Freeze:
The frozen moment , by using a fast shutter speed isolate a frozen moment in time with a moving subject. You may need to use a high ISO to avoid visible blur, Provide images with your data and a discription of the process.
Research:
JOSEPH NICÉPHORE NIÉPCE
Born in France in 1765, Niépce was an amateur scientist, inventor and artist. He was the inventor of the first ever Photograph in 1826 he was interested in using light sensitive materials that could imprint images onto a printing plate or stone, which he titled heliography.
The above image was a view from his window, the exposure was 8 hours long to create the image. in 1829 he had a partnership with a man called Luis Daguerre, they worked together for a long time, however Josephs work ended up being overshadowed by Luis’s new method which he promptly names Daguerreotype. What is Daguerreotype you ask? Good Question, it is the first commercial photograph process.
“A highly polished silver surface on a copper plate was sensitised to light by exposing it to iodine fumes. After exposing the plate in a camera it was developed with mercury vapour.”
And since than photography has just evolved from there, learning to train light from a sensitive form onto a plate, to bending it through a lens.
Eadweard Muybridge was a British photographer who was focused on motion in photography. He moved to the United States where he shot to fame with his Yosemite Valley Photography in 1868. In 1877 he continued his experiementing with motion in pictures. Even though his images were astonishing for the time period, he was widely criticised by people saying, horses legs surely couldn’t go into those positions that were in his images. To correct this criticism of his photography he went on to lecture about locomotion in Animals through California and Europe. He went on to take many more photos from animals, to humans and explained locomotion through photography in all his teachings, until he retired.
Harold Edgerton
Harold was inventive, his photography was inspiring and technically challenging. He used a Ultra high powered flash device and proceeded to take many different images playing with motion and light. His book called Flash! was released in 1939 where he showcases his images from frozen motion to multiple exposure. in 1987 he was given the lifetime achievement award from the International Centre of Photography. His invention of strobe light influenced and ultimately changed the world, from science, Hollywood filmmaking and even surveillance in the military.
His images helped me expand my creativity with this project as its quite easy just to fall into the right lets grab a photo of someone running, a moving car etc, I wanted to photograph something a bit more exciting to look at, I enjoy the use of light he has in his images, his framing and the simplicity of the images really help create an exceptional photo. Not all frozen motion needs to be just what is happening in the world, we can create this image from scratch, he is an inspiration to photography.
Philip Lorca-Dicorcias “Head”
Is a Photographer in New York who took photos in broad daylight using a powerful strobe light, stuck to scaffolding, which when triggered capture someone in the crowed without them even noticing. He used a fast shutter speed to capture the images, the strobe light helped highlight the person in the forefront of the image and diminish the background. When you look at these images, its hard to believe these people are moving. let alone that they didn’t even know their image was taken. The images are beautiful, crisp clear, without fear. These people without intention of having their image taken, were relaxed and let us formulate ideas of what they were thinking or who they were. It is an extremely raw moment to capture people while they move through a crowd unaware. I was in awe when I saw these images, the final pictures chosen out of 4000 were beautiful they told a story of your average New Yorker just making their way through Times Square. His sharpness in the images, the detail taken of someone 20 meters away, the light on their faces to highlight them and yet even though it was shot In daylight it honestly looks like it was taken at night. Movement doesn’t have to show the literally movement of the subject as long as it has a sense of movement, which these images do, just purely from the way the body is positioned and the way the person is clueless to what is happening you can tell straight away this was a movement piece. And what a revolutionary idea.
EXERCISE 3:1 Freeze
This exercise was a great way to learn about my camera, it was a great task to really get you paying attention to your manual dials, but also doing it when the subject you are using, isn’t meant to, or isn’t intending to stay still. As a new photographer, freezing a moment is much easier, than panning the movement to create a clear subject within a blurry background, or to capture motion through smooth running water or streaky light lines from vehicles for example. Keeping a sense of movement rather than stopping it in its tracks. It was a rewarding exercise because you still do have to take a large volume of photographs to capture your subject, you’re never going to get anything perfect on the first shot. You go through a catalogue of issues from the subject moving out of shot, over or under exposure could be an issue, you capture blur rather than freezing the scene or something comes into your frame that you were not intending. This was more of an exercise of awareness about my personal DSLR (Canon 6D) and getting myself use to using my DSLR settings appropriately for the right moment.
Problems I faced with this particular exercise was focus on the movement, when looking through my photographs there were a few that were extremely out of focus, the fact that when you are shooting rapidly and your tracking your subject to capture your frozen moment stops you from focusing on simple things like composition, exposure and focus was really compromised due to those reasons. My ISO was too high on some photographs there by creating to much noise, and unfocusing on my subject “However, raising your ISO has consequences. A photo taken at too high of an ISO will show a lot of grain, also known as noise, and might not be usable.” https://photographylife.com/what-is-shutter-speed-in-photography
“Shutter speed is responsible for two particular things: changing the brightness of your photo, and creating dramatic effects by either freezing action or blurring motion.” https://photographylife.com/what-is-shutter-speed-in-photography By Choosing to use a shutter speed of 1/1250 Second I was able to achieve the desired outcome of freezing my subject. But it also created a problem of letting too much light in. I should have been more aware of my Aperture to counteract that specific problem.I used a medium aperture in these images, and I suppose the problem was I should have made the aperture smaller to allow less light in, as it was a very strong light during the middle of the day and that particular element during this shoot made freezing my subject difficult as the camera would unfocus while taking the shot, tended to be overexposed or the other problem faced was the camera struggled to focus on my subject at all and therefore wouldn’t capture the photo in time to capture the moment.
Overall I have learned that while trying to capture movement the best technical aspects to keep in my is, when freezing a moment use a high Shutter speed, A small Aperture setting to counteract letting too much light in through the ISO so that the scene is evenly lit, but not too noise and that the shutter speed is fast enough that the movement is not blurred but preferably frozen.
Madeleine Lee Photography OCA BA (Hons) 