Studio Art Exploration Proposal

I am fascinated by all aspects of photography.  Photography techniques and technologies are abundant in the world today.  New technology and techniques are being developed and introduced into the photography industry everyday.  I find learning and developing new ideas, techniques and technologies one of the most rewarding aspects of photography.

This year I am going to combine two very different, and specialised techniques aiming to create a unique, aesthetic and thoughtful set of images.  The broader and more common of the two techniques is studio portraiture.  The second, is a very refined technique of high speed photography.  Combining the two techniques is simple in thought, but very complicated and full of flaws in practice.

Studio portraiture has been around for a very long time and has been adapted and refined for the best results.  It was first seen in about the 1850s, but has mainly been refined over the last 50 years.  In 1853 Nadar (Felix Toumachon) opened his portrait studio in Paris.  He took similar images to his self portrait (bellow) of upper class people.  The technical limitations of the time caused Nadar to only be able to capture basic images of this kind.  The photo used a very simple two light technique, one main light and one background light.

The average studio portrait is on a constant white background that curves from the vertical back to horizontal on the floor creating a smooth seamless white background.  The background is then lit evenly by lights to create a true white.

There are many techniques to light a model but there are two that are very common and I have chosen those as a starting point.  Rembrandt lighting and butterfly lighting are both very simple and can be created with a single light source and a single reflector.  Rembrandt lighting is where the light is at a 45º horizontal and 45º vertical angle to the model.  The opposite cheek to the light source is mostly in shadow apart from a small triangular highlight on that cheek.  It creates a portrait with a lot of contrast, but is easily altered to better suit the brief.  Butterfly lighting has the main light source coming from straight in front and from a vertical angle of approximately 60º.  Butterfly lighting creates a very striking image with a butterfly shaped shadow underneath the models nose.  The Both techniques are highly adaptable and easy to use.  The use of reflectors is necessary with both of these techniques to control the contrast and highlights.

Butterfly Lighting

Rembrant Lighting

I plan to first start with these two portrait lighting techniques and integrate a basic high speed technique into them.  There are two common high speed techniques that are used most often.  The first is used more and is normally easier to apply.  It uses the cameras’ shutter speed to capture the split second moments.  There are a number of problems with this technique though; the fastest shutter speed of pro and semi pro DSLRs can capture is 1/8000th of a second.  This is definitely fast enough to capture most sports, wildlife and other fast moving objects.

The second method is a lot harder to apply and only works in very specific conditions.  Using, for example a 1 second shutter speed, and then trigger the flash within the second.  This requires a dark room and possibly a higher ISO than would have normally been used to get the same depth of field as when not using this technique.  Flash duration also comes into play; a brighter flash is also generally a longer flash.  A flash shooting at a low power generally uses a shorter flash duration.  So there has to be a compromise between the power of the flash, ISO and aperture, unless you are able to use more than one flash at a time and have double the light with the same flash duration.

I am going to be using ‘speedlites’ instead of studio strobes because most pro and semi pro ‘speedlites’ use xeno flash tubes which have a very short flash duration of up to 1/40,000th of a second on their lowest output.  Studio strobe durations are a lot slower though.  Most strobes have a t.5 rating of around 1/900th.  T.5 is not an accurate speed duration rating for a strobe though, because it only counts the duration of above 50% of the maximum brightness.  The residual glow below the 50% has an average of being 3x as long.  This means that the studio strobe speed of 1/900th is actually closer to 1/300th.  The t.1 is a much more accurate measurement for high speed photography as it expresses the duration above 10% of the maximum brightness.

Jesse O'Brien a commercial photographer based in Melbourne created an advertisement for Summadayze called Colourfornia.  Colourfornia is a two minute long video of women throwing coloured powder at each other.  Jesse used a Phantom high speed camera at 1056fps in full HD.  The video shows amazing detail in slow motion.  The emotion in the faces of the actors was thrilling; enjoyment, amazement, laughter, anger and looks of no emotion were all shown and kept me even more engaged in the video.  I wish to capture a similar atmosphere in my images as O’brien did.  I have already attempted to capture similar photos and have had great success, but there is definite area for improvement.  A lack of proper equipment and time was the main problem with my attempt.

Colourfornia

My Recreation

Alan Sailer is a high speed photographer from the US that has a constant flow of original extreme high speed images on his Flickr page.  All of his work is shot in his garage in pitch darkness.   He uses an air-gap spark flash that has a t.1 duration of approximately 1/1,000,000th of a second.  I have been following his work closely and learnt how he built his flash and his aiming stabilization for weapons.

When my work is viewed I want people to think about human reactions, facial displacement, object displacement and have an emotional response to the images.  Over the year I am going to capture four different reactions to situations of impact to the body; the first reaction will be the natural reactions to objects e.g. flinching, pain, surprise, anger and many more.  I want the viewer to feel that this is how they would react to the situation and also think about general human reactions and the object displacement.

For the second I am going to try to capture the model with only a small reaction that is not visible at a glance, but when the photo is examined the small details show lots of emotion, for example: the models eyes looking frightful, a hand being clenched or a mouth moving to form a wince.  I think I will be able to capture more emotion and create a larger emotional response to the images if the reactions are smaller and contained than if the model is jumping in fright.

For the third scenario I am going to direct the models to attempt to have no emotional response or reaction to the situation at all and stand still as if nothing has happened.  I want the models to have such a lack of emotion that the viewer questions whether this is actually a real person and not a manikin.

For the fourth scenario I am going to direct the models to attempt to have contradicting emotions to their reactions when hit by an object.  The model is going to be smiling or reacting in any other way that does not seem to be because of the impact.  I am also going to mix it up by getting the model to be reacting with their arms to the impact, but have their face having a different reaction/emotion.

My natural high speed photography style is very scientific and precise which sometimes creates very interesting, but not intriguing or captivating art works.  I hope to create art that is technically perfect but also more interesting and less obvious, leaving the viewers to their to figure out the meaning to the piece.

My final product will be a series of photos from each different emotional response idea.  I am going to have a A3 or larger print which shows the main idea of my work or multiple prints showing the main ideas.  The rest of the series will be smaller prints of A3-A4.  All the photos will be framed and displayed as a set.

The aesthetic qualities of my images will cause an emotional response that will confused and intrigue the viewer by what they are seeing.  I want the viewer to progress emotionally through my images from the first emotional idea to the last.  The viewers emotional progression will start by relating to the image, but then after viewing them all they will feel confused and unsure.  After further thinking, they will understand the intended meaning; a specific point in time shows a specific experience and emotion; everyone reacts differently to every situation and remembers different aspects of that situation.  This is one main aspect of personality and relates to everyone everywhere.