Plastic Bags

I wanted to do some research on plastic bags and what exactly they do to the environment and the implications of this. Through researching i found out that:


Single-use bags, both paper and plastic, represent a huge threat to the environment. This threat is not only related to the sheer volume of them ending up in landfill, but also to the resources needed to produce, transport and (occasionally) recycle them, and the emissions resulting from these processes. Single-use plastic bags are also well known for their interference in ecosystems and the part they play in flood events, where they clog pipes and drains.

images found on Google.com

Plastic bag facts

• Approx. 380 billion plastic bags are used in the United States every year. That’s more than 1,200 bags per US resident, per year.
• Approx. 100 billion of the 380 billion are plastic shopping bags.
• An estimated 12 million barrels of oil is required to make that many plastic bags.
• Only 1 to 2% of plastic bags in the USA end up getting recycled.
• Thousands of marine animals and more than 1 million birds die each year as a result of plastic pollution.
• The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean.
• Plastic bags are often mistakenly ingested by animals, clogging their intestines which results in death by starvation. Other animals or birds become entangled in plastic bags and drown or can’t fly as a result.
• Even when they photo-degrade in landfill, the plastic from single-use bags never goes away, and toxic particles can enter the food chain when they are ingested by unsuspecting animals.
• Greenpeace says that at least 267 marine species are known to have suffered from getting entangled in or ingesting marine debris. Nearly 90% of that debris is plastic.

      from (http://www.envirosax.com/plastic_bag_facts)

Also Less than 1% of the bags are recycled. It is more expensive to recycle a plastic bag than to produce a new one.

     

Sounds: Continued

    To record my sounds i put a recorder on to the side of a window or on a seat so i can   capture the vibrations and sounds coming from the bus itself.

 Here i just wanted to put a black background to see how it would effect my sound pieces.

                             
                                     
                           
                            

I wanted to just mainly focus on the sound itself and what it describes to me. From what i can hear it gives a feeling of rhythm, and constant noise. Normally when on a bus people seem to mainly listen to music to drown out the rest of the noise. Here i want to try and bring it forward and make it the main focus, to conjure up memories of journeys that most people have taken in there life, a long bus journey, looking out the window.

Sounds

From trying to take pictures at a bus stop, i just didn't feel comfortable doing it, and i didn't feel as inspired from the first time i did it. I went away and decided to try a different approach.


I have decided to experiment with sound and images. I am interested in how a person associated a sound with a certain place or journey, and i wanted to see how this would work out.


This helped me to just look at my subject in a different way and try and find a different way to look at it.


I first began by recording the sounds of a bus stop. I tried to capture all the sounds of the road in front of the bus stop, and also the noises of being at the bus stop.

After this i recorded the sounds of my journey to town, and then to my home. I wanted to see what noises would stand out to me, because normally when travelling on buses they seem to zone out and hardly notice how noisy the bus actually is.

I didn't initially want to add a picture to the video, and actually i didn't want a video at all i just wanted the sound piece. I just couldn't figure out how to embed the sound itself, but i feel through doing the video it has given me some ideas on how to develop my recordings.

Plastic bags/Edited

Plastic bags...

Here i have been doing more experimenting. I wanted to see what the effect would be like if i added more spray paint and used more water.

           
             
                                Exposure 1/50 sec                                       Exposure 1/125 sec


Here, by changing the shutter speed by a few stops...making it faster, helped to add to the dark shadows i want. It wasn't quite there but you can see the difference.


Here you can see the result: 

              
                   Here i worked with the burn tool to get rid of some parts that were too light.

             

              

             

             

Uninspired

Andrew Miskys Bus portraits - I went out with the lens that i had borrowed. I sat at a bus stop for nearly an hour, and i just didn't feel inspired,  even though the first time i did it i felt inspired and it was something really interesting to do, the second and third time i attempted it i just wasn't feeling the same way. I tried to think of ways to work around this, and find a way to get me excited about my work and keep it interesting. I feel the main reason i wasn't enjoying the bus portraits was because i felt very uncomfortable with many people around me while i took pictured of people in the bus. I felt uncomfortable and in a way scared to take certain  pictures in case someone got offended. 


I will further my experimentation and try and work around this obstical.

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM Lens

         With this lens i am hoping to get a closer view of the people in bus windows.


                     

                         

                                     

Taken from (http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-24-105mm-f-4-L-IS-USM-Lens-Review.aspx)''


One of the most important features in a lens is the focal length or focal length range - get it wrong and you might not be able to take the shots you want. And the use for a particular focal length or focal length range varies, of course, depending on the FOVCF of the body being used. That said, this lens gives us a very nice general purpose focal range to work with. On a full frame body, 24mm is very wide. On a 1.6x body, 24mm is only moderately wide (equivalent of 38.4mm). And the advantage or disadvantage - whichever it is for you personally - is the opposite on the other end as well''.


       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
     

I will be borrowing this lens from uni hopefully which will help me get further with my experimentation.

Editing

What i did here was mainly work with the levels to make the shadows more dark, and then boosted the contrast to make the white of the bag stand out and the different tones more prominent.

Add caption

The general setting that i used on my camera were: F/5 - Exposure time 1/20 to 1/100 - ISO 400

These seem to be quite successful, but i would still like to experiment further with other subjects using this technique and also taking this technique further and going deeper with the different effects i could achieve.