2008 September « :: Digital Photography & Imaging

Personal Comment (Pablo Picasso – Guernica) September 23, 2008

Posted by jhchen in Exercises.
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Pablo Picasso – Guernica

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This picture is his depiction of the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, by twenty-eight bombers on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. It embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, “It isn’t up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.” Hence, my opinions on the art piece are purely based on my personal understanding and interpretations of it.

Firstly, I feel that the choice of using black and white for this art piece is to relate the viewers to a newspaper photograph. During wartime, newspaper is one of the most efficient and effective way to broadcast information to the public and newspaper articles were still in black and white at that time. Thus, by using black and white is a good way to bring viewers back to the past and into the correct time frame.

Moreover, no one in rational mind would want to go to war as it would result in death and misery. Therefore, the choice of black and white could also transmit the sadness and lifelessness of war to the viewers.

From the art piece, it depicts that war does not only affect the human beings, but also animals and the nature. It clearly illustrates a disfigured bull on the left and a mourning horse with a spear-like object protruding from its mouth and its body. Beside the bull is a woman in grief over a dead child in her arms. It depicts the cruelty side of war that involves the killing of innocence.

Under the horse is a seriously injured soldier, which could be identified from the collars of his uniform and clear ridges on his palm that portrays the tough trainings that he had gone through. The severed arm and the broken blade suggest that he could have just got into a fierce battle with his opposition. It truly portrays the pain and agony felt by the soldiers as well as the innocence.

Moving the attention to the flower near the broken blade; I feel that the purpose of the flower is to show the damage caused onto the nature and to show the contrast between peace and brutal war. It makes the viewers ponder over the question whether a war is evitable.

On the hands of all the victims, there is a star-like figure on their palm. Based on some of my research, the star-like figure is called stigmata and they are primarily associated with the Roman Catholic faith. According to Wikipedia, stigmata are bodily marks, sores, or sensations of pain in locations corresponding to the crucifixion wounds of Jesus. Applying that to the art piece, I feel that it is to let the viewers experience the exact feeling of the victims during the war which is very similar to the crucifixion process.

To the left of the horse is a bird standing on a table behind the bull. It clearly shows a struggling bird in panic state as it seems to be flapping its wings. To the right of the horse is a floating female figure who seems rather frightened while witnessing the scenes before her. In my personal opinion, she might have hid outside the house and witness the whole incident through the window. As she stretched out her hand with a lamp, she witnessed the grudge scene which caused her to be in a traumatized state. To the bottom is another woman with a badly injured knee, limping into the scene as if she is trying to save someone from the killing scene. These are some illustrations of the sufferings during wartime.

Lastly, on the far right, there is another victim who was killed in the scene. It seems that he was burned to death when trying to escape from the house.

From this evaluation exercise, I feel that Pablo Picasso tried to suppress the viewers’ consciousness which in favour our subconscious mind. We will be much focused while trying to analyze the art piece which opens up our subconscious mind and allows us to explore the art piece without any limits. And that is why automatists believe that images should not be burdened with meaning or perception that might hinder our thinking process.

Assignment 2B – CNM Action Shots September 19, 2008

Posted by jhchen in Assignment 2B.
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Learning Experience & Difficulties Encountered

Due to the fact that it involves people, my team and I could anticipate the difficulties that we might encounter on the ground. We could forsee that students might be shy and hide away from our cameras. Hence, we brought along our zoom lens to prevent taking shots too close to them that might intimidate them.

We went to Mr. Alex Mitchell’s Interactive Storytelling tutorial (Wednesday 10-12pm) to take photos of portraits and the interactivity involved between students. The tutorial started off with a short lecture given by Mr. Alex. The class was then splitted into smaller groups to participate in the activity and most of the groups preferred to work on it on the floor. That day’s activity is on creating variations from an existing story (Little Red Riding Hood).

As expected, the students were quite shy at first and tried to hide away from our cameras. It was quite difficult to capture nice and still photos of portraits. To add on, students were sitting near to each other during the activity which made it even harder for us to capture a portrait photo. As for the interactive activities photos, it is rather difficult to position our cameras to capture students involving in the activity and the activity itself. I still remembered we have to kneel down and position our camera near to the floor when trying to achieve some of the action shots.

