UNIT 1 - RELATIONSHIPS (INSPIRATION 03)

After viewing the result of my last shoot I decided to move on another artist. I feel like Franck Bohbot does not have the characteristics that I'm looking for. For this reason I moved on a very interesting artist which I think could give a very magical and misterious look to my picture. Here's a research that I did about him. Kyungwoo Chun was born (1969) in Seoul. After his first study of Photography in Korea (1992) he moved to Germany, where he studied and started to work on his art projects in Europe. He has become known for his poetically blurred photographic portraits in a very unconventional way of dealing with time and space. His pictures give to the subject a sense of lightness and often give a surreal touch to the images. As I'm still working on levitation photography I'm looking for different techniques that could be combined to the ones that I've already used to emphasize the effect that I'm trying to recreate. My two best edit both have a magical atmosphere that could be completed by other details such as this long-exposure technique. Chun is the first of my inspirational artists who uses an analog camera. This fact is not simply a technical detail but characterise all his pictures, as seen in his work colours often variate depending on the film that he used. 

A day in Seoul 3, Kyungwoo Chun, 2003

Family Portrait 110, Kyungwoo Chun, 2003
His chromatic spectre stretches from black and white to super saturated pictures passing through sepia and blue monochrome. Due to the very long exposures the photos are often taken in indoor locations and usually have a neutral monochromatic background.

 Nine editors 9, Kyungwoo Chun, 2014

VERSUS 2, Kyungwoo Chun, 2007

Believing is seeing 11, Kyungwoo Chun, 2007

In general Chun takes more gloomy and introspective pictures while Bohbot and Woon shoot a more peaceful and fairy-tale like reality. I would like to explore how would this two different styles relate and if a good final piece could be created by this bond between two opposite way of seeing the world through a camera.

1592 1, Kyungwoo Chun, 2007

reMEMBERed 5, Kyungwoo Chun, 2002

Simultan 10, Kyungwoo Chun, 2010

UNIT 1-RELATIONSHIPS (RESEARCH)

During the editing of my third shoot I found out that some of the pictures had both visible digital noise and chromatic aberration. These problem are probably the most popular ones in digital photography and new cameras are always trying to avoid them with new sensors and in-camera software. "Image noise is random (not present in the object imaged) variation of brightness or color information in images, and is usually an aspect of electronic noise. It can be produced by the sensor and circuitry of a scanner or digital camera. Image noise can also originate in film grain and in the unavoidable shot noise of an ideal photon detector." This definition explains pretty well what's image noise and how it effects the pictures.

As seen in the examples the pictures shot at higher ISO are more likely to present this problem. Also the combination between resolution of the camera and image sensor size plays a fundamental role in the process.

Chromatic aberration on the other side is generated by the lens and also depends on the focal length and the focus. "Chromatic aberration manifests itself as "fringes" of color along boundaries that separate dark and bright parts of the image, because each color in the optical spectrum cannot be focused at a single common point. Since the focal length f of a lens is dependent on the refractive index n, different wavelengths of light will be focused on different positions." 

In this case the phaenomen is seen in the corner of the picture or between a tight pattern. Usually more expensive lens have built-in system to eliminate the aberration and to get the sharpest picture possible. 

In conclusion I think that this two "errors" that the camera and lens produce can really affect the quality of the pictures but it's also fairly easy to compensate their effect to make the picture look good. Keeping the ISO level as low as possible and shoot with a good lighting should avoid the image noise presence in the picture. A cheap way to eliminate chromatic aberration from our pictures is to use a post production software that could automatically spot the defective areas and can erase the coloured fringes. Obviously higher the price of our equipment the lower we would notice this problems but even using cheap equipment is possible to take stunning pictures.

UNIT 1- RELATIONSHIPS (BUILD UP WORK 03)

For this shoot I completely changed the way of shooting my pictures. In this case it was all about timing. I started shooting with 1/200" but then due to lack of light I had to make the exposure a bit longer (around 1/125"). I had to capture the exact moment when my model was jumping and the leaves were falling over him.

 Another problem that we had in this process was the focus. Initially we started using the autofocus but it didn't work. That's probably because while shooting the burst the camera tried to refocus the image. We solved this problem setting the focus before the action and then putting it in manual mode. This time it worked better but the focus still wasn't sharp enough, the issue was that the model jumping was moving from the background to the foreground sometimes resulting out of focus. 

Solved this two initial problems we focused on the pose and the facial expression. It wasn't easy to combine all these elements in a single shot but at the end of the shoot we managed to get some good shots.

 While I was editing the pictures I found out that some of the picture had really lots of digital noise and chromatic aberration, for this decision I decided that I'm going to write a post just for analyzing this phenomena.

I think that my best edit looks pretty good, colour and pose are similar to the one that Bohbot uses and the leaves floating around the subject emphasize even more the zero gravity effect.

For the next shoot I want to keep the same concept, a model jumping surrounded by some floating objects. This time I'm going to use my camera to get reed of the technical problem that I had shooting with a different camera.

UNIT 1 - RELATIONSHIPS (INSPIRATION 02)

My next research is about a very original french photographer who published a really nice levitation photography collection.
Franck Bohbot is a photographer specializes in photographing public spaces, street scenes, and environmental portraits. He is a documentarian with an eye for the theatrical who found his way to photography by way of cinema. Bohbot’s work inhabits a space between reality and fantasy, documenting and storytelling. I really appreciated the 2007’s Levitation collection where he focus on this particular photographic technique. I love the surreal touch that the apparent lack of gravity gives to the pictures. I really like how the daily situation that he captures are enriched by the levitation effect which makes subjects look like superheroes. I think that this technique could help me representing the relationship between objects and gravity as it allows me to make things float in the air like if there was no gravity.

I also find the way that he uses colors very interesting, his pictures have a kind of retrò look which I really like. Colors are usually soft and even the black and white is not too harsh and gives a very light feeling to the pictures. I'm really excited to be able to try another technique  and don't stop my pursuit for the perfect shot.

All the images taken from: Levitation (2007) Frank Bohbot

UNIT 1 - RELATIONSHIPS (BUILD UP WORK 02)

For the second shoot I decided to explore some outdoor locations. I wanted to increase the magical effect of my pictures giving a more romantic and peaceful feeling. We shot in a football field which gave us multiple opportunities like shooting between trees or on a beautiful grass. Like in the first shoot I used a tripod and a couple of stools to lift my models. This is the contact sheet of the first part of the shoot:

Then I edited the best picture using the same technique used last week, but I think that the clothes don't behave naturally. Probably my models should wear different type of clothes that could hide the zone where they touch the stool.

We also shot some pictures with the models standing, the problem in this case was that the floating effect wasn’t perceptible how it should. The main problem was that the background texture was pretty distracting and that the point of view should have been lower. Some more bokeh could have helped to separate the models from the background.

We tried the same pose with another background which unfortunately had the same problems as the first one.

Finally taking the last shot we found out how to enhance the levitating effect. The model sat on the stool on her back facing up and in this case both the cloths and the separation from the floor worked pretty well.

As I wanted to increase the effect even more I “lifted” the model from the ground using Photoshop and I color graded the picture using Lightroom.

I’m really happy with the result and I think that this technique is really great to represent the relationship I’m working on. Next time I’ll try something slightly different to see if there could be other ways to capture people floating.