Feedback from my Module Proposal

In December I had to hand in a proposal of what I was going to do for this module and what my ideas consisted of, also what I intended to do for my final images.  Here below shows a small copy of the proposal I gave in. In this proposal I mentioned ideas that I have put onto this blog at the start and how my ideas started by working with Nude's.  I talk about how my ideas from Nude changed into linking dance with the body (all ideas mentioned in previous posts).  I also mention ideas about making a theme of 'Elements' Air, Water, Earth & Fire in which I embarked on a lot of research into, only to find that it wasn't really fitting into my original ideas of dance and the body. 

The worst part of this proposal is that there were so many mixed ideas and not really a set idea, this is due to it being right at the start of the module and shows my journey on to how I came to my final ideas.  I have had a lot of changes since handing in my proposal and there are many things that I would like to change.  I have had my whole initial ideas kept the same but have finalised what will be my outcome. 

After the Christmas break I received an e-mail feedback from my proposal and what my Tutor thinks about my ideas and what I should do to improve it.  Here is a copy of the feedback, so that I can look back on this blog post and see what I needed to do to improve and add to my research. 

My Tutor has mentioned some helpful advise on what I can do to improve the project and I will bullet point the important notes to take from this...

O  The first thing mentioned is how it is an interesting area to work with. 

O  Inter-linking with my Mixed Media project could help to create a portfolio for the future. 

O  I need to think about a title because it will make a big impact on how the project is read. 

O  The general area is good but I need to refine MY visual Style.

O  I need to refine and narrow down the research I am looking at, so there is a theme. 

O  Find an exact path to follow and stick by ideas relevant to that particular idea. 

O  Read about the 'Body' (which I have now done on the blog post before this!!) 

O  Buy the linked book: "The Body in Contemporary Art". 

O  All ideas can work, I just need to think of what best fits with what I am trying to communicate. 

O  Think about my Mixed Media ideas of 'the thoughts of the dancer'. 

O  Think about the commercial/fashion side and research into it a lot. 

O  Make sure technical side of things is thought about in depth. 

O  Plan plenty of shoots and re-shoots to get it right. 

O Get shooting my ideas !!!

With all of these bullet points to work from I need to get up-to-date with all of my ideas in my head to show my main idea and what I think my outcome will be. 

First Proposal

Print Name:  SUZI RAE SLOUGH

Blog URL:  suzi-rae.blogspot.co.uk

Provisional Working Title:  Dance Portraits

For this assignment being my Major Project in my final year I knew I wanted to carry on a genre and subject than I have always been interested in. I would ideally like to be working into fashion/portrait photography in the future and would like to work towards it but for this to happen I need a lot more practice of location lighting to get my technical skill to the right place it needs to be.  My original idea came from a series of images that I created in my first year but did not submit to any assignments, which are my black and white location nude portraits.  I used natural lighting for these and they worked really well.  Because these worked really well I have had many projects come to mind to extend on these, I have always had a fascination with the human body and working with the different shapes than it can make.  Nude photography has always interested me, and even more so after I had done this series.  I first started looking into nude photography for this assignment but my ideas all changed once I decided to mix in a similar idea to my mixed media assignment to make it a little easier for me.  For my mixed media assignment I started looking at movement and dance to create a short photographic film and it started me looking at dance portraits and from this research I have decided to go down a fashion, location, dance portrait route to create a series that shows elegance and maybe movement.

I have researched into the body and how the different shapes of the body can be photographed and this has really interested me, I think dance is the perfect way of showing how the body can be captured in different ways.  I think ballet is the most elegant form of dance and can be very beautiful in a photograph but any contemporary dance can show a great form of movements and shapes whilst in the air.  The first photographer that really interested me was Klaus Kampert who has a huge selection of series on Nude photography and looking at his stunning images some of the images are hard to believe that it is a body, which I think is fascinating. When I was originally working with nude this was the standard I would be aiming for but I now have been looking at many different photographers and their dance portraits and it has sparked of ideas on how I can make them interesting and my own. 

