Assignment 2: Response to Tutor's Comments.

Again I was delighted with my tutor's comments and, yet again, not only the way he critically assessed the assignment itself, but also the though way that he has looked at and commented on my learning log with constructive criticism.  The assignment itself he felt was successful 'This is a well prepared and lucidly written up assignment in a successful realisation of the assignment brief'.  He made the comment that I could have added more drama to the image by shooting from a lower angle.  I take this on board but I had to work quickly and my subjects, sheep, were not cooperating particularly well.  I had to use a tripod in order to ensure that the camera position was identical in the two images and also to provide a rock solid platform for the long exposure shot.  I had my tripod on it's lowest setting without splaying the legs which I did not have time to do.  Unfortunately when I returned with a view to re-shooting the assignment the sheep had been moved.  He commented that the blurb on the back cover lacked margins, which I have corrected and he questioned the use of a red font for my quote.  I did want the quote to stand out from the rest of the blurb but agree that the red was a touch strident and incongruous so I have changed it to black.  I include the altered book cover below:

He feels that my learning log is coming on well and comments: '...you have settled quickly into the module and there's a refreshing sense of experimentation and inquiry motivating your learning log.'  I was absolutely thrilled with this comment as lack of experimentation and creativity has always been a criticism with past modules.  I hope to build on this in the future.  It was suggested that I could add some images to my research piece on Tama Dezso, which I have done.

It was felt that my reading was coming on well, although I might like to broaden it with conceptual or historical writing now and again.  The course reader, Liz Wells was recommended as a source and , as well as the essay by Karin Becker, I have read one by Edward Weston which I need to record in my blog.  Some more books were suggested for my reading list which I shall acquire.

All in all I am delighted.

Assignment 2: A Photographic Book Cover; Final Submission.

After a lot of thought I have finally made my decision on which image to submit for this assignment.  All my initial designs, thought processes and research are on previous blogs.

To view large, click on an image

Final Choice

Far From the Madding Crowd

Alternatives

Far From The Madding Crowd

Fahrenheit 451

Assignment 2: A Photographic Book Cover; Fahrenheit 451

Before finally committing myself to any one choice of book or cover, I decided to experiment with another of the titles I had designed:  'Fahrenheit 451' by Ray Bradbury.  This bleak novel is set in a post-literate future where books are banned as being the source of all discord and unhappiness.  Instead of being treasured and valued by society, they are burned.  This would be the theme of my book cover.

  When we had our wood-burning stove lit and it had burned down nicely to glowing logs, I set up the camera and then placed an old pamphlet that we had read on it and photographed it as it burned. I then opened a photoshop document set to the actual size of a paperback book and imported my image.  I wanted this to form the cover background and so resized the image to fill the document, partially desaturated it and applied a gaussian blur to give an impressionist feel to it.  I then re-imported the image, this time cropped to square and with a black border to help it to stand out.  Finally I added the titles and blurb.  I used a mixture of Georgia and Times New Roman and experimented with both black and red font to see which suited the best.

On balance I prefer the second version.  I think that the black stands out better on the title but I found that the red reads more easily for the blurb on the back cover.

Assignment 2: A Photographic Book Cover; Far From The Madding Crowd

Having researched all of the books suggested in the assignment brief read 1984 (many years ago), read Far From the Madding Crowd (again years ago and recently for this assignment) and watched the films of Far from the Madding Crowd and Remains of the Day I settled on Far Far From the Madding Crowd for my assignment image.

