Video Interview

The video clip is an interview of Liz Pierson introducing her favorite picture. Liz is a very friendly and talktive interviewee. The cooperation was a happy experience of mine.

We did meet some difficulties in the process anyway. Both of us had done the whole thing twice to make a successful one. In my first time, I did not set the camera correct, so the whole video was out of focus. It was really a silly mistake!

The lighting was basically like what we did in lab. One key light from the subject's left front; two filling lights for the background. However, I failed to make the background illumination as even as it should be, and it caused some trouble later when I tried to drop out the green wall.

I asked her several questions but only kept her answer of the first question, which was a description of how she took her favorite photograph and why she was fond of it. The photograph is vertical, so I could not make it a whole background. I choosed to put it aside of the subject, as if she was pointing to it and introduce it. She had a lot of gestures when talking, so I did not create much movement of the picture, in order not to distract.

Audio Inspiration

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/09/11/realestate/20090913-habi-audioss/index.html

I like it because it sounds mot perfect but very natural. The ovbious ambient noise makes me feel the lady is directly talking to me in the room. And the pauses, slight stutters, hesitations and repeating "you know"s in her description also strongthen this feeling. Because the topic is about a common but warm story, this natural, imperfect method of sound editing is just proper for it.

One word about the photography, I like the details which are not directly showing the lady with her cats, instead, some pictures show the cat carriers in her closet, and decorations of kitten image. They enrich the whole story and create a sense of real, daily life.

Multiple Flash

Qi An (Angie)

Multiple Flash Self Evaluation

   This is the most unsuccessful assignment I have ever done! When shooting on location, I found myself sometimes just forget I was dealing with more than one flash. Theoretically I am very clear that I should use a key light, a filling light and a light for either lightening background or emphasizing a subject. However, in practice I got everything messed up. When I changed my position and angle, I always forgot to tell my assistant where she shall move to cooperate with my camera, or which person she shall focus on. Also I feel sorry for my partners – my SB-600 seemed just not go with their SB-900, which caused a lot of trouble for our cooperation.

   Most of the outtakes have the problem of unbalanced lighting. The lady in white, who appeared in many pictures, got too hot. While the filling light was not used well, so the background was either too dark or too bright. Since people kept moving around, I did not make good composition. Another problem (I will not forgive myself ><) is that I used manual focus instead of auto focus all the time, just because in the last assignment I used manual and I forgot to change it back this time!

   In the first select, I intentionally kept the shadows on the wall, instead of softening them by filling light, because I thought the shape of the dancing people’s heads and bodies were interesting. In the second select I used a slow shutter to create sense of movement, but I did not know how to set rear mode on my flash, so I could not freeze the other dancer as I imagined. Both selects are not satisfactory. I guess I do need more practice on multiple flash.

Painting with Light

Qi An

Painting with Light Self Evaluation

   It is more like a game rather than an assignment! I have a happy experience with my partners. Anyway, it is also a difficult one; we have a good idea but we fail to make it as ideal as we imagined.

   Anna has two dancer friends who came to help us. We decided to use flash light to freeze their graceful poses in the air, and use a colored light to draw a ribbon-like line around them. However, it turns out not as perfect as we hoped. Problems we met include:

   Untidy background: we shoot in the studio; the backdrop could not cover enough space and we found a lot of unwanted stuff in the frame. I suggested that letting the dancers jump at same spot but we move camera instead; it might be a better way to put the four figures in appreciate positions in the frame. But others believed it was too difficult to control.

   Insufficient lighting: one flash was only enough to lighten part of the dancer’s body; but two flashes would make it over-exposed. We were trying hard to find a way to well light the dancers without extra light on background, but failed. And since Anna flashed the dancers in front of them, in some pictures we could see her shadow, and we did not find solution. I feel the most difficult part of light painting is how to lighten only what I want while avoid making unwanted stuff appear in the frame.

Some of the images we took:

Since I found my lost password to the blog: Filling / Balance

Filling / Balance Self Evaluation

Qi An

   I believe I am getting familiar with flash… several weeks ago when I began using flash I felt I was stuck in a bottleneck and could not find a correct way out; however, now I begin to feel that I know something about it, though still too little.

