I re-watched Coming Home – a film I have mentioned before – last weekend, and instead of using it to inspire my approach I began experimenting on using as my approach. That is after watching it and set up my camera on a tripod and watched the film again on my PC and used a variety of slow shutter speeds to begin to capture some of its imagery. Below are a couple of shots. This left hand image was shot at 1.6 seconds as it looks straight out of the camera. I then processed the image to bring out colour and obscure a lot of unnecessary detail. The result is the right hand image.
This process may answer my dilemma about subject matter as it allows me to present images that reference a person using a wheelchair that could be me or represent a landscape of disability from the point of view of a wheelchair user.
Abstract or Straight?
I need to consider my approach in some detail though. For example I think that if I present my material in too abstract way movement gives way to it as the key feature and this works against me – see below.
So I want to work with images that can just be made sense of such as these below – although that particular image doesn’t offer the sort of vibrancy and sense of dreaminess that I want to evoke.
Thoughts
This work reminded me of some of the issues David Company wrote about in Photography and Cinema, especially consideration of the impact of how time is and can be represented photographically – sequencing, delayed shutter in fact everything within the image implies time. But I am after more than that; imagination is a critical evocation also and that’s why I think colour and brightness levels will play a key part. Just compare the last two images and consider the difference in evocation.
But I may need to be wary of some technical issues. For example, my images will bleed into the pages as vast areas of the images are totally clipped. I won’t worry about that yet though as there are many answers to this problem such as printing on coloured paper or bring the white points down slightly on my images.
Stop press: inspiration beckons…my next post will be on an aesthetic statement aimed at the pop up show –
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Campany, D. (2008) Photography and Cinema, Published by Reaktion books
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