Tom Wood; Gallery of Photography, Meeting House Square, Dublin

The Gallery of Photography in Meeting House Square in Dublin’s Temple Bar area is currently hosting an exhibition by Tom Wood. Wood was born in the west of Ireland in 1951 but grew up in England.  The exhibition is a reworking of his extensive set of images made over forty years and featuring street life in England.  The exhibition is presented as ‘Men and Women’ without a narrative or chronology and so allows issues of gender to be explored by the viewer as well as allowing glimpses of the relationship between the documentary photographer and the subject.

Serendipitously, the National Photographic Archive, also in the Meeting House Square, is currently holding an exhibition of documentary photography from the national archives entitled ‘working lives’ based on the Mason and Poole collections from the national library of Ireland.  this exhibition features Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th Century. Also serendipitously, at the time of viewing the exhibition I happened to have just spent time making my way through Robert Doisneau images in a small book published by Taschen and curated/edited by Jean Claude Gautrand (2012)  Clearly, the subjective documentary style in Doisneau’s work in which the participants are complicit in the image making (see his famous ‘Kiss’ image for an example of this) is subtly different from Wood’s approach.  Woods imbues his image making with somewhat less humour but similar empathy for example here and here.

The exhibition runs until mid January 2014.

Assignment Two – Elements of Design

This second assignment on the OCA’s Art of Photography course is concerned with elements of design.  Michael Freeman in The Photographer’s Eye (Ilex, 2007), a core text on the course emphasises the role that points, lines and shape play in an image.  He compares (p65) the role of graphic design in classic design theory  as it applies to painting and illustration with photography.  In doing so he notes that while in the former it is not difficult to isolate these marks and forms from real subjects in photography the elements often depend on we choose to consider an image.   Freeman notes that points are the simplest elements of design that tend to draw attention.  Lines are valuable in directing and creating vectors whole shapes have the role of organising the elements of an image and bringing structure.

The project briefing notes require that a set of photographs directed towards one type of subject are assembled that incorporate the insights gained in the exercises on the elements of design.

I have chosen details gathered from Dublin’s Docklands area for the images.   In particular, I have selected a small area around the river Liffey that incorporates very new developments such as the Daniel Liebskind designed Bord Gais Energy Theatre in the Grand Canal/Hanover Quay area through to the very old Ringsend village area.  The choice of this urban/docklands area was deliberate insofar as this type of imagery is not a feature of my image making and I wished to stretch my perspectives in this regard.  The area has a mixture of very new apartment blocks and offices, cafe areas, harbour and canal basins and older buildings, some still used and some boarded up.

Eleven photographs that use a variety of design elements are included in the exercise and each of these, where I felt necessary, is preceded by a short commentary.

Single Point Dominating the Composition

Two Points Dominating the Composition

The image is of Ringsend Church at night.  The highlights of the clocks have been deliberately blown to a) emphasise the two single points in the image b) allow some of the detail of the church itself to be captured and c) to create the sinister effect that I had pre-visualised.

 

Several Points in a Deliberate Shape

A Combination of Vertical and Horizontal Lines

Diagonals

In both this image and the following one, dominated by the curve, I was taken with the combination of the old, in the form of the industrial chimneys, and the new of the modern office blocks.  I have, in both images, tried to use the chimneys to ‘anchor’ the dynamism of the diagonals and the curves,  See also the exercise on triangles in which one of the chimneys has been used to create a triangle through perspective.

Curves

Distinct, Even if Irregular, Shapes

Two Kinds of Implied Triangle

Rhythm

In order to capture the detail in the building the highlights have been deliberately blown. The plaque at the bottom right hand corner notes the date of the original building on the site and offers a break from the rhythm.

Pattern

Assessment Criteria and Reflection

At Level 4 of the OCA programmes the emphasis is on the acquisition of skills and good working habits including the keeping of learning logs .  Additionally, Level 4 students should be informing themselves about others’ work by reading and viewing exhibitions.  The learning logs associated with this assignment, which is itself being submitted as a blog, are all found at ‘adivinglifeblog.wordpress.com’.  There are four types of blog; exercises associated with projects, reflections, book reviews and exhibition reviews.  In general terms, therefore, the requirements of the programme are  being met.  The specific assessment criteria for Level 4 programmes, together with my reflection of how this assignment measures against them, are given below.

The Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills – materials, techniques,observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills. 