   Take 1 is taken under the columns in front of Jesse Hall; I passed by the lawn and noticed the girl sitting on the base of the columns, with Macbook on her knees and bicycle at her side. I guessed that would make a beautiful composition. The sun was in the back so the columns made the girl sitting below in shade. She was wearing a hat, which put her face in shadow. I tried to shoot her from an angle as low as I could reach, so that the flash could brighten her face under the hat; but after checking the outtakes, I realized I was still not low enough. I also asked her to raise her hat several times, to make it more convenient to light her face well; but the hat kept falling down probably because of her hairstyle.

A problem I met was the shadow caused by flash: it was difficult to hide the shadow completely behind her. Decreasing one or two stops could make the shadow less distracting, but when I moved farther from her, I was afraid the flash became too weak. Also I tried bouncing the light on the columns; it may be a good solution if I could have done it correct…the fact is that in many of the bouncing pictures, the columns are over-exposed.

Take 2 is taken at the corner of the stairs in RJI second floor. The girl sitting in the sofa seemed to be quite enjoying her private, cozy, warm, little space, and I asked her if I could take pictures. Against the window light, it was not easy to decide how bright the flash should be. I made several over-exposed shots before I got some correct ones. It took me some time to make the flash light look natural and harmony with environmental light. It was a problem that the bouncing technique seemed to be useless, since it caused shadows on the glass window, no matter bouncing from the ceiling or the walls. I hope to know how to solve this.

Actually the biggest challenge for me in this assignment is the weight of camera: with camera in one hand and flash in another, I could not control my hands shaking, and many of the pictures taken later were blurred…I am now considering some practice with dumbbell ^^

Since I found my lost password to the blog: Single Flash

Qi An
Single Flash Self Evaluation
This is my first experience of flash photography except shooting still life. The two
scenes I shoot are both indoor activities and have some environmental light but not
bright enough.
In the dancing class scene, the room was lit by a few light tubes on the ceiling. I
tried the bouncing technique but it seemed to be not enough to make the subject bright;
so most of the pictures were direct flash light. The shadows were very hard and
unnatural. Another problem I found was that I could not release the shutter too
frequently, since the flash needs some time to restore energy. Sometimes I forgot this
and just pressed the shutter button whenever I felt it was a good moment. The result
was that the flash light did not work on some pictures.
In the Tai Chi class scene, the ceiling was so high that it was impossible for the
small flash light to reach. Some of the walls were blue in color. The only choice for
bouncing was the wooden floor, but the effect was not obvious. On one side of the
room there were some windows, so I tried shooting the subjects from another side, so
everybody in the frame was back-lighted but only the one subject I chose was lit by
flash. However, it still looked unnatural.
For this assignment I do not come with many specific questions because I know
too little in flash photography; everything is unfamiliar, one assignment is only an
unsuccessful experiment. Possibly I need more practice and then I know what I need
to improve.

Since I found my lost password to the blog: Glass

Self Evaluation on Glass Assignment

Qi An (Angie)

   My goal of this assignment is correctly completing basic steps and creating the effect as the textbook shows. Since I know nothing about shooting glass before, I think I should learn well how to do the very basic setup before trying to be creative. So I did not do any trick when shooting this assignment (though I know Rita and Allison want more than a simple photograph of glass bottles), but did exactly what textbook and lab told me to do. So far I just want to make the glass clear and clean on the photograph.

   However, the effect comes different from what I expected, which makes me really frustrated. Here is some of the problems:

   Bright field: I used a big light source behind the background as guided, and two black boards to cover the parts within family of angles. But I did not see the strong, black edges of the glass, it came gray. I could not raise the contrast between the color of glass edges and of background. If I increased aperture, the whole image became over-exposed. I also tried adding lights on the top or from the bottom; it changed little except causing more over-exposure.

   Dark field: That was a nightmare. Problem still lied in that I could not make enough contrast between glass and background to show they were two separate things: the glass looked like melted into the background. I tried to keep the background pure black while at the same time draw the outline of the glass with correct light, but it turned out terrible. I was also confused on how to make a fine-looking highlight: as the glass goblet was spherical, the highlight area appeared on more than one side of the goblet.

