Assignment 1: Feedback & Corrections

Another assignment that I was quite concerned about seems to have gone down better that I expected.  My tutor bought into the idea of using myself as a subject and on the whole achieved the statement I was trying to make.  The key criticism is that it is hard to see the passage of a day in the photographs, which whilst  I partly partly, is in a sense the inevitable outcome of a day in my life.  At the time my 12 hour working days simply stretched from morning to evening, with the long summer days and inner city setting ensuring that the light barely changed during the day.

A key topic he addressed was my decision on B&W rather than colour and made a very strong point that it is a decision that needs to be driven as much by the subject matter as the artistic desire.  A key statement is

"Having decided what you want to say something: how best to say it so that it communicates and or comments on something that you feel is important and want to draw attention to in a way that will best be understood by the viewer."

For this assignment I really felt that B&W captured my sense of being oppressed by my work and the darkness that I felt inside.

The key critique was that the light levels barely changed during the day meaning that the set did not convey a sense of the passage of time.  The problem I have is that the windows in the rooms I use during the day face to the East and are fronted by a white building which reflects the afternoon sun.  Combined with the fact that I was shooting just 2 or 3 weeks after midsummer and that we were enjoying 30 degree cloudless days, meant that the daylight barely changed.  I do take the point, though, this meant that the narrative element of watching a day pass was missing without the accompanying text.  Again, a big part of what I was trying to convey was monotony, but in an interesting way - oxymoron alert.

The time lapse video worked much better in this context and went down very well.  The film created that sense of the passage of time and the imprisonment in my home office.  This is a key learning for me as the production of photofilms greatly interests me as way of conveying a "book" of photographs in a coherent and yet compact fashion.  Nan Goldin's book, "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" is based upon a slide show set to music and I am sure is far more powerful viewed that way.  This can be overdone and I am cautious about how I approach the topic, but I have obtained a good quality hand held sound recorder and plan to add ambient sound to the next photofilm.  I need to drop this down onto a DVD for inclusion in my submission set.

Turning to the individual photographs, the shower shot was called out as the best, and the one of my back the worst, no real surprise there.  I will remove the shot of my back from the set.  I have thought about how to replace it, but cannot find a way that adds to the set.  I have other activities of my "day", many outside the house, but whilst these offer more information about Shaun, they reduce the sense of imprisonment, two examples:

 End of the day, relaxing, reading something on my iPad.  Some days this really was the case, but rarely.

Or middle of the day, just getting some air ti recycle some of the cardboard that I accumulate from Amazon

Another thought was to expand on the imagery from the video and use a photograph that provides more context to the room in which I work:

However, given that I already plan to include the video this shot really adds very little, other than that I am sitting at the fun computer that I do my OCA work on, rather than the work laptop.

A few photographs came with suggestions for processing tweaks with example done in Silver Efex.  I have Silver Efex, but so far had not really gotten to grips with it.  Boy, was I surprised, what a powerful tool for making changes to an image.  The ability to change specific area of the photo with such ease is very powerful and much better than using the mask technology in Lightroom.  I need to spend some more time with this package, especially the colour processing.  The only thing I do not like is that it is cumbersome, creating a separate Tiff on which the edits are completed.

He recommended adjustments to three of the photographs, essentially lifting the brightness in places.

Here I have lightened my face and darkened the foreground, but only very subtly.  I have also used the noise reduction as this was a very noisy image

The main change here is an increase in the contrast on the cutlery in the background.  Not terribly noticeable at this scale, but clear in the prints.

 I have brightened the camera to make it more prominent - again a very subtle adjustment

With these changes I am now comfortable with the set of seven images that I have.  This is unusual for me, I have always gone for the maximum number of photographs, however, in this case 7 works for the subject, perhaps that is a sign of a maturing attitude to telling the story.

