Creating the event

Having studied some still objects I returned to the source of my original inspiration and looked again at the interest I felt in Hockey’s joiner, the Crossword Puzzle.

What particularly drew me to this type of photography was the way in which the photographer can capture expression over time. I loved the way that the deconstruction of the overall image made up by the separate frames allowed for the same person to be photographed numerous times, capturing each nuance of thought and feeling over a period of time.

People help to create an event and again, it’s something mundane that suddenly becomes fascinating. Watching Martin Friedman and his wife solve a crossword puzzle, Hockney captured the competitive nature of the husband and wife, their thoughts and their emotions as they played against each other. The joiner he created told the story of their experience and also described their personalities and their relationship. There’s a lot to see in this picture.

I decided to undertake a study of my own and put together a joiner of my brother and his girlfriend as they relaxed one Saturday afternoon after tea. What you see here took place over ten minutes from the time that I picked up my camera while they snoozed to the culmination of the events that took place to clear away the tea things.

Here’s another version extending the observation to clearing away and moving further away in the field of vision. I prefer this joiner to the first as it has more interest.

Certainly having people moving around in the space added interest and marked out the events, but I captured some of the character in this couple, which not only tells of their habits, but also their lives together. It’s a little like being a fly on the wall and in many ways a more intimate portrait of them than a posed portrait would have been.

Bringing street sculpture to life

Street Sculpture, Newport

Inspired by the still life joiners I decided to have a go at something a little more interesting than a basic chair, but here again comes the message that simple works better with joiners.

In this joiner, Hockney  explores how to ‘see’ a chair from different angles at the same time. He compresses time and space into a two-dimensional image, but still evokes that Cubist sense of being able to experience it in almost three dimensions. (see Georges Braque’s Violin and Candlestick, 1910 below)

Hockney’ chair is a captivating image, but I thought it a little simplistic as a subject and wanting to explore some of the art that’s in my locality figured perhaps that I could add more in terms of content.

What I wanted to achieve was a sense of being able to see and experience not only views around the sculpture, but also in detail in places. It didn’t quite work that way mainly because there was just too much to take in; not only did I attempt to bring out the detail of the face, but also the outstretched hand and also try to capture the wider surroundings that the whole sculpture related to.

At first I attempted to make a composition from what emerged as two separate views of the sculpture. I wanted the viewer to be able to see it as a whole and as a three dimensional experience. It doesn’t work that well as I couldn’t find a way to bring the two together; there was no link, no point of reference that I could use to join them. So I now treat them as two separate joiners.

Here’s the first: 

This is one is the more successful of the two as it gives the viewer that sense of seeing around the object. I think that I could have removed a few of the frames so that there’s less to process, but I think that the number of frames I chose to use lends a dynamic feel to the joiner. It almost feels like I added motion to a still object and I quite like that idea.

The second joiner has something of a panoramic effect to it and I can see that there’s a fine line between a joiner and a panoramic picture. The joiner has so much more than a wide angle view – it has that ability to record not just the scene of an event, it captures the passing of time and therefore can record the event itself.

Tapping into Photo Joiners

It’s easy to overdo Cubism when making a joiner. I’ve learned from my first effort that keeping it simple is the best way to avoid astigmatism when you come to put your joiner together.

My first joiner was slightly narrative and was inspired by events of that week when, unbeknownst to me Welsh Water undertook some essential maintenance to the water supply, leaving me without any water overnight. As a result once the water came back on amid huge sighs of relief I ran the taps to flush out the brown, muddy waters and ran the waters clear. 

In doing so I realised that I had an interesting subject to make a joiner.

I wanted to capture the action, front, sides and back with some close ups of the features of the sink, such as the tap in an effort to really deconstruct the scene. The result (pictured here) lacks a sense of structure. I missed the opportunity to make the most of the shape of the sink to frame the rest of the views.

The idea of taking close-ups to punctuate the joiner didn’t quite work; the effect I was aiming for was the same as the coffee cup in Hockey’s joiner “Fredda bringing Ann and me a cup of tea” where he charts the progress of friend, Fredda through his garden as she brings tea. Part of the culmination of the piece happens as Fredda gets closer and hands Hockney his cup. The shot of this takes up the frame of the shot he is taking and adds a focal point in the final piece, as well as describing the completion of the event; the cup of coffee in hand.

I liked the way that Hockey captured the action as an event and how he used perspective and distance to catalogue it; the image works even though a whole batch of photos didn’t make it out of the processing laboratory. Somehow that adds to what was left and the gaps draw your attention to the joiner that’s left.

I also wanted to track the motion and flow of the water as it over-spilled from the glass and down the plughole. This too was quite confusing and I didn’t get the effect that I really wanted mainly because there was no focal point.

Returning to the scene of the crime, as no good criminal should do I made a second attempt at the joiner, this time keeping the composition simple and emphasising the structure of the sink as a strong frame.

There are still many questions to work through when using this form of photography; what focal length is best to use? Could you use greater depth of field in some shots, but then use a shallow depth of field to emphasise detail in others – would this make the overall effect more confused, or would impart greater clarity? What about angles and proximity? Should you alter these and risk bringing the whole composition into chaos? What about exposure? Does a difference in light and shade make a positive difference?

In most of Hockney’s joiners it seems that the angle and depth of field changes very little; in Gregory reading in Kyoto, it’s mainly the 3D effect of perspective that he pulls out of two dimensions. The tranquil light spills through the window and the long, terrace like room stretches away emphasised by Hockney’s attention to the table in the foreground. Perhaps like the Cubists, Hockney gives the same weight to each frame he shoots, even though the table is perfectly reconstructed, it has a relationship to the space that it’s in and this leads you in to discover Gregory reading in the background.

And so to my next attempt at the Tap Joiner; this time I set out each frame using the basin of the sink to frame the composition. The aim was to use the lines to form a boundary and I quickly found a lot of answers to my questions. Introducing angles had limited effects, especially when combining them with moving closer to the subject; I omitted these ‘focal’ shots as they eclipse the overall effect and confuse the structure I’d built up using the sink shape. 

The notion of choosing specific items seems to work when creating a joiner from an event that takes place in a larger space; my sink was just too tight a space to allow for this.

So changing focal length and proximity just takes the whole concept too far. Exposure is an interesting one as it’s this that creates the deconstructed effect, making the eye appreciate that there’s a difference between one frame and the next. For this I simply let the camera pick up the exposure in each frame.

Surprisingly I ended up using around a quarter of the images that I shot; the process needs to be simple in order to effectively deconstruct it. The second Tap joiner is markedly more successful that the first; its simplicity has more of a joiner feel to it. Although I think there’s more potential to make the most of the still life concept. The sink’s a little empty and the composition lacks the feeling of an event taking place.