Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.
How's it going?
Good thanks Matt.
What made you want to become a photographer?
Reading National Geographic. I know its a cliche answer for so many photographers, but I grew up with bookshelves full of the magazines and I spent hours on our living-room floor as a child flicking through each new magazine when it arrived. I dabbled in photography early, but it is only now in my 30's that I have started to take photography more seriously. Its a field that will never be perfected so is something I hope to enjoy for life.
Your work uses tilt-shift photography to narrow depth of field, making Sydney look like a model city. What is it about Sydney which lends itself so well to this point of view?
Sydney's Harbor and Beaches are surrounded by hills and cliff-lines that provide the perfect vantage point for my photography. The 'model city' effect combines selective focus, the angle of light, and speed of playback to trick the viewer into thinking they're looking at footage of a scale model. Elevation is also an important factor. By positioning the camera above the subject, the viewer looks down upon the scene, dramatically enhancing the effect. Sydney's dramatic landscape gives me plenty of opportunity to do this.
Your work plays with focus, vantage, perspective and the viewer's perceptions of reality. Are you challenging your audience not to take their environment for granted?
Absolutely. Both the manipulation of time and control over focus are sledgehammer techniques to detach the viewer from the real world. My scenes of Sydney's Spit bridge are a good example of this: Its hard for commuters to recognize the old world charm of a bridge rising to let yachts pass when you're stuck waiting for that same bridge in peak hour traffic. After shrinking the bridge down to a fraction of its size, I've heard some of these same people laugh out loud as they watch the toy boats pass underneath.
When we're exposed to the same scenes day after day it takes this kind of jolt to see the ordinary in new light. But despite the obvious visual effects, I see my work as part documentary. I am trying to show people things as they are.
When we're exposed to the same scenes day after day it takes this kind of jolt to see the ordinary in new light. But despite the obvious visual effects, I see my work as part documentary. I am trying to show people things as they are.
Using time-lapse, your short films capture time in a way which is both different to the human viewing experience and cinema's interpretation of it. What can this perspective teach us about the city we live in?
We rarely have time to watch life play out in front of us. If you had the time and patience to watch a landscape over the period of many hours and record events of the day you would still miss the most important trends and patterns over time that become clear through time-lapse photography.
By altering the frequency of events in time I can enhance the viewer's perception of scale. This is because smaller objects tend to move faster than large objects relative to their size. In this way, ships that appear stationary at normal speed start to pivot on their moorings like the smallest of rowboats.
Speeding up time can affect the viewer's perception in other ways. At the right frequency, Sydney harbor will ripple like water in a bathtub and sunbathers at Bondi Beach will march like ants in a colony.
By altering the frequency of events in time I can enhance the viewer's perception of scale. This is because smaller objects tend to move faster than large objects relative to their size. In this way, ships that appear stationary at normal speed start to pivot on their moorings like the smallest of rowboats.
Speeding up time can affect the viewer's perception in other ways. At the right frequency, Sydney harbor will ripple like water in a bathtub and sunbathers at Bondi Beach will march like ants in a colony.
Do you make your films for the cinema screen or for other media?
I have only published online to date, but I'm producing this body of work with the view to presenting it at short film festivals. Ultimately I hope this work will have some value as a record of events.
What's the best film you've seen recently?
Its not a new film, but check out "The son's room", by Nanni Moretti.. To quote a good friend "If that won't make it cry.... your heart is just a pump :)"
Where can people see more of your work?
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