Time Lapse - Newark Point

This time lapse shows Newark Point Halls of Residence and I think that it gives a different scale to the other work I've done previously. In my previous time lapses the buildings have been further away like the panoramic works of Josef Sudek, this time lapse is much closer in, more like Eugene Atget and even bares resemblance to Andreas Gursky's work.


Newark Point from Alex Smith on Vimeo.

Stamford morning time lapse

I filmed this from the early hours of the morning to midday and I really like this video.

Drop the stills

I have decided that although I enjoy making the light trails they are bit cliche, they have been done before and its not stretching me. I will continue with the time lapses but will stop the stills.

Research - Walker Evans

I found this image while researching for another project and I noticed that Evans crops his images of buildings similarly to Eugene Atget. As opposed to other photographer such as Josef Sudek and Andreas Gursky who show buildings on a larger scale.

Research - Eugene Atget

Atget's city based images are much more cropped that those of Gursky and Struth, both of whom I have researched previously. I really like these photographs that were taken by a man that until his death was pretty much an unknown photographer. 

Research - Josef Sudek

Sudek was perhaps better known in his early career for his still life photography. However, from the 1950’s, 30 years after he became a photographer, he started to take panoramic photographs of Prague. His book Praha Panoramaticka published in 1959 changed his reputation and it is these photographs that I am interested in.

I really like these images, I've not come across many panoramic photographs before but I think that these are amazing. 

Installation Idea photoshop image

I decided that I would like to exhibit my time lapses as an installation. I think that the addition of a window would give the impression the viewer is looking through the window. The set up would basically consist of a TV screen behind a window with curtains and props to make it seem homely.

Installation Idea

I have decided that the best way to show my project would be through installation, I think that showing printed stills is definitely out of the question and I think that simply showing my films on a screen would be disappointing and would not show off my work well enough. I need something different, something memorable, that people thinking back to the exhibition will remember, I want it to stand out in their minds.


So I have decided that the best thing to do for my work would be to make an installation. As my video's have turned from looking at the changing sky into looking at windows and the passing of time within those windows while still including an element of light, I decided it would be appropriate to use a window as the focus point of my installation. I would like to recreate the time lapses and create the illusion of looking through a window to the outside world but in fact that outside world is one of my time lapses.

Intervalometer

I bought a shutter release which has an inbuilt timer so that I would be able to make time lapses without having to sit pressing the shutter every x seconds. This video is one of the first ones I made, its not really relevant but I just wanted to test that it worked.



Room from Alex Smith on Vimeo.

Research - Eadweard Muybridge

When I started thinking more about time lapses I decided to look into the work of Eadweard Muybridge as he is famous for the photographs of a running horse. The idea of using stills to show the movement through time and space appeals to me. Muybridge was an English man who spent most of his time in America. His Animal Locomotion images were groundbreaking and I could harly do a project based on time lapse (effectively the same process he was famed for) without mentioning him.

Research - Joel Meyerowitz

I found this photograph which is from the series Empire State and was taken in New York City in 1978. I really like this image, I like the strong colours (the one in the book is much more vibrant than this online image) the colour of the sky washes out as it gets closer to the horizon and this reminds me of my hotel time lapse.

Changes to the way I make time lapses

I was originally using final cut to edit together my time lapses but I found that it was significantly reducing the quality when I exported it. A friend suggested I tried using Quick time instead and I've found that although the result is slightly more jerky its a much higher quality.


I have had problems uploading the higher quality video's so I'm sticking to final cut compressed videos for the blog but I will be using higher quality Quick time movies on my dvd of final videos.

Research - Thomas Struth

His early works showed black and white photographs of the streets of Japan, Europe & America. I find the images stricking and you can tell that he and Andreas Gursky were both trained by the same people (Bernd & Hilla Becher). I like the compositions and I think that it has similarities to my own work.

Research - Andreas Gursky

My peer’s and tutors have often told me that my time lapse works reminds them of gursky’s photographs. I like the shear scale of Gurskys work. I like the repetition and patterns found in his work. The buildings and places he photographs are usually found in large city’s like the Tokyo stock exchange, the Siemens plant at Karlsruhe, the General Assembly building in Brasília, or the Sha Tin racetrack near Hong Kong. The farthest afield I have traveled for my work is Southampton. I can however see the similarities in our work. I can see it in the windows of the hotel I made a time lapse of.

Research - Linda Connor

Linda Connor’s work is often spiritual and light seems to be a big part of her influence. She frequently visits India, Mexico, Thailand, Ireland, Peru, Nepal, Egypt, Hawaii and the American Southwest, to photograph special places.

I really like this photograph. I like how it seems like the earth is moving beneath the stars (which of course it is, but often it feels like the stars go around us).

I like the way the light pours in to this picture.

I think that this is an interesting image and its such a grand building. She has a way of making places look very spiritual.