Assignment four is slightly different to the other assignments as for this assignment we get to revisit one of the exercises we have done throughout our part four course work – language of light – and get to expand and develop it into a formal assignment.
I looked back through my exercises; 4.1 on daylight, 4.2 on artificial light and 4.3 – controlled light with the egg and the following helped me decide on which exercise I would like to develop further upon..
For exercise 4.1 I researched Sally Mann, Eugene Atget and Michael Schmidt. Sally Mann is an American photographer who focuses on family portraits and more recently, landscape photography – producing this on large format. My shots for this exercise I took on a walk to my stables. I looked at depth of field images (house in the middle of a field) and shallow depth of field images such as, tree bark to see how the light enhances textures. I then experimented slightly with reflections by taking a photo out of my lorry grooms door of the trees in the mirror. I also looked at Eugene Atget who photographed the streets of Paris and Michael Schmidt who similarly captured the streets of Berlin. You can see more on the research of these three photographer here at exercise 4.1.
The second exercise, 4.2 was on artificial light, this lead me to explore the work of Rut Blees Luxemburg and Christopher Doyle. I also looked into the work of Brassai called Paris by Night. For this exercise I went out at dark (around 1900) to Charlestown harbour to see what artificial light was about and to see how this form of light would influence my images. This was my first time shooting in the dark and I enjoyed trialling something new and the challenge that presented me. You can see my official exercise here.
Finally, exercise 4.3, the Egg and Stone challenge with controlled lighting. For this I used a hallow egg that I had removed the yolk from, as I pointed out in my exercise summary here it required some trial and error with the camera settings to get the exercise to work. I enjoyed playing around with the lighting and seeing how this created different shaped shadows in different areas dependent on where the light was positioned.
Thinking about the assignment four brief – the decision lead me to choose exercise 4.2 – artificial light as my assignment subject. I was mostly inspired by the work of Rut Blees Luxemburg and how she used artificial light at night to capture the beauty of water and nature around London. I enjoyed taking the night time images and wanted to explore this area of photography further.
Heather Wade OCA Blog 