Experimental Photography

Emily Monsey

High speed photography

High speed photography is a method used to slow down and freeze objects of movement in an image. This is a very popular method that is commonly used in photography as it is a very interesting way of shooting movement as it allows you to capture things that the human eye cannot see with the help of an extremely fast shutter speed that can capture the image extremely fast. I personally really like this method of taking images as I think it is a really interesting and unique way of showing movement, especially as it is a way to slow down a moment in an image that you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to see. In order to take a high speed photograph you have to adjust the camera’s shutter speed as this is the thing that enables your camera to work so quickly and makes it able to capture even fast movement and freeze it in place instead of using a longer shutter speed which captures movement actually happening instead of stopping it in time and freezing it like this. When researching this style of photography I found that a lot of the images have been purposely set up, for example there were many image showing fruit being dropped in water or water balloons being popped. This means quite a lot of preparation in the production stage would be essential to ensure you are going to get the images you want, this is also a fairly time consuming method of photography as it takes a lot of time preparing before the images are even taken. You also have to take the time to get the image perfect for the image. This can take a really long time and is really dependant on luck as you can sometimes be really lucky when taking the image and it can result in a really effective final image, however it can also go wrong and not capture what you wanted meaning you have to continuously repeat this process until you have the image you want. Things such as breaking glass or popping water balloons can work really well, however it is hard to capture the image at the right time as it has to be very specific when capturing the right part and doing it at the right time.

I have considered choosing this method for my final images and the things I could include for my subject for the photographs could be things such as, water balloons, light bulbs smashing, use of food colouring/powder. The equipment I would need for this style would vary as it would be dependant on what the subject of the photographs would be as I would use several different objects and see which work well and which don’t. The only thing that would continuously stay the same would be the camera and this would be kept at an extremely fast shutter speed in order to quickly capture the image and freeze any movement the object has to create an effective image. I would also have to consider safety equipment as there are potential dangers with this particular method, for example, smashing glass would mean I have to wear protective glasses and also gloves to avoid injury. Any editing that may need to be done to highlight any parts of the image or to enhance or better the quality would also need to be done on Photoshop which can be easily done and this shouldn’t be as time consuming as the actual image taking part of this method of photography.

Multiple Exposure

Multiple exposure photography is a way of taking a photograph and then overlaying it with another images or several different images. This can work really well and be very effective as it can help to make your original image much more interesting and can also convey different themes or moods that you want your images to have. For example I could take an image of a model and then use a second image of some scenery or a landscape that I liked and as I have chosen fear as my theme I could make these second image really dark and quite mysterious looking to add to the original image and make it show that theme of fear a little more. This is a fairly simple method as it means that no setting changes have to be made necessarily as you could do the editing later in Photoshop or on another editing software, however apart from editing the images, the camera settings don’t have to change as it’s up to you when it comes to taking the images and how you would like them to appear in your final photographs. When researching this style of photography I found that many of the images show themes of nature throughout as they include images of trees and plants that overlay their original image which is most commonly a models face or body. This is something I really liked as the plants often frame the face and hair of the models really well which gives a really interesting final look for the image, I also really like that the plants often continue off the model and dangle from them as this just makes the image far more interesting and much more detailed than if it were to just cut off in to a straight line and not continue at all.

Potential ideas for this method of photography could include possibly only overlaying the image over a small portion or a particular section of your choice of the model as this would add an interesting twist instead of using the multiple exposure effect across the whole of the model/original image. This could convey many of the different themes, however as I have chosen ‘fear’ as my theme I think I could explore many different ideas as it is just dependant on the images you take and how well you have combined the two or more images. If I were to use these technique when taking my own photographs I would use my first and base image of a model and convey fear through the model’s facial expressions. I would then take my second image of a particular landscape instead of plants as I feel that using something like flowers would lighten the mood of the image which may confuse the themes. I feel that using a landscape could potentially work really well as I could take it using a black and white filter and take quite a mysterious looking image if that was possible. On the other hand I could contrast the theme of fear from the expression of the model with imagery of flowers and this could possibly work well also.

I am definitely considering using this method for my final images as I feel that this could be really effective and could also potentially link really well with my theme if the right photographs were taken and if they were blended well together.