siannacole-locationpractice-blog

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URL FOR MY BLOG

http://siannacole-locationpractice.tumblr.com

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APPRAISAL

My project was based around advertisements and the media, and how they engage people. I wanted to take away the engaging qualities such as eye catching colours through the use of black and white film, to show a message that they are just a way to fuel a consumerist society. I have noticed much more advertisements in the city centre compared to back home in a small historical town, due to there being more demand and a bigger target market here, which is where the idea came from.

Out of all three ideas I initially had, I felt like my idea surrounding the media had the most potential for interesting research and deeper meaning. I am still really interested in pursuing the ideas surrounding reflections, which I feel could have linked to the theme well, but also that sticking only to this theme may have limited it. Similarly, I feel that the brief is about noticing things, and my ideas of reflections and using mirrors would have been too constructed in my opinion for this brief. As I have had no previous experience of film, and also processing and printing it, I was interested more so in gaining technical skills in the darkroom with successful shots on medium format film than constructing images. All of the skills demonstrated through this project have been new skills, and I feel I have progressed well throughout it.

The majority of my research was sociological, firstly having my idea based on Baudrillard’s theory of Simulacra. I think of this theory as ‘signs about signs’ where Baudrillard claims that we live in a hyperreality, simillar to a soap opera, where signs signify things that aren’t reality anymore. I then looked at Walker Evans and Tom Bland for visual research. Unfortunately, I found the work of Tom Bland too late in the project to use him as influence for my images, however if I were to continue this project, I would definitely use his work as a main source of inspiration.

Due to the unfortunate timing of the project being around Christmas and the Amsterdam trip, I didn’t get as many shoots as I had hoped done. As I haven’t used film before, I didn’t want to rush through roles of film, but similarly needed enough negatives to work with. I feel that I didn’t complete enough shoots that illustrate my original idea of taking colour out of advertisements, but all of my prints do follow similar ideas. Despite this I am glad that I have gained the skills to use medium format and print in the darkroom in different sizes. I feel that if I worked on the project for 6 continuous weeks, I would feel more confident with my outcomes and my blog work would be more consistent.

However, for me the skills I have gained from this brief outweigh the negatives I feel about it. I really enjoy working in the darkroom now, despite at first feeling anxious about it. I definitely want to improve my skills and test other types of film to shoot with.

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TOM BLAND

Photographer Tom Bland’s project ‘Signs of the Times’ is described on his website as ‘an ode to ghost signs’. As Bland grew up, he saw the introduction of technology change the way his graphic designer parents worked, and he began to appreciate the craftsmanship they had in their careers. He also noticed this in the ghost signs when he moved to London. Some of his photographs are only filled with the typography, perhaps taking influence from his parents, whereas others show the scale of these signs by including their surroundings. Examples of these are shown below.

Although I have focused on the present consumerist society and the nature of bright bold advertisements that use lights, I wish I had found Bland’s work earlier in my project, as it has given me ideas that could develop my project. For me some images remind me of double exposure, something I’d be interested to explore on film as opposed to Photoshop. The style of these images could have linked in my ideas about reflections, as I could have gained a similar layered effect from looking at shop window reflections.

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DEVELOPING SECOND SHOOT

My second shoot was solely shot in Leeds, and I mainly focused on lights, signs, graffiti and the use of Helvetica. Below are the test strips created for the contact sheet, the top one being the correct one and the second one being exposed on white light accidentally. From this test strip I chose to expose a test piece for 18 seconds and boost the contrast slightly by changing the filter from 2 to 3.

Again, the test piece seemed too pale, so when printing the full contact sheet I decided to change the filter again, to 3.5.

As I completed the role of film, it began to get dark, as you can see in some of the middle images. Therefore, I stopped shooting and took the last 7 shots another day. Although I can still see most of the images okay, this has meant that printing an overall contact sheet has made some images overexposed slightly and some underexposed slightly.

