Projected Imagery

In the last four months I’ve attended two plays that have utilized image projection to great affect within their productions. I’m usually not much of a threatre goer so I was pleasantly surprised and fascinated by the use of these special affects. A court scene in “House of Atreus” at UBC back in the fall, included a video projection of a jury that was perfectly timed to interact with the live actors and their movements on stage. More recently, I attended the Electic Company’s production of “Studies in Motion” and was blown away by their extensive use of still imagery projected onto moving screens to enhance the idea of Muybridge’s work in motion studies.

Doll baby

And now to segue into how this relates to me and photography… Last week I took photos to be used as image projections in the production of “Bear”, opening this week on February 2 at UBC. The above doll baby made for a very creepy subject (which I’ve made creepier with a colour treatment), and I’m curious to see how she’ll fit into the rest of the play.

THE THEATRE AT UBC MFA DIRECTING PROGRAM PRESENTS:
BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME by Terrence McNally, Directed by Camyar Chai
BEAR by Rebecca Beegle, Directed by Joanna Garfinkel
It’s the lonely science of ventriloquism versus the creation of a perfectly safe suit in this love-and-death chronicle of how one married couple finally achieves their dreams, care of Pyramid Lake, Nevada. JimJim’s fullbody suit and Ruthie’s multiple voices create unique barriers to their loving communion. Though the two are at odds, they have together hired the Dream Ranger to emcee an Awards Ceremony, and along the way they are granted a celebrity cameo in the form of a Canadian bear-proof suit-maker.
…
February 2 – 4, 2006 – 7:30 pm
DOROTHY SOMERSET STUDIOHUT M-18, 6361 University Boulevard
DOUBLE BILL $5 TICKETS: 604.822.2678
INFO: www.theatre.ubc.ca

Beam me up

In a follow up to the entry about Utata weekend projects from the other day, “Beam Me Up” has been launched over at Utata.org . You can check it out here. There are a few photos of interesting experiments with long exposures using flashlights included, and the use of these as a light source in general gives me a few ideas…

Art of the street

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The dark One of the ongoing photographic projects I’ve undertaken since moving to Vancouver is the documentation of local street artist’s work. I try to keep an eye out when wandering the city and photograph new paste-ups or stencils as soon as I see them because due to the weather and strict anti-graffiti laws, very few pieces stay around for long. I’ve always had an interest in Graffiti but not to the same degree until now because the Vancouver scene distinguishes itself with interesting styles and distinctive work. Some may consider this sort of thing vandalism but I like the idea of bringing art to the street, because it adds a more interesting aspect to the visual landscape of the city and takes art out of the safe and typical environment of a gallery.

Street art is defined as any art developed in a public space, and can include traditional aerosol paint graffiti work, but encompasses many other media and techniques such as wheat pasting, stickers, and stencil graffiti.

Little man inside a ghost Introspective
A favorite of mine is the work of The Dark, for his large scale, very detailed, stencils and paste-ups. He is one of the most active contributers to Vancouver’s tight street art scene, along with Office Supplies Incorporated and Weakhand. The Dark always throws something up on the boarded over store front on the corner of Nelson and Granville, while both Weaky and OSI currently have new stuff up all over the city, so keep an eye out for it.

This week two gallery shows will begin after the cross country moving service gets all of the art here! Vancouver street artists. “Plumage” opens at Midtown (438 Pender St.) on Friday January 27th at 8pm, and on Saturday “Faces of Basco” opens at Les Gallery (1879 Powell St.) at 7pm.

Cuban Soul

In my quest for a suitable venue to show my work this year I came across the wonderful little gallery at Havana Restaurant on Commercial Drive. The current exhibition is called Cuban Soul, featuring the work of Surrey-based photographer Gabor Gasztonyi. His black & white photographs were taken in the barrios of Havana, Cuba and feature the beauty and energy of the people who live there. “They are some of the most beautiful people in the world, full of life and music, this comes through in their faces, even though the communist regime limits their freedom.”

Check it out soon because the show ends this Saturday January 28th.

Utata Weekend Projects

Over on the photo sharing community of Flickr there is an interesting and very active group called Utata that was originally started by Catherine Jamieson. She wanted to create a salon in the traditional sense, where people could gather to talk, share, learn and grow. The group has become a very vibrant community that I’m very proud to be a contributing member of. It’s one of the few groups I make an effort to keep up with (besides Vandigicam) because it seems to attract a higher calibre of photographer and many of the members are flickr contacts that I admire.

Dark goddess 7 Light my way Alien woman modeling wedding dresses

It’s a constant source of inspiration and ideas because there is often a new project on the go to get everyone out and shooting. This past weekend’s project was the theme “Beam me up” – photos taken in general darkness but lit with an artificial directed beam of light. The above three photos are ones that I chose to submit and I’m looking forward to the end results of the group project.

Click here for more Utata projects.

Polaroid Transfers

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If you’re looking for something new to try with your photography I highly recommend experimenting with some of the alternative photographic processes that are available. Years ago I took a workshop on Polaroid Transfer that I quite enjoyed, and was very happy with the results from the session:

Emulsion transfer

Dye transfer

About these prints: the top photo is an emulsion transfer and the bottom is a dye transfer, both from polaroids. The technique is one in which the image of a “peel-apart” polaroid negative is transferred onto a non-photographic surface, such as paper, fabric, vellum, or wood.

“Polaroid transfer begins with the exposure of the color film, either in camera or through an enlarger. Instead of allowing the full development time, the film halves are separated before the dyes can migrate from the negative portion. The negative is placed face down on a damp receptor, most commonly a sheet of watercolor paper, and pressed firmly with a roller. After a short period, one to twenty minutes, depending on the artist’s particular technique, the negative is carefully peeled back. If all went well, the fully formed and developed image is now present on the receptor surface.”

A good place to start for further information on techniques for this process and a listing of the appropriate types of films can be found on the Polaroid website. There is also a good description of the difference between emulsion and dye transfer here.

Scanner Photography

An interesting item on the scanner photography project of Mike Golembewski was brought to my attention today via Utata. He’s spent the last several years experimenting with homemade digital cameras created from combining a flatbed scanner and a large format film camera.

“Instead of building a camera that mimicked the functionality of a traditional photographic camera, I had stumbled across a new tool for examining the relationships between time, motion, and image. What I thought would be a two week art project has turned into one that has lasted for almost three years, and shows little sign of stopping.”

The image gallery of his website contains a selection of the best results from his experiments. There are some good stock photos but the main focus of the website is on the more abstract pieces. The work is very surreal with a similar look in some respects to pinhole photography or toy camera shots, and with bizarre distortion to moving objects.