Of all the books listed, this is the one that attracts me the most.  I think that I am drawn to this book as I have a rural background and have a passion for the landscape, countryside and the play of light on the land.  Hardy's descriptions of the Victorian countryside are so evocative of my childhood.  Not that I am a Victorian child, but the pace of life in the 1950s was still slower and things were only just beginning to change.  As a young child, I remember going to watch my great grandfather at harvest time working on top of a thrashing machine and I remember stooking sheaves of wheat and barley by hand following the reaper binder.  I worked in land-work gangs performing most farming tasks by hand and, as a child, remember the family pig being kept in the pig sty at the bottom of the garden and the screeching of the pig at the annual pig killing.  I envisaged a landscape image for the cover (perhaps wrap-around), but wanted to move away from a 'chocolate box' rural scene and try for something more creative and experimental.  To this end I have been trying out a new 10 stop ND filter in order to be able to achieve ultra long exposures to create movement in the clouds.  I wanted a moody, atmospheric scene to reflect the tragic nature of the book and planned to increase this effect by converting my image to black and white.  One of my memories of the book (and film) are of sheep farming and I remember one of the most dramatic incidents being the stabbing of a flock of sheep to save their lives, so I hope to find sheep out in the Lincolnshire Wolds , if I could find some in a suitable location.  This, actually, became one of my biggest problems; as well as I know the Wolds, I was surprised at how cropped the land is when it came to finding sheep.  I knew of one nearby sheep farm and started there, but I just couldn't find the view that I wanted; either they were not co-operative or were in a field that  wasn't suitable.  Fortunately, while out walking on the Viking way on the Wolds escarpment looking towards Lincoln.

Conceptualisation
I wanted a photograph for the cover of the book that would reflect both the rural nature of the book and my childhood.  Agricultural life plays a large part in the book, especially sheep farming so I wanted to include this aspect.  As this is a book full of tragedy, I didn't want a chocolate box image taken in bright cheery lighting so deliberately chose a dull gloomy day, used the 10 stop ND filter to the sky to add drama and then converted to a moody black and white image to reflect the book's tragic aspect.

The Design

Capturing and processing the initial image
 I came across the right setting with curious sheep that didn't head for the horizon as soon as I appeared.  Having found them I returned late on a gloomy afternoon hoping for the atmosphere that I envisaged.  Below is my first, straight, image.  There was too much foreground but I knew that I could crop the image to what I wanted.

I then attached the 10 stop filter, changed the camera setting to bulb and took a 3 minute exposure.  The sky looked interesting but I thought that I would need to apply the ND grad feature in Lightroom during post processing.

 As I expected the sheep moved during the shot and the long exposure didn't capture them apart from their faint outlines on the skyline. Having processed both images in Lightroom I then combined them in Photoshop to achieve the image below.

 Once I had an image with sharp sheep and a streaked sky I converted it to black and white, increasing the contrast to produce the image below.

 There was now too much foreground in the picture so I cropped to the image below.

 I knew that I wanted the book cover to be a total wrap around one so I again cropped the picture from the right so that when I made the cover the sky on the front cover would appear to streak from the centre of the cover, rather than from the spine.

Producing the cover.

I measured the dimensions of several paperback books  and decided to apply the proportions of my copy of the novel in a new document in Photoshop at 300 dpi.  Having done this I opened my final cropped image and dragged it into the document.  I had to resize and move the picture to get it in the correct position.  Using the ruler facility I drew two lines to show the position of the spine and then reduced their opacity.  Next came titles and blurb for which I used a mixture of Georgia and Times New Roman font at different sizes.  I chose the muted green to suit the cover and reflect the rural nature of the novel with other colours to pick out other aspects.  I found the penguin logo in google images and used photoshop to erase the white background before placing it on the cover.  Finally I flattened the layers in the document and saved as a high quality JPEG and also as a TIFF file.  The only thing that I don't like about this is the fact that I have part images of two sheep on the spine.

  I experimented with different layouts using this photograph.  Here I cropped the original image yet again and then put the three separate images in different layers which I moved over and behind each other to achieve the cover below.  This meant that I didn't have to draw lines to show the spine as the darker image delineates it.  I am not too sure about the piece of hedge on the spine image though.