My first print was exposed for 8 seconds. I noticed there was a lot of dust on the negative once it has been printed, so I clean it away gently and reprinted it. For the second print I also moved the enlarger head up slightly as the image wasn’t covering enough of the board. It is clear at the top of the print where there is a dark line along the edge, but this is less visible on the scans below. However, it is also noticeable that this has made the print slightly lighter, which I feel is less effective than the darker image, so if I get time I may want to print this again.

I chose to print this image first because I think the fact that Helvetica has been used, which is easily accepted by the public, means they don’t question having to pay. This could act as a reflection of the media, where advertisements lure consumers in to buy their products and spend their money.

My second print contrasts to my first, which is of a building covered in graffiti. I want my prints to cover all the messages we receive around us, and although in the city this is seen as vandalism I think there is a certain aesthetic appeal to graffiti in photographs, particularly in black and white. I decided to increase the contrast for this print up to 4, so that this would be emphasised in the print.

For my next print I was unsure whether it would be underexposed due to it getting darker as my shoot when on, however I am really pleased with the outcome. From the test strip below exposed on filtered light 3.5 with an aperture of f/8, I decided to expose the whole image for 30 seconds. I exposed a test piece to check that this was suitable across the whole image, to keep the whites of the lights. On my first attempt I had a water mark on my print, so I printed it again.

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PHOTOGRAPHS AS INDEXICAL SIGNS

An indexical sign is something that signifies or represents something else. A physical photograph in this sense, is a representation of something else. A painting titled The Treachery of Images by René Magritte for me is a good example of what this means. The painting shows a pipe, with the French for ‘This is not a pipe’ written underneath it - meaning, that the painting is simply an image of a pipe, not a physical one.

“Traditionally defined, the indexical sign is caused by, or has an existential relation to, its object. Smoke is an index of fire because it is the burning wood; smells are actual molecules of that which we smell; the footprint in mud is left by the foot, and so on. A footprint may also be an iconic sign insofar that it resembles the shape of a sole, and a symbol in so far as that shape might have an agreed cultural significance (‘Remove your shoes’ or ‘Follow this trail’). A photograph is generally thought of as a combination of all three - index, icon and symbol. I put them in this order to reflect the emphasis often given in theories of the medium. A photograph tends to be thought of as essentially indexical, conventionally iconic, and potentially symbolic. The brute fact of the photograph as index or trace comes before any meaning attributed to it. Even recognising that an image was created indexically (i.e. noting that a photograph is a photograph) is not an indexical procedure. In this sense the index is pre-symbolic, pre-articulate. And this is what is so perplexing about the photographic image. Its readability never quite squares with its status as dumb trace.”

David Campany “a Handful of Dust: From the Cosmic to the Domestic” in  a Handful of Dust [MACK, 2015] (via greatleapsideways)

Photographs as signs themselves is also discussed in Photography: A Critical Introduction by Liz Wells.

More recently, in a complete reversal of this argument, similar ‘Derridean’ ideas have been used by Geoffrey Batchen to suggest that photography is itself a digital process. Photographs are a special kind of sign; they are indexical signs, signs which are caused by the objects they represent (see p. 331 ‘The force of the indexical image’) but they are nevertheless signs (Batchen 1997: 215). Poststructuralist theories of language insist that it is in the nature of linguistic signs that they are unstable. Any particular sign has the meaning(s) it does because it has a relation of difference to other signs; another way of saying this is that its meaning derives from what it is not; any sign entails others, and is always referring beyond itself to others which are not present.

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PLAIN HELVETICA

One day I came back to my flat, to hear my flatmate (graphic design student) speaking about how infuriating a font can be. Helvetica, the font in question, is apparently used by everyone. It became a trend among designers as at the time it was modern, and people could easily read it so it became functional to use. Nowadays we see it everywhere, and it uses contrast those of advertisements and graffiti. 

In 1885, a man called Thomas Smith created a basis for effective frequency called ‘Successful Advertising’. Effective frequency is the amount of times a person is exposed to an advertising message before it has an effect or a response. His basis is below, and states that people don’t notice advertisements to start with, but more and more exposure makes them eventually want to buy the product, regardless of what it is.

