel the images are about but it may be that as I take more of them it changes.</p> <p>That’s the best landing I can manage at the moment.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-79972206630977148372013-10-05T23:52:00.000+01:002013-10-11T23:52:54.603+01:00Grain–and not in a field this time<p>Just realised I’ve not completed exercise 41 which is about adding grain. I did rather a lot of this in People ands Place – especially my <a href="http://flic.kr/s/aHsjzf9yQP" target="_blank">Maryport assignment</a> – and as a technique I’ve basically put it on the back burner.  It can certainly add a certain rough edge to an image, but – its not a technique I’ve felt I needed throughout the course.</p> <p>Whatever – I thought I’d see if I could do something different with it and came up with this:</p> <a title="E8304434.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/10215541693/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="E8304434.jpg" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2845/10215541693_184922290e_c.jpg" width="800" height="400" /></a> <p>The original shot was taken at night – and to get this effect I pushed the exposure and recovered the highlights, massively increased the contrast, oversharpened it and then added extra grain from the Lightroom grain sliders. </p> <p>The end result is quite Impressionistic – and has a certain dream/nightmare quality to it – but without an obvious reason for doing this beyond the exercise I’m afraid it just feels like a special effect. That said – it’s good to play sometimes – if only because you don’t know what it might inspire further down the road, so I’ll preserve it here in that context. Given it was taken in Ibiza, it might have found a home as a technique for photographing round the clubs. Another time then.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-37770203728177022172013-10-05T18:42:00.001+01:002013-10-05T19:34:08.818+01:00Re-worked supporting text for Assignment 2<div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on"> <div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><b></b></div> <div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on">The text below is the re-worked text supporting Assignment 2 which was previously posted in on the page 2: One Acre – Final (see Tab at the top of the page) Not quite sure what’s happened but I suddenly feel I understand what I’m supposed to be doing a lot more clearly. In particular it has dawned on me that I’m doing an art degree – not simply a photography qualification.</div> <div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on"> </div> <div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on">I’ve not reworked the original supporting text for Assignments 3 and 5 because I’m now incorporating my response to my tutors comments in this blog and incorporating it in the pages above distracts from the final outcome. I feel the final outcome of Assignment 2 deserves similar space.</div> <div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on"> </div> <div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on">Why not Assignment 1? Simply because as I noted in a previous post I made a bit of a leap forward between 1 and 2 and don’t think Assignment 1 says anything that could easily stand alone.</div> <div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><b></b></div> <div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><b></b></div> <div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><b></b></div> <div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on"><b> <hr />Contents</b> <br /><b>Introduction</b><b> – Display </b><b>– Images – Lessons Learned – Assessment Criteria - Links</b> <br /><b></b> <br /><b>Introduction</b> <br />On the face of it this is a very simple assignment – take a dozen photographs of a small area of land exhibiting as great a variety as possible of landscape imagery. <br />Living on the edge of the Lake District it would be relatively easy to find an acre that offered any permutation of mountains as a backdrop, lakes, waterfalls, woodland and meadows – perhaps even all of them. Too easy in fact – and too impersonal. Instead I have chosen a patch of land much closer to home – a small ‘nature area’ in the <a href="http://westhouse.cswebsites.org/default.aspx?page=17911">Community Gardens</a> next to my home – a patch of land I regularly visit for a bit of peace and quiet, or to feel alone with the world. <br />It is almost exactly 1 acre, in a shallow valley surrounded by hedgerow on three sides and some recently developed wildflower areas on the other. It includes a large(-ish) and two small man-made ponds and at the time I originally started this assignment was extremely wet underfoot. Vegetation is largely sedges, grass and the usual collection of nettles and thistles. It is visible as the left hand portion of the central field in the Google maps image below. A ground level panorama taken in early spring is also attached. </div> <div align="center"><a title="1 Acre aerial view by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/8183338031/"><img style="display: inline" alt="1 Acre aerial view" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8068/8183338031_c7043f0c6f.jpg" width="300" height="166" /></a><a title="View over one acre by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/8182953636/"><img style="display: inline" alt="View over one acre" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8197/8182953636_19cf821653.jpg" width="300" height="100" /></a> </div> The aerial appears to have been taken a couple of years ago so that the ponds are no longer as clearly defined. <br /><strong></strong> <br />As patches of countryside go it is pretty unremarkable and that, to me, is its attraction. As we have become a more urban population we are led more and more to see the countryside as a spectacle – somewhere to go at the weekend – which means that we need to be entertained while we’re there. Visiting lakes, collecting Wainwrights, cruises, set viewpoints – all seem to me to be symptoms of a separation from the environment around us – and so I want, in this project, to capture something of the reality of my local countryside and why I find this piece of land worth visiting. <br />In reworking this assignment, and as discussed on my <a href="http://nmoncktonland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/assignment-2-tutor-feedback.html">Learning Log</a>,  I have tried to focussed on using collage to construct a ‘place memory’ – an idea I started to investigate <a href="http://nmoncktonpnp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/stretton-space-and-place.html">in People and Place</a>. Building on a suggestion from my tutor the final collage incorporates images taken at different times as well as from different locations and perspectives <br />I took well over two hundred images ranging from multi-shot panoramic views of the site to close-ups of small flowers over a period of several months. The final 12 have been chosen to meet the stated aim of the Assignment (variety of imagery) while allowing me to crop as necessary to develop the final collage. <br /><b>Display</b> <br />As suggested in the feedback for Assignment 1 I have given some thought to how I might choose to display these images. This has impacted on my choice of images in accordance with my aim to investigate perspective and space memory. <br />The artist David Hockney has done a lot of work exploring memory and perspective – his joiners are an example of multi-point perspective, and his recent multi-camera work attempts to produce a moving image which is more representative of the way we see. <br />I made a simple exploration of this, and my understanding of the way memory works in my People and Place blog referenced above. My intent here is to build on this. I envisage the images being displayed either as a single large collage as here, or as individual cropped and mounted images suspended in a 3-D array so that from a distance they appear as the collage image, but closer viewing means the relationship between them varies with viewing position and the individual images are capable of slight movement on the end of their suspension cables. This would give a closer reflection of the way I see my memory of this area working, and would also allow for the overall “memory” to be augmented with new shots. <br />By contrast with the simple black/orange monotone of my PnP blog post this Assignment requires a greater diversity of images, introducing a broader range of colours and details that have to be selected and assembled to create that ‘place memory’. By displaying them as a large collage the eye is forced to move from place to place and assimilate different scenes and levels of detail so that the brain slowly builds a picture of the overall area in a process which is akin to the way I perceive my memory works. <br /><a title="Assignment 2 re-work of final presentation by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9040935383/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="Assignment 2 re-work of final presentation" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2846/9040935383_ab4d57a5a1.jpg" width="500" height="538" /></a><strong></strong> <br /><strong></strong> <br /><strong></strong> <br /><strong>Component Images</strong> <br /><b>Figure 1: Blue Sky:  </b>These high level clouds, taken in October 2012, feel ideal for the top of the collage: 1/400 @ f/8; ISO 200; 33mm. Slight overexposure to lighten cloud. <br /><a title="PA217081.