For my original idea for the personal practice brief i wanted to expand my knowledge on night photography, i had recently done some night photography for my final Major project and in these images i had used a torch to light up the scene, in the dark of night i had used a torch to light up a mundane scene during the day to make it come alive in the night with the light.
The images i feel were successful and although hard to achieve and took a great deal of time and Patience i was pleased with the result. For this brief i wanted to expand my knowledge on this area and create some different types of night imagery. I had looked at doing long exposures at night or trying out night photography combined with hdr an effect used by Eric Curry where several images are taken at night using torches and other light sources to light up different parts of the scene, the images are then layered on top of each other in photoshop to create one final image showing all parts of the image lit. Here are some examples of what i wanted to achieve . . .
Eric curry.
Eric Curry’s images also have a surrealist feel to them. He builds sets and lights each part of the image singly then layers all the images together, creating an effect in which the image looks like a cartoon or drawing of the original scene.
“Michelangelo is believed to have said that the statue exists already within the marble block. One needs only to chip away all the little pieces that don’t belong. Similarly, am hoping that the substantial amount of energy poured into each work will help illuminate the inherent beauty in these otherwise average scenes, culminating in a finished photograph with built in contradictions. At first glance the photographs tend to look ‘fake’, like a drawing or computer rendering might appear, because they are ‘too nice’. Yet the viewer is still confronted with the realization that they are photographic in nature – almost hyper photographic. I strive to create in these small two dementias worlds of the paper print, a sort of ‘other world’, a place the viewer can wander about and explore, or escape for a few moments.”
Long exposure Night Photography.
These are images taken using long exposure at night time, the effect created by the light is quite an eerie one an effect i would like to achieve in my images, i like the effect the long exposure has on the sky in these images. I have recently completed a dissertation in which i looked in depth into landscape and have found a new appreciation for the landscape side of photography i would like to combine the two into this brief both night photography and landscape i am interested in how light affects both the look and mood in an image.
“ first, light, everything else follows, for light is the language of photography as well as it is raw material. As a poet uses words, so a photographer uses light”
Landscapes at night
These are some images again taken at night using long exposure i like the effect useing the trees and the light coming through the branches i will be experimenting with trees at night for this breif and trying to acheive a similar effect. Bill Brandt was one of the original night photographers described as a poet of darkness who wielded the colour black so expressive way that his work should probably be called a photography noir his images of dimly lit streets and the English countryside was often called Gothic
“In Brants Gothic England, this sky is always dark, the rain is about to fall, the floods is imminent”
