Whilst researching on Christmas and waste, I came across an interesting article on Avso.org : http://www.avso.org/interior-design-ideas/works-of-art-from-garbage-and-waste-of-vik-muniz
Brazilian artist Vik Muniz creates larges pieces of art work from garbage. He is a volunteer at the United Nations who believes that you can create art from any material. Besides garbage he uses other materials such as diamonds, sugars, chocolate syrup and more.
Though slightly discouraged from my previous experience in shopping places, I still wanted to focus on the problem of intense and costly shopping, costly to the individual and to planet Earth.
As a boy who grew up in Malaysia, where in most households including mine did not celebrate Christmas, the only time I gave presents if any was during a family member’s birthday. Friends birthdays never necessarily called for a present, only the family. And in my family, I was taught since childhood by my mother that the best way to give someone a present was to make one. I did not necessarily like the idea at the time, especially when receiving. My mother would urge me to make her a card for her birthday, she would tell me that she really wanted one, and I remember her being very happy upon receiving it, at least she showed it that way. Until today, I have never bought my parents a single present. So like my mother did, I want to encourage people to make their gifts, not buy them. Handmade gifts are more thoughtful and personal, hence will be better appreciated as compared to giving just another consumer product. You can buy something someone you know needs, but then again they can buy them themselves. “Waste issues go beyond the consumer, they start at the raw materials stage and continue after disposal stage” Borromeo, L. (2013). By making your presents, you would save both the private and environmental costs that inevitably arises when buying them.
The pinhole camera is the simplest possible camera. All it is is a dark box with a tiny hole on one side of the box, and a piece of film or photographic paper on the opposite side. Simple ones are incredibly easy to construct, some easier than the birthday cards I made for my mother. In the 21st century, a camera is a complex piece of tool, expensive in most cases, too sophisticated and fragile for children to handle. But it isn’t necessarily the case, I believe a pinhole camera can be assembled and operated by a 12-year old with a simple set of instructions. All the necessary materials can be found from the waste we produce over Christmas ; boxes, cards, aluminium cans, strings and ribbons. I want to encourage and inspire people to stop buying gifts and to make them instead. In modern times with heavy industrialisation and mass production we are grown to believe that home made presents aren’t good enough anymore, that a good gift should come with price tag. There are plenty of things which can easily be made by an ordinary person without specialized skills in whatever it is, the pinhole camera is one example. It is unbelievably easy to make. Simple, yet powerful. Compared to a modern camera, a pinhole camera seems to the vast majority of the people an obsolete item, they begin to imagine a dark, blurry and indistinguishable image, they think that it is incapable of producing good results. But the truth is in fact the contrary. With the absence of a lens, a pinhole camera has infinite depth of field, everything in the frame, whether inches away or in a distance will be in focus. A pinhole camera has no lens distortion( a major problem with camera with lenses), wide angle images remain absolutely rectilinear. What better gift to give than a personal, home made gift made by recycling everyday items, a tool capable of producing beautiful images.
I begin researching on the issues relating to Christmas. I found that, as with many other traditional festivals and celebrations around the world such as the Chinese New Year, Hari Raya Aidil Fitri ( festival after Ramadan ) and others, we see a huge rise in waste over these periods of time. The Guardian called it “the most wasteful time of the year” in one of their articles on the topic of waste, e-waste, over-consumption and recycling written in 2013. Most consumer electronics such as toasters, phones, televisions have a “built-in obsolescence” which is the reason why such products last only a couple of years. Of broken, out-dated, ugly and unwanted items, the UK produces around 915,000 tones of e-waste each year.
According to London’s waste clearance company Enviro Waste, 20,000 tonnes of turkey, 4,200 tonnes of aluminium foil, 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper, 125,000 tonnes of plastic packaging, 6 million trees, and 1 billion Christmas cards gets thrown away over Christmas. These numbers are extremely huge and makes for a totally unsustainable festivity. “Having a Merry Christmas could end in a rubbish New Year”, warns the Independent in one of their articles entitled “High environmental price of a very merry Christmas”.