For this version I tried an idea that I have seen in other novels, where the photograph only occupies the front of the cover and other imagery occupies the back, or even plain white overlaid by the blurb.  I don't particularly like just white so decided to use my sky enlarged to extend over the back cover and the spine.

Only a few days after working on this cover design I bought 'Mountains of the Mind' by Robert MacFarlane, an author often writing about the landscape and nature and who is seen as the inheritor of a tradition of nature writing that includes the likes of John Muir, Richard Jefferies and Edward Thomas.  His books have won The Guardian First Book Award and also the Boardman/Tasker Award for Mountain Literature.  I was interested to see that the cover design for this book was in the exact format of mine above and I include images below:

In the same way that I treated my cover, the designer here has place a photograph on the cover with space for the writing and for the back and spine has used an enlargement of the snow part of the image to provide a plain but textured surface for the blurb and spine title in the same way that I have used cloud.
What have I learned
Despite finding this assignment difficult to get my head round I have enjoyed both the intellectual and technical challenges it presented.  I have learned a great deal about book covers and found their conceptualisation fascinating.  I have enjoyed attempting to conceptualise my image for this book and also trying to come up with a more creative and experimental shot.  I have learned a great deal about using a 10 stop filter and also about creating Intentional Camera Movement shots.  I have particularly enjoyed extending my photoshop skills; working with layers and combining two images was also a new experience for me, despite producing 'colour-pop' images for fun in the past.

Photographers Who have Inspired Me During the Course of This Assignment
I enjoy the work of many photographers but I have particularly been looking at the exponents of long exposure photography, especially when they work in black and white.  Four names stand out in my mind:  Matej Michalik who is based in Slovakia, Michael Kenna, Andrew Gibson and Pete Bridgewood who is based in Southwell.  Mattej Michalik specialises in black and white long exposure and many of his images have those dramatic skies for which I was seeking for this assignment.  Michael Kenna again works in black and white, usually in square format and regularly uses long exposure.  There is much about the work of these three photographers that reminds me of Ansel Adams.  Pete Bridgewood is a GP based in Southwell and he writes a monthly article for Outdoor Photography.  Not all of his images are black and white but he often uses long exposures to enhance his photography.
http://www.matejmichalik.com/
http://www.michaelkenna.net/index2.php
http://www.andrewsgibson.com/blog/about/
http://www.petebridgwood.com/wp/

Assignment 2: A Photographic Book Cover

Looking at the list of books, I had read and seen the film of Far From the Madding Crowd, both of which I enjoyed very much.  I was familiar with 1984 and Farenheit 451 from school days and have watch the film of The Remains of the Day.  I was not inspired by any of the other titles having read the blurbs on line.  I am mostly drawn to the Thomas Hardy but also have some potential ideas for 1984 and Farenheit 451.  My sketches and thoughts are illustrated below:-

1984

 For 1984, the theme that springs to mind is: 'Big Brother is Watching You'.  This evoked images of security cameras and an 'eye in the sky'.  To this end I have been out and taken some images of security cameras locally and aim to take a close up of my son's/wife's eye.  These would be positioned on the cover as illustrated.  Although having a preference for wrap around images for covers, I don't think my ideas lend themselves to this technique.  I feel that it is more suited to such as the following books:-

I am not keen, however, on white covers, especially on the back, as in Le Carre and Strange Affair by Peter Robinson; I find these rather cold.

The back of Rogue Male is better but again all black is rather bleak - perhaps what was intended:

1984 is rather bleak, though, so maybe white or black would suit it.  I will give this some thought.

Fahrenheit 451
The main theme of this book that jumps to mind is that of 'burning books'.  I immediately thought of making use of our wood burning stove, here, perhaps with an actual book burning on it. Perhaps an act of sacrilege, so maybe the Guardian media magazine instead which would be used to light the stove anyway.  Here again I feel that the format of the above books would best suit, although, again, I shy away from white for the rest of the cover and may search the internet for a 'fiery' background, maybe with the opacity reduced.

