Project 2 – It’s about time

Notes (from course binder):

• Time and photography are intrinsically linked: each photo is captured at a specific moment and each exposure lasts a specific duration.
• The earliest photographs had such long exposure times (several minutes even in daylight) that moving objects (ie: smoke, rippling water, moving vehicles or people) didn’t register.
• Timing (the “decisive moment”) is part of the photographer’s creative process: they choose to capture one moment over countless others.
• Timing is key: from the “decisive” moment to waiting for good lighting to capturing movement through time.

Exercise 1: Conveying movement in photos

Derek Trillo, Passing Place, Manchester, 2006

• What I see: Two silhouetted bodies about to walk past each other on some kind of staircase in a public space.
• Expression of movement: The main/first expression of movement is through the human subjects, whose silhouettes are blurred. Their body’s gestures indicate movement as well: walking. Then there are visual cues like the fact that they’re in what appears to be a walled-off stairwell in a public space of some kind, like a mall/department store. The wall behind the characters, which appears to be backlit, is colorful and also conveys a kind of movement. Horizontal and vertical lines seem to frame/draw attention to this movement.

Harold Edgerton, Bullet and Apple, c. 1964 

• What I see: A bullet firing through an apple that is “mounted” on some kind of metal stick, presumably for the purpose of receiving the bullet.
• Expression of movement: This image conveys a much faster movement than the other photograph. It seems like the image relies on the viewer’s understanding of basic scientific concepts, like velocity and gravity, to understand what’s happening. Essentially, we see an apple that been impacted by something moving through it very quickly, as evidenced by the right side and left sides caught in a slightly different states of explosion. The bullet has been captured too, caught as thought hovering beside the apple, when in fact it’s just ripped through it. Our approximate knowledge of an apple’s density and a bullet’s speed/power give us key information about the speed of the movement conveyed here.

Harold Edgerton, Multiflash tennis serve, 1949

• What I see: A white on black silhouette of a male figure serving a tennis ball.
• Expression of movement: This image conveys movement by breaking a very fast movement down into multiple phases. We see the way arm and racket move together through space and time to make connection with the ball and send it flying. The blur of the server’s body, and the choice of using white/light on/in black(ness) seem to compare the captured movement with light’s speed.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Cousin Bichonnade in Flight-

• What I see: A woman from another époque appearing to hover awkwardly above some small concrete stairs.
• Expression of movement: This image is surprising; it looks unnatural. For me, the main indicators of movement are the subject’s legs, positioned as though one is leading–almost as if she’s riding a broom–and the fact that she appears not to be grounded. What’s confusing is that her hands are blurred, suggesting movement concentrated in her fists. The odd angle of her body and bent leading knee/leg as she floats/jumps/descends some concrete stairs complicates our understanding of the movement in this picture. Contrary to the first three images here, our brains have to work really hard to make sense of this photo. I am not able to; its gestural aspects are too bizarre. This doesn’t look like jumping and–unless it’s a film set of some kind–floating or flight are physical impossibilities.

Notes (from course binder):

• Techniques for conveying movement:
  • blurred figures, streaks of colour (Trillo)
  • stop-action photography: catching the subject mid-movement (as in wildlife and sport photography) (Lartigue)
  • high-speed flash (shows only a fraction of a second of time) or multiple high-speed flashes (when individual exposures are viewed together/overlaid, gives a real sense of movement)
• Viewing each exposure, one after the other, as in Muybridge’s racing horse (or other figure movement studies) gives a sense of the evolution of a movement, and viewing one very quickly after the other (as in Muybridge’s “zoopraxiscope”) creates the illusion of moving image (and as such was precursor to cinema, animation, video).
• Film appears to be literally moving image(s), but in fact it’s composed of static image shown in sequence, 23-25 per second.
• Photography can break down small chunks of time using high-speed flash AND it can do the opposite: reveal longer periods of time within a single image (as in Trillo’s Benzie Building”, 2013)
• What is a photo, then?
  • A (brief) snapshot in time, or a (larger/longer) “parcel of time”? Both of these? Neither? For me it’s both/and, and while time may always be considered in photography, I don’t think all photographers are concerned/preoccupied with time as a concept.