But Christmas isn’t the only festive culprit behind our over consumption and destruction of planet Earth, many other major festivals and celebrations around the world are to blame as well. Realistically, it is very difficult to tell people to buy less food, many are just trying to be good hosts, the tradition of giving presents is so vital in the modern Christmas it would be impossible to ask people to stop. ‘Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop shopping’ in the documentary film “What would Jesus buy?” tries to do exactly that. This movie recommended by Marianne during our briefing of Task two was very entertaining, funny, and to me, a foreigner who has never really celebrated Christmas, eye opening. The movie shines light on the issues of the over-commercialization of Christmas, excessive consumerism and materialism. It isn’t surprising then, that the statistic that struck me the most is that according to Triodos Bank, people in the UK spend 2.6 billion pounds worth of unwanted gifts for Christmas. 32% of the people receive at least one unwanted present every year with an average value of 155 pounds. A very high personal and environmental price to pay for nothing gained.
To try communicate this issue, I began by wandering into malls, toy stores and retail outlets with the aim of photographing the worrying activity of intense Christmas shopping. Unfortunately, this task turned out to be extremely difficult. I was kicked out by security of almost every shop or mall I went into. Leeds Trinity, Smyths, The Entertainer and a few others. The reasons were consistent throughout. Photographing children was the security threat I was causing. Even their parents consent, which I verbally asked for and received, was not enough, I still was not allowed to. I was asked each time to delete the photos I took, but because I shot I film, I got away with the photos which I will attach below. I knew that there was some sort of sensitivity around photographing children, but it was only through this experience that I realize truly how sensitive of an issue it is here. The case is different in Malaysia.
Links :
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/christmas-waste-green-recycling
http://www.envirowaste.co.uk/feeds/news/christmas-waste-statistics–making-christmas-green.aspx
I really enjoyed everything that I have learned throughout this task. The workshops set for us have been extremely advantageous and many. I have learnt to operate studio lighting and experimented with many different styles of lighting. I booked two studio sessions to to practice, and have shot in both analogue and digital in the studios. I learnt a lot in this area, and though most of it came from practicing, a big part of it came from Alex Vans live demonstration of setting up the lighting. We were in a small group of 4, and this was highly effective as we were able to ask questions on the spot and immediately be shown the solutions.
While editing the hundreds of pictures I took over the summer, I have learnt specific Photoshop skills to endorse my editing process. This I have done very slowly and allowed many distractions to come in the way. I know I shouldn’t have, because not only does it leave less time for other responsibilities, it inhibits further practice and more skills that I could have learnt from editing all these different pictures, but I simply find it difficult to actively motivate myself with the absence of a deadline for these photos. I could have probably learnt much more had I diligently pushed myself to continue to edit them.
I was really looking forward to the Outdoor Flash workshop, and by my own mistake counted on it to teach me the use of a flash. After finding out that it was postponed, I took more time than I should have to learn it, and left it to the last minute to do more tests than what I have done. I volunteered to shoot a Cider Festival at Leftbank on Saturday 16/10/16, and I had planned to use this opportunity to practice the use of flash. Unfortunately, I did not check the flash properly before I set out, and found that the battery I had in the flash was too low in energy to shoot. I partly blame Cannon for bad design for it does not have a battery power indicator and still turns on even when it is too low to shoot with. Another one of my mistakes was focusing too much on producing an output from these technical skills which I am learning that was visually beautiful or “successful”, which I realised only later on was not the important bit, but instead the learning of the whole process.
Besides what is shown on my blog, a weakness of mine is being able to manually focus accurately with speed on a camera. This skill is especially in need when shooting analogue without the function of the auto-focus, something which I am extremely used to when shooting in digital. Up till two weeks ago I have only been using the college’s film camera to shoot analogue, hence the lack of practice, but now I have recently purchased my own film camera, and have been shooting very frequently with it. This process of development I find is too hard to put down in words, or to show evidence of improvement, but I nonetheless consider it one of the most important skills that I have actively set out to learn.
