Week 2 – Evaluation

Well, the cardboard backed images, really didn’t go to plan.  Unfortunately the gaps between the marbles left to much clear space as to what the background actually was.  I tried to edit them but that just effected the whole image and lost the details in the marbles themselves and also took the editing to a stage beyond that of the level we had originally intended.

The original set we restricted to just working on exposure, contrast, bodging, burning, cloning and the other traditional techniques one would have used in a darkroom.  To go beyond this would in my opinion be working into graphic design and illustration but working on a media background and working with a traditional 35mm photographer, from his art background, Joseph and I wanted to keep the traditions there.

It feels painful to dismiss an entire set of images, especially when so much and frustration time was spent aligning all of the marble and getting everything in place, and then not disturbing them. Maybe with more preparation next time we can work on enhancing the card before positioning the marbles to make it more, or less, susceptible to the touch light, neturalising itself… giving more of a minimalism feel to the images.

Fortunately, because so much of the prep work was already done during the week, the evening we got the cameras out (Allowing for a darker environment without black out blinds) we could focus on two of the ideas we had been working on.  The mushroom effect had taken some time to construct due to finding a glue that would hold everything in place without effecting the transparency of the marbles but still hold them in place.

The smaller turntable, has the benefit of a controlled continuous rotation speed.  The larger table we use it rotated by myself or Joseph so varies depending on the spin and the weight of the subjects on top.  With a continuous rotation we could look at each image due to the benefit of shooting digitally and review how the marbles and sphere looked in the rotation.  This allowed up to judge their length and shape which we hadn’t really been able to do in our images before.  This has allowed us to create the effect of sausage shaped light and bands of light from the same images in the contact sheet.