   Anyway, I learnt some primary rules of photographing glass and I got a practice – though an unsatisfying one. Here I have an additional question: what if photographing something made of china? Porcelain may be kind of glass, but it does not transmit as much light. How to photograph a translucent porcelain and create proper highlight?

Since I found my lost password to the blog: Studio Portrait

Studio Portrait Self Evaluation
Angie
This is my first try of studio portrait, and my goal in this experience is to try as
more ways of lighting as possible, rather than to take a good photograph. So I tried
both high-key and low-key, different positions of single and multiple lights. Some
provided good effect, while some looked really weird.
In high-key portrait, my model is Sonja. She is a very active, sunny girl; so I
would like to make her pictures bright and clean, with most shadow reduced.
Therefore I did not completely trust the light meter when shooting her, I purposely
over-exposed to make the whole image brighter. But it proves that they are
over-exposed too much – details on her face are lost.
I learn that single light is not enough for a high-key portrait. I tried butterfly
lighting but I did not see obvious effect except that her forehead was over-exposed. In
two-lights experiments I use a filling light to brighten the white background, and it
seems to work.
In low-key portrait my model is Han. He is a shy, silent man; so I want to make
his portraits darker. When reviewing the pictures, I find his glasses a big problem as it
reflects the shape of reflector. I do not know how to solve this – perhaps taking off
glasses should be the only solution. In some pictures I intentionally hided one or two
of his eyes in shadow.
I tried to use Rembrandt lighting on him; but I did not do it well, it just did not
look correct. Need more instruction on this.

Since I found my lost password to the blog: copy work

Qi An
Self Evaluation for Copy Work

What I learn:
How to shoot two-dimensional subject and avoid unwanted reflection;
Being more familiar with bracketing exposure; if not sure about what exposure is
perfect, just apply several more and see which works best. One big advantage I find is
that on the small screen of the camera, it may not be convenient to decide whether the
exposure is satisfying or whether the details and textures are presented well; using
bracketing allows me to take several images and put them on computer screen to
select;
A better sense of what camera sees: as it regards “correct” as 18% gray,
sometimes if I do not want the subject be 18% gray, I should not blindly trust the light
meter. For the exercise, I prefer the VII 1/2 shot as it is white as the wallpaper’s
original color, while showing enough texture;
A better understanding of what light is, how different they are from each other,
and how white balance impacts the color effect. White balance “Daylight” makes
images warmer, as mentioned in textbook, skylight has a blue tone, so if you tell the
camera “the light has a blue tone outside”, it will correct the image by adding some
yellow.
A blurred sense of how to intentionally set different white balance to achieve
different color effect and create special mood. Still need more knowledge.

What I am not satisfied with myself:
I pay too much attention on fining different light condition and ignore the contents
of the images. Most of them are not worth seeing.
I prepared other two images for copy work; but in studio I found they were too
small to fill up the frame even if I used longest lens. Then I had to use another two
from a photography magazine, which were actually not straight photography. Though
they are also my interest: I want to learn more about environmental portrait lighting,
but it’s my fault not being well-prepared.

What questions I have:
Still not very much clear about different effects created by tungsten bulbs and
fluorescent tubes. I used both of these two white balances in mood lighting
assignment, but I still mix them up.
What should I do to shoot extremely white or extremely black subjects if I want to
show the texture? Or at least, if I do not want them to be over / under exposed? Or
sometimes the subject does not have much texture, like snow, but I still do not want
the snowy land looks like a piece of pale plastic paper?

Color Correction

Color Correction Self Evaluation

   The assignment allows me a second practice on single flash. Both takes were shot in a small room so that I could practice more on the bouncing technique.

   First take was in a fluorescent light environment; the light color was yellowish and I used a pale gold gel to match it. From the left side of the room there was a small window, which provided a little window light but never direct cast on the project. So when shooting from the left side, there was a mix of yellowish light and relatively cold sky light, which made me change the gel for several times.