One other idea that came to my mind also links the dance theme and location dance portraiture but including my brief from professional practice which is Elements.  The four elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Air can be included into my emotive dance portraits in a way using location to determine which element it is, i.e. a dancer in position in a river or stream to signify ‘Water’ or a dancer on a cliff top with a material blowing in the wind to signify ‘Air’.  I would still use the same ideas and techniques to create a dance image but include a subtle hit of each element within the image.  This would challenge me to use props and experiment with the movements to a theme.

What fascinates me the most is how the mind works whilst dancing and the movements we can make with our bodies.  One of my most recent ideas for my series of dance portraits is working with movement and blur.  This is something that I have only worked with a couple of times but I have taken a few images of blurred people and they really make you intrigued and leave you thinking about the emotion of the person.  I propose to link the mind with my dance portraits and within my research to show an emotive dance location portrait. 

The movements and blur within dance can be very effective and will be a challenge to show emotions and body shapes.  It makes dance portraits more interesting and keeps a viewer intrigued, especially if there is a story behind the dancer that can show the emotion they receive whilst dancing.  This is now what I would like to propose as my final idea but I will also try to produce some still dance location portraiture that also show elegance and emotion.

Identify the RESOURCES you will require to undertake the project.

The resources I will require are my Nikon D80 and a location lighting kit.  I have some lights, softboxes, reflectors, umbrellas and trigger at home and all I need is a battery pack so that I will be able to use my kit on location.  I will also require some model release forms for every model I will use.  I may require a Canon 5.50D from the University so that I can film the movements to help me in choosing a still image.  Resources such as books, journals, articles and short films, I can get from the University Library or another Library. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY / INFLUENCES:

My main influences towards the original idea of nude photography is photographer Klaus Kampert, whose work I love to look at but my main inspiration for the dance portraits comes from a photographer called Ella Ruth, I look at her work a lot and really admire the style she has throughout her fashion and dance work.  Lois Greenfield is a very professional dance photographer and had stunning and brilliantly captured dance images in big studios. Bill Wadman is also an inspiration of mine for this idea, after seeing him dance portraits it has made me want to work with movement even more. Here below is a small bibliography of some websites that I have used for research and have used for my blog.  I will have a lot more and a more in depth and strong bibliography by the end of this assignment, as I really am interested in this topic and genre.

http://gavinbambrick.com/GalleryItem/exile/

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

http://ellaruthc.daportfolio.com/

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

http://www.danceshortfilms.com/

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/dancers-in-motion-15-photos

http://echographs.com/oliver-endahl-dance-photography-echographs/

http://www.bertil.co.uk/naturally

- The Body in Movement: Degas, Dance and Photography, Degas Symposium

OUTPUT / ARTIFACT:

The output of this assignment will leave me with more location lighting experience and techniques that I will be able to use in all-future projects.   It will also give me a stronger portfolio of a style that will be recognisable to me. The artefact at the end of this assignment will be a final series of dance portraits aimed at 10-20 images to fit the brief.  

The 'Body' in Photography

I think that the body in Photography plays an important role for any genre that is including a person. The body has to be positioned to the way the photographer wants to show a certain perspective.  The body can be many things, but when used in the right way in photography, it can be very beautiful. The body itself can be photographed in a countless number of ways, and the different parts of the body can be shown from different angles and compositions to show very unique ways of seeing the body.

Obviously the 'body' in photography has a huge link to Nude photography and it is a perfect way of showing the body, but this is something I have briefly looked at in a previous post about Klaus Kampert (click his name for website), and is also something I will talk about in a later post that will be about the history of the Nude. To start, I would just like to focus in on 'body' photography as it has always fascinated me.  Here below are some images I have found whilst browsing for just body photography.  It is interesting to see how each photographer has used different creative ways to express their way of seeing the body.

Most images of the body make me want to explore photographing it even more. When I worked with my model for my nudes that I shot, I really was working to see how lighting would hit different parts of the body and how sections of the body looked in certain ways.
Lighting plays a major part in body photography, it depends on whether the photographer wants to see everything or to hide sections with shadowing. Showing the body shot on a plain black or white background is the most common and effective way way of showing body part close ups. It is the easiest way to block everything else out apart from the main focus.
Compositions & Posing of the models is also important when it comes to the body and it is very interesting how in certain lighting, the body can look like something different and in some cases can almost confuse the viewer as to what part of the body it is.  But it really comes down to testing it out in the lighting conditions you want and seeing how different positions can work.

