Project 4: Reflections on Single and Multiple Images

For both projects, I selected the revolving door which connects the interior of Lang building and the outdoor rest area as my transitional space. We can regard a revolving door as a cylinder structurally. When people walk through the revolving door, they are tracing the shaping of a circle, more precisely, semicircle because no one will walk in the revolving door for a whole cycle and went back to the starting point. As I have observed, as people are walking though the revolving door, there is a beautiful transition of both the direction and the motion of their body, we can feel the subtle transition of their mood as well. I want to record and depict these changes in my projects.

The first project is to take a single image. I was thinking about expressing the change of people in the transitional space. The changes often need to take place in a long period of time, but I can only use one photo to show that whole process, and I was new to photography, so it was challenging for me. Later I found some inspiration in the first project. When I was walking on my 1st and 2nd route, I used the technique of still camera with moving subject to show the trajectory of people and cars.

I brought my tripod there and tried different perspectives. Initially, I did some sketches from some really good perspective that clearly shows both spaces connected by the traditional space. I started to realize how thoughtless I was not until I arrived there and tried my best to adjust my camera. I met lots of pragmatical issues. My sense of distance is very vague so sometimes my estimation about the distance is very different from  what I expected, that lead to a difference in my expectation and reality. For example, I want to stand at the borderline between the two places, but the thickness was the glass door took a huge proportion of my photo but I could not reduce its thickness by moving back because there is no space for me to move back. And I was actually not familiar about the Lang building, the fact is I could only shoot from a very limited perspective due to the alignment of furniture and the structure of its interior. Next time I will probably do some trials before the formal shoot and do more researches about where I can shoot from. My final work clearly presents the structure and the feature of both spaces, the contrast between these spaces, and the motion of people. However, there is still something I can improve. For example, when I went to the Lang building for my first reshoot, I capture the moment with two people standing outside stilly and having a casual chat. This shows a strong contrast with the people who was walking quickly. In my second reshoot, I failed to capture I picture like that. I thought it would be better if I waited there for that moment or maybe ask someone to pretend they were chatting outside.

The second project is to create a work with multiple images. Using multiple pictures helped to break the limits of representing time. So I was think about using pictures to show a complete process.

Before the reshoot, I figured out a practical and viable perspective. This time I want to be more focused on the change of people. Another practical issue I faced is the passenger’s trajectory does not meet my requirement and I have walk by myself and ask someone to shoot for me. I create 7 shapes which forms the contour of the revolving door, and I placed my pictures at different positions into these shapes to show the whole process of moving. I pretty like the part that I make my pictures larger in the middle and smaller on two sides to make it looks pops up and create a sense of depth. I also enjoyed looking at the change of motion in one image, that makes my image informative. But I think there is a lack of some eye-catching things at the first glance. After looking at other’s work, I found that I do not have a recognizable color tone. I will figure out how to adjust my camera to make the color more vivid next time.

I got a better understanding about space and time after doing these two projects. I learned some really practical skill such as using a tripod. I found out what makes a image attractive by looking at other’s work. And I started to recognize that patience is a really important component of a qualified image.