Here is a brilliant Natural Light vs Flash comparison :-
In this video, Manny Ortiz showed me some amazing examples of what a single flash can do to give a very different look to a picture compared to natural light. He shoots the same scene in both natural and artificial light, demonstrating the amazing capabilities of one flash, deepening my knowledge in the possibilities of flash. Shooting during the sunset, the flash allows both the background(sunset) and subject(model) to be “correctly” exposed, with the beautiful warm colors of the sunset showing and a well exposed model, when in natural light the background would have been over-exposed and washed out if the subject was well exposed. This is done by exposing for the sunset instead of the model, and the using the flash to illuminate the model, producing a very beautiful and dynamic image.
This video by Bernie Raffe made me realise better why my photos with Harry in which I pointed the flash toward the wall on the right did not turn out so well. He explains that even though the flash is pointing at an angle away from the subject, there is still some direct light coming from the side of the flash hitting the subject, producing that harsh lighting.
Bernie then solves this problem simply by blocking the side of the flash with his hand, producing an obvious improvement from when shot without blocking.
Immediately the image looks much more professional, with a soft and narrow lighting. This is a top tip I definitely will not forget when shooting with a flash gun in the future.
In these video tutorials by Tony and Chelsea Northup and Lynda.com, I learnt a lot more about the flash gun and the ability of one single flash gun to create many different types of lighting simply by bouncing light off of walls, ceilings, etc. If there’s one thing I can say I know about using a flash gun in photography, it is that direct flash is almost never a good idea. Direct flash produces a harsh reflective light onto the subject, an unpleasant catch light in the eyes(if the subject has any), and many unattractive specs of highlights across the surface of the subject. Tony clearly shows us the difference by first shooting with his built-in camera flash, then with a flashgun pointing directly at his subjects face, then pointing the flash directly upwards to bounce light off the ceiling, showing a massive improvement in the image when the light bounced instead of being direct.
With the flash gun being a very small light source, which produces harsh highlights on the subject, pointing the flash toward the ceiling allows us to turn the ceiling into a large light source which creates a much more diffused and pleasant lighting. The same applies to walls. Bouncing light off walls on different sides can produces different styles such as broad or narrow lighting which Tony demonstrates in his video.
Here are my test shots using the flash gun:-
I like this last shot very much, but my favorite for this shoot is still the image at the very top, shot with the flash pointing directly upwards. It produced a very soft and even lighting entire subject without any harsh shadows or highlights. It had a very natural and pleasant look.
For the shots in which I bounced the flash off the right wall, I think the wall was too close to my subject and this produced a very harsh light. I should have moved him further away from the wall, or at least excluded the bright highlighted wall from the frame.
In this video tutorial by PhotographersOnUtube, I learnt about all the basic functions and settings of the flash gun ; difference between manual and automatic(ettl) mode, zoom function which used to match whatever focal length the camera is shooting in, and finally the different angles of the flash head.
The zoom on the flash can also be set manually or automatically, and should ideally follow the focal length of the lens in order focus the light correctly, for example if shooting with a telephoto lens with the subject further away, the zoom on the flash should also be set to focus the light further into the distance in order to illuminate the subject properly.
This video also shows the different effects produced by different angles of the flash head. Shooting a portrait of his subject, he starts from pointing the flash directly at his subject, then at an angle of 45Degree, then 60, 75, and finally 90(pointing directly upwards). This clear comparison gave me a much better understanding of the function of flashing and different angles.
Here is a little collection photographs by William Klein involving painting with light which I absolutely love. Simple but very beautiful.
With its multitude of variables such as lighting position, angle, number of lights and so on, for me, studio lighting has always been a daunting and confusing topic. But with both Alex’s guidance and the beautiful chart below, my continued my practice in the studio with Jan and Karla. 
zenkhyeooi 