The first time people look at any given ad, they don't even see it. The second time, they don't notice it. The third time, they are aware that it is there. The fourth time, they have a fleeting sense that they've seen it somewhere before. The fifth time, they actually read the ad. The sixth time they thumb their nose at it. The seventh time, they start to get a little irritated with it. The eighth time, they start to think, "Here's that confounded ad again." The ninth time, they start to wonder if they're missing out on something. The tenth time, they ask their friends and neighbors if they've tried it. The eleventh time, they wonder how the company is paying for all these ads. The twelfth time, they start to think that it must be a good product. The thirteenth time, they start to feel the product has value. The fourteenth time, they start to remember wanting a product exactly like this for a long time. The fifteenth time, they start to yearn for it because they can't afford to buy it. The sixteenth time, they accept the fact that they will buy it sometime in the future. The seventeenth time, they make a note to buy the product. The eighteenth time, they curse their poverty for not allowing them to buy this terrific product. The nineteenth time, they count their money very carefully. The twentieth time prospects see the ad, they buy what is offering.

In my opinion, this basis has a direct contrast to the signs that use Helvetica. Helvetica is functional and easily accepted, such as in road signs.

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BRANDALISM

Brandalism is a project that uses the ideas of subvertising. The aim of the project is to “challenge the authority and legitimacy of commercial images within public space and within our culture”, as stated on their website. The example below was part of the project shown on a board in Leeds.

The project also tackles what they call ‘Visual Pollution’. They suggest that if we consider advertisements as pollution as opposed to a form of communication, we can begin to confront the issues discussed below:

“How do we fight back against the incessant flow of logos, brands, slogans and jingles that submerge our streets, invade our homes and flicker on our screens? We could wage a counteroffensive at the level of content: attacking individual advertisements when they cross the decency line and become deceptive, violent or overly sexual. But this approach is like using napkins to clean up an oil spill. It fails to confront the true danger of advertising – which is not in its individual messages but in the damage done to our mental ecology by the sheer volume of its flood.”

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SHOOT CONT.

Similarly to the previous post, these images are a selection taken on a digital camera, so that I could review my images after taking them as opposed to a few weeks later. These images are ones I feel suit black and white better. My main worry was that due to my lack of experience shooting on film, that my images may not be as successful as I had hoped, and I wouldn’t be able to realise this until the week of the deadline. When shooting on digital, I used settings as close to the settings of the medium format camera as possible.

The image below I find interesting, as it features a no symbol, and graffiti. The inclusion of both of these in one image brings a strong universal sign together with a sign that isn’t recognisable to anyone but the person who has drawn it. Adding to this, the composition I’ve chosen to use means the viewer doesn’t know which end of the scale to look at first.

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SHOOT

Due to Christmas and the trip to Amsterdam, I have decided to shoot some of the shots on digital, as otherwise it would have been weeks before I see any outcomes. Below are some of the shots that I prefer in colour, featuring graffiti.

I have seen the same graffiti saying ‘drain’ a few times in the same area, which made me wonder about who the person who wrote it was and what they want people to take from it. To me, the message here says ‘drain lives’, which in an extreme sense could reflect what Baudrillard’s theory of Simulacra does to society.

The next two images are again of graffiti, but show more of a message. The peace symbol is universally recognised, for example. Overall, I like these images together as the colours are all similar, however for this brief they cannot be colour.

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WALKER EVANS

Walker Evans has a fascination with the inclusion of signs in his photographs. Below is an introduction to a section of his book Walker Evans at Work titled Signs and Graffiti, which describes how he photographed signs through the 1930′s. I think it is key that “For Evans they [signs] are the most elaborate indicator of the state of civilization” as the signs surrounding us now indicate a consumerist culture.

Visually, I think the tones in Evans work is really effective, having a large range on the Adam’s tonal scale. I hope to achieve this in my prints.

