Research Notes – Paul Gaffney

On the feedback of my Square Mile assignment, my tutor suggested me to look at Paul Gaffney‘s project – “We Make the Path by Walking”, since my final series was mainly landscape photographs, and I can say that the suggestion was spot on.

Gaffney is an Irish photographer currently doing a PhD related with landscape photography and the project I was suggested to look is a series of landscape photographs from rural places in Portugal, Spain and France took during a year on many of the author’s long walks and presented as a self-published book (released in 2013).

It’s composed by 40 pictures showing forests, gravel roads, viaducts, rocks, rivers that alternate between cold and warm colours, achieved by capturing for example mist and sunlight respectively. The majority of the photographs show some kind of human intervention, being it a road or a forgotten piece of cardboard, but they all share a sense of quietness, transmitting peace to the viewer, which is mainly what the author wants to achieve, since he sees long-distance walking as a form of meditation.

I really like this piece of work, mainly because is a strong sequence transmitting the idea of a peaceful and quiet journey, but also I really identify myself with the composition and the colour tones.

We Make the Path by Walking – Special Edition from Paul Gaffney on Vimeo.

References

1. Paul Gaffney’s website – http://www.paulgaffneyphotography.com/images-1
2. British Journal of Photography – http://www.bjp-online.com/2013/11/we-make-the-path-by-walking-by-paul-gaffney-book-review/

 

Assignment 1 – Square Mile – Review

After discussing the assignment with my tutor and reading his notes, I revisited my photographs and spent some time trying to improve my submitted selection.

After we both agreed on that two of the photographs didn’t quite fit that well in the series (since one had a car and other had a cyclist) when all the others had no, what we referred to as, distractions, I decided to replace those photographs.

The first one that represented the road leading to the beginning of the climb was replaced for one of that same road, taken a little further behind. I liked the composition of the photo, with the road going to the center of the frame.

One of the points made by my tutor was that without reading the analysis, he never noticed that the series depicted a climb or a hill. In order to sort that, the other “new” photograph is one where the hill is visible in the background, with the road leading to it filling the foreground.

It was also mentioned that the photographs were dark, which although I was aware of that (it was done on purpose in order to give that grey and cold mood to the series), I didn’t really want that to be so obvious to the point of being mentioned. I had several options like making them really dark or turn them into black and white. But, since one of the things that I really liked about the series was the cold colours and tones, and mainly the green from the trees, I didn’t go for any of those options, but instead, I made the photographs slightly brighter.

I will pick some other photographs that didn’t make the final selection and will try to get some monochrome versions, in order to understand what I could have achieved if I would have go that way. I’ll write a blog post about it.

This is my final selection, along with some captions that were not part of the assignment submission, but probably help to understand better the work.

approaching the climb

last breath, before it starts

it starts

don’t look back

a window, halfway

surrounded by trees

the road, from afar

the top, at last

 

Assignment 1 – Square Mile – Submission

After weeks of thinking and planning, a couple of days of shooting and a week of tweaking, printing, selecting and reflecting I submitted my Square Mile assignment.

The subject of my assignment was the Ditchling Beacon, a road climbing to the top a hill, where hundreds of cyclists pass by every week. I took this opportunity to explore my way up out of my bike while trying to see things around in a different way and from a different perpective.

The idea of the series is the all the way up, from back in the road leading to the beginning of the climb towards the end at the top of the hill.

This is my final selection of photographs:

the climb is approaching

the climb starts

don’t look back

surrounded by trees

a window, halfway

the road, from afar

almost there

finally, the top

And this is my analysis:

Initial Response

When I first read the assignment, two similar ideas came to mind. They were both about revisiting two places from my childhood, back in my hometown in Portugal, Viseu. The timing was perfect, since I was going to be there for Christmas, but in the end, I didn’t manage to do it, so I decided to do something completely different, which was to get to know, in a different way, a place that I’ve been several times before, the Ditchling Beacon in East Sussex.

Inspiration from Artists

I studied the work from the suggested photographers for this assignment as well as Ed Templeton’s, which recently released a book that fits with the Square Mile concept.

