DSDN 144 Project 2 - Laura Wallace

The deliciousness of the cupcake

Laura Wallace300252990Linda Lee

adenahunter@tumblr.comwh3r3swally@gmail.com

ProposalFor the second project the brief asks us to explore the concept in time through the use of photography. We have the choice to portray time through a minute stop motion or series of 4-8 images.

For this project I am planning of focusing on the time of baking. From DSDN 101 last trimester I know that the planning and shooting of a stop motion takes more time than expected. From this information I will experiment with a stop-motion or pho-tos. At this point I am leaning towards a series of photos as I feel that I will be able to express my ideas and inspiration to a bet-ter extent.

For this project I would really like to stay clear away from what I consider the cliché movement photography of people (e.g. walking). From wanting to stay away from this cliché I have chosen to focus my project on the time of baking. My ideas are to photo baking e.g. bread rising, cake rising in the oven, etc. I am not sure how the best way to show this at this point in time. I will be researching and experimenting with different food on how to best portray time.

For experimentation to decide on either a stop-motion or photos. I am planning on making a stop motion of me making and decorating my sister’s birthday cake. I am planning on framing this stop motion in a simpler style to Ian Waldie stop motions. He has a very controlled stop-motion photography style. I am going to take the use of the still camera on a tripod contrasted with the movement of people or workers to show the passing of time in stop motion.

Artist Precedents

Jack Evens

This photo from artist Jack Evens is inspiration for a gradient of cupcake batter through time to a burnt cupcake. The time shown in this image is subtle and I think the process that is taken in making the flowers would be very affective adapt-ed to the making of cupcakes. My idea is to show the cupcake at 5min intervals.

Sophie Calle

The images of ‘The Chromatic Diet’. For six days Calle consumed a diet of a single food colour. Calle asked writer and filmmaker Paul Auster to “invent a fictive character which I would attempt to resemble.” This charactor also served as the model for Maria in Auster’s novel Leviathan (1992). This charactor intrigued Calle that she re-created the charactors week and displayed it as works of art created. Auster had Maria consumme a chromatic diet which includeds a series of color-coordinated meals.

From this series of work I am taking inspiration from the colour. I would like to show and use different colours through the baking to show the passing of time, e.g. light – not cooked to burnt – over cooked.

EvaluationFrom last project I knew that I needed to have a clear set idea before i started taking photos. One thing that I think was successful in this project was that I defiantly had a clear idea in my mind of how I wanted to show and express time in my photos. This helped mw greatly as I did not waste time like I did last project on decisions that should have already been made. My first photo shoot went well and from this I knew that I could continue with my idea of showing time through baking. My next shoot also went successfully, it was a nice sunny day and the white balance and colours came out very nicely.

After taking a series of photos that was intended to be turned into a stop-motion (third-shoot) I found that this did not fit with the idea in my head of subtle time. I disliked the blatant showing of time, this made the decision that I would be of showing a series of photos for my project.

I found the setting of white balance in my kitchen to be very hard. I struggled with this right through the project and in the end still did not manage to correctly set the balance. When shooting I thought that the balance was almost perfect and would need little adjustment in Photoshop, as the images when previewed on the camera screen look quite good. I was then very disappointed at the final two photo-shoot images when I viewed then on a computer screen as the images turned out to be very different to what they should have been.

If I were to do anything differently I would spend a lot more time correctly setting the white balance and sourcing the cor-rect lighting.