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9096703372/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="PA217081.jpg" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3744/9096703372_47d61b05ce.jpg" width="500" height="100" /></a> <br /><strong>Figure 2: Blue sky with autumn leaves:</strong> Taken in November 2012. I wanted to introduce some obvious autumn colour, and my original shot suffered from blur, so I have replaced it with this one. 1/500 @ f/9; ISO 400; 50mm – 2/3 stop underexposed to saturate the sky and hold the colour in the birch leaves. <br /><a title="PB037173.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9094478391/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="PB037173.jpg" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2843/9094478391_bae60e7e19.jpg" width="500" height="375" /></a> <br /><strong>Figure 3: </strong><b>View to western boundary</b><b>. </b>Included to give and edge to the field in the collage. 1/1250 @ f/5: ISO 200; 23mm <br /><a title="PA217037.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9094471869/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="PA217037.jpg" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5544/9094471869_99507a3dbb.jpg" width="500" height="185" /></a> <br /><strong>Figure 4: Rush Seed Head.</strong> The bulrush heads disintegrate over the winter period so that by early April they looked like this. Again I had focussing issues – more accurately depth of field issues - with image on the left hand edge of the original  collage, so I have replaced it with this one. In any case, this is a more accurate component of the way I visualise the area. 1/2000 @ f/3.5: ISO 100: 54mm. Aperture deliberately chosen to isolate the subject from the similar colours of the background. <br /><a title="Rushes - seed head by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/8624719457/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="Rushes - seed head" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8521/8624719457_6e69139eb5.jpg" width="185" height="500" /></a> <br /><strong><b>Figure 5: </b></strong><b>Backlit rush and sedges</b>. I felt that a vertical crop of this image would make a good edge shot and the backlighting would add to the variety. 1/100 @ f/9: ISO 100; 50mm <br /><a title="PA217074.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9094475297/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="PA217074.jpg" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7300/9094475297_437d355b48.jpg" width="185" height="500" /></a> <br /><b></b> <br /><strong>Figure 6: Grass seedlings.</strong> These grass seedlings are already starting to die back as the weather cools down. As with the bulrush seed head shot I used a deliberately small aperture to isolate them from the background. 1/500 @ f/2.8: ISO 200: 50mm <br /><a title="PB037140.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9094477353/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="PB037140.jpg" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3716/9094477353_42b872ffe1.jpg" width="375" height="500" /></a> <br /><b>Figure 7: View over rushes</b>. Any attempt to capture this patch of ground needs to emphasise water and marsh plants so rushes are inevitably a central feature of the collage. 1/160 @ f8: ISO 200; 14mm <br /><a title="PA217057.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9096702054/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="PA217057.jpg" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5329/9096702054_daba11dd3a.jpg" width="500" height="185" /></a> <br /><strong></strong> <br /><strong>Figure 8: Partially</strong> <strong>submerged marsh plants</strong>. These are actually the same plants as Figure 11, but taken after a spell of prolonged rain a few days later. The reflection of the sky helps to link the various parts of the collage together. The ponds are central to the area and this shot is central to the collage. 1/8 @ f/16; ISO 100: 50mm. 1 stop overexposed to brighten clouds. <br /><a title="PB037134.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9094476587/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="PB037134.jpg" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3833/9094476587_90844bc38f.jpg" width="500" height="185" /></a> <br /> <br /><strong>Figure 9: Marsh Marigold</strong> A sure sign of late spring early summer in my neck of the woods and one of the reasons this patch of land is special. I make a point of wandering down to see these in flower every year. 1/100 @ f/10: ISO 200: 37mm. Slight underexposure to maintain colour in the backlit flowers <br /><a title="P5069278.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9094481121/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="P5069278.jpg" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3824/9094481121_940c01d963.jpg" width="375" height="500" /></a> <br />  <br /><b>Figure 10: </b><b>Raindrops on gras</b>s. A close-up aiming to capture the raindrops and add to the sense of wetness. This image has bee cropped and rotated for inclusion in the final collage. 1/160 @ f/8; ISO 200; 54mm <br /><a title="PA217041.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9094472577/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="PA217041.jpg" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5524/9094472577_c5ae53b953.jpg" width="500" height="185" /></a> <br /><b></b> <br /><b>Figure 11: </b><b>Dew on marsh plants</b>. Again an attempt to add to the overall feeling of wetness, and to provide a nice damp base to the collage. 1/160 @ f/8; ISO200; 54mm. Slight underexposure to avoid burn out in droplets. <br /><a title="PA217047.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9096701172/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="PA217047.jpg" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7377/9096701172_182bd08ba8.jpg" width="500" height="100" /></a> <br /><b>Figure 12: Frost on marsh plants</b> Included to highlight another seasonal aspect. 1/25 @ f/8: ISO 100: 17mm <br /><a title="E4043665.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9096707568/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="E4043665.jpg" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5468/9096707568_71f4bd7413.jpg" width="500" height="100" /></a> <br />   <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /><b>Lessons learned </b> <br /><b>Concept</b>: This was quite a challenging exercise once I moved past the simple ‘take some photos of somewhere pretty’ reaction which I think is almost conditioned by the course text. What did I want to do? There were, and are, two lines of research that interest me – one about perspective, space and memory and the other about portrayal of time and seasonal symbolism. Initially I found it hard to resolve which of these to focus on, so initially I simply took some photos to see what emerged. This is perhaps the <b>key lesson</b> for me – sometimes you have to take photos to help clarify what you are trying to achieve. Does this contradict the lesson of Assignment 1? I don’t think so as I still started shooting with an idea of what I was trying to achieve – it was just not firmly tied down. <br />The resolution presented in my initial submission was in major part down to the fact that the landscape is so simple that it is almost devoid of seasonal symbolism which, coupled with the time frame for submission, meant an exploration of the portrayal of time was not really feasible in this location. This revised version has the benefit of having been completed over a longer period, so that elements of both time and space have been incorporated into the final presentation. <br />The other lesson I have learned is that 12 photos is a relatively small selection – it is better to focus them on a single task, rather than trying to portray or explore too may ideas. <br /><b>Planning</b>: This was the least difficult part of this assignment – at least as far as shooting went. I have continuous easy access to the site. The owners are used to seeing me so, demands of work