I used natural lighting when I have worked with the body previously and I like this effect especially with nudes, but using artificial lighting can also work really well and is something I will try out with the body in the near future.  If I were to choose my favourites from the images above I would definitely say the first colour image because the shape of her back is beautiful and the shadow where her spine is really define's the shape, lighting is simple but the colours are really soft, but in contrast to this, I also like the black and white image of the back with the shoulder blade sticking out, as it it really makes you wonder about the different shapes we can create with out bodies and the fact that the greyness blends together and that to be it almost doesn't look human.

As far as my research goes into the subject for this module, I will be working with the body and how the body moves, this can be portrayed in photography beautifully and most definitely in nude. Working from the body first will give me a lot of inspiration in to how I will shoot my models in a creative way. I have decided against nude and have been looking into how the body moves with dance and have found many interesting images to share within my research. Later blog posts will include how dance plays a great part in body shape and body lighting.

The History of Motion Photography

Since I have decided to create images using motion and movement photography for my Major Practical Project, I thought it would only be helpful to re-read previous research that I have done about motion photography, at the same time I can learn more and research in depth, the real history of the motion photograph.

Nude Descending a Staircase
Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase shows a human figure in motion, in a style inspired by Cubist ideas about the deconstruction of forms.  The image does not show an exact nude but shows abstract lines and planes. The lines in the image show the static positions of the body and create a rhythmic sense of motion and the shaded planes give depth and volume to her form.  It is only in our own mind's in which we see the motion and the nude.
This piece of art was one of the earliest attempts to try and depict motion using the medium of paint. It's conception owed something to the newborn cinema and to photographic studies of the living body in motion, like those of Marey and Muybridge. Cubist paintings around this time were necessarily static and this was the Cubist theory, but instead of creating a piece of work that showed a subject's multiple views at one moment at a time, Duchamp created a piece that showed a subject from one view at multiple moments together. Marcel Duchamp gave the Cubists 'vitality' in the movement which no-one apart from Muybridge had done before.
Duchamp did not mean to mock Cubism by 'deconstruction of form' but was trying to show a new way of seeing, the piece was rejected by the Salon des Independents because members of the jury felt that he was making fun of Cubist art, but viewers didn't just dislike the painting, they saw it as a threat - un-american. American's presumed paintings should be of historical scenes, presidents etc, there was nudes too but they were realistic depictions of lounging women with big breasts. Duchamp's painting hit boundaries with the people and they weren't able to handle the fact he re-defined what originality was and changed the dead academic language of painting. He brought rebellion to art which made viewers think, but because the art piece caused an uproar which both outraged many people, it also made Duchamp famous in America.

His piece of Cubist artwork is here below alongside Eliot Elisofon's piece mimicking Duchamp's work.

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending Staircase No. 2, 1912
Eliot Elisofon, Marcel Duchamp Descending a Staircase, 1952

Motion - Eadweard Muybridge
I have looked into the work of Eadweard Muybridge a lot before in previous projects. I was very interested in the motion work that he produced and it really made me want to know more. Here below is Muybridge's interpretation of Duchamp's Nude descending a Staircase, but taken in different frames in photography.

Eadweard Muybridge, Nude Descending a Staircase from
Animal Locomotion, 1887

Here I have added a screen shot image of an essay that I completed in my first year about Eadweard Muybridge's work. I can use this as my research to re-read about him and his work.

Muybridge in 1872, was the man who questioned whether when a horse galloped, does all there feet leave the ground at one time. Therefore came up with an idea of using multiple cameras to capture a galloping horse in action. Using roughly 16 cameras, he proved his point that whilst galloping a horse lifts all four hooves in air at the same time.  From 1884-1887 he used the same technique but with human movements in motion.  This is a technique that is very simple in todays world, but were extremely technically skilled back then. 

Because of his work using different frames per second, this technique has been improved each generation to bring us to where we are today, anything that creates a motion can be captured, in very different ways too. 

I will experiment with my motion photography but will pay particular attention to the way the body moves, and will look into the background of the body.  With looking at history of movement as well as history of the body/nude I can work towards an interesting piece of work including both. 

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.