I embarked on my second photo shoot on the weekend with Pip and Pop in mind and what I learnt from the first shoot. I decided to also play with lighting this time around and made sure I didn’t delete all the photos I didn’t use like I did on the first shoot (I have a strange addiction to deleting things from my computer). I would say I take about 6-9 shots of the same composition on different shutter speed settings. 

200 photos later and I emerged with yet again 9 somewhat successful images with a more interesting setting/narrative.

The hippo falling (which happened naturally) was a great little accident that made me realise how simple narrative gestures can be created and realised through comparing photographs or stills. I prefer the images with lighting as I think it adds far more narrative and looks less contrived.

I think I will have to do one more shoot though. I would like to make a more detailed setting and tidy it up a little bit. I have also grown fond of the triangles on the photographs. They add a great sort of rhythmic element. I will think more about those triangles!

During the process of composing my photographs and thinking about eventual stop animation, I couldn’t help but aspire to the colourful works of ‘Pip and Pop’. An Australian collective, comprised of Tania Schultz and Nicole Andrijevic (primarily Tanya Schultz since 2005), who create magical, colourful and candy filled installations on the floor, made from sand, lollies and small figurines. Visually, I don’t think I could achieve what they do, primarily because I don’t share their resources and could not fill a room with materials. Luckily, I don’t need to fill a room with materials; I just need to fill the screen. They will remain an aesthetic anchor for me with this project and simply looking at their works expanded my ideas of materials.

I read through many resources in my aim to round off my knowledge of them and found a great article that provided me with further insight into their works (below) http://apeonthemoon.com/2012/08/10/pip-pop-transport-you-to-fantastical-sugar-and-glitter-wonderland-installations/.

Below are two excerpts from the article.

I really love the notions of mythologies, folk-takes and children stories found in their work and the notion of utopia. While I don’t think I will be looking at notions of utopia (purely because I have noticed the photographs look much more interesting with dark lighting, therefore adding drama and the suspension of chaos), I do like the notions of mythologies, folk-tales and children stories. I have contemplated looking up mythologies and folk-tales and allowing these narratives to loosely guide me for my next two parts of the project. I’ve considered looking at Yugoslavian mythologies and folk-tales specifically. I’ve also considered asking everyone in the class for an example of a mythology and/or folk-tale from their children and possibly making a gif and animation for everyone’s story. At the present time, these are all possibilities, and will require further consideration.

While considering these notions of mythologies, folk-takes and children stories, it has reasserted my choice in stop animation. The medium, or method (still not sure what to call it), results in a naïve and playful representation, which I think compliments mythologies, folk-tales and children stories quite nicely, as their foundations lie not in our (mine and yours) current reality/dimension/hopefully I’m using the right word and you understand me.

Below are some images of Pip and Pop’s work.

I am experimenting with gifs. I was inspired by how these two guys combined animation in their videos.
https://instagram.com/p/ydhCOBsI11/?taken-by=deewon_d1

In my first gif I produced a gif by producing a character in illustrator and then converting it to a gif in photoshop.

In this second gif, I combined the use of photos and illustrations.

And this last one is me experimenting with layering photos and creating a gif out of it. My grandparents rock~ 

I began with wanting to do some sort of installation where I project video onto objects. I’ve done it before, and I really enjoyed the process because I was able to work physically and digitally with materials. I found this changed after we were shown past student’s examples.

The simple stop animation of an aquatic scene with a boat and oversized fish really appealed to me. I have never done stop animation before and it’s something that is quite playful and naïve, and holds this kind of special childlike magic. So I eventually want to create a stop animation video, but as I’ve never done it before, I decided to slowly working my way towards the process. Therefore, I have begun the first part of the project, “Composition” with still photographs; I figure it seemed a natural place to start.

I want to use the same materials through the whole project, and with stop animation as the end game in mind, I wanted to use materials that were easily manipulated and not fixed. Materials I could easily knock down and rebuild that require no particular technical skill or processes. So I went out and purchased play dough, piping things, glitters, and other bright objects. I gathered up all these materials, along with some of my own and began constructing scenes to photograph.

The link provided to us on the blog to Erik Kim’s Street Photography Blog, (http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2013/10/10/street-photography-composition-lesson-3-diagonals/) has been a huge resource for me. I’ve never been actively in pursuit of a strong composition; I’ve usually just worked by feeling (the feeling that something is missing, or that something doesn’t belong). So this link has basically guided me through my photographs and my process of eliminating/narrowing down images.

The images below are the first shoot I did with my materials. There are three images, one with triangles, the other leading lines and the last without any marks on it. I was doing this basically to see how strong the images were compositionally using triangles and diagonal lines.

One issue that arose when looking back on the photographs was that what looked beautiful in three-dimensional space as a sculptural piece, didn’t exactly translate as interesting or strong in a photograph. Furthermore, I found the more pastel colours used in images 5 – 9, wasn’t as exciting as the neon’s used in images 1 – 4.

Based on this, I did decide to stick with the neon colours for my next set of photographs and therefore decided to no longer use the latex support. I do however believe the latex support did make a good foundation and added interest, so I think at some point I will attempt to make another latex support that chromatically compliments the use of neon’s.