permitting, I can choose when and what to photograph. Assembling the final collection was somewhat more difficult as I had to sift through the images with an eye to the potential crops I would need for particular parts of the collage. The <b>key lesson</b> here is that by having an idea of how I wished to present the images I could ensure I had enough options for the final output. <br /><b>Research</b>: In my blog I have recorded some of the results of my research into studying perspective (albeit in the context of Japanese art in some cases), and into seasonal symbolism in a culture which I perceived – perhaps incorrectly in the light of more recent reading – to be more connected to the seasons than our own. However it is certainly the case that classical Japanese art demonstrates that connection, and the ideas in that art continue to affect the way I look at the world. Some of that may be apparent in this fiunal assignment submission, and will hopefully be apparent in my final portfolio. <br />On a different note, reading Fox & Caruana during this assignment opened my eyes to the idea <b>that photography itself can be research</b> and this is one of the first times (if not the first) that I have consciously used it in that way. <br /> <br /><b>Assessment criteria </b> <br /><b>Technical and Visual Skills: </b>Once again<b> </b>I find this difficult to assess. I think I have produced a range of images from close-up to distant landscape, of a range of subject matter, in a technically competent way. I made much more use of a tripod in these images and I believe these samples show that I can produce technically sound images. I’m still not sure I fully understand what is meant by visual skills but I believe I have avoided a simple pictorial approach – I have tried to be honest about the area itself – and I belive that in developing a collage for final assessment I have demonstrated that I an see beyond the edge of a single image. <br /><b>Quality of Outcome: </b>Given that the aim of the assignment (beyond the stated one) was to explore memory – the recollection and portrayal of space and time - I believe this is a good start in an area of study which I expect to revisit in the future. <br /><b>Creativity: </b>In looking beyond traditional flat presentation of a set of images I believe I have taken a creative approach to addressing one of the limitations (in a purely physical sense) of photography in producing a sense of place. It is certainly the first time that I have considered displaying photographs as an installation that allows physical interaction with the viewer. <br /><b>Context: </b>I have tried to place this assignment into the context of some current thoughts on portrayal of perspective and the workings of memory. In doing so I have gone outside simple photographic literature by picking up on the work of David Hockney alongside more conventional photographic practice. I have also drawn on Japanese landscape tradition and their inclusion of multiple seasons in single images. <br /><b></b> <br /><b>Links and references</b> <br />Land Matters: Liz Wells – recommended course text which emphasises the potential of Landscape to convey messages. <br />A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney: Martin Gayford – a series of interviews/recollections of conversation with David Hockney <br />Behind the Image: Anna Fox and Natasha Caruana – recommended course text on research in photography <br /><a href="http://wkdkigodatabase03.blogspot.co.uk/">World Kigo Database</a> – a database of seasonal words for Haiku writers that provides a lot of inspiration for seasonal imagery. <br />Japan Season by Season: Sandrine Bailey</div> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-24449795615185321042013-10-05T15:26:00.001+01:002013-10-06T10:57:24.076+01:00Joel Meyerowitz - Photographs inspired by innocence and experience<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This is an interview that Simon referred me to at the end of Assignment 2. I thought it worth including here for a couple of reasons:<br />
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<li>first off - it's worth sharing - there's a lot of stuff covered in the interview and it may be useful to someone else reading this.</li>
<li>I wan't quite sure I understood what it was about the first time, but some of the things he says about photographing the four elements - earth, air, water and fire - make a lot more sense viewing it from this end of the last year or so.</li>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-67210103260398788132013-10-03T20:23:00.001+01:002013-10-03T20:23:14.604+01:00Catching up<p>I’ve been neglecting my blog at a vital time – which i guess is one of the “joys” of part time study. Since my last real post I’ve had two weeks holiday without internet access, packed my youngest off to university, picked up my new role as OCASA rep for the Photography courses and tried to get my portfolio and assessment material in order.</p> <p>Thankfully it’s coming together at last. I think the last big hurdle was getting everything printed. I’ve decided to go quite large – A2 – to ensure that my panoramas are actually tall enough to view. I’ve also decided that Assignment 1 will be digital only – it doesn’t fit with the rest of my prints and will simply distract from the impact of the others if I include it in hard copy. I feel justified in this approach because I think I made quite a leap forward in understanding what these courses are about between Assignments1 and 2.</p> <p>So what I have now is:</p> <ul> <li>A single collage featuring all 12 images from Assignment 2;</li> <li>Assignments 3 and 5 are printed 8 and 12 up respectively on single A2 sheets – in the manner of a Becher typology as discussed previously;</li> <li>The four-shots-from-one-location part of the portfolio (Exercise 15) is covered by my 4 seasons image; and,</li> <li>For the twelve shots representing my response to the four seasons I am  providing 12 shots of the cereal field opposite my house, printed 3 to an A2 sheet in seasonal order. As the group is essentially about the cycle of the seasons this presentation means they can be ordered to start the year at any particular season you wish – I started the cycle at the beginning of autumn – but if someone prefers to view them spring first that’s their choice.</li> </ul> <p>Presented in this way I hope a number of interlocking themes emerge and I’m capturing these thoughts here in the hope that it will help me with a unifying  “artists statement” for the whole collection:</p> <ul> <li>an interest in time and capturing or signifying its effects in an image – as in the collage and the portfolio submissions</li> <li>an interest in the sea shore and the boundaries between land, sea and sky as in Assignments 3 and 5. Man’s action at this interface is something I hope to work on in Documentary – subject to the Assignment specs being sufficiently broad.</li> <li>a preference for panoramic formats. I’ve pondered this one long and hard – it is clearly a preference I was developing during People and Place and in the final analysis I think it’s down to the idea that it feels closer to the way we actually see and, particularly in the extreme ratios used in my portfolio, it requires us to move through the picture as we would if it were a ‘real’ view.</li> <li>an idea of using the camera to explore rather than explain or expound. My tutor has regularly asked – “What am I trying to say?” – and sometimes I know, but sometimes I don’t. Sometimes all I can say is “Look at this – this is interesting. I’m not sure why yet, but give me time and a camera and I might be able to find out.” Triple Point (Assignment 5) fall into this category. I’m grasping at an idea about the impact of time and the elements on the little bit of the planet available for us to live on, and perhaps the variety of efforts we put in to tilt the equilibrium in our favour. The idea overlaps with some of the thoughts about permanence and change in the wave series and for the moment that’s all I can say. It has to come of it's own accord.</li> </ul> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-19915571725641457352013-09-19T20:52:00.001+01:002013-09-19T20:52:54.779+01:00Assignment 4 finalised<p>I have finally strengthened my essay in response to Simon’s comments. In particular I’ve added some detail to explain what I see as the natural relationship between the various series that make up much of Hatakeyama’s work, added some further discussion on how it relates to the New Topographics concept and some illustrations to show the relationships to Friedrich’s sublime.</p> <p>I have previously addressed the level to which he can be considered influential in a post on this blog, and in a separate resource page which covers a range of references over and above those cited in the essay.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-6922260788204747622013-09-10T23:20:00.001+01:002013-11-02T20:31:52.201+00:00Ibiza Waves<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I went to Ibiza with a very minimal kit. I think I probably regret this. The E-P1 and 17mm is not a bad little combo but I missed the flexibility of the full E-3 kit – even if I didn’t miss the weight. I also took a couple of my old manual focus lenses and an appropriate adapter but the strange workflow meant I sometimes forgot to reset the camera in between lens changes – which just added to my frustration.<br />
