As I have chosen to carry out photography for my final major project, I have been researching photographers who currently play around with the truth, with further ideas that I would like to explore on set camera manipulation, this including changing shutter speed, aperture, ISO and white balance/filters and how this affects the final image, in addition to what the photographers final decision is. A photographer who explores this is Michel Szulc Kryzyanowski, a dutch, experimental artist, who explores photography through sequences in distribution and on location when deciding when the 'decisive moment' is. A decisive moment, theorized by Henri Cartier Bresson, is the visual, exact moment people in the scene resonate well to portray that real-life moment in photography. This moment decided by the photographer can affect what the real truth is, e.g the photographer may frame the photograph so that it twists what is actually happening. This would be playing with composition. An example of Michel's photography is below, from a collection called "The Extraterrestrial Highway" The collection involves many photographs using landscape photography and interrupting subjects, a distraction from what the actual background is, manipulating truth using camera angles. These are all situations where he has let life flow around him - letting the sun get to a certain point of the day where it will reflect off these two landmarks and cause a shadow in this particular photograph below. This then affects the colour of the sand and tells us something about the time of day in a particular area. He let life around him continue - the sunlight, and framed the camera when ready, As quoted from the artist - "The location does not give the photographer any reason to take photos... the photographer himself... is fully responsible for the interesting, unique or exceptional events that should later arouse.... the public." In contribution to this particular photo, we can try to understand or analyze why Michel chose this time of day - did he plan to get this composition and height of shadow at all, breaking the rule of thirds but also framing so that the lampost is somewhat in between mountains - though if we saw it in a different angle, the lampost would be behind mountains on the other side, or a river, etc. In terms of truth, the difference of situation may have caused a different outcome, therefore manipulating what's true.
Technical attributes behind the photograph would involve the adjustment of aperture, ISO and white balance. It seems the photograph has been taken using the 'Cloudy' white balance setting, being 15,000k in lighting. On the subject of colour correcting, it seems that no editing has been done, possibly only in vibrancy and saturation settings. For the bright overall background image, the photographer may have had a high ISO - 800 and above, and a low aperture, 5.6 to 8, considering the small value in aperture means more light in the lens. All these attributes in contribution to the taking of the photograph question its authenticity, what if the background was slightly darker if the ISO was lower and the photographer was moving with a slower shutter speed creating a blurred effect - would the overall outcome be different, and would we as an audience see that the photograph may have in fact been taken at a later time in the day - due to a darker background, or a change in colour to the blue sky into sunset colours
http://www.szulc.info/nlmedia.html
As this is a photographic piece, the only truthful elements would include the onset camera settings, composition, and editing in Photoshop involving post-production. Other images the photographer has taken include the following below, in this case in "Mile 75" the photographer has purposefully framed or placed an object that practises the line of symmetry, whilst interrupting the whole back image. It makes it more interesting than what it may have been without the interruption, however, we can never truly know considering we cannot see the rest of the image. Focus also plays a role in this situation, in terms of truth, how do we know that there was nothing behind the big distraction. The angle at which the photograph was taken at also makes the object seem bigger. If taken straight on, the object may have looked smaller in size, with somewhat indication as to what it may be. The colour settings in this image and of the above seem to be the same as if the photographer was trying hard to capture the real-life lighting of both and play around with composition only. Adjusting the white balance to Cloudy on both images / on the collection, therefore, adds some truth and reasoning behind the photographer's intention, in contradiction.
Other photographs in the collection are as follows. They all have similar links in terms of a blue hue and theme of letting still life run and waiting for that perfect moment. The photograph of the car titled "Mile 95" can be seen as contradicting the truth. The photographer has set the lower shutter speed to get the blur effect of the car, however, if seen that in real life, would we see the car as still - or moving so fast in a blur?
Waiting for the decisive moment also comes in "Mile 45" the composition of the clouds may have been different an hour before or after, changing the overall meaning of the photograph considering the artist may have changed position or camera angle if the clouds were not present.
Lastly, as an example of the sequence where Szulc's mentality of "the location does not give the photographer any reason to take photos, everything has to come from the inside of the photographer" is practised in "Mile 20" The location does not seem the most vibrant however the people and other subjects on what looks like a construction site makes the photograph more interesting, and again play with the truth when considering what the photograph and location would look like if those subjects were not present.
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