Photography

Having previously studied Media and Film at A level, I was excited to start Lens Based Media. My initial thoughts were photography this was quickly changed during the first couple of minutes. I was unaware of what Lens Based Media would bring and was surprised at how broad a range it was. LBM includes animation, sound design, film, photography, television, moving image and interaction. When in sound design the only live recorded sound is the dialogue, all the other sounds are made using other objects and put into the clip after in the editing stage of production. Having studied Film and created my own opening scene I was only reminded of the people and different stages needed for the production of a film or television programme. Photography is something I have been interested in for many years and combined with my fine art style of working I was happy to find out that there are many different ways to set up what you are trying to capture, for example contrast, light, pattern and colour.

Photography starts from the invention of the camera which was Thomas Wedgwood in 1790 and the work of the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. Photography has evolved over many years and this is something that can either inspire or bore people however in my case as long as it is brief I enjoy learning about the history and envelopment of the camera and photography itself. 

I was taken from the past to present in how photographs are taken; starting with a still shot from the surrealist film Un Chien Andalou. The camera can let us see more than the eye as well as fooling it into believing what we are seeing. The lens has been taken into space, far into the universe as well as to the microscopic images of particles. We were then shown a photograph taken in a busy French street however the image did not include people in the image. This is because at first the camera back then could not pick up movement due to how slow the shutter speed was. However as photography moved forward it started to break the frame and more and more fine artists were influenced by the rule breaking photographers. The camera was then sped up to capture movement and this can be seen in the images of a horse, Muybridge has taken. These two elements of speed and frame breaking were then both taken and I could see how the photograph has now taken the chance to blur the background to incorprate movement. We were shown a photo of a race car were the car was half of frame and the background was blurred which had to suggest that the camera was going the same speed as the car to make sure that the foreground of the image was not blurry. 

Many people back in the day were not aware of the photograph therefore the Lumier Brothers in Paris used to photograph and film people doing there everyday chores, they then projected these images onto large walls and invited people to see themselves; the people were amazed and confused. As time went on, war was something that people were very nieve about and the use of photography helped to expose the brutality of it. The power of image meant that they had to withdraw from the Vietnam war.

As Photography continued to grow sound was now available to to capture as an image. Photography allows us to see the invisible to the naked eye. 

Technology has paid a big part in the change of photography, cameras are so small now and have been incorporated into other products such as phones. There has been a range of beautiful images that have been taken on the iphone and us as a generation now have a sense of urgency of putting images online for everyone to see. For example take the Riots in London, the images were put online so quickly however you never see any of them again now. The generation of today live in the present and future and fail to sustain photographs that will be looked back on in the future. CCTV is a new presence of the camera and London is one of the most filmed places around the world. This makes me feel very uncomfortable with this information as we have no privacy although others argue it is for our safety. 

Overall, the camera is a lie; images can be manipulated as well being set up to appear to be something different. The framing and lighting is something very key to the idea of photography and illusion.