ccdn 331 | project two | stage one

First draft of photo essay. 

I took to the streets and shot a dozen or so images, each of them featuring yellow objects. I then selected the best eight. For this exercise, I was inspired by the Geoffrey Batchen quote in Snapshots - one of week 3's readings. I have studied for two of his papers and am very interested in his theories around vernacular photography and its study using the conventions of art history. For this project I would like to explore his theories around the everyday in photography (or, as Batchen would have it) visual culture. (Durden, 2013)

I wanted to further investigate the 'boring generic snapshot'. (Durden) As a jumping off point, my yellow objects constraint resulted in a useful exercise since the focus of only choosing yellow items allowed me to remain reasonably detached in my approach, which in turn lent itself well to the concept of the Flâneur.

The results ended up reminding me of Instagram so when I downloaded the images, I deliberately cropped them to squares to play on the Instagram look. With that in mind, I also amped up the contrast in Photoshop although I stopped short of applying any filters until I am clearer about where this project is going. I am interested in the act of photography not only as a means of creative expression but also in it's relationship to mourning and death (Barthes, 1980) as well as Batchen's Foucaultian proposition - that photography exists within a discursive space and relies on our interaction with it for it's production. I feel that these theories have a massive influence on the sort of design aesthetic I gravitate towards. That is retro, domestic and nostalgic-feeling design.

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ccdn 244 | project one proposal

The brief so far:

[Photographers use certain techniques to enhance their work all the time].

From high dynamic range imaging (HDR) to provide a wider spectrum of exposure to merged imaging and manipulated colour values. In this project we will experiment with various photographic manipulation techniques in order to construct both day and night based, geographically specific panoramas.

These panoramas will then be converted into mini-planets and placed on a locational map of Wellington to form a class “solar system” of the Wellington region.

Objectives:

Lately I have been researching 'duality' - duality of nationality, (i.e. New Zealander vs Australian) duality of language, (i.e. English vs. French) duality of roles (i.e. student vs mother/wife) Because of this I am interested in finding out about dual meaning in this project, and using these themes to inform the subjects of my photography. I will use the techniques I am learning in the course to enhance my work.

My goal is to express duality in a way that others will comprehend and perhaps relate to.

 The strategy: 

The strategy will be to research precedents for this theme as well as mini-world images that inspire me.

I intend on photographing both at home as well as in Wellington to best express the two 'worlds' I inhabit.

The outcome:

The ideal outcome will be a series of worlds (or at least two) that clearly express the idea of duality.

Inspiration:

My first ideas sprouted from this Instagram image. It is a picture of a 'village' my daughter made at home. 

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I like the idea of setting up a line of these and photographing them up close in panoramic form then using the miniworld method to create a colourful little version of this:

Source

I also noticed this image on Leon's professional blog and am interested in this kind of representational symbol as well as the fact that the first thing it reminded me of was this project.

Source

I did start trying to shoot the boat houses at Paremata today, however I need a zoom lens as they are just too far away. Plus I am bored out of my brains by the landscape shtick. I have also failed to leave enough sky at the top of some of my images. Largely because I ignored Leon's advice about shooting with the camera in portrait orientation.

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ccdn 331 | project 1 | hand-in

Design should inspire people to see the world in a new way.

Hand-in: 

The final part of the process: 

Daisy and I hadn't really seen Chris since the project had started and we weren't really sure what stage he was up to when we came in to campus this morning.

We caught up with Chris after the 331 lecture to see what he had done. He had added the sound which needed some tweaking and then, while we watched and discussed our design decisions, he added the text. This is the final version we handed in.

Reflections on the group project:

The output:

I feel like we answered the brief with a strong project. I am pleased that it fulfils my own expectations regarding clarity of message and refinement of vision. The object we made from the wood we were given was playful and yet there was a mature quality to the whole concept in that it didn't just fall back on the easy option of destroying it, which was an idea we had toyed with originally. I feel that the message of the video is twofold: one is about sustainability but the overarching idea is about how it is possible to draw the attention of your audience to everyday items (that might otherwise be overlooked) through thoughtful design.

Because we did not finish in a timely manner, despite my best intentions, mean that I feel what we handed in was not as polished as it could have been.

What I learnt through the group-project dynamic:

From the outset I really bought into Daisy's initial jumping off point (the pencil) because she justified the connection through the research she had done into the type of wood we'd been given. She had found that cedar is typically used for pencils. So it not a coincidence that we ended up with a (giant) pencil, and I really like that this was such a considered choice. Daisy is also an excellent communicator and is good at sharing her ideas without being overbearing. We are friends, so there is an established rapport between us which makes working together fun. Even though familiarity can be a positive, it can also be the source of distraction in a group project. It turns out that Daisy and I are also effective at being efficient with our time when completing tasks together, so this was not a problem we had to contend with.

