Scanning Paul Kenny. Unit 18.

So Paul Kenny came to give a lecture about his work on Wednesday.

I can't say I was greatly interested, but I did want to find out how he did photography without using a camera. As the title suggests, he uses a scanner. So I had a little go at it with my scanner at home.

As with most things. Start with my own face.
This is a bad start I think. I'm way too far from the scanner making me appear blurry.

 I quickly moved away from my face and used a fake rose I had acquired on my travels. For this I placed the rose on to the scanner and then reflected a torchlight  off a mirror angled just above. I then cut the image down in Paint. Removing the messy empty space and leaving you to focus on just the flower head.

I tried the same shot but in the dark this time. The reflected light is picked up a lot more and the colour in the flower is much stronger.

I have these small coloured card sleeves and thought I would see how the light would work with them.
I was hoping for them to be a little more transparent and look almost ghost-like. That is not the case.

I went back to using the rose. This time I left the light resting at the very top of the scanner. As the scanner scanned, I closed the lid and opened it again to create the striped background.














I decided to leave it at that for the night. But worry not, I came back.
These were done almost a week after the first few. I found this very relaxing. For some I just clicked scan and came up with the idea in the few seconds before the scanner started.

 For these two I tried moving with the scanner. I really like the first one. I really like how my hair looks in it. The image of the hand started off well but failed at the thumb.

For these two I tried to make the image slightly faded and ghost-like. I think the first one with the lights off gives the creepy feel I was hoping for. I like how the eyes have turned out for both images. They are just dark. Slightly annoyed by the mucky streak that is from my earlier pictures. If I were to do this as a proper piece of work I would wipe the glass clean after each shot.

 I decided to mix the rose into it again. I thought about it being in place of my eye. The first two I'm holding the stem and in the first, I'm clearly too far from the scanner. I moved closer with each take and finally decided to reposition the flower. Again, my hair looks good. I like that my fringe is the only thing in focus although I would have preferred it to have been just the rose. I may come back and try to perfect this some time.

For this one I tried to add motion again but this time I moved away rather than along. I was hoping to have a clear nose in the center for the focus point. I think I moved a bit too fast and too close to the scanner. I think I could make something good with this idea, I just need to put a bit more time into it.

Unit 18.

 So that's the main body of work I produced. Here are some of the other images I produced: