Friday, May 3, 2019
Project Evaluation
When starting out this project I wanted to capture natures beautiful landscapes but I wanted the photographs to show an intervention of the man made world. County Councils and governments are targeting picturesque locations such as fields and empty plots of land so that those locations can be the host for the next lot of housing development, their reasoning for so many planned builds is because the world is so extremely over populated that they believe that the new builds can "solve" and potentially "end" the over population crisis.
I went back to the same 7 building sites on 3 separate days so that I could experiment with Digital, B/W 35 mm film and Colour 35mm film, the lighting conditions were pretty much identical on every shoot but the overcast skies meant that I could take photographs of the different areas of the sites without the risk of over exposure, lens flare and without the risk of being unevenly lit.
I chose my 8 favourite photographs, collectively, from both the black and white and the colour film shoots, after scanning them onto the computer I opened them in photoshop and converted them back into negatives so that I could use them for my alternative process.
For my alternative process I decided to produce 6 salt prints, the salt printing process is organic which, in itself, echoes the natural world and the sepia effect that is created from the silver and salt mixture adds an old fashioned effect which visually helps my concept of the loss of nature. I predominantly used the technique of salt printing but I chose to photograph all of the prints just after they had been brought in from the sunlight, I was faced with a problem when it came to fixing my images, when putting some of my prints into the fix it completely stripped away and removed any remanence of the photographs from the surfaces so I decided to print the photographed copies onto the surfaces that they were originally printed onto. For me, the image that is lost represents the past, they represent spaces that were once filled with vegetation which are soon to be replaced with the elements of the manmade world, the photographs themselves are a way to preserve that natural world as it once was.
To improve my project I would spend more time developing the technique of salt printing as I feel that I didn't work as well as it could have, if I had limited the amount of variables such as perhaps doing this in my own home where I wouldn't have to risk the chance of the cross contamination of chemicals and I would've chosen to produce the images in a different time of year such as summer as the sun would've been more dominant which would've made the effect more vibrant and the summer sun would've made it more possible to achieve better outcomes.
I went back to the same 7 building sites on 3 separate days so that I could experiment with Digital, B/W 35 mm film and Colour 35mm film, the lighting conditions were pretty much identical on every shoot but the overcast skies meant that I could take photographs of the different areas of the sites without the risk of over exposure, lens flare and without the risk of being unevenly lit.
I chose my 8 favourite photographs, collectively, from both the black and white and the colour film shoots, after scanning them onto the computer I opened them in photoshop and converted them back into negatives so that I could use them for my alternative process.
For my alternative process I decided to produce 6 salt prints, the salt printing process is organic which, in itself, echoes the natural world and the sepia effect that is created from the silver and salt mixture adds an old fashioned effect which visually helps my concept of the loss of nature. I predominantly used the technique of salt printing but I chose to photograph all of the prints just after they had been brought in from the sunlight, I was faced with a problem when it came to fixing my images, when putting some of my prints into the fix it completely stripped away and removed any remanence of the photographs from the surfaces so I decided to print the photographed copies onto the surfaces that they were originally printed onto. For me, the image that is lost represents the past, they represent spaces that were once filled with vegetation which are soon to be replaced with the elements of the manmade world, the photographs themselves are a way to preserve that natural world as it once was.
To improve my project I would spend more time developing the technique of salt printing as I feel that I didn't work as well as it could have, if I had limited the amount of variables such as perhaps doing this in my own home where I wouldn't have to risk the chance of the cross contamination of chemicals and I would've chosen to produce the images in a different time of year such as summer as the sun would've been more dominant which would've made the effect more vibrant and the summer sun would've made it more possible to achieve better outcomes.
Monday, April 29, 2019
Why Salt Printing?
I have chosen to look at the alternative process of salt print for my final outcomes, salt blocks could soon be used when building houses, however, the blocks would have to be coated with a waterproof material to prevent them from dissolving. Salt may not necessarily be used in the building process just yet, however, a salt print does give photographs an old fashioned sepia effect which I think would work really well for this subject matter.
To make sure that the salt printing process ties in with the subject of construction, I am going to be sourcing materials that are commonly found at building sites such as cement bags, plaster bags or ply wood, anything paper based or anything porous, and I will be using those as my base to print my photographs onto.
My next step will be to go through my final photoshoot and choose which photographs I think would be the most effective as a final outcome, I will then turn the photographs back into negatives using Adobe Photoshop and I will print them onto acetate so that I have, what is known as, a digital negative. From there I plan to coat my surfaces with a mixture of salt and water then I will leave that until it's dry, my next step would be to coat those same surfaces with a silver nitrate solution so that they become light sensitive which will enable me to print my photographs onto them. My final step would be to place my digital negatives onto the surfaces and weigh them down with a piece of glass (it has to be glass so that light can still get through it) so that they are flat and either place them in the sun or onto the UV machine so that they can develop.
Final Photoshoot Contact Sheet (Colour Film)
This is the final photoshoot for this project. By using colour film it has taken away the gloomy effect that the black and white film gave and it has replaced it with elements of vibrancy and warmth, which gives it more of a naturalist feel. I again travelled the same route, I chose to stick with the same route so that I had the order fresh in my mind and so I could remember the compositions and framing I used for each site. I knew that if I had tried to mix the travel order around I would've forgotten what parts of the sites I took photographs of so I decided to keep every variable the same to ensure that I produced the same, if not similar, outcomes.
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This is the final photoshoot for this project. By using colour film it has taken away the gloomy effect that the black and white film gav... -
William Eggleston is one of the most renowned Photographers in the world, he changed the course of colour photography by taking the intens...
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I have chosen to look at the alternative process of salt print for my final outcomes, salt blocks could soon be used when building houses, h...
