Personal Joiners

Over the next few weeks/days I will be adding new personal joiners to this post.

1. Pedal board

When going to my brothers gig recently I liked the way the light fell on this pedal board so I quickly took a series of photographs to assemble into a joiner. I normally avoid doing joiners like this as they don’t push joiners to their boundaries. Whenever I make a joiner I try to exploit the medium to produce unique images that couldn’t be done via any other medium. This image is almost no different to a single photograph of the pedal board.

2.Driving All Night.

I had the idea for this joiner quite a while ago, Many joiners show a movement of time and I wanted to take this concept even further by showing a large passage of time. My idea being a car with one half of the photos taken at one time of the day and the other half at another time. I had visualized the front being at day and the back at night showing a movement of time as the car drove “All Night” however I didn’t account for the available light source, which cast unwanted shadows on the car and forced me to have the front at night, I also think I missed a couple of shots and got the two angles slightly wrong. For both of these joiners I used the freeware program “The GIMP” (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) rather than Photoshop.

Screenshots.

3.Mirror Man

As I said earlier, Joiners are very good at portraying movements in time, I wanted to use this to show how taking a joiner is a process as opposed to a single photo and thought that using my reflections would be a unique and original way to convey this. I remember seeing a David Hockney joiner that had the same sort of concept.

Walking In The Zen Garden At Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto (Pictured above) Was taken in 1983 by David Hockney. I saw this photo in a book on Hockney when I was researching him in the library. Notice how he takes a photo of his foot every time he takes a step, showing that he is taking a step then a series of photos and continuing on. This shows that taking a joiner photograph is a process rather than a single act. This is what I was trying to convey with my photo.  I was also using available light because the flash would have reflected off the mirror, consequentially I needed a wide aperture to let in the light, the depth of field caused by this meant that I was out of focus. This was ok but to ensure there was at least one clear photo of me to show that I was the subject more than the mirror, I got a photo of myself in the middle completely in focus.

4.Sinead

Another joiner I assembled out of some photos my group took. What was good about the conditions I took this photo in was that it was very bright, meaning that the camera could have a small aperture, high shutter speed and not need a flash meaning that most of the image is sharp and in focus, the is no risk of camera shake and the would be no over exposure. I assembled it quickly on Photoshop in the same way as the others. I quite like the curve of the stairs in this photo. This was a mixture of standing still and moving around. something else interesting about joiners is that they act as a natural crop, because you only photograph your subject and not its surrondings, it draws your viewers eyes straight the subject.

6.Lamp post

Recently Peter and I noticed that some of the photos in David Hockney’s “Pearblossom Highway” were turned and off kilter, whereas all the joiners we had done, we had kept all our photos in one orientation. After seeing this I wanted to try turning the camera around to get a more defined image so I tried getting every rotation I could even going as far to turn the whole camera upside down, I now realise that the maximum amount of rotation I had to do was a half turn both directions. I also took photos down to my feet, which gives a reference point for the eyes so you can see the perspective shift. David Hockney does this in some of his photos and I wanted to try it. Unfortunately one of the lamp-post segments (The second down) was out of focus due to the fact it was very dark and I needed a very wide aperture to let in enough light to get the exposure correct, this combined with the fact I was zoomed all the way in, meant that focusing would be pinpoint. Unfortunately mine was a little out.

7. It’s A Small World After All

I had toyed with doing a 360º joiner last year in my intro course and so didn’t attempt any for this project at first. However after a little thought I decided to do another  as they are a prime example of something you cannot achieve with regular photography that you can with joiners. Last year I did a 360º joiner laid out flat, from left to right, and another where I quickly threw it into a circle to show it was a full 360º. However, this year I organized the circle better and put myself in the middle. I named it “It’s A Small World After All” because the circle it makes seems like a caricatured planet.

I stood outside the front of my house and took a photo and then turned to the right and took another. I continued this until I had a full circle and then moved the angle down taking photos until I reached my feet. Again inspired by David Hockney putting his feet in the joiner but also to add to the planet idea and could represent the inhabitants or the heart of the circle. It occurs to me now I could have used a tripod for this and it might have been easier to do or even have come out differently. When I did reach my shoes, I photographed the sides and the back (I cheated slightly in that I only managed to get one photo of my back leg so in post I copied, mirrored and edited it). Once I started editing it I arranged my photos in a line first, partially for use as a second version and to see if they could be assembled.

I then counted the photos and realised I had 14. If I were to remove 2, I could make 4 groups of 3, each with a straight photo and two diagonal. After deciding which 2 to remove I placed them in the circle and went around, starting from the second photo on the top right, rotating each in increments of 30º (0º,30º,60º,90º,120º,150º,180º,-30º,etc.) unfortunately to keep the circle uniform some sides do not match up perfectly but with the shifting perspectives it would be impossible to align the entire thing and keep it in the shape of a circle. But, as with most joiners, you pick whats most important in your frame and line that up, the small inconsistencies go unnoticed and it creates quite the accurate portrayal of human sight.

Group Joiners

In photography my group and I made several joiners. I’m going to explain the process we used.

After coming up with some ideas my group and I were given small compact cameras, I didn’t take note of the model or make, and we walked around campus looking for interesting subjects to photograph for a joiner. We all took turns taking photos for joiners in the manner explained in my post “Joiners & David Hockney”. The cameras were set on full auto and we simply used them in a “Point-and-shoot” manner. We didn’t use flash or a tripod as it was a sunny day and tripods aren’t particularly necessary for joiner photography, our lighting conditions were good enough to just shoot hand held. After we had taken several photographs, keeping in mind memory card limitations so as not to fill our card before getting all our shots, we came back to the Mac suite to assemble them on photoshop.

I decided to assemble the photo of Sinead’s shoes. I started by uploading all the images the Mac using a card reader and the memory card. I then uploaded these to photoshop and resized them to 30mm wide by 22.5 high, making sure that the DPI or resolution was kept or changed to 300. This can be done via the Image>Image size command or CMD+ALT+I

After doing that to each of the photographs I created a new canvas to assemble them in from File>New I started with an A4 piece but cropped it down to 131.4mm wides by 91.1mm high.

After dragging and dropping the images into the new canvas using the arrow tool, I assembled them in a joiner fashion by overlapping the photos and aligning the image. It helped to have the Auto-Select option ticked which ensured that the photo I clicked and dragged was the one that would move, regardless of layer. If a layer was below or above another image and needed to be moved, I selected the layer and moved it higher or lower respectively.

Final Image

This is another joiner I did with a previous group as an experiment. I wanted to try connecting different things to create a joiner, rather than just a single object. We had the idea of using each other’s body parts to create a “Frankenstein”. Ironically, it worked as a good experiment but not as a final piece.

My group also did a physical joiner of the photos of Sinead’s shoes. We printed out the individual photographs and laid them down on the floor on top of a piece of card. We assembled them into a joiner in the same way we did on Photoshop, making sure they overlapped and the content fit together. The easiest way to connect them is using straight lines in the photo, in this case the bricks and folds on the shoes, as guidelines. Once they were in an order we all liked we glued them down to the card and each other. We all named it “These boots are made for walking”, signed it and mounted it on the wall.

Joiners & David Hockney

Joiners are images made up of many smaller photographs, overlapping and interjoining almost like a puzzle.

Generally they will be multiple photographs of one subject, each photograph showing only a section of the subject and each subsequent photograph partly showing a previous photographs area.

In the example above you can see how each subsequent photograph shows part of the previous. This makes combining them later infinitely easier.

A good way to take joiners is to stand looking towards your subject and take a photo, take a step to the side and take another, continue this until you have completely covered the area horizontally. Next move your view down one frame (By which I mean the area you can see through the camera’s viewfinder) and again move horizontally, this time in the opposite direction. Continue this grid pattern untill you have covered your entire subject.

Another way you could do it would be to stand in one place and turn your view left and right rather than taking steps, this makes for an entirely different effect, rather than having a very large image of one angle, you would get a shifting angle much like the photo David Hockney took of his mother.

What’s interesting about this photomontage is that, as Hockney was standing in the one position, the perspective changes as your eyes follow the photo downward. Almost giving the impression you’re right there and you yourself have just looked down at your feet.

I used the first method mainly for my joiners, both at college and at home. At college I used a small compact digital camera and at home I used my new DSLR (Canon EOS 550d). In both instances I had to keep in mind my overall image and ,unless this was a desired effect:

• I had to ensure that nothing changed in my overall image area
• I needed to ensure lighting and shadows were the same throughout my photos
• The focus needed to be the correct for each shot
• Having the exposure the same was important so that the photos matched each other
• I needed to ensure that I had every photo, if I missed even one section the entire joiner could be ruined.

I imagine doing  joiner photography is made considerably easier since the introduction of digital photography, considering that you can review your photos on the spot as well as assembling them digitally. I would hate to take a series of photographs on film for a joiner, only to find an integral photo was out of focus, shaky, etc. The cost would also be considerably more.

Once the separate photos are all taken then they can be combined, either digitally or physically ie: Photoshop or printing and combining.  The photos are placed one atop another overlapping, combining the separate photos into one image, by lining up the content.

There are many reasons to use joiners over standard photography ranging from the fact that you can display a movement of time, you can get very wide photo’s without the use of a wide-angle lens and even just the fact that they have a unique and interesting flair.

The name “Joiner” was coined by British artist David Hockney.

David Hockney is an internationally famous painter, set designer and photographer who has used mediums from countless kinds of traditional art supplies to photographs used in imaginative and unique ways, to computer technology and the iPhone. He was born on the 9th of July, 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire. His parents were Kenneth and Laura Hockney. He had four siblings: his two older brothers Paul and Phillip, his older sister Margaret and his little brother, John.

Hockney went through several schools of art in his life from the Bradford School of Art to the Royal College of Art in London and started to become a celebrated artist. Painting many of his famous pieces, such as “A Bigger Splash” and “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy”, before moving on to joiners.

Pictured Above: “A Bigger Splash” possibly David Hockney’s most famous painting. Something I find interesting is that: In a painting, which is a moving flowing process, Hockney concentrated on getting the splash perfect, on freezing that very moment in time. However in his photography work, which normally is a quick process that captures that very instant and does literally freeze it in time, he focused on displaying a movement of time and a flowing process.

In 1967 Hockney bought a 35mm film camera for taking reference photos and in 1970 made his first joiner. He had apparently been unhappy with the amount of photographers using wide-angle lenses at the time, unsatisfied with the distortion they created and how the photos were not true to human vision. It is said that he stumbled on to joiners by accident when preparing to paint a terrace he took several Polaroids and set them next to each other, he found this created a “Narrative” as if you were walking from one image to another.

Pictured Above: An early David Hockney Joiner.

After the creation of his first joiner Hockney began making more and more photocollages of all different sorts including; from a fixed position moving his view, moving all around taking photos at different levels, photos all from the same angle, photos from multiple angles, photos laid out in a perfect grid pattern or completely jumbled and many more.

On the 11th of April 1986 David Hockney starts what will be his most famous joiner yet, Pearblossom Highway (pictured below), and would not finish it until the 18th. Hockney stated in an interview held by The Tate art gallery’s Twitter “Tateshots” that “It looks as though it’s a view from one point, but not one of the photographs was taken from that view point. I moved everywhere and in every direction, but I had to start piecing it together while I was out there, otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to take next.”

This is an example of what I refered to as “The grid method” of moving around and taking photos at different areas but facing the same angle the whole time. This is what I did in the majority of my photographs.

Pictured Above: An example by David Hockney of a joiner in which the photos are taken from multiple different angles.

Pictured Above: An example of a joiner which, rather than overlapping, is arranged in an angular uniform manner

Joiners Evaluation

The first thing I’ve learnt during this project is not to accept an easy option and to always push things to their boundaries. If your going to do something you may as well make it as good as you possibly can.

I think my joiners went well in the end, both in idea and execution. Looking at works by other artists in-depth and imagining how they did it was very helpful.

My main drawback I think was that I quite often missed some photographs. For example in “Driving All Night” the aft section of the car is missing some blocks of metal, I attempted covering it with some similar coloured metal but in the end I think this potentially ruins the photo.

I found managing my time was a bit difficult, between the light fading quite early in the day and having to do other work, I found a happy medium in taking photographs first thing in the morning for a main joiner and then some experimental or side joiner photos and then piecing together the main joiner straight away so that the idea was fresh in my mind. I then assembled the experimental ones and others later on as they weren’t as pressing.

It seems that the amount of joiners that came out like I had planned and the amount that came out differently was almost split 50/50

“Pedal board” came out just as I had planned however there isn’t much that could have differed from my initial idea as it was a simple one. Aesthetically I like the colors in this joiner, the orange gives it a really warm feel. However I feel that the composition of the photo is lacking, there’s empty pieces of space and would have been better had it been at a different angle maybe.

“Driving all night” didn’t come out how I had planned, as I mentioned in my other post, I had originally intended on having the front of the car day lit but lighting restrictions made it difficult. The angle was slightly different from what I pictured which I should have taken into account. Aesthetically I don’t think this overall image looks any good, it didn’t come out how I had intended and just doesn’t work as a stand alone piece. I think my strength in this piece was the concept and trying to think of new inventive ways of using the medium of joiners. I think my weakness was lack of proper planning and forethought which potentially ruins the image.

“Mirror man” came out just as I intended, I think it’s my best piece of work. I love the overall look of it and think it works really well as an overall piece. I think my strengths were the concept and the construction and composition. My weakness would be probably that I could have put a little more time into construction as some of the segments aren’t perfectly aligned.

For “Sinead” the final piece came out as I imagined it would but, being a simple joiner, there wasn’t room for discrepancies. My strength in this joiner was lining up the photos in post production, which I did quite well. However a weakness was that I could have done with a few more photos to fill in some of the gaps and make the overall piece flow better.

“Lamp post” went according to my initial idea also with little variation, although I did have a little trouble in that when I tilted the camera down for the photos leading up to my feet, I forgot to change focal lengths meaning that when I got to my feet I couldn’t fit both feet in the frame. My strength in this piece was drawing inspiration from other joiner artists without plagiarizing. My weakness was not properly reviewing my photos on site, if I had then I would have realised that the second segment down of the post is out of focus, and could have taken a replacement.

With “It’s a small world” I originally intended to have more on the inside of the circle,filling the entire area. This didn’t work out however as the angles started to clash in unnatural ways as they drew nearer the center. I think the final piece came out just as well without it however. In my original concept I pictured the photo’s lining up better but having  the separate photos at an exact 30º increment rotation meant that they would be out slightly in favor of a perfect circle. My strengths were that I attempted this 360 styled image and it turned out fairly well, and that I could quickly and relatively easily calculate the necessary actions to create the circle.

In Conclusion: I learnt a lot from this project even though I had some prior knowledge into joiners. I feel I expanded on my joiner abilities and pushed my boundaries a little bit further. Overall I am pleased with my work. I think it came out rather well once I had put additional time in to it. The feedback I got from showing my works in  progress to fellow students was quite helpful as they made suggestions and comments and the feedback I got from my teachers was invaluable in helping aim for my goals. I think  my overall strengths were; I had good concepts and ideas, I drew from artists work without stealing or copying ideas and I became quite proficient at assembling joiners. My weaknesses were; I came across a couple of problems while taking the photographs, such as missing shots and unintended varying angles. My written work was severally lacking at first, but with effort I’ve raised it to a higher level and finally I should have put more planning into the execution of my joiners so that they came out the way I had pictured or so there wouldn’t have been as many unforseen circumstances.