 Far From the Madding Crowd
Of all the books listed, this is the one that attracts me the most.  I think that I am drawn to this book as I have a rural background and have a passion for the landscape, countryside and the play of light on the land.  Hardy's descriptions of the Victorian countryside are so evocative of my childhood.  Not that I am a Victorian child, but the pace of life in the 1950s was still slower and things were only just beginning to change.  As a young child, I remember going to watch my great grandfather at harvest time working on top of a thrashing machine and I remember stooking sheaves of wheat and barley by hand following the reaper binder.  I worked in land-work gangs performing most farming tasks by hand and, as a child, remember the family pig being kept in the pig sty at the bottom of the garden and the screeching of the pig at the annual pig killing.  I envisage a landscape image for the cover (perhaps wrap-around), but would like to move away from a 'chocolate box' rural scene and try for something more creative and experimental.  To this end I have been trying out a new 10 stop ND filter in order to be able to achieve ultra long exposures to create movement in the clouds.  I am thinking of a moody, atmospheric scene to reflect the tragic nature of the book.  One of my memories of the book (and film) are of sheep farming and I remember one of the most dramatic incidents being the stabbing of a flock of sheep to save their lives, so sheep may feature, if I can find some in a suitable location.

I think this may suit a wrap around image for the cover, using one image or even one image copied and reversed to produce one mirror image as in Lewis Man by Peter May.

Alternatively I may go for one image for the front with a plain back as in Strange affair which has a smaller image of the cover photo on the spine.

Experiments with a 10 Stop 'Big Stopper' Filter.

Thinking towards Assignment 2, I am considering using Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd for my book cover design and am looking towards an unpalatable  landscape image but I am wanting something out of the ordinary.  To this end I have invested in a 10 stop 'Big Stopper' Filter in order to be able to take some ultra long exposure images.  My first experiments are detailed below.  All are taken with a Canon 7D with either a Sigma 10-20 mm lens or a Canon 17-85. I used f16 for my unfiltered shots as I feel that the lenses perform best at this aperture and give good depth of field.  For the filtered images I used the smallest aperture available in order to obtain the longest exposure.  A tripod was used in all cases.

To view large click on an image.

43sec @ f25

1/40 @ f16

The first of the two images above are with the filter and the second without.  In the long exposure image there is some streaking in the sky but not a lot.  There is movement blur in the reeds.

30 sec @ f25

1/80 sec @ f16

In this pair there is hardly any streaking in the clouds of the long exposure shot but the water has been smoothed compared to the shorter exposure.

30 sec @ f25

1/30 @ f16

Again little evidence of streaking in the clouds in the long exposure shot but the water is smoothed out compared to the shorter exposure.

The above images were taken in the early afternoon with the sun out.  Even with the 10 stop ND filter it was not possible to achieve a long enough exposure to secure more dramatic images.

133 sec @ f22

This image is taken at the same location after the sun had gone behind the large bank of clouds.  Now it was possible to use a much longer exposure to give definite streaking in the sky and smooth the water.  To enhance the moody effect I converted to black and white and cropped to square.

122 sec @ f22

1/25 sec @ f16

These two images were taken at Flamborough Head towards the end of the afternoon with lower light levels which meant that the filter enabled longer exposure times.  The long exposure image shows  much more dramatic streaking in the sky and water is totally smoothed out.

122 sec @ f22

122 sec @ f22

1/25 sec @ f22

Here again there is more dramatic streaking in the sky with the filtered images and the water has been completely smoothed with a slight milkiness.

3 sec @ f8

Here I used the filter to give me a long enough exposure for a handheld ICM shot.

I have found that, in order to get the best out of the filter, it needs to be used either early or late in the day or in dull, gloomy conditions.  I do think, though, that it has great potential and I shall certainly be experimenting with it for Assignment 2 to try and get that 'different' image.