General over-view of Unit 04

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Unit 04 is a core unit with a high value in terms of your overall grade and points for University (UCAS points). As such you should aim to attain the higher grades.

The general learning aims which you must evidence in your work are seen here in the grid below...

When you submit your work at the deadline you must be sure to have addressed these learning aims within your work on a consistent basis.

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A. Understand how materials, techniques and processes are used by art and design practitioners.

Learning aim A relates primarily to your research and you're going to be given 4 photographers to research over the duration of the assignment - (1) The Douglas Brothers, Ed Drew, Rania Matar and Richard Avedon. When you do the research the main thing you need to keep in mind is that you need to demonstrate that you... Understand how materials, techniques and processes have been used by each of the photographers and why they have been chosen for the job and are fit for purpose and suit the subject and help convey the meaning and message within the image/s.

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B. Explore art and design materials, techniques and processes to develop practice.

Learning aim B relates to your use and identification of the materials, techniques and processes. The images you'll be shooting will be - portraits of someone you know and have access to a lot, as you'll need to shoot pictures of them several times using a range of materials (Films). *Note at the start you can shoot anyone, but as the project develops you will need to make a decision of who will be your main subject, so it makes sense to make this decision as soon as you can. Technique relates to the different ways you shoot the images e.g. whether you shoot in daylight, ambient light or studio; whether you use a long focal length or short focal length, composition, using tripods, film or digital etc. Process relates to the way you do things and how you do it and can include planning your shoots and reflecting on your shoots, but also the photographic processes you use - Contact sheet prints, developing the film, making the prints in the darkroom, hand colouring the images, damaging and degrading the images etc.

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C. Apply materials, techniques and processes to a brief.

Learning aim C requires that you produce images that fit the brief (See below) and use some of the materials, techniques and processes in the production of the work. Over the unit you'll be exploring numerous ways of using MTP's to manipulate your images... adding colour to the images in a variety of ways, distressing the images so that they look older and potentially damaged and using a variety of different materials to enhance these processes. You simply need to incorporate some of these techniques with your final outcomes in order to pass, or experiment with them consistently, leading up to the production of your finals in order to attain the higher grades. 

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D. Review own use of art and design materials, techniques and processes

Learning aim D requires that you review your work in terms of the effectiveness of your use of the MTP's. This must be done at the very end of the assignment in the final evaluation, but if you're looking to attain the higher grades you're advised to reflect on your work and learning at key stages over the duration of the assignment. 

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The Brief...

You will be required to produce 2 final images (A3) that feature someone you know. The idea is to photograph them in a variety of situations/places/poses etc to try and capture a sense of who they are and their moods, persona and what they do. This can include work places as well as leisure situations. 

The final images must be "Composites" e.g. multiple images of the person created using techniques that give the same feel as the work produced by the Douglas Brothers https://www.thedouglasbrothers.com/home/254  in their composites. The composite can include images of places and things associated with your subject (Model), but the majority of the images should include your subject in the photo.

One of the images should be finished with a predominantly blue tone and the other a sepia tone. 

Getting organised with your folders and files.

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Unit 04 is a big unit with a lot of varied work and it'll be useful if you organise it well within your folders. I would do the following... 

1. All of the work that you've done for the first two projects (Unit 09) Create a Unit 09 folder and put all of the work in that folder.

2. Create a new folder for Unit 04, the current unit.In this folder create the following sub-folders as above. Use these titles or your own. It's important to be organised so that you can find the work easily. 

• Design Sheets
• DSLR photo-shoots
• Scans of hard-copy work
• Research images & text
• Final Images

3. These Sub-folders can have their own sub-folders. For instance within the DSLR Photo-shoots folder I would save each individual digital shoot that you do in it's own folder.

You could have either another folder for film shoots where you put the contact sheets and prints scans or put them in the same folder and maybe just call it Photo-shoots.

The important thing is to be organised and methodical. 

It's also useful to name files with suitable names to allow you to use the search function to find the individual files. 

TOP TIP... At the very start at the project create the Design sheet folder and make a template for your design sheets. Then save the design sheet six times with the follow titles as below and include the use of the number using the zeros. This will help with sorting the files into one big PDF at the end of the project.

Try and write up all your work as you go along so that it's in the order that you do it. Before you leave college each day make sure you scan all of your hard copy work and file it in the 'Scans' folder. It's good practice to name the files and have them in sub-folders within the scans folder - name the images by their technique, each lesson you'll be learning and using 1-3 techniques. Remember to scan the images at fairly low resolution e.g. 100 ppi/inch as they're for your design sheets.

IF you like any of the images that you produce during the unit well before making decisions about which images will be finals scan these 'Good ones' at 300 ppi and save as TIFF files and save them in the 'Finals' folder. 

