Digital Camera World - UK (2020-03)

ecently I discovered a bunch

of old black-and-white 4x6

prints. They were slightly

damaged and partially stuck

together in places. My instinct

was to throw them away –

but then something stopped me.

The images were taken at the beach,

and were mainly of gulls sweeping down

towards the camera. I can’t remember

exactly what I was trying to achieve:

I think I was experimenting with rear-

curtain flash and moving subjects.

Whatever it was, I couldn’t have been

happy enough with the shots to do

anything with them, and they’d been

relegated to the back of a cupboard.

However, the passage of time and the

distance from my original motivation

allowed me to see them in a new way.

I couldn’t find the negatives, and there

was something about the way the surface

of the print had degraded over time that

I found visually appealing. So I made

photographs of the photographs,

using a copy stand. I then created

a very simple frame animation, using

the Timeline panel in Photoshop.

I was thrilled with the result. Like some

Hitchcockian nightmare, the fast-paced edit

resonates with a haunting menace. Most of

the images are only displayed for a fraction

of a second (0.2 sec) so it’s challenging

to watch, and best seen on a loop. The

overall clip is only 14 seconds long.

I’ve also started collecting sounds using

a Zoom H2n recorder – I’m still not sure to

what end, but I’m squirrelling away short

sound files like an obsessive digital hoarder,

to use when it seems right. In this instance,

layering a recording of the intense sound of

cicadas in a Greek olive grove perfectly (and

slightly weirdly) complemented the visuals

and accentuated the sense of menace

The images seen here are in a grid to

reflect the frames of the animated video;

visit my website via http://www.bit.ly/seeing226

if you’d like to see the clip.

Benedict Brain reimagines old photos

into a fast-paced frame animation

The art

of seeing

R

Benedict Brain

Photographer

Camera: Contax G1

Lens: Contax Carl Zeiss Planar T 45mm f/2

Exposure: 125 sec at f/8, ISO 400

http://www.benedictbrain.com

http://www.digitalcameraworld.com MARCH 2020 DIGITAL CAMERA^37