Movement & Motion

Movement within photography is a very effective thing to do especially when it comes to dancing.  There are a countless number of photographers that have used movement in photography as it can fit in to every genre. But dancing is a movement of the body and can be experimented in many different ways. I have found some examples of how the movements in dance and photography can be captured. I like this effect in images as it leaves you following the movements as if you could really see them move. 

In this top image showing the same dancer, three times, she has clearly done a dance move an the photographer has captured the moving body parts up until a certain point.  The movements are visible due to the long exposure used.  I love this effect and it is definitely something I will consider trying out. I like how each move shows the extent of the dance move, them arms bent and legs perfectly aligned, I think these particular poses work really well in this type of photography.   When looking at the movements themselves, the strokes are faint but you can see how the dancer has moved from one position to the next. Lighting is key for images like this and it would be something I would have to try out again and again to get it right. 

This second image of two images combined shows a very faint movement on a white background.  The model looks like she has slowly jumped up and down to create movements where her hair is moving quite a bit.  Her arms are extended out from her body and you can see the movements from where her arms were during the exposure.  The image on the right of her face is quite interesting as it is blurred as she has moved but it almost gives a 3D effect to it, this may be down to the colours used in lighting and editing but there are very soft, pinks, blues, whites and yellows which makes it very beautiful. I really like this set of images and there are others in the series like these, but although I think it looks great and still used the same long exposure technique, for my ideas I am looking into dance and movements within dance so I would like to have a bit more dance included within my images.

These last two images I found whilst looking for movement photography on a broad search.  Black and white can work very nicely for this kind of photography but only when shadowy dark images are what you are looking for. The image on the left is just of a female looking towards the camera. Because of the long exposure she isn't standing dead still and you can see movements, her hair is blurred and you can see faint movements from the dress. This kind of image is intriguing as you don't know anything about her and why you cannot see her face but yet little is shown for us to even make judgement. It would be good to test out images like this one of the right to get lighting correct for the long exposure. 

The image on the left is a professional dance image.  The dancer is in nude and has chalk dust thrown around her to create a lovely effect for the shot.  There is a fast shutter for this image although it does show the dancer in motion. It is easy enough to capture movement in both quick motion or slow motion, but both need a lot of work in the lighting set ups. I particularly like this image because of the chalk dust in the dark room, the light has caught the dust and brightened it.  I have seen many dance images like this before, it is something I would like to try, but would need a big enough space to do the shoot. 

Here is a short video clip I found on YouTube whilst researching, which is for a tutorial site in which you have to pay for, but from this short clip, you can see some of the dance images from photographer Frank Doorhof.  He uses props most know for dance photography which is material cloth and chalk dust, both create very beautiful effects, and both something I would love to try out. In these clips it shows the type of studio space to work in and how the shot has been taken which is very useful.
These are all ideas to mix in with my movement and body ideas.

Moving on to Dance

So from my original idea of focusing on the body and Nude, I have looked at many nude photographers, but one perfect way of showing how the body can move is within Dance.  Ballet is the most elegant of dance itself, and can show beautiful shapes with the body. I have decided to interlink dancing with my ideas so instead of creating nude portraits I will create dance portraits.  After this initial idea I have looked at different dance photographers and how I can come up with an idea.  Lois Greenfield is one of the most professional dance photographers and has captured beautiful images.

Greenfield says in her Bio;
"I've spent the last 25 years of my photographic career investigating movement and its expressive potential.  My inspiration has always been photography's ability to stop time and reveal what the naked eye cannot see.  My interest in photography is not to capture an image I see or even have in mind, but to explore the potential of moments I can only begin to imagine.  What intrigues me is making images that confound and confuse the viewer, but that the viewer knows, or suspects, really happened. I want my images to defy logic, or as Salvador Dali wrote, I strive to "systematize confusion and discredit reality."  I can't depict the moments before or after the camera's click, but I invite the viewer's consideration of that question."

Like Greenfield, I too have a huge fascination with photography's ability to stop time, I have always been interested in how life will keep going on whilst a split second of it is captured. I am intrigued in what she says about inviting the viewer's consideration of the question, Can you depict the moment before or after the click?, because it is something that I do not think many people even consider. I now know and can see whilst looking at Lois Greenfield's work how she feels towards dance photography and it really gives me a reason to experiment into this topic more.

I love Lois Greenfield's work with material - Here are some of my favourites below:

http://www.loisgreenfield.com/galleries/index.html

These images above and many dance images have a material within the shot, this is to show movement and is a very effective way of making the image interesting. I have tried this technique before and had a lot of fun with it. Here are four of my images below that show how I used the material within the image to create an effective prop.  My model's were still but with a dance movement it could have looked very effective.  I need to work on my lighting techniques and may try using this on location but it is definitely something I will consider. 

Lois Greenfield's quote:

"Ironically, freezing a split second gives the movement more solidity than it had as a fleeting gesture of dance.  We know that nothing in the real world can exist in two dimensions, yet photographs seduce us in believing that it is a valid representation of reality."

I truly believe in what she is saying here, photography convinces us that what was taken in that split second is real and that the movement has to be real even when you find it hard to believe. This is something I will aim to convey in my images depending on the models I can use for my shoots.   

Nude's

Nude photography has been a genre that has always fascinated me.  Since I created my series of location nudes shown on a previous post, I have wanted to experiment more with nude photography.  I love the way the body can make so many different shapes and how it looks so different with lighting techniques.  I would like to explore this within this assignment and work with dancers who are much more flexible and show movement with the human body.

A perfect inspiration for me is professional Nude photographer Klaus Kampert, who creates stunning nude images and portraits that show elegance of the body. I could look at his work for hours because of how interesting they are; here are some of my favourites and a link to his website.

http://www.klauskampert.com/index_en.php

I would like to include some inspiration from his work within my own, I would only do this if I decide to shoot in the studio, but if I shoot on location then I will take what I see and find a way to find interesting positions for the dancer's to create an emotive dance portrait.