Liquid Emulsion

This is a technique that I'd advise you to use at least a couple of times each year if not more within your projects. This is one of those techniques that you'll only really get a chance of seeing and using if you go to college and therefore if this technique is used and ends up in your portfolio is one that'll be noticed. 

*Notes for lecturer 21/5/21. Having done this session with L4's with less time, the paper was coated while it was still damp having been hung up and partially dried in a drying cabinet and the results were better than normal. In addition do not waste time trying to allocate the paper the students have prepped to them as individuals. Cut the paper up into quarters, double bag and box.

There are several boxes of pre-prepped paper in the cupboard on the 3rd floor that can be used in exams and for developmental work in later units. As of 2021-2022 with the cost of the emulsion the paper may have to be paid for? The chemical is currently £43 a bottle one bottle does about 15 x A3 sheets. So a ball park figure of £3.00 each covers students using about A3's worth of paper/emulsion. 

Using Liquid Emulsion (Paper Prep) 

Initially, you'll be introduced to this at a basic level - you'll be instructed to pre-prepare a number of different supports giving the impression that they are degraded/old. You may have already done this before at school, normally in conjunction with making a pirate map...

Get together a number of different types of A3 sized supports for experimental reasons, make a note of the papers and where you sourced them from. - mark the back of the paper with diagonal lines using a biro. The reason you do this is so that you can differentiate the side that has been treated with the emulsion. Also write a letter to indicate what type of paper is what

a. Cartridge paper from sketchbook.
b. White Colorama background roll paper

and so on...

Then at home or in college, prep some of the papers in order that they look degraded and old. Fold the paper randomly or screw it up making sure the folds are good quality, not halfhearted attempts at folding, you want the creases to be obvious. 

Get a large dish and a number of tea bags, run hot water over the tea bags and or use stewed tea from a tea-pot and soak the paper in the tray. If you do several at the same time move them from the top to the bottom so those that are in the centre get a good soaking too. 

You can fold the paper when it's wet and that creates very obvious fold that have a chance that they might tear, but you might want this? 

Once it's had a good soak place the paper somewhere where it can dry. We usually place the paper on a window so that it drip dries and then remove it and place it on some old paper or newspaper, this helps to absorb more of the moisture. Do not leave the prepped paper on the drying paper as it will stick to it and be difficult to separate. 

Additionally, once the paper has dried out, you can treat it further. Using vinegar, bi-carbonate of soda in some water, orange juice squeezed from an orange or lemon juice, flick and splash the solution on to the paper in a randon way to make it look like accidental spills. 

Health & Safety warning.

This next stage is potentially dangerous and if you're a student you're advised to seek adult guidance when working on this next stage... Once you've treated the paper with one of the afore-mentioned liquids and it's been allowed to dry, the paper can be placed in an oven or beneath a grill on a very low setting so that the paper is heated and singed a little. Before the paper starts to singe, the liquids you've splattered/dripped on the paper should go dark brown, leaving some nice marks that make the paper look even more convincing as aged paper. The other thing that you can do is tear round the edges so that the paper is an irregular rectangle. This is optional and is best done once you've cut the paper into halves or quarters. 

Unibond (PVA Glue)

To massively increase the chance of your paper working first time, mix Unibond (PVA Glue) at a ratio of 1:4 (1 part PVA, 4 parts glue) and apply this to all of your papers. Allow this to dry fully before applying the liquid emulsion. What this does is seal the paper, the papers you've chosen will all have differing levels of absorbency and if the liquid emulsion is applied direct, the paper will absorb a great deal of the liquid emulsion diminishing its performance. 

Once dried you should now have a handful of supports onto which you can apply your liquid emulsion.

Application of the emulsion 

As far as I'm aware all or most of the liquid emulsions solidify and become jelly-like under normal room or refrigerated conditions and prior to using them you need to warm the bottles up so that they chemical becomes a fluid again. I simply place the whole bottle in a large graduate (Measuring cylinder) full of hot water and leave it for 10 or 15 minutes. 

While that's warming up, I take another graduate and two developing dishes, one of which is a 10"x8" and the other a 7"x5" into the darkroom. On a table set up in the darkroom specially for coating up the paper, I place the larger dish on the table and pour some hot water into the tray. The smaller tray sits in the larger tray resting at one end on something that raises one end up. Once under red light conditions the liquid emulsion is then poured into the smaller tray so that it collects at the warmer end that's partially submerged in to hot water. This keeps the liquid soluble and prevents it from solidifying and returning to its jelly state.

Using a Jiaban brush the pre-prepared paper is then treated with the liquid emulsion. I tend to use two light coats and try and leave an impression of the brush strokes at the top and bottom of the paper. This stage and the effect is something you learn through trial and error and it may take you a couple of attempts before you have a sense of how you like to treat the paper in your style. 

Drying the prepped paper

Once the paper is coated, it then has to be dried and stored in a light-proof bag. At our college this is probably the most difficult stage as it takes a good hour or more to get the paper dried to the point where it can be bagged up. You need to liaise with the technician and the lecturers to establish a good time to get in the darkrooms and prep your paper and more importantly dry it without someone turning the lights on!

In our darkroom we string up a line and peg the A3 sheets onto the line and then dry them in the dark as quickly as possible using an air con unit that moves the air around and aids the drying process. 

We're then ready with our opaque paper storage bags and old photo-paper boxes and we cut the paper into quarters so each piece is A5 ready for out experiments. The drying process with the air-con unit takes around 20 minutes to dry.

Printing

Printing is done in exactly the same way as you would with normal photo-paper, test strips etc. A top tip is to do the initial test strips using RC VC Kentmere paper and then once you've ascertained the exposure time for the print try a test strip using the liquid emulsion and tweak if need be. 

The only added time might be at the fixing stage 5 minutes and washing might be good for 6 minutes. The only other factor you need to consider at the processing stage is that some of the papers because they are so fibrous may tear very easily. It's advised to make your prints fairly small to combat this eventuality - hence the suggested A5 size. The larger the prints are, the more difficult it is to handle the paper without it disintegrating as it's moved from one tray to the next at the processing stage. 

Drying the prints

You guessed it, this bits not easy either! This is a lot more difficult than the drying stage in the darkroom (In different ways). One thing you cannot do is dry the paper using a method that puts the paper in direct contact with metal, so metal drying cabinets with metal racks are of no use to you, your drying rack needs to be a wooden one like the ones we use in the prep room. 

There are a number of approaches at this stage and things can go wrong, so you need to watch your paper and monitor it at the initial stages. The main thing you need to do is get the excess moisture out off the paper. 
(1). Carefully put the paper on a window, place it vertically on the glass, the fact that it is wet will mean that it'll stick. The excess water will then drip off the print and you can move the paper from one place to another and each time you do so, some of the excess is left on the glass (Clean this as you go - so that the window is left clean). 
(2). Get together sufficient sheets of paper A3 copy paper for instance (or newspaper), and lay the prints out flat on the paper, so that the paper absorbs the excess water. With this technique you need to move the prints every now and then otherwise they fuse together (Stick) to the paper beneath.

Once the paper is relatively dry and less likely to fall apart and tear, it can then be put in the drying cabinet on a low heat to dry either hanging up using pegs/clips or lying flat in the wooden racks.

At this stage the paper when it dries, tends to screw up badly and may need ironing/flattening out at home. 

That's how you do it, the more you do it and the more you experiment the better you'll get at it, as with all things photographic. It is tricky and it is a pa lava, but if you persevere with it, it produces unique images that are beautiful and allows you as a Level 3 photography student to identify experimentation at a very high level and the fact that it will take a couple or more stages to get it right identifies 'Development'. Record what you do and how you do it, using images and a diary approach to identify the 'Recording' aspect of your work.

If it's gone wrong...

Don't worry, in photography and especially with Level 3 a degree of experimentation that doesn't yield results is good, it allows for development of practice and skills. If it has gone wrong it'll probably be due to the choice of paper

Top tip

If you read this all the way through before under-taking the project this bit is going to be helpful. Not all papers work that well with these techniques and you have to go through a process of experimentation/trial and error before arriving at a point where you know what papers do actually produce consistent and reasonable results. Two that do work are... Mount board card; which is thick, but despite this, works really well. The other is Colorama background roll, used in photographic studios. If treated with Unibond before applying the liquid emulsion these are almost guaranteed to produce good quality results.

If you don't like the degraded paper approach, try it on the paper without staining it?

If you need to see work that is produced by contemporary photographers using liquid emulsion and other experimental approaches check out http://listofphotographers.blogspot.co.uk/ and search using  CRTL F and then typing in 'Liquid emulsion'.

Presentation and layout of your work.

Start this section with your Intention (Plan) use this as your heading. Then explain what you were hoping to do during this session. Then put in your images and the details of the techniques, processes and materials used. With this section again try and use images as much as possible to identify the MTP's. Try and use diagrams as well. Then at the end write a mini Gibbs Reflection  in the analysis section of the Gibbs (1). Explain why this activity meets the requirements of the brief. (You wrote up the requirements in your intro).  (2). Analyse what more you needs to learn or could do or improve with regards this activity.