Chris was an unknown quantity for both Daisy and I, so I was curious to know how things would work out when we were initially deciding how to divide up the work. As it turned out, everyone performed their designated roles really well, however communication was not something that characterised the way we ended up working with Chris. This did make the project harder to resolve between all three of us. As someone who places great value on communication I found this challenging. Happily, in the end I do feel Chris' input, even though it occurred late in the proceedings, was valuable and justified. I thought the music he composed worked well and his input around the text was thoughtful and elegant. It would have been preferable not to have been completing Chris' part quite so late on the day of our hand-in but I recognise that I could have made Daisy's and my timing expectations clearer to Chris.

For my own part I relish project management and took this role on without hesitation. It also felt good to get back into making the pencil after a trimester away from the workshop. I don't deny I have much to learn about Premiere Pro but enjoyed working with it again and think it was good I made an initial clip to help us understand the final requirements better. For someone who doesn't major in media design, I feel I can be proud of what I achieved with my initial clip. It confirms my theory about this degree being really useful for better understanding the work that future specialists do for me. I don't need to be able to use technical applications brilliantly but I do need to understand what they are capable of producing and how they work. I definitely learnt more about what is needed in terms of camera-work for video production and enjoyed my first foray into the school's ergonomics lab.

ccdn 331 | project 1 | process part 3

I came home on Sunday night, and couldn't wait to start working on the footage in Premiere Pro. Finally ended up last night with this version to hand over to Chris to add sound to. I had quite a lot of fun tinkering with the video and have to admit I got into the zone after a while.

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This is the version (made by me) that I finally handed over for Chris to add sound to:

ccdn 331 | project 1 | process part 2

Daisy and I finished the pencil and shot our footage on Sunday:

We filmed yesterday using the storyboard as a guide. Some of the shots were hard to get - I think we were fairly ambitious wanting a sweeping panning shot that gave a sense of majesty! But in the end the pencil came out looking like a star.

We managed to get the lead centre to look like lead. And glued it into one half of the pencil:

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We then traced over printed letters to get our message onto the interior of the pencil.

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Then the shoot began

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On my return home I processed all the raw video through LightRoom and decided on the footage we needed to keep for the final clip. I am going to do some editing to see what the storyboard looks like and how it all shapes up.

ccdn 331 | project 1 | process part 1

I have put together a storyboard based on our group's ideas:

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Daisy and I worked on the pencil design and execution on Thursday:

We cut the length of wood so that it formed half a pencil ( lengthways) then cut it in half.

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We then cut a groove for the 'lead' down the length

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We cut it in half so we had two lengths 250mm long. We used the lathe to 'sharpen' a dowel that will form the 'lead'. We even inserted a piece of real lead so that in principal you could use the end product to write with.

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A test video done on the iPhone's slo-mo camera gives us a hint at how this might work.

ccdn 244 | first studio... miniworlds

First studio

Covering panoramas and mini-worlds.

Epic fail first off. This:

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 To this:

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 Then took this image from our summer holidays:

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And turned it into this (rough version):

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More info on this process can be found here

ccdn 331 | studio one for project one

Our theory:

We have:
a nice length of wood - 17mm x 38mm x 500mm

We are:
Chris | Media
Daisy | Industrial
Me | Culture + Context

Our studio notes:
We were asked to brainstorm: Examples & ideas that support this
We started by observing that the word 'should' should be optional.
We tried relating it to sustainability (without much success)
Talked about redesigning recycle bins in a way that might test this theory
Thought about designing a house that has an integrated recycle system... but ran into a dead end
Each person is different - not everyone will/can be inspired by design - i.e. they might not be visual people
There is not really 'design for the masses' (um - except for IKEA?)
We completed a paper exercise where we were asked to create something that demonstrated one of our ideas as noted in our brainstorming.

Examples of these were:
1. Things don't have to be what you initially think they are
2. All is not necessarily what it might immediately appear to be
3. Fewer resources can be used to achieve the same result

After some further discussion we are going to approach our group project with the idea of perhaps cutting or burning the wood (transforming it and then reassembling it in some way) so that it demonstrates the theory we have been given.

Like dominoes.

We toyed with the idea of 3d modelling the block of wood and doing something with that but think it's too much - keeping it simple

Researched online and found this time-lapse that kind of sparked a few ideas:


 

back at it...

testing the new intervalometer

Received my new intervalometer in the mail last week and last weekend tested it on a G Road sunset. Took 600 odd images at full RAW size (so only got 2 x an hour or so of images done before the 32GB card filled up). Did a little post production editing in LightRoom which is what gives it the weird, high contrast look. Used LightRoom to render the first video file.

Sped up the resulting file in PremierPro by 1000% to end up with a one minute film.

Here is the result: