The Politics of Tea in Today’s Age

Over the centuries, tea trade has shaped culture and significantly influenced power and politics in both the East and the West. Therefore, it should be no surprise that, in today’s digital world, Tata Tea, a staple household brand in India, is taking its role in society seriously.
See this recent Ad Age article on their new Indian ad spot, “Jaago Re.”  In Hindi, the national language of India, Jaago Re translates to “Wake Up.”  Naturally, its expected that a key selling point for tea drinkers is its ability to wake you up in the morning!
According to the author of the article, Sourabh Mishra , the “ad started with a campaign for the brand based on the proposition ‘Jaago Re,’… But the leap in the thinking happened when they took the ‘Wake Up’ proposition beyond the physical waking up to a larger call for social action.”
India often complains of having a large “gap” between those living in high rises and those living in the slums. This poses many challenges across the board – especially for marketing to the masses. Tata looked to advertise  to this very “gap” –masses of educated middle-class people.
In an effort to grab their attention, Tata honed in on an issue central to their role in India’s society with a problem-solution approach to this controversy. Seemingly just another ad spot, the message to “wake up” signified a far greater call to action than encouraging folks to buy and drink tea.

Object & Body - History of tea.

Tea is so much a part of everyday life in Britain that we might never stop to think about how a unique plant from faraway China became the nation´s favourite drink. But the history of tea is fascinating, and in this section we can follow its story from the earliest times in Imperial China right up to its present place at the heart of British life.

Imperial China

There are various legends surrounding the origins of tea. Perhaps the most famous is the Chinese story of Shen Nung, the emperor and renowned herbalist, who was boiling his drinking water when leaves from a nearby tea shrub blew into the cauldron. He tasted the resulting brew, and the beverage of tea was born.
An alternative story claims that links tea drinking to the Indian prince Bodhidharma, who converted to Buddhism and in the sixth century and went to China to spread the word. He believed that it was necessary to stay awake constantly for meditation and prayer, and took to chewing leaves from the tea shrub, which acted as stimulant, helping him stay awake. (An alternative, more macabre version has Bodhidharma accidentally falling asleep, and upon waking cutting off his own eyelids in disgust at himself. He threw the eyelids away, and from them sprouted the first tea shrub).

(Environment Research) Jane & Louise Wilson Stasi City

Jane and Louise Wilson’s Stasi City is a psychological exploration of the mute, abandoned architectural spaces of the Stasi, the former headquarters of the East German secret police. For five minutes, a video camera slowly and deliberately pans through the building’s hallways and interrogation rooms, invoking the long history of abuses that took place there, as a human figure floats gently upwards unpinned from the laws of gravity. The four channel video installation is shown on opposite corners of the enclosed installation space, reinforcing a sense of confinement and surveillance.

Hospital Room 
Hohenschonhausen Prison 
1997, C-Type print
mounted on aluminium





Stasi City
1997, Installation View 
303 Gallery, New York (1998)
Photo_Theo Coulombe.

(Environmental Research) Beauty In Decay - Urbex

I first found Ubrex though a friend that introduced me into Urban Exploring a few years back. they showed me there online forum  28dayslater.co.uk  This website is a dedicated website to urban exploration around the UK and Europe. This book " Beauty In Decay" is my bible I got it as a Christmas present last year because i loved it that much.


RomanyWG first started exploring abandoned Locations in 1967 which was a hunted house at the end of the road WG lived on. as i recall it was a group of 3 young kids. He says the house didn't have cobwebs or much dust in fact they lady who lived there previously had left everything as it was cosmetics, perfumes still on the dressing table. it was as if who ever lived there had only pop'ed down the road for the morning paper. 



( front cover) 


Urban Exploring is still filled with unforgettable moments.  Walking around some places looking at them as they have been left untouched like a few Asylums that are featured in this book one in this book in particular Asylum in the UK. It's been shut down now for 10 years but almost everything was left in situ. There are Wheelchairs, beds, furniture,curtains, even drugs and syringes. Only now has nature has started to take over. 


  
The English Patient - RomanyWG
Using a Nikon D700 using Natural Lighting.


 

A Hospital is a building and an institution heavy under the weight of its own symbolism. Its the triumph of science and reason over centuries of quackery. It is a cornerstone of a functioning society, visibly and physically raising the standards of living for all. Hospitals are furious hives of activity, always busy and aways lit up like electric beacons through the night. They are symbolic of hope for recovery, care, help and all the good things about things about being human.


    
Smoke In the Powerplant- Bertram 'Batram' Beyer
Location: Power Station, Germany 
Camera Olympus E-400   Natural Lighting, Long Exposure, Long Depth Of Field



Broadway - Timothy Neesam 
Location Abandoned Theater, USA 
Canon EOS 400d XTI,Natural Lighting, Long Exposure, Long Depth Of Field.


These kinds of places are, the the photographers in this book what i like to call 'Urbex Gold; it is not uncommon for any photographer shown in beauty in decay to travel for 24 hours to get that one shot that they are looking for.   

( Research for Environment ) Robert Polidori - After The Flood

After spending Most of last night Reading and flicking though "Robert Polidori's After The Flood"  Polidori visited New Orleans between September 2005 and April 2006. He went round photographing the widespread destruction—an incomprehensible landscape of felled oak trees, houses washed off their foundations, and tumbled furniture, Looking closely at the Destruction of family's home's, businesses nature whipping out a whole community in just a few hours.



5417 Marigny Street


Polidori finds a formal beauty that radiates stillness and compassion and invites contemplation. 
Like i do when i walk round wrecked abandoned Homes'Schools,Hospitals. There is just this overwhelming feeling of sadness knowing Places like homes that have had alot of work and effort to make it someones home or even a family home has been destroyed in a matter of minuets by natures freakish accidents. 





  The wrecked rooms, collapsed houses, and ravaged neighborhoods on view in After the Flood become metaphors for human fragility. Showing the hell what the Neighborhood would be going though after a traumatic time they would be going though knowing that all of the prize possessions, everything they had ever worked for destroyed.







 Using a large-format camera, natural light, and unusually long exposures, Polidori records the destruction with a mastery of color, light, shadow, and texture that brings to life discarded mementos and mud-caked belongings. In each image, the artist seems to have captured the very air of New Orleans, weighted heavily with mold, humidity, and history. 

Henry Fox Talbot (Cyanotypes)

 Henry Fox Talbot was a British inventor and a pioneer of photography. He was the inventor of calotype process, the precursor to most photographic processes of the 19th and 20th centuries. He was also a noted photographer who made major contributions to the development of photography as an artistic medium. 


How calotypes work

The sensitive element of a calotype is silver iodide. With exposure to light, silver iodide decomposes to silver leaving iodine as a free element. Excess silver iodide is washed away after oxidizing the pure silver with an application of gallo-nitrate (a solution of silver nitrate, acetic, andgallic acids). As silver oxide is black, the resulting image is visible. Potassium bromide then is used to stabilize the silver oxide.

In the case of salted paper, the sensitive element is silver chloride formed when the salt (sodium chloride) reacts with silver nitrate^[1]. Silver chloride decomposes when in contact with light forming silver and chlorine evaporates. Excess silver chloride is washed out of the paper and the silver oxidizes in contact with gallo-nitrate. The silver oxide is stabilized on the paper with hyposulphite of soda.

Silver chloride is sometimes favored over silver iodide because it is less sensitive to temperature. During long exposures in direct sunlight the temperature on the paper can be quite high.

The calotype created a negative image on the silver iodide from which positives could be printed (onto silver chloride paper). This made the calotype superior in one aspect to the daguerreotype which only made one positive image (whereby it was difficult to get multiple copies)- Wikipedia quote 

 These are just a few of Fox Tabots images,

for an experiment i thought i would try Cyanotype. I tryed both ways of doing this i did do flower pressing and cutting up paper and trapping them in a photo frame. I also thought i would try this excrement using negatives but instead of using my Large format Negatives i made digital negatives using Photoshop converting them into black and white then inverting them. then printing them onto projecting paper. and these are my end results. 

And this one is of the digital Negative. 

Deconstructing Environmental Photographers.

Simon Norfolk 
 For this research task I chose to look at the photographic icon that is Simon Norfolk- i perceptually chose 3 images from his Afghanistan portfolio. I chose this because if you didn't know already that i am a urban explorer, His images of the derelict buildings really court my eye.      





  





I picked these three images too analyse because these where once used by the public Afghanistan, but know they are dereliction sites full lonesomeness knowing these places where once loved by the public and where used regally but know people are afraid of these places. the indication of this is by looking at the bullet marks and mess it has been left in after the war in Afghanistan. looking at the environment of the location its dry and dead in all three images the only life form in any of these is in the second image of the blur'ed animals. these images make me think of death and the sadness these landscapes give the way the buildings are empty  and barely standing at all. 


The sky in all Three images is quite vibrant yet doll and empty emotionless. I believe they are all taken around sunset as looking at the small bursitis oranges, yellows and pink, and when ever i think of a sunset it could ether be romantic, lonesomeness or emptiness. In this case this images are represent Emptiness and a little Lonesomeness.


All three images i think the photographer wanted natural low key lighting to show shadows of the empty buildings. 
there is depth showing us views how far back the landscape goes but also highlighting that there is no other life forms around showing us that this is an abandoned town/village.
on the second image these is a slow shutter speed to show the fast movement of the  animals, giving of that vibe that they don't want to be here its a war zone or that the building is not safe n being around that is a hazard and could fall any moment.










Sorry for the delay on blogging this i was attending a Lecture at the Royal Holloway University London and did not get home til 2 am. I did inform Steffi Klenz. 
    
    

Depth Of Field ( DOF) Workshop Lecture.

To start of the work shop we had a 45 minuet long Lecture about Depth of Field looking at the distance in front of and beyond the point of focus of the a subject and coving the basics of Depth of field, looking at the critical point of focus in front and a object behind appearing in focus.
In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field  is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance at a time, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance, so that within the DOF, the unsharpness is imperceptible under normal viewing conditions
In some cases, it may be desirable to have the entire image sharp, and a large DOF is appropriate. In other cases, a small DOF may be more effective, emphasizing the subject while de-emphasizing the foreground and background. In cinematography, a large DOF is often called deep focus, and a small DOF is often called shallow focus. The DOF is determined by the camera to subject distance, the lens focal length, the lens -F stops and the format or circle of confusion criterion. 

In the lecture we also looked at a few photographers like
Paolo Roversi
Peter Praser
Martin Par
Naoya Hatakeyama ( i think thats how you spell it)
so on so forth.


Here are some notes from the lesion.

Focus, Sharpness & Depth of Field workshop

We started the work shop of with a small Lecture on depth of field and explaining the critical points of focus the plane object focus, decreasing sharpness and Large aperture.

Studio Introduction

I have worked in a studio environment for the past two years sins i started studying photography at college. Its never been my strongest photographic skill as i prefer working on location but i do use studio lighting in most my work.

We started with the basics like Heath & safety in the studio then working with exposures which is still my weakness I'm terrible working with film because i alway feel like i will always mess up the film. 

We then went on too working with continuos tungsten light and light metering 

these are some notes from the studio work shop.

these are notes of how to control ISO and light metering in the studio.

i also did attempt to do voice recording but my iphone memo recorder is very quite. 

The next task was understanding and showing us what equipment we could use for studio work example Lights, Tripods, See Stands and how to attach the lights correctly to the stiggets.  Then we got to set up the mini studio sets.

we then went on to Look at using Medium Format cameras i had studied Medium format before at my college but i never got round to actually use the Cameras and only really had a short lesson on the subject. so it was great to finally get round too using the cameras . I forgot to take a photograph of the studio set up with camera and the studio set up. 

The next task was to pick 1 object to photograph me and my Partner Luke Charles picked the wooden mallet as are object because  we really like the shadow from the mallet under the tungsten light. Using light meters to get the lighting right to shoot for the highlights, the mid-tones and the shadows and 3 different Fstops, but thats where me and my partner messed up instead of changing the f stops we changed the Iso i think. but we correct are selves on Lukes roll of film.

I think the best part of the whole work shop was the processing the black and white film. i had developed medium format before at college but i messed up the film when exposing it and lost everything. I developed it the old traditional way doing it all buy hand in the processing lab. so the too experience developing film in the processing machines was very exciting for me. going into the dark room for the first time at this university was great. and i was very happy with my results of my negatives. I yet need to scan in my neagive contact sheet to upload to my blog but will be done soon.