Furthermore, it is natural that everyone would like to look nice and serious in photos. Hence some of the shots came out to be quite artificial. To overcome this, we fixed on our zoom lens so as to reduce the tension between the students and us. It also reduced the awareness of being shot by our cameras.

To reiterate, one of the major difficulties that we faced was positioning of our cameras. As mentioned above, most of the teams preferred to work on the floor which limited the positioning of our cameras.

After the activity session, there was a short discussion session for each team to share with the class their story and lesson learnt from the activity. When a particular team was presenting, the rest would gather around them. We took quite a few action shots of the presenter with his/her activity cards.

Overall, the portrait and activity taking experience was fun and enriching. I learnt that taking photos of people is not as easy as taking photos of still objects. One has to take into account of the emotions of the people and the tension between the photographer and the people. If they were not taken care of, it would definitely become a hindrance.

Here are some photographs that I have taken for my assignment 2B:

Short Lecture

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Group Activity

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Experience Sharing and Discussion Session

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Assignment 3 – Focal Length, Sensor Latitude September 15, 2008

Posted by jhchen in Assignment 3.
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Learning Experience & Difficulties Encountered

As usual, I started off with some planning and brainstorming of ideas to fall under the different sections for this assignment. Here are the list of objects and scenes that I would like to take and and would be looking out for this assignment:

Element	Objects / Scenes
Perspective	Objects that have lengths that illustrate deep depth of field which would also give a strong illustration of perspective. E.g. Railway track, corridor, buildings from top / bottom.
Zoom shot	Zoom shot can be applied on any objects, but personally, I wanted to use zoom shot to further enhance the effect of movement. Hence, I would be looking out for objects that are naturally moving. E.g. Cars, lights, roads with people.
Close up	Close up is to show focal point on a specific area of interest or a small object. E.g. Plants, flower bud, dew on leaf, ants.
High key	Taking photos in their rightfully shades. Context is also an important factor. E.g. of high key: Light bulb. E.g. of low key: owl in the night, bat in the night.
Low key
Symbolic of the sun	Bright objects to illustrate the grazing characteristic of a sun. Red, Orange, Sunlight are some of the characteristics of a sun. Abstract illustration of a sun. E.g. Headlights, plants that are bright.

For the perspective element, I went down to the commonwealth area hoping to take some interesting photos of the railway. I found a track where residents always used to cross the railway. I don’t think it’s legal though because there isn’t any proper walkway and the fence has been intentionally brought down by the residents. ^.^ Nonetheless, I went ahead and stood onto the railway to take a few shots of the railway.

To start off, I took some safe shots to make sure that I have some photos that falls under long perspective. After which, I tried to explore with different angles, different aperture to toggle between the depth of field. For those who are new to photography like myself, I recommend you to take some safe shots before proceeding to input your creative sense because the result might not be successful.

It was a sunny day, thus I am able to capture high quality deep depth of field photos of the railway without the need to increase the ISO setting.

When I was on the way home, I came across a very straight and long corridor. I took some photos of it to illustrate long perspective as well as some zoom shots on people walking away from me to give it an eerie kind of feeling that the person has been followed. The first thought that came to my mind is that it could be used for campaign on neighbour safety. I learnt that planning is important, but situation awareness and the ability to notice a good scene are also crucial. If I followed closely to my plan, I might miss out the spectacular scene on the corridor.

As for the close-up photos, I took photos of nature to illustrate it. I made a trip down to the botanic garden to take some close up photos of beautiful plants. The trip down was well-spent as I managed to capture very close-up shots of plants and flowers with a 60mm macro lens.

The experience gained from the exercise at the botanic garden was mavellous and it kind of helped me to destress from my hectic schedule. Through this exercise, I also learnt how to apply the different metering on different scenario. There isn’t any best metering amongst the 3 metering techniques (Evaluative metering, Spot metering and Partial metering), it all depends on what kind of effect do you want to achieve. I used the different metering on different elements for this assignment, for example, spot metering on the flower of focus so that the exposure is correct for the flower and evaluative metering for the perspective shot on the railway to give a more balance exposure throughout the whole photo.

As for the low key, I managed to capture the cat eyes at night. Everything was dark expect for the eyes of the cat which reflects some light from the road lamp and the moon. It is one of my most favourite photos because it gives viewers an eerie feeling. It also creates the suspense, horror and the sense of unexpected and that’s what I think a low key photo should portray.

