Vanished...With a Trace: a theatrical narrative of long exposure night photography

     So the first few weeks of this summer I took a Night and Low light photography class.  A lot of what we shoot are daytime outdoor weddings, but ocassionally we get to shoot receptions that carry on into the night or may someday have a candlelit wedding ceremony.  I thought this particular class would be a good excuse to play with the settings on my camera as well as practice with high ISO's, long shutter speeds, and low light situations.  I had three weeks to come up with and execute a final project; which was to be made up of a 10 photo series.  As I was walking my dogs one night by the playground one of the swings on the swingset was swinging, but nobody was there?  Was it the wind?  Is somebody there?  Thus, I knew I had a concept brewing. 

     When I started this project I wanted to capture the stillness of the night and experiment with long exposure.  I then realized that the stillness was boring, so I added a single aspect or item to each photo that would create drama, movement, or tension in the photo but keep the inherent stillness.  I was hoping to pose many questions in each photo.  What happened?  How long ago?  Who's doing these things? etc.  I've always hated the orangeness of street lights but in these photos it become another motif that I decided to work with.  My intent was to build the tension and the suspense through each photo.  I find shooting with a tripod more challenging than shooting handheld.  I hope everyone enjoys this series.  Take your time looking through each one.  Put yourself in the shoes of a person walking this path and finding these items.  What conclusions do you draw from each place?  Ask yourselves the question an investigator would ask.  Do you naturally start to build a story in your head like I did?  

So what do you think happened?  Comment below with your story!

The full set of photos can be seen in larger size on our Flickr page.

Thanks for reading!

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"Goodbye is Not Forever" - My Final Project in B&W photography 101

     So as the semester went on my professor and I both felt that I was much more conceptual in my work.  We were given technical tasks associated with a conceptual subject. (e.g. use of different angles on "childhood" or use of aperture on "ambiguous space")  Our final was a-whole-nother story.  We were told to create a cohesive body of work containing 6-8 photos.

     "Wait...what?  What's the theme?"

     "There is none.  It's up to you.  You have three weeks to come up with your concept, shoot 4 rolls, develop, and print your shots.  Ready, go!"

     

     So here I am, trying to come up with a truly unique and creative concept for my first real cohesive body of work.  I've taken individual shots and photos of events like weddings, but this is outside my usual comfort zone.  What is art to me?  One thing I think that is a requirement of art is that it must invoke some sort of emotional response.  If I look at a piece and don't feel anything, than it isn't very good art.  I decided that I wanted to come up with a narrative story to my body of work that would invoke a strong emotion.

My most successful shot of the semester was actually from our first assignment, so I decided to build the project around that photo.  I used it as the last photo in the series, but then wanted to come up with a story of why this photo happened.  I then came up with a sad narrative story about a man who leaves for war that parallels the real life story of Brandy and I, but instead of using people it would be told through the whimsical world of teddy bears.  In some way it almost confused me on how to feel.  The essence of the story is sad, but I couldn't help but smile because they are teddy bears.  When my professor heard about my concept she thought it could have gone very poorly and very boring, but because for a just a moment she forgot they were teddy bears I got an A.  She also enjoyed that each scene could easily be seen with real people engaging in even down to the fact that their dog was even a stuffed animal.  Over all I was very pleased on how it turned out.  

And I hope you enjoy it!

Goodbye is Not Forever

by Chris Gronde