Anyway enough grumbling – I had a good break and hopefully some of the shots which I’ll split between this blog and my Documentary blog are worthwhile.<br />
First up then – some waves. Some of these are not as sharp as I’d like at full size – I missed the tripod, and because the camera isn’t waterproof I was more than a bit twitchy about dousing it in salt water - but I think they carry my ideas on waves through well enough.<br />
<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="5" style="width: 900px;"><tbody>
<tr> <td valign="top" width="100">Es Cana</td> <td valign="top" width="330"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9721177356/" title="Es Cana 1 by nmonckton, on Flickr"><img alt="Es Cana 1" height="160" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3731/9721177356_09e4690e83_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td> <td valign="top" width="330"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9721178032/" title="Es Cana 2 by nmonckton, on Flickr"><img alt="Es Cana 2" height="160" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2826/9721178032_17bc6c39b5_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td> </tr>
<tr> <td valign="top" width="100">Cala Martina</td> <td valign="top" width="330"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9721178536/" title="Cala Martinez 1 by nmonckton, on Flickr"><img alt="Cala Martinez 1" height="160" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5502/9721178536_c5e7cbbecd_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td> <td valign="top" width="330"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9721179174/" title="Cala Martinez 2 by nmonckton, on Flickr"><img alt="Cala Martinez 2" height="160" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3755/9721179174_8aa809d918_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td> </tr>
<tr> <td valign="top" width="1005">Cala Nova</td> <td valign="top" width="330"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9721179818/" title="Cala Nova 1 by nmonckton, on Flickr"><img alt="Cala Nova 1" height="160" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3681/9721179818_70db772935_m.jpg" width="320" /></a></td> <td valign="top" width="330"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9721180448/" title="Cala Nova 2 by nmonckton, on Flickr"><img alt="Cala Nova 2" height="160" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5350/9721180448_190d712202_m.jpg" width="320" /></a></td> </tr>
<tr> <td valign="top" width="100">Cala Llenya</td> <td valign="top" width="330"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9721181080/" title="Cala Llenya 1 by nmonckton, on Flickr"><img alt="Cala Llenya 1" height="160" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7405/9721181080_31ecd1fa19_m.jpg" width="320" /></a></td> <td valign="top" width="330"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9717951897/" title="Cala Llenya 2 by nmonckton, on Flickr"><img alt="Cala Llenya 2" height="160" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2819/9717951897_e0abfa4b8a_m.jpg" width="320" /></a></td> </tr>
</tbody></table>
And while I’m at it my only attempt at a Triple Point while I was away. I thought I could play with the idea of land and water by substituting the aircraft wing and the clouds.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9702522787/" title="Triple Point experiment by nmonckton, on Flickr"><img alt="Triple Point experiment" height="500" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5451/9702522787_18f2eeee73.jpg" width="250" /></a> </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-35447040339183554902013-08-19T18:17:00.001+01:002013-08-20T06:53:07.217+01:00Making sense of my portfolio submission and assignments 3 and 5<p>Not unusually I have been having a bit of a crisis as assessment submission time approaches. This particular version of the landscape course effectively commits you to a course of action early in the proceedings – which can be a bit challenging if you feel you’ve developed in the interim and the work you started with may no longer feel “true” – even if you acknowledge its benefit in moving you towards something that does. A warning – this post is going to be long and rambling because I am trying something unusual for me – putting my thinking down in words.</p> <p>After a somewhat hare-brained start – spurred on by the general enthusiasm for the Olympics – I rapidly picked up on my interests in perspective and memory that I was starting to develop in People and Place. From early on I picked an interest in perspectives that led me to think about Japanese paintings, and that in turn led me to thinking about seasonal symbolism in classical Japanese art and literature. This seemed a solid starting point – here was something I could use my camera to investigate, and that might form an interesting structure for later assignments. I struggled however, to find a clear path from those classical images to modern photographic practise. Reading around Japanese photography it became clear that there was actually a gap in that path.</p> <p>While I was reading around Japanese photography trying to find a bridge I also did something I’ve not done properly in my previous course – acquire and digest some of the recommended books. In the process I discovered Sugimoto and Hatakeyama – the first attracted me for his philosophical approach, the second for his measured investigation. Both make extensive use of very similar images taken in series either to make a point or investigate a subject. My course for Assignments 3 and 5 was set.</p> <p>In parallel however I continued with my explorations of fukei – landscape images with a hint of time passing through – based on symbols from early Japanese literature. And now we come to the crunch – I have three strands of work to present for assessment – in a format that only really admits two (portfolio and four seasonal images from same location) – and preferably one. If there’s something I’ve learned in the last few months its that presenting multiple ideas in a single piece of work is likely to lead to confusion and dilute whatever it is I’m trying to explain or explore.</p> <p><strong>Seasonal symbolism</strong></p> <p>I’m undoubtedly quite pleased with some of these shots – it’s still a subject that interests me but it poses a genuine difficulty which I’ve touched on previously. Without the background it looks like a collection of pictures of flowers, leaves and other figurative material without any obvious cohesion. It may have meant something to the mediaeval Japanese courts but for me it’s become more of an academic exercise which helps me better understood the poetry and art, rather than a subject in itself. I did consider producing the images on Japanese paper, but I feel this risks descending into simple pictorialism – which would be OK if that were my intent, but doesn’t feel convincing if it’s a desperate attempt to shout “Japanese”. </p> <p><strong>Cereal Field</strong></p> <p>I started this in response to the exercise which required me to shoot from the same location once during each season, but over the year it has developed into more than that. In an interview for <a href="http://www.seesawmagazine.com/southam_pages/southam_interview.html" target="_blank">SeeSaw magazine</a> Jem Southam describes his working strategy as follows: “Once fixed on a site, I revisit it regularly, and gradually assemble a body of work that is a response to a slow absorption of the site …” He then adds some references to other research and discussions with people at the site which are less relevant to my experience here, but the initial sentence captures quite a lot of what I feel about this group of photos. In an artistic sense this is my field...I’ve watched it change and grow, I’ve recorded it’s development over the course of the year – and in some ways it’s like a clock marking of the passage of the year (and the seasons of course) with its subtle changes and differences. What would be a more fitting way to represent the four seasons in my portfolio?