I have now printed my photos at A4 size on Ilford Gold Fibre Silk.  This is the first time I have used this semi-gloss paper, and I can say that I am extremely impressed, the sense of them being an inkjet print is gone, the images have all the quality of traditional photographic prints, even the chemical smell of the paper as the ink dried.  I plan to stick with A4 for this course, I believe it will work better for the subject matter I am developing and in particular the book concept for Assignment 4.

A good start to what is again turning out to be a more enjoyable and thought provoking course than I expected it to be at the outset.

Assignment 1: Submission Notes

Well I finally got my finger out and assembled the 8 photos and video that make up my submission for assignment 1:


Introduction

Starting Social Documentary coincided with the beginning of my busiest period as an employee of Hewlett Packard.  My role in the company is heavily tied to the financial cycle, (the new fiscal year starting on the 1st November), from May onwards we move into overdrive to prepare for the upcoming year. On May 23rd HP announced that 27,000 people would be removed from the payroll.  The upshot was that my team ended up with double the work and half the people.  Long days ensued and as the days turned into weeks fatigue and stress became a constant companion, there was no end to the mountain of work we had to complete.

The OCA is relaxation, an escape from a world of numbers and deadlines into one driven by aesthetics and philosophy.  But, it is hard work and added to my “normal” working life the sheer amount of stuff I needed to do was becoming overwhelming.  Doing a little street photography as part of on-going project work was a welcome diversion, but developing and executing an Assignment was weighing heavily.

The nature of Assignment 1 was troubling.  Getting close to a person for a day, or the many days needed to develop a concept is something I am not comfortable with.  My normal photographic working practice is standoff and objective, perhaps reflecting the remote and very analytical role I have at work.  I spend time researching a subject, develop a concept, and then execute over multiple shoots.  During Landscape this often extended over months and included 20-30 visits to a given location.  So what to do?  I had potential subjects in mind, but all would require time I did not have and energy that was at a very low ebb.

Subject

Practicality drove my selection of subject; a portrait of a corporate wage slave struggling to get through yet another day.  In other words – Shaun Clarke!  To date I have not turned my camera on myself, concerned that this could be seen as a form of conceit without there being a good reason to do so.  On the other hand this was a good time to be introspective, to evaluate where I am in life and where I am going.

Such a choice clearly brought with it the advantage of access and a subject who was unlikely to get fed up with the process and tell the photographer where to stick it.

I decided to chronicle a typical long working day, trying to illustrate the confines of my world.  It would be a single day, but shot over several.  I habitually wear jeans and black t-shirts so continuity would not be a major issue.  It would have to be done fairly quickly, more than a few weeks and my hair would start to indicate the passage of more than a day!  I work from home so that took removed any issues of access and permission.

Given that I had a subject, a location and a potential narrative, the question was then how to portray this photographically.  My own feeling at the time was of being closed in; my home was progressively becoming a prison.  I rarely crossed the threshold of the front door and had no time for many of the normal activities make up modern life.  I got up, eat breakfast, worked for 12-14 hours, drank a lot of coffee, eat some supper, and returned to bed fretting about the next day and what had not been achieved on this one.  About the only non-work related activity was eating lunch and washing the dishes from the night before. The process of going from a disordered pile of dirty dishes to a neatly stacked drainer providing an odd form of mental relief.

The photographs would need to capture this sense of gloom and self-imprisonment, but at the same time contain enough visual interest.  They needed to tell the story of me, who I am, what I am interested in, as well as what I do on a daily basis.
 
Practice

Creating a convincing “day” in the life over a period of two weeks required some early decisions:

• Camera choice was straightforward, the Canon 5D2 would provide the flexibility I needed and is the only camera for which I have a time lapse trigger essential for the self-portraiture I had in mind.  
• The tight space I planned to work in suggested a 17-40 or 24-105 zoom.
• From the outset I knew that I committed to use available light to preserve the mood of my world.  For the sake of visual consistency I shot all images at ISO3200 irrespective of the lighting level. Even at ISO 3200 almost all of the photographs necessitated opening the lenses to f/4
• The only exception is one shot that included the 5D, taken with a Samsung NX20 with a 20mm lens.
• I rendered the photographs in B&W as I felt that would capture the way I felt better than colour.
• Most of the time I mounted the camera on a table top tripod (gorilla pod), occasionally using a full tripod when space permitted.  

