Michael Millmore - DPP Blog: March 2014

Sunday 30 March 2014

Assignment 2: Tutor feedback

Student name	Michael Millmore	Student number	497132
Course/Module	Digital Photo Practice	Assignment number	Assign - 2

Overall Comments

Many thanks for submitting this second assignment Michael, which I feel has really given you the opportunity to conduct some fairly serious technical testing – judging by your initial comments on the blog posting … this forced you out of your comfort zone ! As you have been transferred over to me we do not have any outstanding issues to address from the last report, but I will include several practitioner recommendations for you to look at if you haven’t already done so.

Feedback on assignment

I noted from reading the written element of your assignment the fear you encountered when viewing what you considered a ‘brilliant and original interpretation’ of this assignment. I understand it can be difficult at times, but I think this will come through confidence about your work and the ability to become less personal about the work you produce. My advice in the first instance is to try not being put off by the work of your cohort and simply use the work you admire to drive and inform your own. Most things have already been done to be fair and if you dig deep enough you will find a source to most of what you consider ‘brilliant and original’ ! I will try to help and support you in this respect.

As a series of images, I actually thought they all worked really well and wondered why you had spent so much time beating yourself up prior to shooting ! Some of these images are both really well composed (Hair Brush on Window Sill) and really well observed (Light Falling across Wall). They show both an attention to detail and keen visually curious eye, which is not always seen at this stage of an undergraduate degree. They actually suggest to me that you have spent many hours in the past deliberating and carefully constructing images, which you should feel confident about.

I think my main advice to you at the moment would be to think much more carefully about what you are actually spending time taking photographs of, even if the exercise is based purely upon technical considerations. Having said this I did note that some of your writing could be described as ‘descriptive’ in terms of technical weighting as opposed to being more ‘reflective’ in terms of concept. I think you could afford to ease back on the former and try to further develop the latter within this module.

When you look at a series of images and one makes you stop, this can be referred to in terms of what Roland Barthes would call ‘Studium’ or a general enthusiasm or interest assigned to an image. This is as opposed to something that might be classed as a rare detail or piercing moment of either pain or delight, which Barthes would term ‘Punctum’. My punctum will be different to yours, but it is a good exercise to try to start establishing this when viewing imagery. I have listed a publication below by Barthes entitled Camera Lucida, which I urge you to read in relation to developing your photographic critical position.

Lastly, an additional positive point to make about your work is that most of the images show very little ‘dead space’, which is so often found in the early stages of photographic practice – prior to any theoretical compositional considerations being either learnt or absorbed. You have actually already alluded to the fact that effective photography equals Technique + Composition. Good or acceptable technique is arguably the first prerequisite for ‘good’ photography, but this alone will not make a ‘good’ image. Image making must be complimented by composition, not just technique as mentioned before. We all use very similar technical equipment to make images, so composition is often one of the best ways in which a photographer can express their individuality and personal feeling in communicating their thoughts and ideas.

For the next assignment [monochrome] try to conduct some research into why anybody would specifically wish to remove the colour from an image. Obvious debates surrounding this are firstly to limit or remove distractions from an image … but also you can argue a monochrome image can sometimes look dated / or dateless. By reverting back to the results that were only available from the early stages of the process, you can somehow often associate these historic vales to the works.

Learning Logs/Critical essays

This is progressing well for you and you are updating with regular posts. The design is very easy to navigate, which will support you during assessment. You may also like to consider placing a couple of tabs on the home page which help to easily locate key areas of admin such as feedback reports etc.

I also noted many postings in relation to photographic practitioners which really is excellent to see at this level of undergraduate study. I think you might be able to make more reference to some of this work in your future assignment submissions, in terms of who is actually informing your own practice and in what way etc. I’ve tried to suggest some more practitioners below which are not currently listed on your blog and whose work you really need to know about.

Suggested reading/viewing

Hunter, T.2003:Tom Hunter. Germany. Hatje Cantz Publications

ISBN-13: 978-3775712774

Bird, N.2001: Tracing Echoes. Leeds. Wild Pansy Press

ISBN-13: 900687135

Callaghan, H.2006:The Photographer at Work. New Haven, CT. Yale University Press

ISBN-13: 978-0300113327

Barthes, Roland.1993: Camera Lucida. Vintage Classics. London.

ISBN 13: 978-0099225416

Journals – Source / Portfolio

Conclusions and targets for next assignment

In terms of practitioners I would like you to take a look at the following and then perhaps review their practice via a blog posting … the same as what you have already been doing.

In her 2001 work ‘Tracing Echoes’, Nicky Bird’s study of the Julia Margaret Cameron Archive revealed ancestors that had been traced back from Cameron’s original sitters. Bird actually states that the Tracing Echoes project initially stemmed from viewing an image made by Cameron in 1865-70 called ‘The Passion Flower at the Gate’. The image provoked what Bird described as ‘an almost gut reaction to the picture’ due to its resemblance to the artists sister which are detailed below:

In addition to the above, I’d like you to take a look at the work of Harry Callaghan for the next assignment [Monochrome]. I can’t stress how important it is, to be able to know as much as you can about the photographic practitioners who have influenced today’s photographers. Callaghan has also done some interesting work in colour.

Anyway, good work once again Michael and I look forward to your next assignment submission.

Tutor name:	Keith W Roberts
Date	30/03/2014
Next assignment due	May 2014

Wednesday 19 March 2014

Assignment 3: Monochrome

"Today, the victory of colour photography over black and white is almost complete…..To work in black and white now is to make a deliberate aesthetic statement or to reference the work from the past in a particular way"1

Derrick Price

I have a great admiration for black and white photography; I love the way that monochrome can transform an image and focus our attention as viewers on small details or enable us to concentrate on form and tone. Yet, I rarely convert my images to monochrome - approaching this assignment one of the first question I needed to address was my reasons for this.

