Earth, Air, Fire and Water is the 2014 title for the AS Photography exam project. You will have a period of 8-10 weeks (plus the Spring half term and Easter holiday) to develop your ideas through preparatory studies before spending a day in the studio realising your final outcome as part of the 8 hour, controlled assessment. You should aim to be ambitious in your final outcome and presentation.
The exam paper is full of ideas to help you get started. Your photography teachers will also set class and home work tasks that will enable you to have the best start possible for your exam project. Make sure everything is documented clearly on you weebly.
The exam paper is full of ideas to help you get started. Your photography teachers will also set class and home work tasks that will enable you to have the best start possible for your exam project. Make sure everything is documented clearly on you weebly.
Links that may not work in the Slideshare:
Homework Task 1
Practical
Bury, submerge or expose a photograph to the elements for a week. Record in situe if possible then re-photograph how the image looks at the end of the week. You have to take the photograph you distress however it can be printed from film, a polaroid, printed on low quality paper or high quality photo paper. |
Class task 1
Chemical Reactions
Colour changing milk:
Materials: Whole milk Dinner plate Food colouring (red, yellow, green and blue) Washing up liquid Cotton buds Poor enough milk in the dinner plate to completely cover the bottom to the depth of about 1/4 of an inch. Allow the milk to settle. Add one drop of each of the four food colours to the milk. Keep the drops close together in the centre of the plate of milk. Place a drop of washing up liquid on one end of the cotton bud. Place the soapy bud back in the middle of the milk and hold it there for 10-15 seconds. Add another drop of soap to the tip of the cotton bud and try again if nothing happens. Experiment with placing the cotton bud in different places in the milk. The molecules of fat bend, roll, twist, and contort in all directions as the soap molecules race around to join up with the fat molecules. During all of this fat molecule gymnastics, the food coloring molecules are bumped and shoved everywhere, providing an easy way to observe all the invisible activity |
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Bubbling Lava Lamp
Materials: Clean plastic soda bottle Soda bottle top Vegetable oil (the cheaper the better) food colouring Alka Seltzer table Water Fill the bottle 3/4 with vegetable oil. Fill the rest of the bottle with water (almost to the top but not overflowing) Add about 10 drops of food colouring. Be sure to make the water fairly dark in colour. Drop one of the Alka Seltzer into the bottle and watch what happens. When the chemical reaction has finished, screw on the bottle top and tip the bottle back and forth. The tiny droplets of liquid should join together to make one big lava-like blob. |
A slightly different way-
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Magic potion
Materials: Bowl 2 Tbsp vinegar 1 Tbsp baking soda Food colouring Put 2 Tbsp vinegar in the bowl Add food colouring to the vinegar. Add 1 Tbsp baking soda (all at once) Record what happens What Happened: The bubbles that form are carbon dioxide gas. A chemical reaction occurs between the vinegar (an acid) and the baking soda (a base). The bubbles that form are carbon dioxide gas. A chemical reaction occurs between the vinegar (an acid) and the baking soda (a base). |
Class task 2
Blur: Response to Uta Barth and Hiroshi Sugimoto
The blur in this task could emulate the effects of fog and mist.
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Sugimoto photographed landmarks of modern architecture using long exposures. The buildings are shown as isolated volumes and are photographed from unconventional angles. Sugimoto captures their essence, rather than the details. The result are blurred forms that evoke the passage of time.
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Homework Task 2
Rain, Mist and Fog:
Create 4, edited images of one or more of these themes. Remember to include your contact sheets in your weebly and screen shots of actions you complete in editing the images.
To shoot in misty or rainy conditions you will want to ensure you've got enough protection for your camera. You can buy a rain cover, or you can always go low budget and use a Ziploc or plastic bag. If it’s not raining very hard you may be able to find shelter under a tree, you could shoot from the car with the window open, or if you’re shooting in the city you can stand under an awning.
Rain, mist, and fog means there are clouds…which also means there’s less natural light available. Given that there is less light you may need to shoot at slower shutter speeds to allow more light into the camera. Avoid that nasty camera shake by shooting with a tripod. Typically you will find fog and mist during early morning or late evening. If it is a cold misty morning you’ll need to shoot fast before the sun burns through the mist. |
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Class task 3
Creating fire
Work independently through the different tutorials and develop your preferred way of adding fire to an image. Photograph an inanimate object or a person and attempt to add a fire effect in response to the work of Jiang Zhi (on the left).
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Homework Task 3
Distressed Portraits
Simoes said:
'to burn pictures is a way of fisically erasing a memory by burning it, so with time, the image that is burnt will disappear from your memory.' Take your own portrait photographs. Choose one and alter it in 5 different ways so that part of the image is erased.Please be careful if you plan to burn part of the image. When you present this work on your weebly you must include the contact sheet, screen grabs of alterations you made digitally and reasons behind your choice of image and technique.You should also attempt to discuss Simoes' quote above. |
Look at the work of Graham Dolphin and Daniel Buetti for other techniques. Images are drawn into from the back giving the illusion that the model's skin has been branded with a heated object and / or a brand itself.The piece on the right has involved piercing the surface of the print and placing the image onto a light box to illuminate the patterns made.
CLASS TASK 4
Elegant corrosion The elements can have a huge effect on the man made environment. The deverstateing floods around the country have des The corrosion to man made objects cab be extremly beautiful the photography Colin Winterbottom catches this corrosive beauty in his series Elegant corrosion. Using the work of Colin Winterbottom and Martha Middleton a inspiration look around the school and capture areas that have corroide rusted flooded. Get close up and try to create images of abstract beauty. Martha Middleton - Abstract Beauty
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Colin Winterbottom - Elegant Corrosion
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