</p> <p><strong>Four seasons photo</strong></p> <p>This developed out of my interest in Japanese art, and my discovery of a genre of Japanese paintings which show  all four seasons in a single image – sometimes a pair of images across two folding screens. Over the course of the year I have assembled sufficient images from exactly the same location – I recorded the position of my tripod using the joins in my patio slabs - to spread the seasonal changes across a single image which can also be read as a simple allegory of the progress of life. This feels like an ideal way of presenting the “four images from exercise 15” even if it is a somewhat creative iteration of the precise brief.</p> <p>So far so good – but what of the assignments – do they support this development?</p> <p>Both assignments consist of series of similar shots which could be considered typologies in the Becher mould – given the similarities of presentation and content. I do not see them in quite that way. As I understand it the Becher typologies are about similarities and often reflect the modernist idea of form following function. </p> <p><strong>Wave studies</strong></p> <p>These are very consciously about difference. I was using photography to explore – challenge even – the ideas I picked up from Sugimoto’s work about the constancy of the sea and its link to the past. There are not intended as a typology in the Becher sense, because I would maintain that they demonstrate continuous variability, rather than consistency – and in any case waves have no function, so in one sense the form is of little relevance. In another sense the form is everything, as without the variation in form at the intersection of land and sea these photos would all be identical.</p> <p><strong>Triple point</strong></p> <p>I struggled a little for a subject for Assignment 5, but found myself drawn back to the coast.The “triple point” of the title , the visual point where land sea and sky meets represents in some way the limit of man’s environment. Sometimes this limit is totally natural, sometimes it has had structure or function forced on it. Again I would see the series as a study of the differences in form that can be found around the limit.</p> <p><strong>Where is this going?</strong></p> <p>I believe I have talked myself in to a position where I can say with some certainty that the work I have produced in the latter half of this course has been focused on difference – differences in wave forms, differences in land forms and differences in nature brought about by time and sometimes the action of man. Interestingly, from this end of the road I think I can understand how I got here. The two series for assignments 3 and 5 seem to fit quite well with the cereal field series – even the 4 seasons image can be seen as an extension which merges the individual differences into a single image.</p> <p>All this seems to talk to the ideas expressed by Liz Wells among others at the seminar I attended in Newcastle months ago, about landscape as a documentary practise. How I take these ideas forward into the documentary course I have yet to work out.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-44250659815874108192013-08-04T10:06:00.001+01:002013-08-04T10:08:19.148+01:00Moving on to Documentary<p>I recently took delivery of the next level 2 course I’m tackling – Documentary. As previously I’ll be starting another blog for that – in fact I already have. It’s here if you fancy popping by to see it: <a href="http://nmoncktonsocdoc.blogspot.co.uk/">http://nmoncktonsocdoc.blogspot.co.uk/</a></p> <p>The reference to Soc Doc in the address is because for once I planned ahead and set the blog up without any content while the course was still Social Documentary. That’ll teach me. Can’t help but observe that the removal of “social” from the title seems to open up a whole extra area of practice and context which is good as far as I’m concerned.</p> <p>Also worth noting that I still have all of my prep for assessment to complete here, plus a load of other stuff that still interests me – so this blog wont be coming to end for some time yet.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-39960433390215551452013-08-02T22:52:00.000+01:002013-08-02T22:52:38.229+01:00Working practice<p>One of the challenges of studying I’ve found is marshalling all the thoughts and materials into a coherent mass – especially as I spend 2-3 days  every week away from home – and the time I spend in hotels is therefore a large chunk of my “free” time. What I have also found pretty frustrating is trying to capture the random thoughts that occur while I’m driving – and the thoughts spurred by listening to people on the radio – as there’s a limit to my memory capability when it comes to this sort of stuff (bad jokes is another issue – but I digress).</p> <p>So what are the basics – I have the notes in a ring binder, an A5 notebook as provided at the start of the course and this blog. A few pros and cons to start with.</p> <ul> <li>the course notes – in previous courses I’ve tended to scribble thoughts on them – which is a bit unsatisfactory at assessment time. I started off by carrying them with me but they are big, bulky and made of paper so easily damaged. In the end I copied the contents pages onto my phone and went with just that unless I really needed to take a page or two with me. </li> <li>the A5 notebook – I can see looking at the example videos provided by the OCA that my previous notebooks would have provided rather slim pickings for an assessor. I’ve tried harder this time – I’ve used it to keep notes of study visits, scribble down thoughts about photographers I’ve researched in books and collect my random musings. I’ve discovered that I tend to progress by simply asking myself questions – which I try to write down – the answers get ground around in my head and end up as posts here. Sometimes using the notebook can be quite spontaneous – at others it just feels forced. As time as progressed I’ve also felt restricted by the size and binding. For my <a href="http://nmoncktonsocdoc.blogspot.co.uk/" target="_blank">next course</a> I’ve moved up to an A4 notebook, with built in document wallets so that I can more easily add pictures and supplement notes as I go. </li> <li>this blog – is here when I need it – on my lap-top in hotels, on my phone when I’m out and about and on my home PC when I’m not. Sometimes I post finished thoughts (in as far as any thought is finished) – sometimes musings  - whatever feels comfortable  - which in truth is most things other than the random questions and jottings in my notebook. I post my photos on Flickr for linking here. For better or worse I started my OCA journey using Blogger – it’s pretty easy to use – and although the OCA model is based on Wordpress I feel no significant reason to change. What I have done throughout this course is tweak the layout to more closely resemble the OCA model – so that the assessors and, hopefully, other people can find their way around better. </li> </ul> <p>What more do I need? Quite a bit actually. I find the idea of doing online research and then painfully transcribing links to a written notebook odd at best. Ditto finding images and articles online and then printing them out. Carrying an A5 notebook everywhere is simply painful – and A4 will be worse – as I don’t wear a jacket or carry a man-bag. I’ve taken the reading list seriously on this course as well – not something I did before (we live and learn), but there is a limit to how big a library I can transport. So during the course I’ve adopted a couple of practices and bits of technology to help manage this.