5 Year Photographic Study of Musicians in Motion:

Still Photos Exposed For Several Seconds Using Time Flow Techniques

by Rick Doble© Copyright 2014 Rick Doble, All Rights Reserved

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Depicting Motion In Still Pictures Around 1900Introduction to Contemporary Time Flow PhotosDrew Wright: Singer/Song WriterGuitaristsViolinistsOther Instruments & SingersGroups of MusiciansThe Audience

DEPICTING MOTION IN STILL PICTURES AROUND

1900Around 1900 art and science gained new insights about time. With the perfection of photography, the birth of several art movements, and groundbreaking ideas such as the concept of the 4th dimension by Albert Einstein, new imagery depicting motion began to appear.

NOTE: For a more detailed explanation of the history of motion in still imagery, see the associated pdf paper:

Historic Timeline: The Capture of Movement in Painting and Photographyand also see the paper presented to the

12th Generative Art Conference in Milan Italy in 2009: The Future of Futurism

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Woman Walking Downstairs, 1887, photograph, Eadweard Muybridge.

Eadweard Muybridge perfected a way to take sequential photographs that were triggered electronically from frame to frame as a person

moved. His work led to the development of motion pictures.

Pole vault, 1890, photograph, Étienne-Jules Marey.Marey developed a technique that showed segments

of continuous motion all in one photo.

The Cellist, circa 1917, painting, Max Weber. The Cubists worked toward a style of imagery that showed a person

from different angles or different points in time all at once.

Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913, bronze sculpture, Umberto Boccioni.The Futurist in Italy aimed at creating work that contained the energy of living -- a

person as they moved through time, for example. In this famous sculpture the figure moves through space but with a kind of vortex whirling about him.

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912, painting, Marcel Duchamp.

Nude Descending a Staircase Marcel Duchamp

"The painting combines elements of both the Cubist and Futurist movements. In the composition, Duchamp depicts motion by successive superimposed images, similar to stroboscopic motion photography. Duchamp also recognized the influence of the stop-motion photography of Étienne-Jules Marey, particularly Muybridge's Woman Walking Downstairs from his 1887 picture series, published as The Human Figure in Motion."Wikipedia.com

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Violoncellist, 1913, photograph, Anton Giulio Bragaglia.

Bragaglia, a photographer associated with the Futurists wanted to take photographs that recorded movement -- very much like what I am doing now with digital photography. He was limited by slow black and white film and most of his work was done in the studio.

With digital I feel that I have been able to build on his vision, as color gives this work much more depth and I can shoot in dim light with much faster sensitive material (i.e. the ISO). Plus with small portable cameras I can shoot candid photos of people moving naturally.

Bragaglia believed that time was not divided into segments or sections but rather flowed continuously. So he wanted to depict time in a free flowing manner, rather than the segmented still shots of Marey or Muybridge.

He called his vision: Futurist Photodynamism

Read an English translationhttp://www.italianfuturism.org/manifestos/futuristphotomanifesto/

Futurist Photodynamismexcerpts from Bragaglia's Manifesto

To begin with, Photodynamism cannot be interpreted as an innovation applicable to photography in the way that chronophotography [ED. meaning Muybridge or Marey] was...We despise the precise, mechanical, glacial reproduction of reality, and take the utmost care to avoid it. For us this is a harmful and negative element, whereas for cinematography and chronophotography it is the very essence...Photodynamism, then, analyzes and synthesizes movement at will, and ...possesses the power to record the continuity of an action in space. We are involved only in the area of movement which produces sensation, the memory of which still palpitates in our awareness. And so – just as the study of anatomy has always been essential for an artist – now a knowledge of the paths traced by bodies in action and of their transformation in motion will be indispensable for the painter of movement.

Introduction to Contemporary Time Flow Photographs

Inspired by the work just shown, I decided to develop my own method for recording continuous time. With the advances in photography, especially the advent of digital, I felt I could pick up where the Futurists and Bragaglia left off -- as the effort to depict motion in still imagery came to a halt around the time of the First World War. In particular digital allowed me to see the image I had just shot which was crucial to experimenting with motion. Also it cost very little to take a number of pictures.

I settled on musicians as my main subject for what I call 'time flow' photography, photographs that result from a long shutter speed. I did this because I love music and had taken a number of pictures of musicians with traditional film photography and traditional sharp frozen imagery. My work even included an album cover for the Red Clay Ramblers. So now for more than 5 years, I have taken digital photographs of musicians the Beaufort, NC area and continue to do so.

I believed that I could learn the ways that musicians moved, so that I would eventually be able to capture their movements in creative and different ways using 'time flow' techniques. The idea was to capture the energy of the music in a still photo -- and that, I believed could only be done if movement itself was recorded.

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My method was quite simple. I took photographs of local musicians at local locations -- feeling that strong photographs could be created in my own neighborhood rather than going to some exotic location.

As for my photography: All settings were manual. I typically set the shutter speed to 2 seconds, handheld, under available light. I usually kept the shutter speed at 2 seconds no matter what, adjusting the ISO as needed. I set the focus to a hyperfocal distance that would encompass the movement of the musician. I never used a flash and rarely adjusted the general lighting. I also was not afraid of zooming in quite far -- even though traditional thinking was that it would lead to much more blur -- yet I learned to hold the camera even steadier when I did that.

I developed a number of techniques for handholding the camera so that I would be relatively solid -- since in traditional photography a 2 second exposure is considered virtually impossible handheld. I learned to brace my arm that held the camera against my chest, for example; press the shutter button so that only it moved and not the camera; or I leaned against a pole or a wall to help steady myself.

Much of the time I kept the camera still and let the musician move. Other times I would move with the musician so that the background became streaked or more blurred. Because I shot under ambient light, some situations were dark; I could barely see the musician in the view finder. Yet with a little practice I learned how to find key points of light that would allow me to frame the picture. And I learned the movements of a number of musicians so that I could move with them or anticipate their moves.

Of course chance was involved but perhaps not in the way you would expect. My method went like this. I first had to find a spot where the light was right -- especially contrasting colors of light. Next I had to find an angle that would give me a good composition. I often found myself waiting until a performer moved into just the right spot which was when I would go to work. I would take as many shots as possible hoping that the unpredictable motion would record well or reveal something new. Many times the right light and composition only lasted as long as a song and after that the performer might move.

So the light and the composition were not arrived at by chance, but instead by traditional photographic skills. The movement in the picture was then up to the performer -- and that I had no control over, although I knew generally what was likely. So there chance did play a part.

Yet taking the pictures was only part of the process. Next I carefully went through all the pictures I had shot, picked the most likely ones for basic darkroom enhancements and then put these selected ones into their own folder. Next I looked at these best ones side by side, and selected the best of the best. This three step process has worked well for me. I find that I have to shoot about fifty pictures to get one I really like -- but bear in mind many of the pictures that I don't chose, I do so because they are too similar to work I have already done.

Drew Wright

Singer/Song Writer

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Guitarists

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Violinists

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Other Instruments

& Singers

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Groups of Musicians

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The Audience

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