KISHAN THAKRAR

Evaluation - Unit 2

 

I chose the question topic 'Creative use of light' for my exam project, because I had experimented with light painting in different ways for my GCSE project, however I wanted to explore this further. I also had in mind capturing interestingly lit skies and people, and how images can be transformed from dull to breathtaking with the right lighting composition and exposure. I found bokeh shapes very interesting, and discovered through pinterest that one could change the shape from being the ordinary circle to any desired shape, if you could cut it and make a DIY bokeh lens. This was a very low cost and interesting experimentation, and I found I came out with some fascinating photos. I also looked at landscape artists such as William Patino, and how he uses exposures of 5-7 seconds to capture smooth, flowing water/beaches and sun starbursts. I took some images of my own, with high apertures to create starbursts and others with just long exposures to capture interesting light colours and flares. I edited these images to enhance the light's effect on clouds, and changed colours subtly to add interest to some images that otherwise were monochromatic. I was lucky in that I came across some beautifully lit skies including light rays and wonderful gradients in the sky from time to time. I then went on to look at a lot of different ways of capturing and utilising long exposures. Firstly, fireworks. I had taken lots of photos of fireworks using long exposures and used these in my project. I experimented with different exposure times until I found a balance that did not over-expose but captured the full length of each firework, around 4 seconds exposure on aperture f16-20. I then looked at zoom and pan exposures, which was moving a camera on a tripod instead of moving the light source, making all the lights in the image have similar trails. I enjoyed experimenting with this idea and achieved some very bizarre outcomes. I also looked at light trails from cars. I looked at artists like Ian Egner who takes long exposures, and I looked at slightly editing the colours in the long exposures as he does, to reflect the scenery in the image. I also looked at more abstract long exposures, taking handheld shaky exposures and seeing what the result is. This is a very experimental process that can produce some quite interesting images, and some very unattractive ones too. I then looked at light painting, with multiple lights, and produced some interesting images, similar to the work of Dana Maltby, a light painting artist. I used exposures ranging from 10 seconds to 30 seconds for these images, with a high aperture of around f22. This was to allow enough light in, in order for the light trails to form. I also attempted doing some star trails which involved leaving the camera facing the stars on a bulb mode exposure (unlimited length exposure) for around 40 minutes, to capture the movement of stars. I did manage to capture trails from the few stars that were visible, and I found it very interesting how much stars move over the sky. I love how the outcome is not something that can be seen by the human eye, although the information is given to us, we cannot interpret it in a way that a camera does. That is the main reason why I chose this topic; I wanted to use this opportunity to create images that cannot be seen by the naked eye, thus created by capturing movements of light and perhaps manipulating it digitally, like in my next part of this project: timelapses. I researched many timelapses on YouTube and Vimeo, and chose Gavin Heffernan and John Eklund to study as they were well-known, and produced beautiful timelapses. I experimented with different types of timelapse - hyperlapses, video timelapses, and photo timelapses. The photo timelapses proved the best quality and were my favourite. I included all of these types in my final piece; a compilation of timelapse videos I took. I structured the final piece as a journey of the light, the Sun. It begins at midday with the sun forming rays through clouds, and then the sky clears and changes colours until eventually the sun sets and I captured stars moving across the sky. The very last shot of the video is one of lots of stars moving, and I used the photo method for this, setting my intervalometer for a 10 second exposure to take a picture every 10 seconds. Interestingly, the timelapse produced appeared as a black sky with one bright star moving across at first. Then I brightened the video and raised the levels, and suddenly lots more stars appeared, along with a lot of noise and grain. I tried to remove this noise with reduction filters, however I could not, but the stars can still be seen, so I sacrificed quality here instead. I included hyperlapse videos from handheld timelapses in a car journey that had been stabilised; these clips often show the sky and the sun, but from a more dynamic, exciting angle than that of a still tripod. For the hyperlapse videos in the final piece, I took video of a car journey and stabilised it. I purposely made these videos almost uncomfortably fast to really contrast the still shots, juxtaposing the beauty and serenity of the countryside skies to the busy urban life, conveying a message of how we are too busy in our lives to stop and watch the beauty of the light in the sky at day and night.

 

I felt that this exam project opened my eyes to many techniques in photography I had previously not seen or had overlooked, the most prominent being time-lapses. I will definitely strive to further the quality of my time-lapses in the future, having continuous motivation and inspiration from artists like Heffernan and Eklund. I also was very interested in the way the light and colours in the sky changes so much during the course of the day; I noticed this more, having spent a lot of time looking at the sky, waiting for opportunities to come to capture interesting light through photo or timelapse.