Time Research.

   While surfing the web, I stumbled upon this cool little blog that had a post about time lapse photos.

http://sindromecoleccionista.blogspot.co.nz/2010/11/timelapse-el-arte-de-ver-pasar-el.html

   Quick translation: The post talks about what time lapse is, links to a neat video, relates time lapse to a video camera, and gives some info about technique.

   I really liked the first two photos of cityscapes, because that is somewhat the idea I think I'm leaning towards for my project.

   The first photo shows a city at different times during the day, and I think it is really cool and effective. The photographer didn't try to blend the lines of the different photos at all, which helps to distinguish between times of day. Although I like that it is chopped up, it is somewhat aesthetically unpleasing in the sky sections. The clouds are my least favorite part of the photo.

   The second photo is better, in my opinion. It is very plain, with not too much subject matter and not too many different photo segments. It is easier on the eye with only 4 sections, rather than the 6 in the above photo. I wish there was more of a transition, however, between the third and fourth photos. The sunset and night scenes have much more of a difference than the others.

   However, I do like these photos, and want to achieve something like this with my photos.

Craig Barber.

   Craig Barber is a photographer that I'm really fond of. He took some photos of me and coworkers at the vineyard. Here's his website:

http://66.175.212.172/www.craigbarber.com/?page_id=219

   It is sooo cool that I have my very on daguerrotype. A picture does not do it justice. It's much better to see it in person.

Weekly Task 5: Shutter and Aperture.

1)  Slow shutter

     I think that the slow shutter speed aids in showing movement in this photo. It makes

      more sense than a fast shutter, because a fast shutter would not demonstrate the

      intention of the photo as well.

2)  Fast shutter

      The fast shutter speed in this image freezes time, and therefore freezes me in mid-air. In

      this photo I'm trying to show a brief moment in time rather than movement, and the

      fast shutter captures that.

3)  Large aperture

      The large aperture in this shot makes it so only my nalgene is in focus, which is the

      main subject of the photo. It really emphasizes the stickers on my nalgene, and makes

      them seem like they have some significance I'm trying to portray in the photo. 

4)  Small aperture

      The small aperture in this photo makes it so everything is in focus. With such a wide

      shot, I'm trying to show a lot of the subject, and the small aperture makes more sense

      than a large aperture. It shows everything in the image rather than picking out one

      thing in particular.

Time: First Shoot.

   I attempted my first shoot for the time project, but it didn't turn out the best as I didn't yet have a tripod. I wanted to photograph something though. I think this could be a good starting point, and I could try to mimic the same angles for each consecutive shoot. I would like to photoshop the backgrounds of all my final images so that they are white, not as you see them here. However, I didn't do that on these photos, because I don't know which I will be using as the final, or if I'm going to reshoot them entirely.
 

More Research.

   I've been researching which foods would be best to photograph, and which will decompose the most. I'll use one food from each food group in the pyramid, as seen below.

Ministry of Health NZ.

   I've also been looking at what kind of photograph I want to produce, and I like the glorification of the advertisement. Most food ads have white or neutral backgrounds, with food in the center of the shot. The colors are also really vivid. I think this would work well with my project to focus on the change in the food, rather than what else is in the shot.

German McDonald's advertisement.

Project 2: Time Proposal.

   Time is now a fundamental part of being human. Everything we do revolves around time, and time influences us. Some things change over time, and some things stay the same with time.

   With this project, I want to look at how certain things change over time. Everything ages, whether it be humans, buildings, food, etc. I want to show the progression of aging over time. I'll do this using food, as it will show the greatest change in the time scale I'm looking at, which is weeks.

   With close up images of food, I will have to focus on angles, lighting, and the background. I aim to use bright lights, almost as if in an advertisement, with bold colors and a white background. The angle will be from above to show greater surface area of the food.

   I've chosen this idea because I'm fascinated with aging and the way things change over time. It's not always possible to document this, because the life span of different things varies so much. I hope to show food decomposing as a proxy for the human form. Although food rots and changes, it is still recognizable and beautiful and interesting. Nobody keeps food around long enough to rot. Could this be similar to the way we write off our elders, or demolish old buildings, or throw away our old and outdated possessions?

   The result of this project will be a series of photographs. I'll show an example from each of the 6 food groups. There will be 2 photos of each food - one 'before' and one 'after' to demonstrate the change over time.

Light and Time Research.

Here are some photos that some friends and I took a while back. We were experimenting with light and time, and I think it would be interesting to revisit this topic.

Project 2: Time Research.

   I've been thinking a lot about time lately, and all of it's different meanings. According to the dictionary, time is:

          1) the system of those sequential relations that any event has to any other, as past, present, or future; indefinite and continuous duration regarded as that in which events succeed one another.
          2) duration regarded as belonging to the present life as distinct from the life to come or from eternity; finite duration
          3) a system or method of measuring or reckoning the passage of time: mean time; apparent time; Greenwich Time.
          4) a limited period or interval, as between two successive events: a long time.
          5) a particular period considered as distinct from other periods: Youth is the best time of life.

   Given these definitions, my project could go in a lot of different directions. I've been looking around for inspiration, and I found this video. It's similar to some of the things we've looked at in class.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151588767715396

   I've also been influenced by the work of Ryan Pavlovich. His photos don't always pertain to time, but he does seem to catch people in the right moment. I really like the way he composes his photos.

http://ryanpavlovich.com/

Weekly Task 4: Stop Motion.

   For this week's task, I decided to shoot my 100 photos in an alley leading up to my flat, stopping along the way for a snack. The owner of the cafe was cool with me taking photos, but he didn't want me interfering with or taking photos of any customers. This made it a little hard, as I had to wait for people to order and leave, and I had to move out of the way of the customers and workers. We also had a fire drill halfway through my shoot! I think that the portion of the my project in the cafe was a little disjointed.
   The rest of the shoot, walking up the stairs and across the street, was relatively easy, but I had to be weary of people walking past me, and where people were in my photos. I'm pretty pleased with the way the video turned out.
   Some difficulties I had were finding the correct aperture for the photos. Not all of them are perfect, especially in the cafe where I was a bit rushed. Also, a technical problem I had was the changes from photo to video. In the video, some of the photos look pixelated. The photos that have large chunks of one color in them look really strange. However, these photos don't look bad when they're opened as jpgs or in photoshop. I'm not really sure what caused the change in quality.
   Overall, I found that I was able to walk pretty far in 100 steps, although my video is actually more like 110 steps. I thought It would have been strange to end the video right at 100 steps, so I kept the extra few in there. The photos were, for the most part, continuous, although there are parts when they're jumpy. I played around with the frame rate to see if that helped with continuity, and it definitely looked better with a slower frame rate. Neither too fast nor too slow looked good, so I managed to find a happy medium.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FraUL6t9NA&feature=youtu.be