The images captured for these exercises have involved a range of locations, lighting conditions and subjects that, in turn, have required the use of the full range of camera settings and techniques including slow and fast shutter speeds, narrow and wide apertures, changes in ISO and the use of a tripod.   Additionally, post image processing has involved conversion from RAW, cropping, perspective correction and levels adjustments.   The work to date therefore has demonstrated a wide range of technical skills.

In contrast to Assignment One, where I struggled to reflect on the visual skills component of the learning outcomes required, in this assignment, and the underpinning exercises, I am much more confident about demonstration of visual skills in this assignment.  For this asssignment and underpinning exercises I deliberately chose to make images that I would not normally make.  In this instance, deatils of a docklands area.  In doing so I have surprised myself with how engaged I became with the process.  In order to complete the assignment I visited the central location (Grand Canal/Hanover Quay) on four separate occasions to make, repeat and refine the images I was collecting.  Each time I went I saw new images and new ways of using the design elements to structure the images.

The Quality of Outcome; content, application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas.

Each of the exercises has addressed the particular task and frequently contained reflections within the exercise as well as post exercise reflections to ensure that learning was embedded.  The work has been structured appropriately and narrated to ensure that lines of thought within the work are clear.

The Demonstration of Creativity; imagination, invention, development of a personal voice.

For this assignment and the underpinning exercises, I deliberately chose to make images that would not be abundant in my portfolio.  As I have noted above, urban/dockland details would not normally feature in my image making. Although images of individual buildings or details of buildings occur in my work, the exercises and assignment have shown clearly to me that my composition of these images needs to be improved; something worked upon for these exercises and this assignment.

As will be noted below,  visits to galleries outside of Ireland and the feedback from Assignment One has enabled me to start to start to think about why rather than how I am making images – the first step towards identifying my personal voice.  A good example of this is the image of Ringsend Church at night towards the beginning of this assignment.  My thinking here was very simple.  I wanted to meet the requirement to use two points in the design and create an image that was sinister or ominous in intent.

A separate reflection on the exercises underpinning this assignment has been undertaken and is here.

Context; reflection, research, critical thinking (learning log).

Because I have a research background I am used to the need for reflection and critical thinking and am happy that the blogs in which the exercises, book reviews, exhibition reviews and reflections are covered are providing me with the appropriate learning opportunities.  In a reflection on the previous assignment I noted that a general lack of exhibitions in Ireland  would be addressed by occasional visits outside of Ireland.  A recent trip afforded the opportunity to visit FOAM and the HUIS Marseille in Amsterdam.   A blog on my visit to the FOAM gallery is here and a blog on the HUIS gallery will follow in coming weeks.

Elements of Design; Project – Lines; Exercise 18 Diagonals

Vertical and horizontal lines, as noted in another blog, tie very closely to the edges of the frame and any misalignment is quickly noticed by the viewer.  Diagonals, as Michael Freeman in The Photographer’s Eye, a core text for the OCA’s Art of Photography course, free the need for alignment with the frame.  Additionally, diagonals introduce much greater dynamism into an image.  According to Freeman, diagonals represent ‘unresolved tension’.  This learning log is concerned with the use of diagonals as elements of design in images.

Four images are presented below each of which uses diagonals as a key component in the design of the image.

The first image is of naturally occurring diagonals formed by the way in which the limestone rock breaks up.

The second image is of an abandoned industrial building and the diagonals were captured by using a wide angle lens up close and looking upward to the building.

The third image shows diagonals (emphasised by the line overlays) of naturally formed sand and pebble on a beach.

The fina image is of diagonals formed by shooting beneath a seaside pier.

Unlike horizontals and verticals I would not have consciously sought to include diagonals in my images to date as evidenced by the fact that I have few of them in my image library.  I suspect that many of my images that use lines as elements of design are thus somewhat static and lack dynamism.

Dave McKane is a Dublin based photographer who comes from a graphic design background.  His main imaging work is around abandoned and derelict man made objects and large buildings.  All his work makes strong use of diagonals to give depth and energy. Here an abandoned car displays strong diagonals as part of the image design.

The Frame; Project – Focal Lengths; Exercise 9 – Focal Lengths

A well known legacy of the rapid decline in Ireland’s economic fortunes is the so-called ‘ghost’ estates.  Unfinished housing estates on the periphery of many Irish towns and villages.  Less well known, apart from some high profile cases (e.g. Anglo Irish bank’s to-be flagship headquarters in the Dublin docklands area – http://thehelpfulengineer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Anglo-Irish-Bank-HQ-1.jpg ) are the incomplete and abandoned industrial and commercial building sites.  Although less obvious than the ‘ghost’ housing estates they are, nonetheless, a legacy that will blight the Irish landscape for generations.  Not alone do these sites blight the landscape but the insult is further compounded when both the resources that were wasted on them are taken into account and when the more productive uses to which those resources could have been put are also considered.