Dan Holdsworth’s work is focused on landscapes with an unique mood, mainly achieved with the use of light trails (from several different sources) making some of his photographs surreal.

Tom Hunter’s suggested series share some similarities. They both show staged images, with people placed in ordinary surroundings presenting different views of Hackney in a melancholic way.

Templeton’s latest work “Adventures in the Nearby Far Away” shows his connection with Catalina Island, located 20 miles out in the sea from Templeton’s home (Huntington Beach) and is a diary of some of his holidays there over the years, showing Catalina’s people, tourists and surroundings.

Technical Response

From the technical point of view I was mainly focused on the aperture in order to control the depth of field, depending on the subject I was trying to capture, and where to lock the exposure until achieving the desired lighting before recomposing the image.

After the selection process I ended up with 12 photographs that I edited, tweaking contrast, temperature, levels and saturation in order to get the final result. Then I printed 10 of those images and finally after playing around and sequencing the prints I ended up with the final selection of 8 photographs.

Personal Reflection

The Ditchling Beacon is probably the most well known climb among cyclists in Southern Britain and since is close to where I live, I usually manage to do the climb every time I go out on my bike. It’s a short, but steep climb, which means that when you are on your bike, suffering all the way up, it’s really hard to enjoy the view or to get know more of the surroundings.

Because of that, I used this assignment to explore it better and from a new perspective (through my camera and out of my bike), taking photographs both on and off the road and exploring new paths.

My main worry was to make a final selection of consistent images that would work as a series, so I can say I’m happy with what I’ve achieved on this assignment. Also, I liked the idea of putting them as a sequence, from the road approaching the bottom of the climb to the view from the very top.

I think I could improve the series by adding a temporal dimension to it, starting at the bottom of the hill during sunrise, ending at the top on sunset, exploring the different lighting. Also, focus on cyclists on the road with the goal to show more action and movement with some longer exposures.

Research Notes – Toshio Shibata

Toshio Shibata is a Japanese photographer best know for this photographs of large scale man-made structures usually located in wild landscapes.

Shibata originally studied oil painting at Tokio University of Arts, turning his attention to photography, while in Ghent attending the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. It is said that on his return to Japan he found Tokio and it’s surroundings visually cluttered, so he started looking at post-war infrastructures and the nature around them.

Red Bridge, Okawa – Toshio Shibata

One example of that work if the famous “Red Bridge, Okawa”, where we can see a big metallic triangle shaped red bridge leading to a darker forest on the other side of the river. The lighting in the picture (supposedly sunset) is superb, dividing the image in a light well known foreground and a darker unknown forest in the background, where apart from the trees and a road it’s impossible to know what else is in there. The contrast of the sunlit bridge against the darker background of trees with the sunlight fading from the top left to the bottom right corner keep the photograph perfectly balanced.

More recently he started focusing on water as the main subject of his work, making use of long exposures to capture its movement and having much of this subject of work presenting dams around Japan.

Nikko City – Toshio Shibata (from Laurence Miller Gallery)

References

1. The Guardian – http://gu.com/p/4b925/stw
2. The New York Times Magazine – http://nyti.ms/1D6NEwk

Research Notes – Gabriele Basilico

In order to prepare for the Soft Light Landscape exercise, we were asked to research the work of Gabriele Basilico.

Basilico born in Milan in 1944, picked architecture as his university subject, becoming an architect before starting focusing on photography. Started mainly photographing landscape, moving later to architectural photography.

Quartiere Isola, Milan, 1978 (by Gabriele Basilico from Artribune)

He got widely known in 1982 with his work about the industrial areas of Milan – “Ritratti di Fabbriche, Sugarco”, where he presents photographs of factories, in Milan.

He was then commissioned by the French government to document the northern coast transformation where he captured mainly seascapes. He went Beirut in 1991 to cover the aftermath of the Lebanese civil war after being in Berlin documenting the German reunification, after the fall of the wall.

Oporto (by Gabriele Basilico from Sara Pavone blog)

Between the referred projects and throughout his career, he visited and documented the architecture of several european cities like Oporto, Trieste, Geneva, Hamburg or Vigo, dying of cancer in 2013.

Personally I find his work really strong and consistent. All his work is mainly black and white, shot from far and usually with no sign of people, making his photographs impersonal, but a perfect documentation of architecture and cityscapes. The smooth lighting usually presented, along with quite scenes suggests that he usually took his photographs early in the morning.

His strong composition is achieved with the use of the different building shapes and forms and the lines “drawn” by roads, cable lines, rail tracks, bridges and stairs, but in my opinion the main characteristic of his photographs are the black and white and the way he uses the light.

Place des Martyrs, Beirut (by Gabriele Basilico from Domus)

Project 2 – Shadows

I found this exercise really interesting, first because I liked the result, second because I never really used the spot metering mode or stopped to think about it and how it can be used in several different situations.

My favourite shots (below) were taken during two different sessions, lunchtime on the Brighton seafront (I was lucky to have the sun out for 10 minutes during a really grey December) and on a weekend away in Rome.

All the photographs were processed in Photoshop, with small touches to darken the shadows and lighten the highlights.

Assignment 1 – Square Mile – First Thoughts

When I first read the assignment, I had immediately some ideas popping in my head. They all had a common thing, that was, being on my hometown, back in Portugal.
Since I’m going back there for a couple of weeks during Christmas, it will be the perfect timing to complete the assignment.

Still have to put more thought on it, but I’m considering one of two which I think are strong ideas. One would be the city park, where during 3 years in my teens me and my big group of friends of the time spent at least a couple of hours every single day. Since the park was redeveloped recently I would like to go and revisit how the places where we once skated, talked and hanged around changed since that time.

The other idea was to go to the neighbourhood I used to live since I was born until I was ten. I moved from there 22 years ago, so even if all the buildings are pretty much the same, there was some redevelopment over the years, some shops opening, others closing, so as the previous idea, I think it could be interesting to go and shoot on some specific spots.

Over the next week I’m going to pick one of the ideas and start planning what specific places have more meaning to me and those will be my potential places for the shots.

Research Notes – Trent Parke

Before starting Project 2, about Shadows it was recommended to have a look at Trent Parke‘s work and make some notes about he uses high contrast light and shadow.
As a street photography lover and follower of In-Public for sometime now, I’ve came across with Parke’s work before.

from In-Public website (by Trent Parke)

Parke is the only Australian photographer part of Magnum collective and as mentioned above, he is also part of the street photography collective In-Public.

His work is well know for the use of high contrast on his street photographs. He makes use of the strong light and the casted shadows from the buildings. His idea is to remove all the clutter from his pictures by making use of the shadows and have the subject(s) on the light.
The way he uses the light and handles the shadows makes his pictures dramatic and in some cases, looking almost surreal. The way he drives the viewer to the subject(s) is so good, making strong compositions.

from In-Public website (by Trent Parke)

from In-Public website (by Trent Parke)

He’s best know for his black and white work which has its own melancholy, according to him, influenced partially by music videos like the ones from Sigur Rós, Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails, but what strikes me the most it’s his colour work.
The way those pictures have the dark from the shadows and the colourful saturated subject on the light usually on screaming lively colours.

from In-Public website (by Trent Parke)

“Light does that, changing something everyday into something magical” (Trent Parke)

Project 1 – 100 Photos

The exercise consisted in taking 100 photos in 30 minutes. I went for a walk to the centre of Brighton on a sunny Sunday and on my way back I timed the 30 minutes and took the photos.
I didn’t think too much about the shots because of the time available, which in way was good, since it made me took shots that I would never actually would take. Below are three of the pictures I liked after adjustments using the techniques referred for the exercise.

All systems go

So, after a long time considering to enroll in one of the Open College of Arts photography modules, I decided to go for it.

I enrolled in Foundations in Photography and I’m really looking for it.
More than the technical side of photography I was more interested in art and history side of it. Researching, reflecting, thinking and writing about it, will hopefully help me to have a new improved approach on taking photos.

This will be my learning log for the module, so feel free to pop over and check the updates about my journey.