After Photography

Fred Ritchin's book 'After Photography' fits perfectly with what I am working on at the moment in terms of trying to push photography in a different direction. I'm not sure if the market for photography will be around for ever and it certainly seems like it has peaked and in some ways the rise of the digital camera make it a sort of sell out. Maybe I am wrong and my ignorance to much of the history of photography has made me think like this but I am increasingly worried if I will ever be able to make a career our of photography and when trying to push the dimensions of photography I feel as if I am heading in the right direction.
In Ritchin's book he states,

' As photography is transformed into a variety of emergent media strategies and becomes partially integrated into an increasingly sophisticated multimedia, we should be looking to create more useful, exploratory images, not just the flamboyant, shocking ones.'

I agree with this and feel that as well as exploring our images we should be exploring the medium itself constantly within this ever changing society.

Reportage.

Been looking back at the work of Marco Cadioli and attempted my own in-game war reportage. At current I cant find a piece of software that's able to take screen shots on a Playstation 3 and it doesn't have any such capabilities built in. For these images i just photographed straight off the screen which does compromise the quality.

Game design.

I've been looking into game development and reading into how the games are created. It seems most areas in games that are made to be real places are based on the real places from photographs or other sources etc. Then with the help of art directors who add things to make the areas seem more aesthetically pleasing the areas comes to life with colours and features. Things are then shifted around to make the areas more playable as games.

The majority of areas seem to start with simple sketches based on photographs or things sourced from the 'real' world. It seems there are two categories in this respect, a little like books, fiction, non-fiction but with games, the real, or the fantasy.

Here are a few of my first attempts at in-game landscape photography, obviously if it to look as if it is shot by a person on a camera it must be a first person view ( compared to a 3rd person perspective) this gives the rough capability to frame a shot but then after the image is taken I often have to manipulate the image to erase in-game HUD's and icons.

Here is the first original image before the removal of the in-game hud:

and the same image with the removal of any of the in-game additions:

wayyy out there

I've just found this really strange site called 'HIPIHI' Its a crazy client based downloadable world created by the chinese, On the website it states:

'HiPiHi World is a 3D digital world as rich and complex as the real world, and is created, inhabited and owned by its residents.The residents are the Gods of this virtual world; it is a world of limitless possibilities for creativity and self-expression, within a complex social structure and a fully functioning economy.'

I find it really odd that people are constantly trying to find new ways to mimic the real, is the world we live in really that bad that we have to submerge ourselves in these fake imitations of the real?

Still... I'm currently downloading the 'HIPIHI' client and will see what its all about soon.

The Crossover Between the Real and the Virtual.

INTERNET-

Computer games

constantly developed to be like the real/ on-line games;

playing with other real people

large scale landscapes to freely roam

Virtual landscape Photography

The Sims

Social networking sites

computers were not a sociable thing and now there is software and websites developed to socialize.

Google Images

The ability to see anything anywhere in a fraction of a second.

'Oh yeah I saw India on google images'

CINEMA

3D cinema

watch 3D cinema in amazement but the real world is already 3D.

escapism through the screen

Virtual tours

The Digital Revolution

invention of the microchip

THE RISE OF THE DIGITAL CAMERA

everyone owns a camera

those little point and snap cameras

everyone thinks they are a photographer

film and digital:

FILM: actual impression

Digital: Binary 010101010101010101010101010101010100

Alter Ego

Here is the link to Marco Cadioli's Alter Ego in which he performs his in game photography;

http://www.marcomanray.com/

This to me shows his dedication and engrossment in virtual photography, it also outlines perfectly that although he is not the person photographing directly he in a real sense has control over the images through the use of his Avatar.

ARENAE!

I found this really interesting guy called Marco Cadioli who I feel is on similar tracks to myself in terms as bringing in game 'screenshots' into consideration for in game photography. He's been doing it since 2003 and is so serious about it he has created a website for his own Avatar, Below are a selection of his images from a series called 'ARENAE' in which Cadioli describes as being photo reportage from the battlegrounds from the net.

Photography and realism

So I've decided to transfer what I've done so far into a Blog. Blogs are used alot nowdays as a sort of on line diary and i thought this would be very relevant to my project. Over the past few weeks ive been focusing on photographing as an 'in game photographer'. In other words I have been taking photographs not directly as myself... but indirectly as a computer generated character roaming around virtual maps and landscapes. I was talking to someone last night and they said ' do you have a blog?' and this spurred of the idea to, instead of having a research file or sketchbook full of ideas why not fully submerge my whole project in this 'virtual world'

You see what I realise I'm trying to do here is show the separation between the real world we live in eg, walk in the park, swim in the sea, go round your mates etc and what im calling the virtual world, sitting on facebook, on-line games, 3D films. This therefore would mean that by the end of the project...by the end of the 150 hours work, all the effort, time etc will eventually still just only amount to binary, nothing real, just a representation. Read, transmitted, received , scanned, captured, posted, blogged. I think there are two ways of looking at this and at this moment in time when the digital revolution has submerged us within itself its simple to overlook this all and regard it as a way of life ( which undoubtedly it has become.) but i feel that this is a huge topic of our life which is often overlooked. Over the next Few posts I will transfer the things ive been looking at and reading and working on up until this date and then from tomorrow will continue as normal, chronologically.