   Second take was under tungsten light, which was warmer and yellower. The flash came with a light orange gel. In both takes I found the camera sometimes were much too smart: by changing the white balance setting, it corrects the color extremely strictly. For example in second take, if I use tungsten white balance to correct the yellow tone, the photo color becomes exactly white, which in fact does not look pleasant. I actually prefer the warmer tone, but “pleasant” and “correct” is not the same thing. I do not know which should be the goal of this assignment, so my outtakes contain both auto white balance and tungsten/fluorescent white balance; the former is “preferred” while the latter is “corrected”.

   An additional question is how to shoot something like a computer screen. In the first take, the interesting point is the three screens which are working at the same time in the office; but I do not think I successfully emphasize that they are all turned on. I want to know how to make the screen look normal, not too bright nor too dark, while people can tell something is displayed on them.

Portrait Inspiration

        The photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, is one of the most famous photographers in history. This French man is usually regarded as “Father of Modern Photojournalism” and his most significant contribution may be that he turned photojournalism into a kind of art. His 35 mm Leica captured thousands of interesting pieces of time and space; and his principles of candid photography has effect on generations of photojournalists in the following times. He is undoubtedly made a master by his incredible vision, his perfect sense of composition, his genius for being there at the precise moment that allows the significant image, and the timelessness of his pictures.

     Cartier-Bresson’s symbolic theory is the decisive moment theory, which he explained in an interview with Washington Post in 1957, “there is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.” According to John Szarkowski, “the thing that happens at the decisive moment is not a dramatic climax but a visual one. The result is not a story but a picture.” (Szarkowski, 1966) Cartier-Bresson, in this sense, is not a story-teller, but a record-taker. And he only recorded things as he found them, no unnatural clarity, no exaggerated importance, no posed figures.

     Cartier-Bresson took portraits of many celebrities; and many of the photographs were improvisations instead of posed pictures. He liked to catch the expression and emotion without the subject’s self-consciousness. That made him able to capture the real characters and personalities of his subjects, and reveal the unknown parts of those celebrities. Martin Luther King in his photograph was just like any of the busy, tired, attentive but a little bit confused clerks – we can see almost same facial expression on both the great political leader and the businessmen we meet every day in the subway. Pablo Picasso seemed to be a plain, familiar, neglectful old man, in the photograph of this excellent artist, almost no painting could be seen in obvious places. Another great artist, Henri Matisse, was also portrayed as an ordinary old gentleman who enjoyed staying with his pigeons, nothing in the photograph implied his wild, fevered style of fauvism. And Igor Stravinsky was shot at a careless moment which interestingly made contrast against his solemn image as an unrivalled musician. Pierre Curie and Marie Curie looked like a middle-aged couple living in our next door, tired, strained, nervous, even depressed. That image did not present the Curies as perfect as we have imagined; but it reminds us of their huge workload in their everyday life: without hard work, how could they achieve so much success and honor? Even geniuses are human; every human emotion can be found in Cartier-Bresson’s pictures, no matter how famous, glorious, important the subject he photographed was. When thinking of the celebrities he took picture of, we usually fall into stereotypes such as artists being weird, politicians being insidious, philosophers being painful, great men being forbidding…but after seeing Cartier-Bresson’s photographs, the false imagination disappear. We realize that every celebrity is still commonplace human being; they share commonplace happiness, sorrow, burdens, pleasures, annoyance just with every of us. Therefore, even in his photographs there is seldom any extremely strong feeling or drastic expression, we are still moved by those ordinary faces of extraordinary persons.

     In this portrait of Marilyn Monroe, similarly, we see something in common with us in this legendary actress’s face. That is why this photograph becomes a classic in thousands of images of Marilyn Monroe: it is able to arouse compassion and empathy, not only stopping at admiration.

 In everybody’s mind, Marilyn Monroe is a token of matchless beautifulness and sexiness. There may be a thousand different moments that are able to show her beauty to the audience; but this portrait is a special one, because Monroe is shown in a completely true moment of an unself-conscious, even absent-minded state. It means her beauty is a natural product, not created by make-ups and intentional expressions; even when she does not pay attention to the camera – in other words, not pay attention to what she herself looks like in others’ eyes, she is still amazingly graceful and charming.

