SILENCED - UNTITLED # 1

SILENCED - UNTITLED # 2

SILENCED - UNTITLED # 3

SILENCED - UNTITLED # 4

TAKE A BREAK – SNOW

(The Little One is Dreaming, Study, 1881, Paul Gauguin)

Tate Britain's Eadweard Muybridge is surprisingly beautiful. The works are more than 130 years old but still inspiring. White Cube's Gregory Crewdson's Sanctuary was surprisingly boring, but as usual, pretty. White Chapel's Walid Raad's Miraculous Beginnings is highly conceptual, systematic and impressive. I like the second room - Making the Familiar Strange in Paul Gauguin's Tate Modern exhibition.

GROUP PROJECT – THE CRIT

Every term one of the most exciting and enjoying part is the crit. Unlike previous ones which we printed and stick on white walls, this year we use projector. The Rollei film projector is amazing with such a vivid cinematic quality, but as the film mount is only good for 6 X 6 or 6 X 4.5 and our trannie is 6 X 7, we have to use the digital projector to project the scanned images, which the quality can not compare with the film one. The reaction was nice especially the formal qualities. Although most of the mates are ok with conceptual idea, there are a few who do not get it. We might put some statement in final submission. There are quite a few good projects and shots. For me, the most impressive was Anonymity in the City. I love the sense of isolation expressed by the beautifully lighted series.

TAKE A BREAK – MUNTEAN / ROSENBLUM

by Muntean / Rosenblum

Finally, as the project and the essay are finishing, I managed to have some free time to wandering around galleries. London is full of hidden gems. Maybe not hidden for others, but for me, they are hidden. Most galleries I visited today are for the first time. First Photofusion (Member group show), then Jerwood Space (This Must be the Place curated by David Campany), Gagosian is closed, Maureen Poley (Muntean / Rosenblum) and Finally Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize Show. I instantly fell for Muntean/Rosenblum’s works. The image plus the text are very touching. It is cinematic, concise, and poetic… which has a very strong impact on me. I did not found this years portrait prize show intriguing. I felt that the statement from many photographers are overplaying the issues of social study, relationship etc… I did not have the same refreshing feel as last year. I found myself is sometimes seeing too much biography (just like the media, critics, and statement do), story and context, rather than the image itself. I would rather free myself to see and feel more of an image than the discursive analysis.

GROUP PROJECT – THE LAST SHOT

To quote Robert’s writing from our group blog: fourmat.blogspot.com

Final shoot: less flesh in the shots makes a difference, so we needed to ensure that any exposed flesh was well lit.

Composing the image to suggest a tension between the woman gazing at the priest whilst being held by the hand and in the loving? desiring? gaze of another woman.

Suggesting a conflict between the women and the priest, the church and beyond regarding their relationship? Sexuality?

There is an absence of rhetoric from the church about love between women, sex between women thus made invisible and therefore silenced. The image suggests all sorts of possible relationships between the characters. The priest is looking away which is significant - a way of ignoring, silencing the 'other' and not acknowledging their existence,

GROUP PROJECT – LENS

We used 90mm which is equivalent to around 44mm and hence there is still wider angle than our standard 50 at D700. It explains the small perspective difference and the little inconvenience to get rid of he rim of the curtain while using D700 50 lens was of no problem at all at the same position at that time. We used 127 for the first week though. 110 equivalent 53, 125 equivalent 62. I didn't do the proper lens research until now, another hindsight!

There are a wide variety of lenses available for the RZ67:

◦ 4 wide-angle lenses:

37 mm f/4.5 Fisheye, the widest RZ lens ever produced, 18 mm equivalent in 135-format

50 mm f/4.5 ULD L, 2 versions (the older one is inferior in terms of contrast and resolution, the ULD version has an additional floating system focus ring), 24 mm equivalent

65 mm f/4, two versions (the second one has a floating element), 32 mm equivalent

75 mm f/3.5, with floating element, 36 mm equivalent

◦ 3 normal lenses:

90 mm f/3.5, 44 mm equivalent

110 mm f/2.8, smallest of the RZ lenses, also has largest aperture, 53 mm equivalent

127 mm f/3.5 and an older model f/3.8, 62 mm equivalent

◦ 8 telephoto lenses:

150 mm f/3.5, 73 mm equivalent

180 mm f/4.5, 87 mm equivalent

210 mm f/4.5 APO, apochromatically corrected design, 102 mm equivalent

250 mm f/4.5, 2 versions (newer one is APO), 121 mm equivalent

350 mm f/5.6 APO, 170 mm equivalent

360 mm f/6.0, an older lens, 175 mm equivalent

500 mm f/6 APO and an older model f/8, longest of the RZ lenses, 238 mm equivalent

◦ 6 specialty lenses:

75 mm f/4.5 Short Barrel, possible to use with a tilt/shift adapter for perspective and focus plane control, needs an SB spacer for normal 75 mm use, 36 mm equivalent

75 mm f/4.5 Shift, perspective control lens, needs manual cocking of the shutter, 36 mm equivalent

140 mm f/4.5 Macro, two versions (the newer one with floating element system), able to shoot 1:3 without extension tubes or bellows and 1:1 with extension tubes 1 and 2, 68 mm equivalent

180 mm f/4 Variable Soft Focus, uses three interchangeable diffusion and spherical aberration disks for soft effect, 87 mm equivalent

180 mm f/4.5 Short Barrel, for tilt and shift adapter, needs an SB spacer for normal 180 mm use, 87 mm equivalent

100-200 mm f/5.2 Zoom, the only RZ zoom lens, 48-97 mm equivalent