Deciding when and where to shoot would determine the tenor of the set.  I wanted an honest and un-posed set of images, as objective I could be with what is an intrinsically subjective study.  Once a location was chosen, I selected a position for the camera that worked with the available light and offered a wide angle of view, conscious that I could crop the images later.  Using a timer remote control I would take a single shot to ensure that lighting, position, and framing was where I wanted it to be, then set the camera to shoot every 30s for about an hour at a time.

My goal was avoid taking a series of carefully planned individual images, rather to take so many that after a time I would forget the camera and simply get on with whatever task was at hand.  My intent was that this would result in a series of natural portraits with a documentary style as opposed to a home based studio shoot.  The 8 images come from 6 separate days but together represent what I consider to be a “typical” day in my life.

Although the guideline was to present between 6 and 10 photographs, I have elected to break that rule somewhat.  In addition to the 8 conventional images I am including a further 1,660 photographs combined into a time lapse video.  The 8 individual photographs capture moments in time, representative of my daily activities, but they fail to convey the sheer grinding monotony of being locked to a deck for an extended period of time. As I was already using time lapse for the “regular” images I experimented by shooting a complete day capturing a frame every thirty seconds.  The day I chose turned out to be longer than I had expected, but that was fine.

I placed the camera attached to the gorilla pod on a table facing my work area with a continuous power source.  I chose a wide angle of 17mm, fully capturing half of my home office space.  I set the aperture to f/5.6 at ISO3200 and opted for a JPG format that would enable an 8GB card to last a day, but permit me to render a 1080p HD video.  The camera was running from 9:20am to 11pm.  I combined the images in Premiere Pro at 30 frames per second, each photo occupying 4 frames, condensing the 14 hour day into just less than 4 minutes.  Prior to loading the stills into video I performed global edits in Lightroom, such as the conversion to B&W.

I made a few technical errors, the main one being that I left the camera on autofocus.  This resulted in the framing slightly shifting between shots, although I do not find the effect disturbing, it is quite reminiscent of the flickering of early B&W movies.

This document uses still photographs to create a vision of how I spent a day of my life stepping from one conference call to another.  It captures the progressive change in my body language as the day got longer and fatigue kicked in.

Learning

This assignment required the development of a number of techniques, new to me in terms of both the still photography and the creation of a time lapse video.  It also required thought about the development of a narrative that illustrated my world.  The approach I have taken with this assignment resulted in significantly more work in the edit cycle than in capture, although I am increasingly finding that editing (both from a selection and a processing standpoint) has become the larger part of project development.

The greatest learning came from looking at myself as a subject rather than a photographer, asking questions about who I am and what is it that motivates and troubles me.  Completing the time lapse left me in a state of shock, I really had no idea of the degree to which my body language reflected my state of mind.  I watched myself grow older on the screen.  Since finalizing this project I have taken steps to try and rebalance my work and personal life.  It is not easy, the corporate world is unforgiving and computer companies are not the money machines they used to be.  But I cannot continue to work 12 hours a day week after week.  In my small world photography has become a tool for change.

I have been reluctant to draw parallels to other photographers whilst presenting this work, however, I found looking at Larry Clark’s “Tulsa” and Nan Goldin’s “Ballad of Sexual Dependency” a source of inspiration.  I also considered Sally Mann’s “Immediate Family” and Annie Lebowitz’s photographs of the dying Susan Sonntag. Clearly what I have created here is a small insight into the life of one rather unremarkable man.  It does not compare to the works I have mentioned, however, I have learned that there is great value in turning the camera around to look at my world.  Even the mundane has its place in the record of society.

