Individual folio assessment sheets are in the post.
As you know this was the last time that the traditional ‘wet-process’ black and white photography will be offered as part of the core studies in the photography program. In the new program, the Bachelor of Photography, traditional B&W photography will be offered only as an elective.
In the ‘good-old-days’ B&W photography, processing and printing were not only routine practices in their own right but they provided a perfect grounding for the development of skills in other areas of photography. An understanding of B&W photographic practices and the reproduction of tones was equally relevant to the use of colour negative/transparency film and printing. Indeed it has also been invaluable in terms of its relationship to digital imaging practices, many functions in capture and processing software for example have their roots in film based imaging and many default settings in equipment and software are based on film and paper characteristics.
So why all the waffle? Normally your B&W photographic skills would develop further over the course of the year and indeed the program. This last semester presented all of us with a particularly difficult challenge, to get your skills up to a level where by week 9 you would have photographs that could be shown in a public exhibition, the Legislative Assembly Exhibition and Competition. This was a terrific opportunity and you all rose to the challenge and produced some very good work. Normally, however, we would not be exhibiting or assessing final work until much later in the semester when your skills had developed further. I think you would all probably agree that your studio work demonstrated a higher level of skill than the early location work. There were and always are exceptions to the rule of course. Given the limited time to fine-tune your practices for this folio we have decided that to be fair to everyone we will award a Pass grade to all students. In-class reviews and discussions of this work took place prior to the exhibition and took into account the limited time for skills development. A grading now would only point out the limited skills and practices you had at that time.
The studio presented some different challenges for you (assuming of course that by that time you could expose, process and print).
Even with ISO 400 film you quickly found that a tripod and still subjects were necessary in order to prevent camera shake and subject movement. Typically with one tungsten flood at around 2m from the subject, correct exposure was around 1/60th sec at f2.8. Without the use of a hand-help light meter many of you used your in-camera meter (film/digital) to establish a round-about exposure. Of course we all know the problem with the in-camera exposure meter, don’t we? They attempt to produce a mid-tone rendering of the subject. That isn’t a problem when the subject is mid-tone but is a particular problem when the subject is mainly white or mainly black, how many of you shot those subjects? White backgrounds will result in underexposure while black ones result in overexposure. Experience counts for a lot in photography and without a light meter you might be able to recall previous shoots where a particular lighting scheme and exposure combination led to a good result but this technique can easily lead to disaster. You should think about purchasing a light meter some time soon, we will cover this in the studio in semester 2.
The use of an incident light meter in the studio is commonplace but there are issues. An incident light meter produces consistent results because the reading is not dependent on subject matter, it measures the amount of light ‘falling’ on the subject and is calibrated to render a mid-tone as a mid-tone. There is one major problem with this, in high contrast lighting situations such as that produced by a tungsten flood or spot the subject luminance range is too wide for detail to be recorded in both shadow and highlight areas. The answer is to slightly overexpose the film (either directly or by underrating the film slightly) to increase shadow detail and to reduce development to prevent the highlight from becoming too dense and therefore un-printable. Ever heard of the rule ‘overexpose and underdevelop’? Many of you tried this and the results were evident.
If there is as rule of thumb in the studio it is to ‘use as few lights as possible’. Start with one main light to illuminate the subject and create the basis of the scheme/style. Only use extra lights if you wish to illuminate a background separately or to improve separation by creating a rim-light effect on the body or hair. The more lights you have the more problems you have and the less convincing the style is. The lighting should not be at the expense of the subject. It is also common practice to use fill from a reflector. It is easy to convince yourself that the detail you see in an unfilled shadow will be seen in the print. Ideally the ratio of light to fill ratio in general portraiture should be 4:1 or less. This ensures that detail is seen in the shadow areas of the print. For a 4:1 ratio there are two quick ways you can achieve it.
1. Take an incident reading on each side of the face (one lighted, the other in shadow)
A two stop difference will result in a 4:1 ratio, eg if lighted side indicates f8 and the shaded
side indicates f4 you have a two stop difference (4:1 ratio).
2. Using one flood to illuminate the subject (any distance) and a white foam reflector at
around half a metre from the shaded side will result in around 4:1 ratio.
Piece of cake.
We chose to set some parameters for the studio portraits to ensure that you would address some typical portrait issues, ie. head-shoulder, head-to waist, full-length standing and self portrait. These shots increase in difficulty in the same order because each requires you to progressively deal with more body parts and contextual issues. Along the way however the standing portrait somehow became a curled-up foetal pose for some, an honest mistake of course.
For the most part we were very happy with the responses to this folio brief, most of you took to the studio like ‘ducks to water’ and produced some imaginative and high quality work and it appears for had fun doing it. On the down side the studio was generally left in a dreadful state after each shoot (not entirely your fault) and that is something we will be fully addressing next semester. We also have some ideas for improving the studio space. Stay tuned.
The individual assessment sheets that have been posted have personalised comments and grades.
We should also comment on the topic of written assignments. Many of you had to resubmit assignments not because you cannot do them but because you failed to address the assignment briefs. At this level of study you must address the brief and complete the entire assignment as indicated. It is also your responsibility to ensure you understand the brief and when a draft is requested you should take up that opportunity. Structure, spelling, grammar and correct referencing procedures are also important issues that must be addressed. (Doesn't apply to quickly written blog entries) Assignments must also be your work!
Lastly, thanks for a really productive semester and particularly in the light of the curriculum development disruptions which incidentally continued over the course of the last three weeks. We would have liked to had all results and feedback to you a week ago but we were ‘flat chat’.
On the up-side, the panel that oversees course development met with us on Monday the 29th and short of a comet hitting Canberra we will have a new program for 2010. We’ll be trialling some aspects of the new program during second semester to assist with your transition to the new Degree. There may also be some further changes to your timetable for second semester but we’ll try to let you know as soon as possible.
Have a great break and we look forward to seeing you in week 1 (starts July 27th).
Regards,
Julian, Geoff, Silvia and Belinda