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PRINTING 12″ BY 16″

Printing different sizes doesn’t mean you have to change much on the enlarger. To print the 12″ by 16″ print below, I used a different measuring board, where the maximum size is exact for these prints. Where to print a 10″ by 8″ print, you need to set a measuring board to the right size and ensure it is correct to get an even border on your print. However, with the larger board, there is only a ridge that the paper fits into to get your print right.

For my first attempt at this print I hadn’t handled my paper correctly and it had a lot of water marks across it, but I could tell from it that I was pleased with the tones and composition of the photograph and that it would be worth printing again. I have now decided to use this as my final print, as this was one of the first “ironic signs” I saw when first gaining ideas for the brief. I want the viewer to question the purpose of the arrow, which points to nothing.

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SIMULACRA

Simulacra is a theory formed by Jean Baudrillard, which describes how we now live in a hyperreality. This is where we are unable to see the difference between reality and a simulation of reality. Baudrillard begins his book with a quote:

“The simulacrum is never what hides the truth - it is truth that hides the face that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” - Ecclesiastes.

I have read the relevant sections of his book to find out more about his theory. The two sections I’ve looked at are called ‘The Implosion of Meaning in the Media’ and ‘Absolute Advertising, Ground Zero Advertising’. Within the first section, Baudrillard describes how “we live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” (page 79) He then goes on to explore the effects this has on us in society, and states that “everywhere socialisation is measured by the exposure to media messages. Whoever is underexposed to the media is desocialised or virtually asocial.” (page 80). In the next section, he also explains how “all original cultural forms, all determined languages are absorbed in advertising because it has no depth, it is instantaneous and instantaneously forgotten” (page 87).

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SHOOT #1

For my first shoot, I want to take some images in my home town, to visualise what I am comparing my new surroundings too and to get used to using the medium format camera. The first half of this contact sheet was taken in Tamworth, however when I first loaded the film I did it incorrectly by winding it on too far, exposing the first two shots and fogging the edges of the next two. I am glad this happened to me whilst at home as these were just for practice, not potential final prints. 

From the contact sheet, there were a few images I was interested in printing, however in this session we were printing for the first time, so I only got one print done well. Below is an image, focusing more so on my idea of reflections. I think the print has worked really effectively, as I love the softness of the depth of field and the range of tones in the image.

I also printed a test strip and a test piece for one of the images from home, however I ran out of time that session to get a finished print, and I didn’t feel it was useful to me to print this again as this was not going to be one of my final prints, as it is not looking at my new surroundings.

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DEVELOPING

First off, we needed to create a test strip for our contact sheet, to decide how long we needed to expose the whole thing. The test strip procedure is as follows:

strip of photographic paper underneath negs on a diagonal, brightest light, expose all for 2 seconds, piece of opaque card covers a small section, expose again for another two seconds, move card over again and expose for 4 seconds…. 2 (all) , 2, 4, 8, 16

The idea of a test strip is to get as many tones in each strip as possible to get the best range and make the best decision. We used an f stop of 4 and set the filtered light to 2.5 to create the strip, from which we then decide if we need to change either setting. The f stop controls the intensity of the light from the enlarger, and the filter creates a certain amount of contrast. From the test strip below, we chose to stay at f.4, but increase the contrast up to 3.

To create a test strip, we first expose the photographic paper for 2 seconds all over. Next we cover a small section, and expose for 2 seconds again. After this, we expose for 4 seconds covering a bit more of the paper, then 8 seconds covering more, and so on. This means that we can then read the test strip and compare the different times to see which is best. So in the test strip above, the exposure across the strip goes 2 seconds, 4 seconds, 8 seconds, 16 seconds, 32 seconds. The full contact sheet is below.

We then need another test strip of the image we’ve chosen to print. Again we opted for f.4 and set the filtered light to 2.5 as a start, and from the test strip below decided to expose the image for 4 seconds (the second strip from the bottom) and increased the contrast back to 3 again.

For our next test strip, we forgot to change the white light back to filtered light. The white light is brighter and used to focus the image on the baseboard. As the light was more intense, it made the test strip much darker - you can see the difference in the two strips below.