The sequence of images below were captured for Exercise 9 within the Project  on Focal lengths as part of the OCA Art of Photography course.   The site is a disused/abandoned building site in a location earmarked for motor car and white goods premises on the outskirts of my home town of Sligo in NW Ireland.  All the images were captured from the same point on a tripod with some recomposition during the course of the sequence to ensure a clear subject.

The first three images were at 10, 17 and 24mm focal length (EFL 15, 26 and 36mm), respectively.  These images are extreme wide angle and do no more than provide a context for the site.

10mm, EFL 15mm

17mm, EFL26mm

24mm, EFL36mm

The next three images at 35, 55 and 60mm (53, 83 and 90mm EFL), respectively, much more clearly place the abandoned underground storage container as the main subject in the images and establish a balance between the container and the surrounding site.

35mm, EFL53mm

55mm, EFL 83mm

60mm, EFL 90mm

The final four images at 85, 122, 165 and 200mm (128, 183, 248 and 300mm EFL) respectively, place the abandoned storage container as the clear subject of the images.  In moving this close to the container the context within which the container is found is lost  but the detail of the container becomes much more obvious.

85mm, EFL 128mm

122mm, EFL 183mm

165mm, EFL 248mm

200mm, EFL 300mm

In considering the three groups of images I am not clear under what circumstances extreme wide angle might be used in this situation.  However, the creative choice between the second and third groups of images is clear.  Use mid range (35-60mm, 53-90mm EFL) and the the storage container is a main subject but seen within the context of the overall site.  In the case of the longer focal lengths the container itself becomes the subject and its context is lost.

From a technical perspective all that has changed is the focal length and not the distance between the camera and the subject.  As the course notes note (p47), within each image the the relationship between different objects in the scene is the same.  The following exercise (Exercise 10 – http://wp.me/p3PbRS-S) will demonstrate how changing both focal length and the distance between the camera and the subject changes the relationships and perspective significantly.

The Flats, Pearse House, Village in the City – National Photographic Archive

Pearse House is a complex of flats in Dublin’s inner city built in the 1930’s to help deal with the accommodation crisis in Dublin first identified in 1912.   The flats were a significant improvement on what had previously been on the site.  The exhibition of photographs by Jeanette Lowe, – ‘The Flats, Pearse House, Village in the City’  is at the National Photographic Archive (part of Ireland’s National Museum) and is replicated in one of the Flats at Pearse House (3b) which has been recreated as a 1930’s flat.  Lowe, who was a winner of the Photoireland 2012 People’s Choice Award, is connected to the flats through her Grandmother, Bridget Ashmore, who was one of the first residents in the new flats in the earl’y 1930’s.

Lowes’ series of photographs, captured between 2009 and 2013 is complemented by one wall of photographs, collected from residents of the flats, from the flats and their surrounds from earlier times.  The sense of community (A Village in the City) jumps out from every image; washing lines and smiling faces; small children and large pets; homes and pride in them.

The images are not currently up on her website, http://www.jeanettelowe.ie, but you will get a sense of the project from the Facebook page for the project, http://www.facebook.com/pearsehouse.

I am not a superstitious person but earlier in the morning before going into the Archive  a back cat had crossed my path (for luck) and I spied two magpies  (two for joy) and a little part of me wondered what the day would bring! Little did I realise that I would experience a practical working out of Robert Adam’s quote that the real use of art is’…to keep intact an affection for life.’; quoted in Why People Photograph, Aperture, 1994 from Adams’ earlier (1981) book Beauty in Photography.  

The Frame; Project – Viewfinder; Exercise 8 – Sequence of Composition

The Grand Canal in south Dublin moves quietly between the busy suburban streets of this part of Dublin bounded on both sides by treelined pavements, pedestrian and cycle ways and seating areas.  In recent years two locations in this part of Dublin along the canal have been favourite spots for lunch time food markets where fish and chips, to pizza, to noodles to cup cakes can be bought and enjoyed in the open air.  The biggest of the two markets is near Baggot Street Bridge at the 4th Lock on the Grand Canal and happens every Thursday lunchtime when multitudinous office workers congregate to buy the cooked offerings.  Over the years  I have enjoyed a lunchtime break here, not just for the food, but for the smells and the anticipatory buzz that accompanies people waiting for food.

