PUBLIC/PRIVATE – PRINTING

I made a mess in printing forgetting to re-sizing the image. I used A3 for the montage and A4 for series. Because the size was too small comparing with the size of paper, I ended up with a much smaller image on the paper. The Epson Stylus Pro 3800 is amazing! I used super satin paper and the quality to me is much better than high street printing house. We had a crit thereafter...

BRONICA SQA

I came more and more to like 6 by 6. Don’t know why. It is just so cool. Maybe I hadn’t played with it before and suddenly with all these medium format camera I found this new thing fascinating. I used this Bronica SQA and shot some portraiture. I felt I really like 6 by 6 for this type of work. I would like to shoot some landscape as well. Never did before. Only cropped from 6 by 4 just like the public/private series project. I like this SQA.

PUBLIC/PRIVATE - EDITING

We had an edit class. I was so happy that it is not another photoshop dim room class. I just don’t like the flaring screen maybe because I am not capable or because my eyes get easily soured. It’s exciting to see all others’ stuff, even though work in process. Laurence’s dummy baby one was so conceptually strong. I quite like it. There is a strange feeling after viewing her work, sick aesthetics, I can say, but it is really good. The cohort gives me some feedback and I have been considering some of them.

PUBLIC/PRIVATE (Montage) - TRANSFORMING

Photoshop is powerful yet annoying sometimes when I get frustrated as things cannot be done properly because of my lack of skill. I easily spent hours on one image. It is a sharp learning curve for me. It does offer me a wide range of options of image making and creation. I come to enjoy the amazing tool empowered by the digital technology. Transforming…

PUBLIC/PRIVATE - VISUAL COHERENCE

(Green Street, W1, London 2010)

I have been struggling regarding my hotspot series about the visual

coherence. I used D300 and it was in 35mm format. Because of the

different looking of different places all in messy surroundings, there

are hardly any good formulated visual codes. I had endeavoured to find

it when shooting and several of the shots included doors which I quite

like as it has some kind of connotation of passing through. Terez

enlightened me to consider crop and format changing. I eventually

chose medium format 6 X 6 and cropped off much unnecessary details.

It changed the visual impact dramatically. However, the Hornsey Lane

Bridge one is not good, as I shot from side rather than from the

middle. This caused the perspective not in line with other shoots. I

planned to re-shoot this one

PUBLIC/PRIVATE (Montage) – IN PROCESS

(Liverpool Street Station, London 2010; Work in Process)

We had guided independent studies on Photoshop. I tried to work out my mask montage project. With Terez and Pavla’s help, I managed to put mask on hundreds of faces in one of the photos I shot in Liverpool Street Station. I just wanted to see what the visual impact it would be after the masking. The copy and paste was not well done as there are different angles of people’s face and I only got a few mask shots from different angles. There are other details need to be adjusted meticulously such as the shape of the mask against each one’s face, the overlapping mask with hair, etc. It is gonna be lots of work if choose crowds of people to wear them mask. Anyway, I masked most of the people very roughly just to see the visual effect and it looks not too bad. Therefore, I plan to go ahead but probably choose an image with lesser people.

PUBLIC/PRIVATE (Montage) – 2ND SHOOTING

(Liverpool Street Station, London 2010)

OMG. What an excited locale! There were hundreds of people, if not thousands, jam packed inside Liverpool Street Station when I arrived there at around 17:30. There should be some train delays otherwise it would not be so many people even in rush hour times. The upstairs offered a great vantage point. I started shooting first round at ISO 400 intensively worrying security people might stop me at any time. The crowd were just fabulous and I kind of shot without any conscious. I changed to ISO 800 for the second round worrying blurring due to slow shutter speed as the lens aperture became around 5.6 when I tele zoomed the scene and the light inside is not ideal. Crappy lens (18-200 Nikkor) though convenient. It was a great venue and I wish I could find one shot to be used for the montage project. There are several difficulties in this shooting that might have a detrimental impact on the photos. The colour temperature was very complicated with all kinds of electric lights on so not quite sure of the white balance adjustment afterwards. The high ISO might get too noisy. Shooting was done by instinct with no time to check the image and re-shoot. I did plan to shoot a grand scene with good depiction of environment besides the big crowd. I also planned to shoot a group of people looking up.

I checked the pictures afterwards. ISO 800 quality is acceptable thanks to my D300. There are a few blurred ones, but I quite like one or two of them. One or two shots might be suitable for the montage, but I am not quite satisfied with the composition. I need to edit again the 83 photos and hopefully find the right one to start the masking, not the PS masking, the real one – to wear every one in the crowd a white mask!