The light and dark zones are distributed in a balance in the whole picture. Of course Monroe is put in the highlight; but audience can easily notice that in the photograph there are several other faces. Bresson does not exclude those people from his frame, nor does he cover them in the darkness. Instead, he includes them and gives them comparatively much light, and their total area in the photograph is almost half and half with the area of the subject Monroe. It gives audience a sense that Marilyn Monroe is simply an actress at her workplace, not a lonely, narcissistic goddess in her own world without anybody else. Of course, in order not to distract audience’s attention from the main part, Bresson does not present those people in the background completely and clearly. But merely their existence in the photograph just properly gives us the hint: she is not an untouchable nymph following Artemis in the mysterious forest; she is the real person, actress Marilyn Monroe, doing her job and living her life.

In terms of composition, Bresson insists on his principle of geometry. The whole space of the photograph is divided by several straight lines; the subject is perfectly framed out and emphasized within the concise composition. As Bresson explained in The Decisive Moment, “if the shutter was released at the decisive moment, you have instinctively fixed a geometric pattern without which the photograph would have been both formless and lifeless.” What geometric patterns do in the sense of visual effectiveness is that they create a feeling of being closer to reality. When we see a picture with fine geometry, we tend to be more likely to believe what it tells us because the stable, balanced composition implies that we are looking at a product of real world, not an absurd, empty hallucination. The perfect perspective Bresson selects makes the image seemingly Marilyn Monroe is just sitting in front of us, so close as if we can touch her hair and read most tiny changes on her face.

To avoid the sense of distance and contain other elements in the composition, Bresson does not use a closer angle to amplify Monroe’s face. However, her expression is still recognizable enough. No laughing, no smiling, no amusing, no enticing, in this photograph Monroe looks only calm and mild, even a bit tired and bored, in a casual, relaxed state but still incomparably graceful. She is not looking at the camera, therefore, her seductiveness “is turned away from us, just as Marilyn Monroe has turned her gaze somewhere else…there is a certain weariness in the gaze, boredom perhaps, but there is an almost imperceptible shadow of smile on her lips, the suppression of a smile, the portent of melancholy.” (Jean-Luc Nancy, 2006) From her face we can feel quite complex mentality: she is serious-minded for her role play but also tired of her work; she does not pay much attention to her appearance but is still unconsciously confident of her own beauty; she enjoys this quiet, idle moment but knows it is only temporary and rare in her busy schedule…the psychological distance between Monroe and the audience is decreased at once, as the audience have discovered that Marilyn Monroe is just the same kind of people with them. Like us, Monroe has her own burdens, troubles, exhaustions and confusions. Bresson has done a great job in capturing the quick expression and revealing the hidden subtle emotions of his subject. One frozen moment instantly allows us to understand the super star’s inner world and begin to feel she is not that remote.

Bresson said himself in the preface of his The Decisive Moment, “the true portrait emphasizes neither the suave nor the grotesque, but reflects the personality.” Actually, movie stars like Marilyn Monroe are pitiful because everybody is familiar with their faces but nobody is familiar with their personalities. We are accustomed to Monroe’s beauty just like we are accustomed to the misery of war, disaster, poverty, disease and all other cruelty of fate. Our stereotypes have told us in advance what is expected to be seen in photographs. So we do not feel moved when seeing Monroe’s photographs of her charming smile and sexy body, just like we do not feel moved when seeing photographs describing the tragic scenes in the world. But once we see the real moods, emotions and characters of Monroe, and surprisingly find those moods, emotions and characters are of no difference with our own, it is just like wars and disasters happening in our hometown, poverty and disease torturing our own family, cruel fate suddenly coming to our life. Everything originally unrelated with us seems to have so close relationship that enough to arouse our strong compassion. We get moved because we suddenly discover that perfect goddess is actually experiencing the same human world with us.

“Above all, I look for an inner silence. I seek to translate the personality and not an expression.” said Bresson in an interview with Michel Guerrin, in Le Monde, 21 November 1991. The “inner silence” contains all the unspoken words in our hearts, which we understand at the first glance. That is why, though we have access to thousands of Monroe’s photographs, this silent, weary, melancholy Monroe is considered as most close to the real one. And we are just moved by this most real one, as we see our own spirits in her gaze.

From An Inner Silence: Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson, p145

Marilyn Monroe

On the set of The Misfits, USA, 1960

Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson