Dust

I have chosen to start my investigation exploring both time (shutter speed) and space (context). Using ‘Dust’ (Powder Paint), I aim to explore fluid movement physically; highlighting atmosphere and space – thus transforming ‘Dust’ into something tangible.

This image particularly struck me because a typically mundane image has been made exciting using ‘silky’ colour, achieved by a smoke grenade. The ‘yolky’ yellow provides a strong contrast against the dark image. The use of a fast shutter speed allowed the smoke to be extremely clear and give a suspended in time effect.

Image taken by pintrest user Steph Wallis.

My decision to use powder paint rather than smoke was based on it being more appealing to use a powder. The powder had a more tangible and long-lasting feel, whereas smoke leaves no trace and is far more difficult to work with due to its unpredictability. Initially, I considered using flour, but I knew even before I tried that the white powder would provide images that would be dull and lack the emotion I was attempting to portray. Additionally, the colour white has connotations of purity, and I don’t want that to effect my exploration into time. I also thought about using powdered paint but this was too fine to capture at a high quality, as well as the fact that the powder would stain everything it touched.

So, I had the idea to mix the flour with the powder paint. This created a flour powder paint hybrid. This was perfect because it acted like flour, whilst retaining the appealing and vivid colours of the powder paint. The set-up was several flashguns with remote triggers attached to light stands. The flashes were positioned at 2, 6 and 10 o’clock to the subject. The camera was set to continuous shutter. This was to give me the best chance of capturing a usable image. Doing this also caused all the flashes to fire simultaneously when images were being captured. However, one problem I encountered was that my DSLR could only capture around 6 or 7 images before the camera needed to process them. I would like to reattempt these shoots later with a mirror-less camera, as this would allow me to capture far more images without the camera needing to stop to buffer, because mirror-less cameras can capture far more images before needing to stop.

Dust shoot

During this shoot I had the idea to use props to add some variation between my images, and I felt that they could in some way give deeper meaning to my images. The most successful prop was the newspaper, because it’s central in the image and is associated with normality. It is also slightly mundane, which strongly contrasts the interesting and vibrant nature of the powder paint. In future shoots I would like to have the subject of the newspaper relate to my work, whether that be relations to time or Hali festivals.

Below are my contact sheets for my one and only shoot with the powder paint:

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Here are some examples of how I used lightroom to enhance the quality of my images and make them more vivid, as well as to fit the style of Wallis more effectively:

increasing the contrast of the images
reducing the exposure
increasing the vibrancy
dropping the saturation
adjusting the the shadows
adding vignetting

Before After

Finals (click to enlarge images)

Here are my final images. All 12 have been edited using the same technique (described above.) I decided to use these as my finals because they ‘POP’ so much and are visually similar to my inspiration image. This is due to the vivid colours and a texture that is extremely similar to smoke, however slightly more granulated. Although I am extremely happy with these final outcomes I would like to revisit these shoots. This is because I feel I could further experiment with this style of photography; although it has worked successfully, I feel I could push the use of props and materials used to create the ‘powder’. I also want to try and use a mirror-less camera to capture a greater range of aesthetics. Finally I want to edit them in a more uniform matter to make the images look more consistent.