For this particular exercise, ‘Sequence of Composition’ in the Art of Photography course, I drew up a shortlist of possible locations for the exercise including this cooked food market, a fresh food market in Sligo in NW Ireland, where I live, and a number of other small events that I was aware were coming up. Because of the combination of market and location (canal, green spaces, trees) I settled on this venue for the exercise.

The purpose of the exercise was to help the thinking process involved in composing an image.  The sequence of images below is in the order in which they were taken and each one (or small collection) is accompanied by my observation on what I was thinking as I moved around and away from the market trying to capture the essence of the market.  Most of the images were shot at ISO400 and with shutter priority at 1/250.

I would note from the outset that I was trying to capture a range of elements in the sequence; the location, the tents, the people, the food, the bright warm day.  I will return to this objective during and at the end of the blog.

The first image below was intended purely to locate the market and the canal knowing that I was going to move in much closer.  This I did by moving up the bank to the right.

The second and third images below in the sequence start to pick out the marquee tents used by the food vendors to provide a scale reference and to show them located on either side of the canal lock gate.

In the 4th and 5th images below I was starting to try and bring people into the frame but was not satisfied that I had done this effectively as they made up only a small proportion of the frame in these two images so I moved in more closely.

On the east side of the canal the food tents face each other providing a narrow walkway down which people walk as they move from tent to tent before making up their minds about what they were going to eat.  By concentrating on this narrow walkway I hoped to be able to to get closer to people and their interactions with the food tents. The next image in the sequence below attempted to capture this hustle and bustle and I felt that although the perspective was right there was not enough going on (I came back to this possibility a few minutes later)  so I moved even closer to one specific food tent.

Fish and Chips!  Very nice, and the two men were good enough to let me photograph them at their work.  It was at this point that I realised that perhaps i was trying to capture too many elements in one image (canal, trees, food, etc) and decided to concentrate on trying to link people – small groups – or individuals – to the market and its surrounds.

At this point therefore I started to try and identify specific people-place interactions and the two images below were first attempts to do this by getting closer and seeing could I get some interaction between people and the food being served.

The two images below were my first attempts at trying to establish this relationship between people and food and I feel that while they go some way towards that objective they were not quite what I was looking for.

At this point another element came into play – the lock gate over which people moved frequently carrying food in their hands – and I played with this for a few minutes to see what I could make of this relationship.  The first two images I captured suggested to me there was something and I waited to see what else might happen.

By the the third of this sub sequence of  images below I came close to getting something that I thought might work and, if I were to concentrate on this image as an end product, I would crop it slightly to bring out more obviously the man, the food and the lock gate. The purposeful stride, the boxes of food and the red sweater drew my eye. I had hoped that I would be able to get an image(s) with three men in suits carrying bags of food across the lock gate but though I waited for a few minutes more none appeared so I moved off.

At this stage I moved well away from the centre of the market to see what else  was going on of interest and tried to once more pick up individual interactions between people and place at the market.

It was in the final sequence of images that I made two images that I was satisfied with.  The one below captures the place, the activity (eating), the types of people that were present (mainly office types) and the location (a sunny canal bank).  The only element that was not captured in the image below was the market.

Three more images of a general nature followed but I was still not satisfied that I had fully got what I wanted.

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For the last image I moved well away from the market to see what could be got.  As I settled down to watch I noticed two well dressed young men moving away from the market to find a place to sit and eat.  They sat on the bank of the canal, quite close to where I was standing and I realised that if I could get sufficient depth of field I could  get them well focused and the market, canal and lock gates in the background sufficiently in focus that the context of the image would be clear.

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Satisfied that I had captured a small number of images that I felt worked in the sequence I moved off.

A more complete reflection on this exercise and Exercises 6 and 7 will appear in the blog in the next few days but my immediate reflections on this are first, although I was satisfied with the event as a good one for the exercise I was not satisfied that I had undertaken sufficient pre-shoot research to ensure that I  was clear about what I was trying to do.  This manifests itself in a second reflection that during the course of taking the photographs I became unclear as to what I was doing – trying to capture the essence of the whole event, trying to consider the relationship between people and food or trying to capture the relationship between people and place.  So, while I was reasonably satisfied that a small number of images worked (or appeared to work) for me I was not satisfied with the execution of the exercise as a whole and the lesson learnt would be the need for much more careful research prior to shooting so that I am clearer about the purpose of the activity.