Abstract #5
Open Perspective
Photograph/Digital Edit 49.2 cm x 51.5cm November 2018 Exhibition Text
Perspective in the art world has to due with drawing lines in such a way that a 3D object is accurately represented, with this piece inspired by photographers such Fan Ho and Andy Kirby, I attempted to put a twist on a traditionally 2D art form. Open Perspective encourages viewers to view situations and art forms from new perspectives. One should seek first to understand rather than be understood. |
Planning
Inspiration
I've recently been really inspired by photography and the life and personality of some very accomplished photographers. For about a month now I've been dabbling in traditional film photography and even taking a few peoples' senior photos. Fan Ho in particular can capture angles that most people would never see. Fan Ho was based out of Hong Kong and showed the heavy impact of the structures and buildings in the city. Many times he focused on framing the subject as an ant in a large jungle of buildings as you can clearly see in his series "Hong Kong Venice". With my own work I wanted to emulate this feeling of a heavily interactive and dominant background. |
The second artist I drew inspiration from is Andrew Kirby, a street photographer in the US. He's a much more modern and contemporary photographer, I primarily drew inspiration from his equally creative framing and quite unique frame compositions. His photo series "Shooting Panes" focuses on getting out of his comfort zone with photography and doing his best to capture an unfolding story when he sees it. This ideology inspired me to select a model that I do not know well and shoot an area I am not accustomed to shooting. In the long run it would definitely take me a bit longer to fully adapt to this style of shooting however it definitely resulted in a short adventure. I seek to continue finding new people and places to photograph just like Kirby. This whole idea of outgoing exploration caused my to differ from my standard planning process of hand sketching a final piece and instead I began planning out my shots by actually taking them in a very physical medium: film. I've wanted to try film photography for quite some time and now seemed to be the ideal time to try it seeing as I don't own a digital camera of my own, my phone camera is broken, and I found a cheap place to buy used film cameras.
Planning Sketches
My planning sketches for this project are quite unconventional as they are not pen and paper sketches but rather me developing a style through exploration out in the world. To do this I went out and bought an Olympus Point and Shoot from goodwill for $2.49. This was my first experience ever shooting film before and I honestly fell in love with the art style almost immediately. In this photo here I was trying to capture a complete stranger in an off guard moment as he scooped me some ice cream. One of the benefits of film photography is that you can't see your pictures until after they are developed which means you only get one shot at making a scene work. I found myself more actively pursuing these moments and experimenting with many kinds of composition and lighting. |
I quite enjoyed taking this photo in downtown Milwaukee and it helped me finalize what I wanted out of my final image. I realized I wanted a high contrast image with various sources of light that blacked out the subject so that only their silhouette may be seen. I took this picture and few others standing directly in the street as to get close enough for the film to be able to absorb some of the light (I was only using 400 ISO film). Some of these photos came out completely black, initially I view this as a waste of money but I am now grateful that I was able to make this mistake during my planning phase.
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As I did with my Fourth piece once I got an idea of what I wanted by somewhat planning out the shot I began actively experimenting with the final shot. I tried various kinds of framing and in this shot I attempted getting the final look I was striving for. I lined my subject up between two bright windows and attempted to only outline his silhouette, this almost worked however he was standing too close to the windows and thus wasn't fully cast in darkness. At one point I accidentally dropped my film camera and the back of the camera opened exposing a few frames of my film, this frame was partially damaged by the light leaking which ended up looking quite cool even though it was unintentional. This planning process really helped me figure out my final shot composition and desires from the project and I definitely would return to it if I ever chose to do photography again. |
Process
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Photographing: This project ended up being a quite difficult one to shoot seeing as I needed all of my settings to be on manual, I couldn't use a flash, I didn't have a tripod, my model hadn't modeled before, and the initial location I wanted to use didn't allow my camera inside. I once again was using the Nikon D3300 with an 18-55 mm kit lens that my friend let me borrow for a night. The first location I had wanted to shoot at was an arcade called the Garcade, I figured I could use all of the neon light and cool looking machines to easily pull off the silhouetting effect and produce the 3D image quality that I wanted. This did not work out so I decided to leave and look for other nearby neon. I took about 90 shots from a few different angles, for a gif I would need the same shot from three different angles and to achieve this you have to physically move the camera while rapidly taking photos. Many times the pictures were blurry or the model moved during the sequence and a few times the camera wouldn't take the photo because it was too dark out. Post Processing: The post processing was thankfully much quicker than it was for my previous photography project as this time I only needed to find a good frame sequence and then start editing the 3 photos together. To figure out the frame sequence you have to speedily switch pictures and look for a buttery smooth transition from frame to frame. I ended up using the third sequence of photos as my final sequence and edited them with a simple S curve in Lightroom and then exported them to Photoshop. Photoshop: To Photoshop these photos together I took the first image in the sequence and then placed on the layer above it the second the image in the sequence. Then I dropped the opacity on the second image to 50% so that I could see the first image through the second one, once this was complete I began looking for a consistency between the three photos to line up. In this case my models hat stays nearly static throughout all three photos and thus I used it as my overlay object. I lined the opaque second image's hat up with the first images hat and then turned the opacity back up to 100%. After this I repeated this process with the second and third images. The next step was dropping the three images into an image sequence timeline so that I could animate a transition between them. To do this you have to double the number frames and experiment with the transition time between each image. Once this was complete I exported the file as a web gif. |
Experimentation
I feel very grateful to be in the HL IB Visual Art program because of how much it has allowed to experiment with various mediums and ideas. With this project I experimented with the medium of photography and worked in film and digital styles, Below in the first slide you can see how I tweaked the transition time between images to final arrive at the ideal 0.15 seconds. 0.2 seconds was too slow, and 0.1 one was crazy fast. The next photo indicates some of the photo editing I did in Lightroom to the neon to be crispy and the silhouette to be super sharp. The frame following that shows the super long process of continually exporting multiple versions of the gif in attempts to get a web compatible one that looked very smooth. I also experimented with the frame sequence series and tried multiple takes on the same sequence, I ended up using the final sequence because of the clarity of the subject and the timing on the neon "OPEN" sign. And finally you can see an early attempt I did to animate my brother as to figure out what my process would look like for this project. In the future I plan on further experimenting by directly drawing on each frame with abstract squiggly lines to create little animations across the piece, in addition I may also add a film overlay so that it would appear that is coming off of a cinema level camera and has not been edited yet.
Reflection
As a conclusion to IB Portfolio I am overjoyed with my art experience. Every piece I have created over the past 4 years has been a new challenge from a technical and creative perspective. With this project in particular I really was enthused to start pursuing photography quite a bit more in my day to day life. As a result of this project I have purchased a Fujifilm X-T1 so that I can continue my endeavors in the digital medium. I feel fairly satisfied with my final product, it is unique and this process in particular is rarely used in photography. I'm really satisfied with the way the neon signs illuminate the the background and beautifully back-light and silhouette the subject. This project is composed of primarily industrial lines and grids with the only organic form being the man in the middle. This project is representative of my worldview as I am finishing up this semester of schooling and chapter of my life, it is an open worldview and honestly I am open to any adventures and challenges that may come up in this upcoming journey.
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ACT Responses
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork.
My inspirational artist was a photographer and this directly influenced me to choose photography as a medium for the project. In addition, I did my best to use some framing and lighting techniques that can be seen in the artists work.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The author of my inspirational source page happens to be the artist himself. His approach is very humble and very telling to the amount of work he puts in as an artist and the amount of experimentation and failure he has to go through to get what he wants.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
This artist has broken the generality that all street photographers are sociopaths just trying to get a picture without any regard for humanity. Andrew Kirby shows how careful he is when it comes to handpicking his shots and models.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central idea around my inspirational research was finding artist who had new perspectives of humanity and civilization. Artists have been capturing human form for centuries and my research focused on those who capture with nuance.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I made inferences about the tools used by some of the artists, their intentions with certain angles or photographs, and I made inferences about how other people feel about their work.
My inspirational artist was a photographer and this directly influenced me to choose photography as a medium for the project. In addition, I did my best to use some framing and lighting techniques that can be seen in the artists work.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The author of my inspirational source page happens to be the artist himself. His approach is very humble and very telling to the amount of work he puts in as an artist and the amount of experimentation and failure he has to go through to get what he wants.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
This artist has broken the generality that all street photographers are sociopaths just trying to get a picture without any regard for humanity. Andrew Kirby shows how careful he is when it comes to handpicking his shots and models.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central idea around my inspirational research was finding artist who had new perspectives of humanity and civilization. Artists have been capturing human form for centuries and my research focused on those who capture with nuance.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I made inferences about the tools used by some of the artists, their intentions with certain angles or photographs, and I made inferences about how other people feel about their work.
Bibliography
- Kim, Eric. “5 Lessons FAN HO Can Teach You About Street Photography.” ERIC KIM, ERIC KIM, 7 May 2017, erickimphotography.com/blog/fan-ho/
- Kirby. “Shooting Panes.” Mrkirby.photography, 26 Dec. 2017, www.mrkirby.photography/blog/shooting-panes