I found through research some techniques that I thought may be helpful in capturing movement as patterns. I used that research I found to influence my tests for this week. The techniques I focused on this week were Light Painting, Motion Photography and Chronophotography.
As mentioned in my research, Eadweard Muybridge was a photographer who is famous for capturing still frames of motion. I chose to use his work as inspiration for this test. I want to see if I can capture my movements and poses as I walk so I might observe this habit better.
Experiment:
I decided to use my phone in "burst mode" to take continuous/burst shots of myself walking in the hopes that it will be able to captured my movement. Using this mode on my phone allowed me to take multiple images close together so I could see small differences between each.
Set One:
This sequence of me walking across the room. There was not enough room in the frame for me to see my whole body so I decided to focus on the bottom half as I knew my head wouldn't have a lot of movement compared to my legs and feet.
Reflection:
I discovered that while my phone is able to take photos at a fast rate, it could not clearly capture the movement (as you can see I am blurry in most shots). While I can still see the difference in poses as I moved, it is not as clear as I would like and in some places part of my body is so blurred that it's almost disappeared.
Set Two:
For this test I tried to walk slower to fix the problem from the previous test where I was blurry.
Reflection:
Unfortunately even though I tried to walk slower, the images captured still shows me as a blurry figure most of the time. I didn't want to slow down any more or the movement would become unnatural which isn't what I want to capture. I will have to try and use a camera next time to see if it captures movement better.
Set Three:
For the final test using my phone I decided to try a different angle - a front facing view of me walking down the stairs.
Reflection:
I discovered that this action was naturally slower for me so it made the images clearer than the previous ones which was good. It was also interesting to see a different side of how I walk. However seeing the movement from the front is not as informative in regards to poses. At this angle everything looks more flat than in a side view. I probably won't get a front view again if I create more series photos like these.
Extra Test:
I decided to use my phone to turn these series into animated gifs. This way I could see a slow version of my movements as another way to observe the motion of that action.
Reflection:
Animation and video will always be a good way to show movement and while these gifs are a nice way to see how I move when walking, it does not create a pattern in the way I want for this project so I probably won't do this again unless used in conjunction with another technique. It is also still blurry since it was made from the photographs above.
Conclusion:
These tests were a good way to view the different poses involved in an action and could be useful for a more in depth study of body language. I think this technique could be useful in the future and could be used to create chronophotographs (another technique that involved putting multiple shots into one image). If I were to do this again I would need a camera that can take a sequence of photos clearly. This will allow me to view and understand the movements better.
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