Tech Lecture 4: Change

For this Tech Lecture, we were asked to take photos that showed change. Compositionally the same, the photos were meant to show a "spot-the-difference" kind of thing. 

What I wanted to capture was the change over time while working at my computer. I wanted to see what kind of things change over the course of a few hours working on projects. Surprisingly, very little actually changes physically. A few things move, but the most noticeable change overall is in the light. Showing the shift from the afternoon to after the sun has set, that shows the most interesting change. 

I did manage to show change, however, the physical changes were not as dramatic as I had hoped, however the light provides an interesting alteration. 

DSDN 144 Project 2: Proposal

For the second project, the whole idea of it is to capture the connection that photography has with Time. What I really want to discover, and what I've set out to do is to capture the moments in people's lives where their lives are figuratively paused. What are those moments in society where, relative to everything else, one stops moving and stops living one's life by "normal" standards. I also want to try and capture the nature of this pausing. Is it voluntary? Or are we controlled by society and told when to pause our lives?

For the techniques I want to use, I really want to capture these moments in a brief space of time, but I really want to show everything else, society around the person, continuing to move, I want to show that life only pauses for them and maybe say a few other choice people, while the rest of society goes on living. I want to experiment with a variety of times of day, but mostly have long exposure shots. 1-5 seconds of exposure. I really want to capture the person in the middle of the hubbub of society, so taking a central or rule-of-thirds viewpoint on the subject will be ideal. Keeping my distance from the object will be paramount, since ideally I want them to not know I'm there and literally stop and do their pause. Depending on the light and situation, I'll have to vary my use of aperture settings, so I'll have to see regarding that. I literally want to use the camera as a sort of "time machine".

I saw some of the ideas shown in the "time" lecture slides, and loved how some photos really just captured the moment, and I thought, "I also want to capture the moment, but only the moment for THAT person. I only want to capture their moment, and have everyone else continue on.". I think showing the everyday moments where we chose and sometimes are chosen to pause will be a really interesting idea to present, and should show everyday moments for the audience in a new light.

Ideally I want to end up with a series of photos, where the inherent idea transfers seamlessly across all the photos. The idea I have really wouldn't be suited to any kind of time lapse or stop motion, but could possibly be suited for a short video. We'll see. 

Tech Lecture 3: Ultra-Fast, Ultra-Long

This shot was taken at a 400th of a second, and still parts of it are blurry! I want to try some more shots with ultra-fast exposures,  also experiment with a larger depth of field too, just so I can also get more in focus.

This shot was taken at 5 seconds exposure length. The light trails of the car look pretty impressive, but what I really like is that the reflections off the car from the street lights still come through! It really makes the trails more interesting, but not as contrasting. I want to experiment a lot more with this, seeing the result is really exciting!

DSDN 111: Final Models & Drawing

The final 1.5mm card model I created! Exploring the concept of the word "symmetry" here, through rotational symmetry, more specifically. I'm very pleased with how it finally turned out, and it has a really good feel to it.

The final wire and thread model I made explored a shape I originally created in card, but then saw as being better and more refined when created in wire and thread. The thread zig-zags on the frame serve the purpose of creating a 2-dimensional plan between those sets of wire. The whole thing was created from a single piece of wire and again seeks to explore the idea of rotational symmetry. I drew on existing shapes and feels that I used in the cardboard model also.

The drawing I did is an abstract representation of the shadows created by the wire model and the thread involved in the design. The drawing was done in pen, and I used three separate shadows to create the final result.