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Final Piece
Gallery of Inspiration:
Statement of Intent:
To conclude my unit 1 Fantastic and Strange photography course, I am going to use work I completed for Mari Mahr's '13 Clues to A fictitious Crime' and keep developing original concepts and techniques I have studied throughout whilst bringing in new ideas as well. In particular, I want to explore transferring onto multiple different surfaces, some which I have not tried before. This will test my understanding of textures, whilst also further developing and growing the ways in which I can keep changing parts of my earlier edits from Mari Mahr. It is still important to me to be able to incorporate parts off Mahr's work as I have continued to draw inspiration from her '13 Clues to a Fictitious Crime' which I explored originally. Throughout this artist, I have been able to adapt and evolve ideas and compositions, starting from first detailing a murder in monochromatic edits, to the using multiple exposure, burning, printing, layering, and transferring. My idea for this final outcome is to create an assortments of shelves, each which will house objects shown in my first edits. I shall construct the shelves personally and continue using transfer methods to add later edits onto the shelves.
Gallery of Chosen/ successful Images:
I have chosen these images to use, as they are my latest developments, and show the most progress from my starting point. Whilst creating them, I printed edits off, burnt the edges and then layered and distorted them changing the lending option s well as the exposure, saturation and orientation in the process. For this, I will print each image off, so they can be transferred onto plywood, metal and plastic. In total, I have nine edits, so I may have to reprint them multiple times in order to have enough, to cover my different surfaces.
Creative Process:
To start with, I used a solid wood frame, or open box and began by painting it black. This I did all over, including the sides and then once it had dried, I went on to use a white paint and unevenly spread it, creating a washed out affect. The white would allow each transfer to be visible. After drying, I printed off 18, two of each edit, images and began ripping them. Some I teared around the border, whilst others were ripped into smaller pieces. This would help to create a unique collage.
Next, I used mod podge glue, to stick images facing downwards onto the wood. I left this for twenty four hours, before returning and removing the excess paper using a wet sponge. I rubbed carefully against the surface until the image transferred below was fully visible. I then decided once it has dried to repeat this process and create another layer to fill gaps.
The image on my left, shows a surface after an image has been transferred. It can be more difficult to see the first layers of transfers as the mod podge was opaque. This meant I had to be careful not to add the glue over any images.
To continue to experiment with surfaces, I transferred more images onto different ones. Firstly, I used small plastic shelves that I had bought from the construction store. I was doubtful whether the images would transfer as plastic does not have pores for the image or glue to stick to. To counter this problem, I used an extra coat of mod podge on top of the paint. Overall, it turned out well, so I decided to keep on transferring.
Another surface, I used was a cork rectangular strip, which was also bought from the hardware store, I repeated the same process as for the wood and plastics and did this on the sides and top of each plank. Then, I decided to try transferring on metal, so used circular metal tubes, of different sizes and did not paint them but instead applied mod podge where the images would sit.
Once each transfer would dry, they would become less visible, so to solve this, I used pva glue as a final coat. I not only painted all of the smaller objects, but I also covered the wood frame.
This was the first time I was able to get a better vision about how my idea would end up, so I began trying different arrangements. I swapped certain objects and finally concluded on one which I was content with. Here you can see how the transferred images would be visible and further emphasised by the positioning of each shelve.
Then to attach the shelves, I used a glue gun. Here on the left you can see how each object would be glued onto the wood. This did not take long to dry, so I then began setting up my background to shoot against. In terms of for the creating process, I was nearing finished. Overall, the installation took over 8 days to create mainly due to drying times
Shooting Process:
As a background, I used two white sheets and placed one horizontally on the ground and the other vertically as the backdrop. I used natural lighting as this would make the compositions create natural shadows, rather than those stimulated by spotlight or studio lights. I also wanted to use day light, as this was what both Mari Mahr and I have used in earlier photoshoots. The middle image shows the objects chosen to feature. This includes playing cards, dice pearls bracelets and other items such as a purple necklace and gambling cards. I placed these within, above, below and hanging from the shelves. I took some images with the composition lying flat and others with it standing upright.
Composition Experiments:
I was unsure as to whether my final outcome should be presented upright or lying flat. Initially, I began taking images of objects in the shelves, with it flat. These image are some of the ones taken. I soon realised, that it was difficult to capture depth with the installation laying flat. Furthermore, the images did not seem three dimensional as objects sat at the back. However, some images were well taken. To better photograph my final outcome I decided to have it standing vertically against a white background so not only could objects hang, I could also photograph it from different angles.
Final Piece:
For my final piece, I have used 35 images, because I wanted to show not only an overview of the composition, but also specific parts. The objects placed amongst the shelves include playing cards, dice, pearls, bracelets and other items such as a purple necklace and gambling cards. Th colour purple was chosen as this commonly represents greed. Like the way Mari Mahr's work hints at a sinister story, I wanted mine to allude to illegal or promiscuous activity driven solely by greed resulting in the destruction of purity, represented through pearls. This storyline was partly inspire by my original story of a greed motivated murder. I felt it really important to re-embed and display an understanding for the origins of this study, which was Mahr's '13 Clues to a Fictitious Crime'. I have not included an editing process as I used photoshop solely to make the images black and white. This was because Mari Mahr's work is not heavily edited and I was content with the way daylight had casted natural shadows, which added depth to the images. In terms of technical features, I made sure to use a variety of angles including a close-up undershot, wide angle and a medium shot. I wanted to capture the whole composition in some images and specific parts in other images. This was also helpfully achieved by managing the aperture, I chose an aperture of 1.8, which blurred the background and limited the amount of light entering the lens, so the composition was in clearer focus. Furthermore, the ISO of these images was 125, and I also used a fast shutter speed, which make the images more sharp. This is particularly important because these images have a complicated, confusing composition that is made easier through the focus being better.
Gifs:
Shooting Process:
To advance my work and presentation of my final piece, I created short gifs detailing the movements of multiple objects into the structure. To do this, I slowly moved each object and took photos after every change, so that eventually a full set of chronological images could be made into a gif by uploading all images onto gifmaker. These images above show my hands moving each object before a photograph is taken.
Gifs:
The first gif shows a bracelet move into frame and then climb onto a shelf amongst other images.
This gif is significantly longer and shows a longer process of dice stacking in order to reach the shelf and then shows them to retreat off frame one by one, so when the gif restarts it appears natural.
Another piece of jewelry is used in this gif except this time it is a flower necklace and it appears into a different shelf. I found it difficult to move the necklace up from the base.
The last necklace I created a gif about was a pearl necklace and I chose to move it into the metal cylinder shelf de to the juxtaposing effect of the dainty pearls and rusty metal. This contrast is frequently conveyed in Mahr's work.
Finally, I created a gif illustrating the rotation of a game card. This gif is more simple and therefore allows the audience to focus more clearly on the subject's motion.
Highlighting Success:
In this highlighting success I chose two gifs, specifically the one featuring the dice , because it was more descriptive. A more detailed, intricate story unfurls rather than the rotation of an object. Not only this, the gif also required more images to create meaning the objects will move more subtly. Furthermore, I managed to keep the frame the same by only changing the camera angle, from a medium shot to a close up, at strategic points.
I chose the pearl necklace gif again because the motions were the smoothest and transitions between photographs are subtle. This brings my final piece to life more.
Reshoot:
Shooting Process:
To improve my work, and in particular the gifs that I have already taken, I decided to reshoot the images that I converted into a gif. Previously, I did not use a tripod and this made the gifs overwhelming and too chaotic, distracting from the composition. This was because the camera angle would change with some photos taken with a close-up and others taken from a wider angle. To change this, I have used an empty plant pot to place my phone in as a makeshift tripod. This allows me to see the image before taking it and also keeping the angle the same.
Contact Sheet:
To ensure that the images and change of position of the object that I was shifting was steady, I took multiple images of the same shot, so that I could choose the best one. This would be one which has a clearer focus, which would be achieved by an aperture of 1.8 and an ISO of 125. These technical features would make the background more blurry so that the focus of the image is the immediate composition. I have used ticks and crosses to show which images I will use and which ones I cannot edit.
Gifs:
I decided to shoot the same objects moving to show the development and improvement between the two sets of gifs. Making gifs have helped bring life to not only my work but also Mari Mahr's work by modernizing it. At the time Mahr shot her '13 Clues to a Fictitious Crime' video cameras did not exist and therefore I did not want to film a video. Instead, I have created moving reels using consecutive images.When creating the gifs, I upload the series of images and change the animation speed to 150 so the individual frames can merge. Overall, this reshoot has helped develop my understanding of angles and also how to refine stop motion videos or gifs.
Highlighting Success:
I chose this gif for my highlighting success because of the way the movements of the dice were shown chronologically with the same starting point as the end point, which in this case was off screen. Furthermore, the angle with which the gif was taken from remained the most consistent. In the future, I could look to create more complex gifs, or a film and add music.