</p> <ul> <li>One Note – I’ve blogged about this previously. It’s my go-to tool for online research – the challenge now is how to present the info at assessment without more dead trees. I use it to collect articles, links and images of interest. I use it to store my tutor reports and e-mails between myself and my tutor, and to collect my initial reactions to tutor feedback. I shall be using it to store any worthwhile forum posts I make for future reference. It also integrates with my phone – so I use it to store stuff I might need while way on study visits – train times, proof of ticket purchase etc. </li> <li>my phone – I am embarrassed to admit that in a forum response to Joe Fox I once suggested that if the answer was a smart phone you were asking the wrong question. I now use it for staying in touch with the forums when I’m on the move, as a handy camera for recce trips and visual note-taking, it has tide tables, a depth of field calculator and a sun compass –and best of all a handy little free text note taking app (S-Note) you can write on with a stylus. From time to time I export these to the PC, print them off and add them to my log-book. By the time I’ve thrown in Dropbox and the One Note app I can do pretty much anything in the field I could do at my desk (although I do prefer working on the PC/laptop for the proper keyboard.) I also have a mind-mapping app which I've just started using to keep notes from books I’m reading – not quite sure about it yet, but worth a try I think. And finally there’s the Bloglovin app which i use to stay in touch with other blogs I fiollow. </li> <li>my Kindle – much easier to read on than a computer or a phone I try to get as many of the course texts as possible in this format. I also use it for pdf texts from the net, and as a handy format for instruction manuals. The dictionary function is also pretty handy when reading some of the denser theory texts. I have the Kindle app on my phone and both computers so I can generally get a decent view of colour images if I feel I need them as well. </li> <li>forums – Flickr and OCA.; My contribution to these varies – sometimes I’m very active, sometimes I’m just an observer, There seem to be several ways of interacting with these  - my preferred methods are contributions to debates and helping relative newcomers. the latter has the unexpected benefit of testing my own understanding as well. </li> </ul> <p>I guess it’s possible to say technology has taken over my life but it feels about right to me. Information gathering is done with the phone, Kindle, forums and PCs and recorded using the logbook, S-Note and OneNote. Musings and thought sorting are done in the logbook and sometimes her and on the forums and the final (and sometimes semi-final) output recorded here.</p> <p>Not sure if all this is helpful to anyone but me, but I’ve not really thought about the physical structure of my learning experience before. Overall it feels comfortable – although I’m sure I will continue to tweak it as I progress.</p> <p>PS Did I mention I sometimes make photos?</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-73463398164358788142013-07-29T21:34:00.001+01:002013-07-29T21:34:57.479+01:00Answering my own question<p>I found myself musing about the attraction of Martin Parr in <a href="http://nmoncktonland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/look-13liverpool-study-visit.html" target="_blank">this post</a> which I wrote after the visit to Look13 in Liverpool earlier this year. While I’ve not had a chance to go away and have a really good look at his work, I think I may have talked myself part way to the answer in response to a post ion the student forums, where I observed that we shouldn’t look at individual photos, but at the totality of the body of work.</p> <p>No more to it than that I’m afraid – I will have to reserve judgement until I’ve seen more of his stuff, but from what I know of it so far I suspect the whole is significantly greater than the sum of its parts, and certainly more than the relatively small subset of those parts I’ve seen to date. I’m doing Documentary next – so no excuse not to find out.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-84201514793751730532013-07-28T23:05:00.001+01:002013-07-29T21:26:13.461+01:00Naoya Hatakeyama Resources<p>Given the level of effort I put into researching Hatakeyama, his work, influences and influence, I thought I would compile the website links into a single page  for the benefit of anyone else interested in his work.</p> <p>I don’t think I realised quite how big this post was going to be. As a result I’ve moved it to a permanent page – see tabs above – to avoid it becoming too dominant among all the posts associated with Assignment 4.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-84562560090210382482013-07-17T21:15:00.001+01:002013-08-09T21:57:20.050+01:00Re-shooting assignment 3<blockquote> <p>“Stone and sea are deep in life. Two unalterable symbols of the world. Permanence at rest. And permanence in motion. Participants in the power that remains.”</p> </blockquote> <p>I’ve just re-shot assignment 3. In doing so I realise that I never wrote up a response to my tutors feedback – although I have annotated it on OneNote – which is my preferred method of catching my immediate thoughts. There is a reason for this failure – it was clear to me from Simon’s comments that yet again I had over-thought my supporting material and so confused the message I was hoping to portray in the images. And yet – I couldn’t get clear in my own mind how to say what I wanted in words. This in itself was quite distressing as I’m usually pretty good at coming up with words for my thoughts. Anyway, it was resolved by a <a href="http://paying-ready-attention-gallery.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/sky-watch-friday-three-shades-of.html" target="_blank">blog post</a> from my brother which quoted Stephen Donaldson, from The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever and which I reproduce above.</p> <p>Much as I admire Sugimoto’s seascapes, and find the philosophical approach he brings to them fascinating and involving I disagree with his premise in one fundamental way – the view is not the same as it was thousands of years ago – it is different in virtually every respect. The same is true for the sea and the sky the second before and the second after I press the shutter. The problem I had was I could find no way of expressing it succinctly – until “Permanence in motion” came to the rescue. Handily, there are rocks, and distant hill in some of my images – so “Permanence at rest” comes into play as well.</p> <p>Simon also raised a couple of technical issues and I did not have the images to replace the technically less effective ones. In particular the shooting conditions resulted in the “permanence at rest” being rather blurred. I could simply have re-shot those images at an appropriate time on a separate tidal cycle, but that felt to me to damage the integrity of the series. How? Well the sea has two (at least) motions – the waves and the tide – and I did want to capture both of those in the same series. What I did not want to do was introduce long and un-necessary timescales. So complete reshoot it was.</p> <p>I used Simon’s idea of having a very low tripod – I actually used a gorillapod to avoid inundating my ‘proper’ tripod in salt water and sand. I suspect I didn’t really need it as this weekend – when I did the reshoot – was much brighter than my original shooting date, but I thought I’d try it anyway. I was surprised at the difference in shooting experience.  The first series – without the tripod was all dash in, grab some shots, get out before the water sloshed over the camera. The use of the tripod made it a much more contemplative experience. Move 3-4 feet back from the current tide-line, level the tripod and wait for the water and the waves to come to me. Keep shooting until inundation becomes a possibility, pick up the tripod, move back and repeat the experience. No less immersive, but much more meditative – I can see a place for both.</p> <p>So, in reworking the Assignment I’ll be replacing all the images and considerably tightening the text. I’ll also be making one further change – the title. The more I think about it the more I think that simply re-using Sugimoto’s title is a cheat. I’m really questioning his idea, rather than developing it, so I’m going to go with “Permanence" as the title.</p> <p>As I’ve written rather a lot I thought I’d finish with an image from the re-shoot that I wont be using in the Assignment – the stranded dogfish I rescued on the day.</p> <a title="Something fishy at the beach by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9283269719/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="Something fishy at the beach" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2825/9283269719_3fa6a20f4e.jpg" width="500" height="250" /></a> <p>According to some <a href="http://www.silvertalks.com/en/blog/2012/jan/1/native-symbol-figures/" target="_blank">internet sources</a>, in the mythology of the Haida people of British Columbia the dogfish symbolises persistence and strength. And so perhaps here we have, in a single image, my opening quote.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-21219724423291307312013-07-16T23:37:00.001+01:002013-07-16T23:37:29.070+01:00Damn!<p>I guess it had to happen eventually – I’ve dropped one of my cameras on an unyielding surface :( Fortunately – in monetary terms – it’s my E-P1. Not sure how serious the damage is as I had to go to work, but the battery door is definitely a goner – am keeping my fingers crossed that it’s no worse than that, otherwise e-bay will be my friend I think.</p> <p>The only real pain is that it’s the camera I’ve been using for my field panoramas, so I’ll now have to see how well I can reproduce them with the E-3. Hopefully reasonably well.