I start the day still fatigued from the one before, the shower a place of warmth and refuge and yet somewhere I cannot stay forever.  I cross my hands on my chest to allow the warm water to accumulate around my neck, a comforting feeling.

The light shining across my eyes was good fortune; it takes away personality from the photograph, letting the shape of the body tell the story.

First order of the day is coffee.  With this image I want to not simply illustrate that I like coffee, but also to include some clues about me, the knives suggest someone who likes to cook, the fridge decoration that there is a life outside, somewhere.

As with all of these images, the lighting is marginal.  I put the camera on the kitchen counter and it has captured the underside of the cupboard above adding to a closed in feeling.

This is where I spend my day; the speaker phone is relaying yet another conference call.  As I spend so much time in my office, I have made sure it is comfortable, good chair, multiple monitors, and a decent hands free telephone.

If I was to create a truly representative sample of my day, there would be 7 of these and 1 other.  This is my life.  Once again there are clues to my broader existence, the book shelf behind is full of photography titles.

Lunch and washing up, my favourite part of the day, from chaos I can make order, not something I can easily do in my job.

With this image I want illustrate my day, but also reveal a little more about myself, the racks behind again point to someone who loves to cook.

OK, I stop occasionally and do a little non-work stuff. Here I am gluing a Robert Frank book catalogue into my Social Documentary log book.  In the upper left corner one of the greatest self-portraits casts its eye on my project.

Again lighting was an issue.  I could have fixed this with a reflector, but that went against the ethos of what I was creating – but, I have brightened the dark side of my face in Lightroom.

Back to my desk. A faceless voice on the telephone.  I have yet to meet my California based manager of the past 2 years; he is also simply a voice on the phone.

I am unsure about this photograph; it is a very simple image, perhaps too simple.  However, it is very representative of how I see myself.

Multi-tasking.  Logging back onto my work computer whilst Assignment 1 clicks away.

I realized that there was little in the set that captured the fact that I am a photography student, so I have included a photograph of me creating this assignment.  In the end I did not use the images from this sequence, an attempt to capture the detail of my hands.  On the screen to the right, Assignment 4 begins to take shape.

Aftermath.  Relics of the past day sit on the coffee table.

Taken the morning after this is the only photograph that omits my explicit presence, however, it contains many symbols.  An empty beer glass, an ice cream wrapper, remote controls, cat treats and finally the hint of a female presence.  Heidi was keeping me going at the time; her absence in these photos is yet another damning indicator of a life out of balance.

A Day in the Life…

http://youtu.be/l9MZYDoYa0k

Assignment 1: 10 photographs

Since having the first idea around this assignment I have rapidly assembled a set of photographs that look like a good start and perhaps even an end to this assignment.  I mulled over what a "day" would be and what day to capture.  A weekend, a day out to somewhere cool, a composite day that illustrated the many elements of my life?  In the end I became very introspective and started to consider what is a typical day for me, how do I live what do I do and how do I reveal myself to others, the viewers of these photographs.  As part of the research for this study I took a look at some of Nan Goldin's self portraits and studies of friends, plus a brief look at some of Richard Billingham's "Rays a Laugh" photographs.  WHat struck me was that some of the most powerful photographs were often very ordinary moments, but ones in which the subject revealed their inner self.  My life is not as dramatic as Nan's or as sad as that of Ray, but it is my life so how to tell the story?

First off, a single day would be hard to document, so I have worked over several days, taking advantage of a predication towards black t-shirts to ensure continuity.  I wanted to describe a normal day, a working day. I work from home and so this did not present any access issues with the camera.  On a typical day I spend about 15 hours out of bed, of which 12 hours will be spent in front of my computer working.  As 10 photos of me working are not going to be terribly interesting, I am more interested in the 3 hours when I am not working.  I have gone with a high contrast B&W style, somehow suiting the depressing days I sometimes endure.  This was also driven in part by a need for continuity in the imagery and the need to therefore shoot at ISO 3200, noise was going to be a factor (a welcome one in this case).  Unlike landscape I am not too worried about technical excellence in the images, what I want is representation and conveyance of mood.