Inspiration Ella Ruth

I found a series of Dance Location Portraits whilst researching, and I think they look lovely, really classy and elegant which is exactly what a dance portrait should look like.  This series is by a Photographer called Ella Ruth.  I have looked at her other work as well and it has given me a lot of inspiration. These two images are my Favourites out of the series.  I would like to do some shoots like this to practice my skills with working with natural lighting on locations.  I love the locations for both these images too, fits perfectly. The positions that the dancer/model is in, is very interesting yet simplistic.  

After looking at these images of the location being the woods, it reminded me of an old shoot that I had done in my first year.  Here are two of the images below which are not edited at all.  I had the model sit in the middle of the tree and I liked the look as if the tree was cradling her in a 'hand' like position, almost reminded me of Thumbelina.  I think that they could be made a lot better with some more preparation and time. If I stick to a Dance theme to my ideas and shoots then I could potentially re-create this shoot but have a dance model posing inside the tree. This is definitely something I will consider and come back to!

I have a lot more inspiration and have been looking at so much dance related fashion photography that I love, and will be sharing very soon. 

Brighton Photo Biennial

Okay, so I'm a little bit behind on my dates, but, on the 16th October we had a Photography trip to Brighton to see the 'Brighton Photo Biennial 2012' and I thought it was a really helpful trip to see some of the galleries in the area and look at the exhibited work.  Here is a quick photo I have taken to show the leaflets/postcards that I collected on the day.  There are plenty of Exhibitions that I would still like to go to in Brighton and in London so hopefully the trip this month to London will help me too.

I went into one of the galleries in Brighton called Gallery40 and saw some work that interested me quite alot and I thought that it would fit well into my initial ideas for my module's. It is the work of Gavin Bambrick and his series called 'Exile'.  Here are the images below;

At first I thought they were sculptures to show emotion and quickly thought they would fit into my idea as working with the Human Body and showing shape and shadows of the body in different light.  I actually had an idea of shooting low key images of the body and work with shapes in a certain light which, in a way would be similar to this work.  But after reading about this 'Exile' series, I found out that it's the work of domestic abuse and how most of the time it is unseen by the public eye, and his work shows the physical and emotional suffering.  Another reason this work has given me inspiration is for ideas towards my Mixed Media module.  Bambrick says that he couldn't find anything to use for his work so then decided to make his own sculptures.  He made these caricature models as realistic as possible to make sure the abuse and violence looked real.

The reason these models/sculptures have given me ideas towards my Mixed Media module is because I had thoughts of creating a sculpture of the human body and include it with my dance/nude idea.  My idea was to create a model/sculpture in a dance pose and then place the model either in the studio or on location and shoot it as if it was a real model.  If i choose to shoot in the studio I could place a big image of mine as the background but I do think it would work better if I actually took the sculpture to a location and shot an image there as my final piece. Its all just ideas at the moment but this work had given me alot of ideas for my Major Practical Project and Mixed Media. 

Previous Ideas

I have had many ideas for my Major Practical Project throughout my course, but one idea I always think about is the study of the 'body' and for some reason, have had interest in Nude photography.  Over the years I have written essays about Nude's including work into Sally Mann and have researched alot into the subject. I am not 100% sure if I want to produce some Nude work for this assignment but I'd like to work on Fashion photography more and maybe merge both Nude and Fashion photography together. 

I would also like to work on my Location portraiture alot more and work with different lighting techniques outside, this will be good for me to continue after the course has finished and would help me improve in many types of photography. In my projects from year 2, I looked into fashion photography within my research for a number of projects and I would like to extend on that further this year.  

These 5 images below are some Photographs that I produced for the 1st year Exhibition.  I did not submit them into any form of assignment throughout the year but it was something I wanted to try. I was very happy with the final outcome and personally think they worked well in an Exhibition.  It was a bit risky for my first Nude Images but I think I succeeded. I now use these as my own inspiration to extend on how I can work with the body to form some technically better location portraiture work. 

      

Here at the bottom right I have added an image of myself standing next to the images I chose to exhibit (frames are mounts, given by the curators of the exhibition).

I have been looking into many Fashion photographers, Nude photographers and Fine art photographers for inspiration for this initial idea and will show some of the work I like in the next couple of posts. 

Blogging

I thought I'd start my very first blog post with what I think about Blogging itself   =)

I personally think that the Idea of submitting our Project as a blog rather than an actual critical journal is a great idea.  Alot of people in the class didn't like the idea when we were first told and were really not happy about it, but I think that I will get used to it really easily as it is something I've always thought about doing and wanted to do in the near future anyway, if anything, it's actually forced me into starting blogs which is a good thing.

I can see blogging for this assignment being alot easier for a few different reasons, the first being Time Saving !! Blogging (typing) is alot easier and quicker than hand writing pages.
For the whole of my creative education I have used sketch books and folders and either written on the page or printed word documents and cut them out and stuck them to the page, along with magazines and any other inspiration, which, in simple terms, is very time consuming. Another reason is the fact that it's Online, making it alot easier for me to access it at all times of the day. Luckily for me I can actually use blogger and write a post from my Phone, which means whenever I see inspiration or think or any ideas I can post straight away. Online Resources will be alot easier to actually 'source' by simply attaching the link and scanning in from books/journals will also be easier sitting right at my desk.

I would ideally like to post a blog post for this assignment every day and will try my hardest, but I will post at any time I feel I have an input to my research and reading into the ideas I have.  I plan to post anything and everything I see that will help me to arrive at my final outcome.

Happy Blogging  =)