</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-38474321432858001542013-07-15T13:39:00.001+01:002013-07-22T18:25:05.744+01:00Printing exercises<p>There are a couple of exercises on this course which seem intended for traditional darkroom printing techniques but can reasonably be adapted to digital media. The first of these is burning in a sky. To be honest it feels like this should be a standard technique at this stage in the overall degree course, so here’s a before and after example. To make it closer to the apparent intentions of the exercise I’ve done a default B&W conversion in Lightroom first and then darkened the sky using the Brush tool and th exposure and clarity settings. Then I lightened the field using the yellow slider for good measure. Overall I think this gives the image a more ominous, stormy feel.</p> <p align="center"><a title="P5129288.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9275326205/"><img alt="P5129288.jpg" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2834/9275326205_8ecfb9f9cd_n.jpg" width="320" height="240" /></a>      <a title="P5129288-2.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9278112300/"><img alt="P5129288-2.jpg" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3796/9278112300_9f37a54ec7_n.jpg" width="320" height="240" /></a></p> <p align="left">The extent to which you might think this is a good idea is obviously a matter of taste. I actually think it works in this case, but there has been quite a bit of debate about the Salgado Genesis exhibition on WeAreOCA, much of it associated with the level of processing/over-processing of some of his prints.</p> <p align="left">The second exercise is about printing a  shot which has been taken into the light, and appears to be about bringing some detail back into the burned out areas.as above and also holding back the shadows to lighten them. This seems a lot simpler in digital media – this one is not quite directly into the light but makes the point reasonable well. I’ve been able to emphasise the contrast in the clouds to make them slightly more dramatic, while simultaneously lifting the shadows. Again which of these you prefer is a matter of choice. I’d go with the processed version, but at least one person has favourited the original.</p> <p align="center"><a title="E4213720-2.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9317143688/"><img alt="E4213720-2.jpg" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3722/9317143688_e535077f57_n.jpg" width="320" height="160" /></a>      <a title="E4213720.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9314355881/"><img alt="E4213720.jpg" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5541/9314355881_be20e85259_n.jpg" width="320" height="160" /></a></p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-90507108271354394502013-07-12T21:31:00.001+01:002013-07-12T21:31:42.051+01:00Man-made landscapes<p>The practical side of this project is to take three photos of the title of this post “Man-made landscapes”. Having just read Andrews’ Landscape and Western Art I’m tempted to ask “What landscape isn’t man-made”? Even the most innocuous and unprepossessing bit of land is just that – land – until someone asserts ownership, or ascribes cultural value to it, or claims it as a great view or simply puts the boundaries of a photo frame around it – at which point it becomes landscape. Landscape is inherently man-made and so the practical part of the project becomes simple – I can point my camera anywhere, make a photo and it’s Landscape – and by implication man-made.</p> <p>A thought has just struck me – that might be a reading of some of Billingham’s more puzzling Landscapes. Before he photographed them they were just land – his action has changed their status. Not sure where that thought process will take me yet, so back to the original…</p> <p>There is a second and more challenging part to the exercise. I’m not simply required to capture a shot of a “man-made landscape” I have to decide what I want to say with it in advance. I took the following three photos on a day trip up Eskdale. before I set off I had already concluded that it would be a good opportunity to shoot for this project, and I had a broad idea in mind to make a point that nearly all British landscape is man-made (in the lay sense rather than the art theory sense) and perhaps to provide a counter-point to the prevalent view that all development is bad. First up is this shot towards Boot from the platform at Dalegarth:</p> <a title="P5269366.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9269464721/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="P5269366.jpg" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2834/9269464721_8dd448d048_z.jpg" width="640" height="480" /></a> <p>This is, give or take a couple of fences, unspoiled country side as presented in tourist brochures, and yet, except for the bare bones of the rocks,  it is almost entirely the result of continuing human intervention. The tree were probably cleared from the lower fells by bronze age farmers, and the descendants of their sheep have kept them tree-free since, the woodland is quite possibly the unmanaged relic of woodland managed for centuries as coppice to provide charcoal and timber, the dry stones walls and pastures were initially developed by the Vikings, even the grassland itself is improved. Somewhere in this valley around 100,000 tonnes of iron ore were extracted – and apparently there are still Roman slag heaps if you know what you’re looking at.</p> <p>The difficulty with all this is that to the uninformed eye none of this is readily apparent – perhaps it needs a title such as “5000 years of human development” to emphasise the point – I’m not really sure.</p> <p>Next up was this one, which in the context of the first image I simply meant as a reminder that the planet, and the countryside itself, will outlast our impact by some considerable measure. The rock of the hills in the background is 450million years old – give or take.</p> <a title="P5269387.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9272248622/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="P5269387.jpg" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3771/9272248622_a972750ff2_z.jpg" width="640" height="480" /></a> <p>And  final image, which struck me as appropriate to this narrative and was too good an opportunity to turn down. I love the way this glove appears to be re-assimilating into the rock emphasising the idea that the planet will deal with the things that we throw at it. Whether we will is another question.</p> <a title="P5269385.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9272454190/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="P5269385.jpg" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7425/9272454190_122c89ef9a_z.jpg" width="640" height="480" /></a> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-67821987718734225432013-07-09T20:47:00.000+01:002013-07-09T20:47:15.184+01:00Assignment 5<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Assignment 5 now added to the line up. Mods to Assignment 3 next on my hit list.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-74392675205339030242013-07-08T21:26:00.001+01:002013-07-22T18:27:14.381+01:00Drama<div style="text-align: left" dir="ltr" trbidi="on">According to dictionary.com dramatic has a number of related meanings:, but of those on offer the one most applicable to photography is “any situation or series of events having vivid, emotional, conflicting, or striking interest or results”. <br />The exercise notes are oddly specific. They provide a series of scenarios for dramatising landscapes, ask us to come up with some extra scenarios of our own, and then provide some <em>imaginary </em>examples. This is strangely liberating – I can imagine what I want – attainable or not, but at the same time it feels like a trick missed. This module is definitely an improvement over previous modules of the course in encouraging engagement with the photographic “canon”, so why not ask for concrete examples as well? perhaps it’s to see if we will use our initiative, so I’m going to do both. <br />First off then, their examples: <br /> <ul> <li>inherently spectacular subjects – huge waterfalls might be an obvious example – and there are some real examples of my own in <a href="http://nmoncktonland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-sublime.html" target="_blank">this post</a>. Other imaginary examples might include huge forest trees, dramatic surf, towering cloud formations – the list is nearly endless. </li> <li>extreme focal length – wide angle lenses give the opportunity for huge depth of field so perhaps a dramatic contrast between a clump of meadow flowers and a mountainous background or a huge building would fit the bill – this <a href="http://www.anseladams.com/new-archival-replica-mount-williamson-sierra-nevada-from-manzanar-california-c-1944/" target="_blank">real life example</a> from Ansel Adams lacks the contrasting subject matter and relies simply on the perspective and light for its effect. At the other end of the scale, maybe using an telephoto to isolate a detail, such as a single tree or a person, against a frame filling background would do the trick. For example, this shot taken from a fell road in west Cumbria:</li> </ul>  <a title="P2238238.jpg by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/8500972702/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="P2238238.jpg" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8378/8500972702_9d35e9ff4e_n.jpg" width="240" height="320" /></a> <br /> <ul> <li>rich colours at sunrise or sunset – could be used to add dramatic lighting to an existing landscape – for example the alpenglow that Rowell demonstrates in Mountain Light, or a startling colour cast on a red sandstone cliff – as per many Joe Cornish images. </li> <li>back lighting – can be used to create sunstars and dramatic lighting contrasts, as in my previous post, but can also be used to give an almost luminous feel to a field of grass or a hillside vineyard when the sun catches the underside of the leaves. </li> <li>unusual composition – placing a small object close to the edge of a frame might work as a “reveal” showing the true scale of the primary subject only after a short inspection of the whole image, or might increase a sense of loneliness. Another approach might be a dramatically skewed horizon to emphasize the power of waves, or a shot taken vertically into the tree tops or over a cliff edge.</li> </ul> Adding to these with a few ideas of my own: <br /> <ul> <li style="text-align: left">night shots have an inherent sense of drama, especially when they include artificial lighting</li> </ul> <div style="text-align: center"><a title="Salford Quays - IWM and the Lowry Centre by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/8558310008/"><img alt="Salford Quays - IWM and the Lowry Centre" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8085/8558310008_6ae8b55745_n.jpg" width="320" height="160" /></a></div> <ul> <li>extreme weather conditions can offer drama of the own – lightning strikes and tornadoes are obvious examples, but even storm fronts can offer drama, as in this image, which is perhaps also an example of unusual composition with its very low horizon:</li> </ul> <a title="Stormbringer by nmonckton, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/7963722976/"><img style="float: none; margin-left: auto; display: block; margin-right: auto" alt="Stormbringer" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8182/7963722976_f8a9a21472_n.jpg" width="240" height="320" /></a> <br /> <ul> <li>unusual aspect ratios offer can make a relatively mundane image more dramatic by altering the way we engage with it. My cereal field shots are (hopefully) a case in point. Displayed as a standard format they could be taken in in a single glance, but presented as a 5:1 panorama our eyes are forced to wander through the field, seeking detail and context. </li> <li>a distant viewpoint, as per Hatakeyama’s city shots or quarries can add drama by setting us outside the image – converting it to a theatrical spectacle. An unusual or potentially precarious viewpoint emphasises this still further – Rowell’s mountain photography offers several examples of this – <a href="http://www.mountainlight.com/gallery.yosemite/images.html" target="_blank">with this shot of a friend on Half Dome in Yosemite</a> a particular favourite. </li> <li>a final example would be simply to reduce the image to black and white. Many of Adam’s images would – I suspect - seem less dramatic in colour, and the high contrast opportunities offered by black and white can significantly alter the impact of an image.</li> </ul> </div> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-33528789876236187352013-07-06T09:58:00.001+01:002013-07-09T19:58:21.246+01:00Triple Point 7<div style="margin: 0 0 10px 0; padding: 0; font-size: 0.8em; line-height: 1.6em;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9219204360/" title="Triple Point 7"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7394/9219204360_d047126d40.jpg" alt="Triple Point 7 by nmonckton" /></a><br/><span style="margin: 0;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/9219204360/">Triple Point 7</a>, a photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmimages/">nmonckton</a> on Flickr.</span></div><p>Found this view while out shooting for Assignment 5. It combines the sun-star exercise from the notes with an idea I picked up from Rowell's Mountain Light about using the edge of a solid object to cause diffraction patterns.<br />While not really relevant to anything I was attempting at the time it seemed foolish to turn down the opportunity.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-15427200420184499632013-07-06T02:40:00.000+01:002013-07-05T18:44:44.712+01:00Assignment 5 – The challenge of style<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On the face of it this assignment is fairly straightforward – take a dozen photos in the style of the photographer I analysed for Assignment 4. The question I keep coming back to though is, “What is Hatakeyama’s style?” – so I thought I should explore that a little.<br />
Clearly he makes use of the sublime – if that constitutes a style – in his early works, although it is less apparent in his more recent material – often featuring images which hint at the unknown/unknowable – either by dint of the subject size 9as in his quarry, factory and city images), or location (as in his underground images). He also makes use of stylistic devices – for example in Rivers he uses a 2:1 vertical panoramas with a strong horizontal - or shooting through wet glass for Slow Glass, although not so often that it might be considered a “trademark”. In general his work features a relatively limited – and for the most part fairly muted palette – blues, browns, greys – with very little green or yellow. It also appears to be largely taken in relatively flat lighting – frequently suggesting twilight or at least evening.<br />
Much of his work also concentrates on man-made or altered landscapes – cities, quarries, river channels, industrial facilities – often centring on the interaction of the man made items with the environment, although, as noted in my critical essay there is a sense of detachment – perhaps even scientific study - rather than campaigning. Particularly with his quarries, coal heaps and cement factories there is a suggestion that he prefers elevated shooting positions, but this is reversed in Rivers and Underground.<br />
All of this leaves me with plenty to shoot at stylistically, but what about subject matter. I was tempted to try a series on abandoned mining sites in the Lake District, as it interests me just how many of the now “beautiful” valleys incorporate the result of nature acting on what we might now consider an environmental disaster, but my knowledge is not yet at the stage where I could do that convincingly, and in truth I’m not really fit enough for all the hill-walking required to get the elevated positions. But I am working on it. and wondering if I might be able to weave it into Documentary.<br />
Instead I’m returning to the coast to do a series on the interface between earth, sea and sky. The stylistic devices I’ll be using include the 2:1 vertical panorama with strong horizontals and the muted palette.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-6491823156501602852013-07-05T22:17:00.001+01:002013-07-05T22:17:57.892+01:00Assignment 2: Final version<p>Quite a bit of rework to Assignment 2 in the light of my tutors comments. Final version now linked through the tab at the top of the page. Key change are that I have concentrated on a single issue – the way I remember the patch of land at the centre of the assignment. In doing so I have introduced some elements of temporal change as well as differing viewpoints – which I think is a closer reflection of the way our memory works.</p> <p>My final challenge for this assignment is to work out a way of displaying it at assessment that reflects the thoughts I’ve put down in the associated notes. In particular – how do I get a 3-D display to assessment – or do I simply build it and photograph it?</p> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3350084995583155409.post-75793774282758650562013-07-01T23:22:00.001+01:002013-07-01T23:22:53.390+01:00The Big Fat List of Documentaries About Photography<p dir=ltr> <a href="http://petapixel.com/2013/07/01/the-big-fat-list-of-documentaries-about-photography/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PetaPixel+%28PetaPixel%29">The Big Fat List of Documentaries About Photography</a> <br /><p dir=ltr>More than enough stuff here to keep me going through the winter.<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0