I start the day with my camera on a tripod in the bathroom, carefully positioned to preserve my modesty, but reveal myself.  The first shot in the shower captures a moment when I am trying to wash away the fatigue of the previous day.  I am currently working 12 or more hours a day and I am beginning to feel it.  The reflected light obscures my face and somehow emphasizes the sense of vulnerability and tiredness:

Next stop is the mirror to put in my contact lenses, this was an ouch moment when a bit of grit got under the lens.  I am not sure about including both of these images, but they do work into the day and how I am going to spend it.

This is how I spend most of the day, sitting propped in front of my work computer on a conference call.  The phone is a speaker phone and I am engaged in a conversation with someone in Asia or Europe at this time of day.

Coffee, is a must and with this photo I show a little more of the environment I occupy and the processes that support the day

Although the day is long, I try to take a break and work on my course a little.  I guess I am not the type of person that can simply laze away a day in front of the TV.  I am averaging 60 hours working each week and on top of that a good 15 hours dedicated to my OCA studies.  Here I am starting work on my paper logbook, gluing in a Steidl brochure advertising the works of Robert Frank.  I like the movement in the frame.  I have adjusted the lighting a little, reducing the strong shadow that was obscuring my face.

Lunchtime brings with it a few chores, one is getting rid of the piles of cardboard that accumulate due to my Amazon addiction.  This also brings a chance to illustrate some of the aspects of living in Germany and to portray the world outside my locked in life.

Oddly therapeutic, I do the days washing up at luchtime

OK, this is kind of odd, but I like it.  This is me shooting this assignment, so this is the only photograph not taken with my 5D2.  A typical day in my life always includes some photography, even if just looking at it on the web.

Back to a work shot, this is now the end of the day and fatigue has really kicked in, it is after 7pm and I am still sitting in on conference calls...

Finally I leave myself out of shot.  This is taken in the morning, showing the remains of a bowl of soup, a beer and empty ice cream wrapper, my treats at the end of a long day and not tidied up because I was knackerd and just wanted to head to bed.

I think this is a revealing and interesting set, speaking about the hum drum life of an office worker (even if a home office worker).  The photos are not representative if they were they would be very dull indeed.  To illustrate how unrepresentative they are I embarked on a supplementary piece of work.  On a day that I knew would be long, I mounted my 5D2 on a table facing my desk, set it to shoot 1 frame every 30s and left it running for 15 hours.  The 1,660 photos that resulted really show how I spend my life.  I am thinking about making this the 11th image in the submission or as a replacement for one of the photos.  It tells the story in a way a single image cannot and yet is still a work of photography not cinematography.

Youtube

Together I think this eloquently speaks of my real life, not one that I have exaggerated, but how it really is.  In many ways it has been a frightening experience, until I really studied myself objectively I did not know quite how I spent my days.  I am now going to leave this alone for a time and see how the concept sits with me before writing up and sending in, however, I really think I am close.

Assignment 1: Initial Thoughts

Assignment 1 is my bete noir of this course, it was the main barrier to my enrollment and remains the sticking point.  "a day in the life of...".  I really do not see the point.  But then that is me, I like to work alone and not be dependent on others for my progress.  My job is tough, long hours and right now a great deal of stress.  I take photographs to wind down and switch my brain to another setting.  The thought of having to coral someone over a period of a day or several days just does not fit into my idea of fun.  Whilst I do appreciate that this course is designed to expand my horizons, it also must fit into my world view and from a practical standpoint my available time.