In my opinion, the composition of high key photo should consist mainly white, which may have different representations. For this assignment, I would explore into purity and innocence. Hence, I took some photos of babies so as to enhance and purity and innocence of adolescence.

Here are some photographs that I have taken for my assignment 3:

Element: Perspective

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Aperture: f/14
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 100mm

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Aperture: f/9
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 100mm

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Aperture: f/5
Shutter Speed: 1/5 sec
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 17mm

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Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 56mm

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Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 56mm

Element: Zoom shot

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Aperture: f/18
Shutter Speed: 1/10 sec
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 56mm

Element: Close up

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Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 100mm

Element: Symbolic of the sun

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Aperture: f/10
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 50mm

I came across many plants during the trip and one of the most magnificient is the cactus plant. The first thing that came to my mind was the sun. Personally I feel that it has similar characteristics of the sun:

- Hated by some and loved by others.
- The ability to conserve water and to survive under desert area.
- The spines of the cactus resemblance the sun rays.
- The round shape of the cactus resemblance the shape of sun.
- The yellowish core of the cactus represent the hottest and most glaring portion of the sun.

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Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 5 sec
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 85mm

I took this shot at a neighbourhood lamp post. The night was very dark and the only light source is the lamp post. I feel that it symbolises the sun because:

- It is the most prominent light source at that hour.
- The light rays coming out from the lamp resemblance the sun rays, which light up the objects and the surrounding. If the lamp is not present, the surrounding is all dark and empty. Thus, the lamp gives “life” to the surrounding which has same meaning of the sun.
- The centre of the lamp light which is the brightest and the hottest, creates a ripple-like effect around it. It acts like the sun where the core is the hottest.

Assignment 2A – Exposure Triangle September 10, 2008

Posted by jhchen in Assignment 2A.
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Learning Experience & Difficulties Encountered

From the experience gained from previous assignment, I started off with some planning like what kind of objects and what kind of scene to look out for. These are the list of stuff that I have come out with:

Activity	Aperture	Shutter speed	Things to look out for
Shallow depth of field	Large	-	Objects that are naturally large so as to give a strong illustration of shallow / deep depth of fieldE.g. billard table with billard balls as reference, tennis court, badminton court, long stretch of road with cars as reference.
Deep depth of field	Small	-
Freeze action	-	Fast	Objects that are naturally moving in a certain direction so as to illustrate freeze action / motion blur.E.g. moving cars, raindrops, water from fountain or tap
Motion blur	-	Slow

After much preparation and planning, I was ready to take some shots. But it wasn’t as smooth as it seems.

On the first day of shooting, the weather is rather cloudy and I was unable to take any freeze action photo because the weather must be good so as to compensate the fast shutter speed. If the amount of light entering the camera is insufficient, the photos will definitely be underexposed. Well, when I was faced with such difficulties, I tried to adjust the ISO setting so that it will be more sensitive, but.. the result was not satisfying due to the amount of noise added to the photos. I also tried to use white paper to reflect more light to the object, hoping the amount of light is enough, but the photo is way too underexposed. I have no other choice but to put the freeze action photos on hold and move on to the other activities.

I continued with my photo shoot at the AYE expressway near the science faculty. It was very smooth and I managed to take a few motion blur shots of cars from the overhead bridge. I felt that those photos were very successfully because there is a strong contrast of moving objects (cars) to static objects (the bushes and the bus stop) in the photos which clear illustrates motion blur.

Next, I went straight home to take some photos of my billard table, hoping to capture some interesting shots to illustrate shallow and deep depth of field. At first, I tried taking some without a tripod, but I realised everything was blurred due to the slow shutter speed and large aperture setting. Things went very smoothly after I mounted up the camera onto the tripod. I took many shots from different angles, with and without the cue, and many other combinations. From this scene, I managed to take a few interesting shots. I filtered away many shots that are either too messed with too many elements or lack of interesting focus in the photo. I also managed to take some photos using the panning technique to from my window.

As for the freeze action photos, I tried taking some shots of the tap. The photos were quite interesting, but I feel that there are lots of room for improvement. So I went out again looking for water. I came across a statue at the botanic gardens which is about a father pouring some water to his son. I managed to capture the freeze action of the water as it was a sunny day.

Here are some photographs that I have taken for my assignment 2A:

Subject Element: Shallow Depth of Field

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