From the correct test strip, we decided to expose the whole photo for 4 seconds and increase the contrast slightly, shown below. 

Another issue that came up for me was movement of the photographic paper when exposing it. I didn’t realise at the time but above you can tell that the paper has moved whilst making the test strip. However, now I am more conscious of this happening and make sure that it doesn’t. From the strip we decided to expose the whole photo for 3 seconds and set the filter to 3.75. Firstly, somehow the timer was set to 30 seconds as opposed to 3, and we only realised after about 4 or 5 seconds, meaning our image was exposed for too long, so we tried it again for 3 and it came out much better.

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USING FILM FOR THE FIRST TIME

As I have never had the experience of using a film camera, I feel that it’s extremely useful to me to document and understand developing negatives. This begins with the latent image - the unexposed image on the film once it’s shot, before it’s developed - and ends with a set of developed negatives.

To do this, we have to understand how film works. There are a number of layers that the light passes through when a photograph is taken, and the process of developing negatives allows the light reactive silver halides to be ‘fixed’. The silver halides not affected by the light wash away in this process whereas those hit by light turn into black metallic silver.

Once the film is loaded into a light tight tank, we start the development process. The steps we follow when developing are as follows:

Step 1. Pre wash/soak 600ml water 20 degrees.

Step 2. Developer – 1 part developer 300ml 1 part water 300ml.

Step 3. Development – pour pre wash out pour developer in (note time) first 30 seconds agitate/invert, then once every 30 seconds.

Step 4. After 11 minutes, pour developer down the sink.

Step 5. Rinse with cold water.

Step 6. Add 600ml fix (not diluted) 7 minutes following same agitation as developer.

Step 7. Return fix to container.

Step 8. Wash film and add wetting agent.

Step 9. Hang to dry.

Step 10. Cut – care.

After the negatives are dry, we can then take them to the enlarger, and begin printing.

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IDEA #3: REFLECTIONS

My third and final idea was to build on my second idea and try to represent the business of city life compared to home. I want to do this through creating a double exposure effect by looking at reflections, particularly windows. To portray the consumerist culture we live in, I would look at shop windows, and take influence from photographers such as Lee Friedlander and Saul Lieter. I also like the idea of reflection as a metaphor, and I could also use a mirror to reflect how I am now in new surroundings, influenced by the work of Guillaume Amat. I feel this technique would create a distance between myself and my environment, showing the newness and unfamiliarity within it. However, I feel this is an unrealistic idea in a busy city centre. 

Lee Friedlander and Saul Lieter

Guillaume Amat

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IDEA #2: SIGNS ABOUT SIGNS

My next idea I already feel has more potential, as there are more social issues surrounding the topic. I want to focus on the difference in the amount of media and advertising around me in the city compared to my small home town. I noticed this straight away on the buses. In Leeds, there are adverts plastered on every bus and bus stop, however back home this isn’t the case at all.

My idea is to use the guidelines of the brief, to use black and white film, to take away the engaging visual qualities of adverts in town and in the media. Bold colours are typically used to attract customers and the public to going into shops and looking at adverts and signs. The point is to take this away to make a comment on the consumerist society we live in, particularly in a city environment.

I also would like to look at ‘ironic signs’. Walking home from uni me and a friend noticed an arrow on a pipe pointing downwards to the ground, and couldn’t work out the point of it. We are surrounded by signs and symbols but what do they all mean to us? There is also the difference between what messages real people want to say compared to advertisers through graffiti and other means.

When mentioning this idea in class, subvertising was suggested to me to also look at. The google definition says that:

‘Subvertising is a portmanteau of subvert and advertising. It refers to the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements. Subvertisements may take the form of a new image or an alteration to an existing image or icon, often in a satirical manner.’

A good example of this is shown below. This definitely will help me to look at messages and the visual culture of advertisements, but I’m unsure still of how this may influence my own photographs. I considered drawing new advertisements over my prints, however as this is my first time using the darkroom I want to practice creating good prints rather than post production.