When I first became interested in digital photography I used photoshop a great deal to manipulate my images. The understanding I gained during this time has proved invaluable in underpinning my knowledge of how the digital image is made up, however, I reached a point when I realised photoshop and digital manipulation was getting in the way of me actually taking photographs. I would spend hours at the screen trying to make something of an image that did not warrant this - I realised my time would be better spent trying to take better photographs and began to concentrate on improving my photographic technique. I stopped using photoshop for every image I took and began only to use it when I wanted to create a specific effect. This also coincided with me becoming 'seriously' interested in photography and a growing appreciation I began to have of art photography - rather than reading 'how to' books and magazines I began to look at photographers work and started to read books on art theory. From this point on I only converted my images to black and white if that was my original intention - I loathe to see alternative pictures shown in both colour and monochrome, to me the photographer should have the conviction to do either one or the other but not both.

To get myself thinking about this assignment I brainstormed what black and photography could mean. Words like real, truth and documentary were the first I thought of along with the term 'fine art photography.' It is a phrase I loathe because of the connotations that photography can only be fine art by conforming to some sort of aesthetic standard. It suggests that the photographer must be serious about their work because it is produced in black and white; I hate pigeon holing and find the description quite insulting as it suggests that photography has to have some sort of sign post that it is art before it can be taken seriously. As my interest in photography grows I become less concerned with work that is purely pictorial and am increasingly attracted to work that is more challenging using unusual points of view or exposure settings. The work of Daido Mariyama comes to mind as an example of this.

I always like to have some sort of theme to underpin my assignments and I kept coming back to the notion of photography and reality as a subject to explore. It seems ironic that black and white images should be seen as more authentic than colour despite the fact they are not a direct translation of the way we see the world. Thinking of photography as truth I remembered two examples from my research which challenge this. The first is an image by documentary photographer Stepan Rudik, Street Fighting Ukraine which won third prize in the World Press Photo awards 2010 and was subsequently disqualified after judges deemed the image did not conform to accepted standards in the industry. (Original image here.) The final image is completely different to the original, the close crop onto the boxers hand being wrapped and gritty black and white treatment give a total different reading to the original image. Interestingly, these were not the reasons given for disqualification - a small area of background detail was cloned out of the image and that was why Rudik had his prize taken away.

Another example of pre digital manipulation of an image is by a photographer many see as a giant in the history of documentary photography W. Eugene Smith. Smith was obsessed with printing and would rework negatives throughout his career for different results. He wrote, "Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the completed version of the work….Negatives are private, as is my bedroom…"2 In this article by photographer Joerg Coldberg. Two radically different interpretations of the same image, Madness 1959 are shown (called patient in a mental hospital, Haiti, 1959 by Michael Freeman in his book 'The Photographer's vision.') In his blog Coldberg wonders whether this image would have been disqualified by World Press Photo because the figures have been removed from the background in the second image. I wonder whether controversy over manipulating an image in post production either in the wet or digital darkroom is more about elitism than anything else - is it because digital images are seen as 'less' than analogue and photoshop is deemed a simple process in comparison to the skill required by a master printer in the darkroom that criticism abounds? It seems to me that photographers have always manipulated there images to heighten meaning or even change the way an image can be read completely. I do not see this changing any time soon and as long as we remember that any image we view is a subjective rather than objective view of the world I do not see a problem.

For the assignment I decided to take a series of images within a mile radius of my house. My first consideration for this was practical - I had a short space of time to complete the assignment and needed to have a subject that was accessible. I was also driven to explore the notions of photography and truth I have detailed above. I deliberately decided to concentrate on the more run down and unloved aspects of my locality and then to process the images in a way to heighten the subjects grittiness as much as possible. Viewpoint was particularly important in that I deliberately excluded details so the viewer does not have a clear understanding of what they are looking at - I was not interested in showing truth only an aspect of what can be seen in my local area. Where I live in the North-East of England there are high levels of unemployment and poverty, some of this can be clearly demonstrated near to my home but in my opinion is the exception rather than the rule of what the area is like. By choosing to ignore positive representations of the area the set of pictures gives a snapshot of the local area but not necessarily the truth.

I researched different ways of converting the images into black and white (of which they are many) before deciding to only use Adobe Lightroom - I am familiar with the way Lightroom operates and like the intuitive way images can be processed and the way the software encourages experimentation. A lot of advice I read on converting images to black and white advocated trying different treatments to see how an image looks rather than a hard and fast rule or recipe for conversion. This was something I took on board using only my eye as a gauge to whether an image was working or not. My approach was to first convert to black and white and then push contrast and clarity as much as I could to stretch the tonal range as much as possible, with most images I would also lower exposure to increase the gritty feel. I would then tweak the tone curve and black and white colour mix selections before adding a vignette and a small amount of grain. My overall aim was to create a set of images that look like are similar in their treatment and sit together as a group. The most success I had with this assignment however is how I managed to stick to my self imposed deadline for completing shooting, and then work with the images I had taken to produce the set. I had a much improved sense of confidence in my selections and editing choices and was able to pair down my first selects to my final 10 in a much shorter space of time than I usually do. Maybe it was the pull of a very definite deadline for this assignment that helped me or maybe it was my clear approach and increased confidence in my workflow that stopped me slipping into procrastination - I guess only time will tell!