However, it must be done, so how?  Last night after our more than amorous neighbours woke me at 4am with a "Harry met Sally" moment of epic proportion I lay awake mulling over how to do this assignment - see, it keeps me awake at night.  Initial thoughts had been a day in the life of Mr. Niall McCorley, my best friend, next door neighbour (not that neighbour) and major mover  in the Munich Irish community.  A day in his life would be varied and could expose elements of Munich's ex-pat cultural scene.  The problem I have with this is that it is a little too obvious.  Another similar project would be to follow Heidi, my wife, on a Friday, when she balances swimming training with work and caring for her elderly mother, finishing off with a well deserved cocktail.  Interesting, but probably a well trodden path.  

I may do both of these, just for the sake of practice and getting used to this style of photography, although it is not very similar to the reportage style of wedding photography that I practice when asked:

I am also considering something related to place, a day in the life of a Munich street corner, there are some good ones, although some would get me either arrested or severely beaten.  My tutor suggested a shop, difficult in Munich unless you know the owner, it is otherwise pretty much illegal. An Irish pub could be a possibility, I get on very well with the owner of Molly Malone's and he would probably be OK with me helping out for a day in exchange for some photos.  Another possibility is simply the row of houses I live in where something is alwats going on.  This would be a chance to document the lives of ordinary (well not really) Germans as they go about their daily routine. I think too little attention is paid to the mundane in photography, we spend so much time looking for the unusual.

I will explore these ideas further.

In the mean time, another idea germinated in the dark of night, why not a day in my life, I am available and accessible.  My life is not terribly unusual, but it has it's moments.  This is also probably a cliche, but it is also a subject I have never tackled, I am not terribly fond of seeing myself in photos.  The advantage here is control, the disadvantage is that I still need to actually take the photographs.  This is possible but does bring with it a few challenges.  The first challenge, how to take the images is the easy one, I have a TC-80N3 remote control for my Canon DSLRs that effectively enables me to program the camera to take a shot on a periodic basis, I can set the interval.  The real issue is one of documentary versus portraiture,  some of the shots will need to be staged.  What I will need to do is to mount my DSLR on a tripod, place it somewhere and then carry on with my life in its vicinity.  At home, this is really not a problem, out doors, more of a challenge.  I will need an assistant to help carry the camera and then guard it from passers by.  Heidi has volunteered.

As an experiment I placed my 5D on a gorilla pod (small flexible tripod), set ISO to 3200; used my 24-105 f/4 zoom at f/4 and 24mm, and then set the timer to take an image every 30 seconds.  I placed the camera somewhere that would work with available light and just got on with my Saturday morning routine.  This essentially consists of checking for any urgent emails from my American boss and doing any work needed, making coffee (lots of it) and then working on my blog or log book.  I split Saturday into documentation and shooting, with Sunday as a backup if something does not work the way I want it.  My life is basically during the week, work 12 hours watch a movie, sleep and on the weekends OCA.

I left the camera running for nearly an hour capturing 120 frames, from which I have culled 6 for this blog to illustrate the possibilities.  I have processed the photos quite aggressively going for a gritty B&W, ISO 3200 more or less required this.   I am going to do a test print and see how they look at A4.  So this is me!

Did it work, actually much better than I expected.  I had to think carefully about the light and where to put the camera for best effect, but otherwise I just got on with my thing, which that morning was sticking stuff into my log book.  I did not switch the camera off and so got some odd shots as I carried the camera around, the 4th image is an example. The look on my face is horribly like a Cindy Sherman still...

But jeez, I need to lose some weight:)

So, next.  No commitment yet, this is and was an experiment, I will need to run it past my tutor together with some images before I actually go as far as using it as the assignment.  I like it, I like the accessibility and I also like the fact that it is forcing me to do something very new (for me) and develop a new approach to photography.  A day in the life of anyone else is going to become a wedding shoot, a day in my life, well lot's of potential for introspection and analysis of who and what I am, as well as taking some photographs.  Finally, Heidi loves the idea, she will finally get some photos of me.