This is my photograph I took over the summer break. I think this photos composition is it's best quality, with its subject facing diagonally and the old tree looming over the statue. My favourite aspect of this photo though is how the barrier of the gate perfectly blocks the statue's eyes, this wasn't intentional but it makes it look a lot more meticulously planned despite the fact it was actually taken completely impulsively and without much thought about the composition. Another feature of this image that I think came out really well is the lighting, the sun shining through the intricate branches and leaves of the tree blocks the majority of the light and leaves only small blotches of sunlight onto the subject, I feel like this emphasizes the interesting form of the statue, as well as highlighting the textures of the graveyard.
This is another of my favourite photos that I took over summer. In my opinion the lighting on this photo is near perfect, showing the warm red glow of the setting sun projected onto the intricate architecture of this building, its structural details creating interesting shadows and highlights. I like how the warm hues on the building is juxtaposed with the mellow blue of the sky.
I'd say the most important and most noticeable feature of my photography in Paris is my use of light and shadows, the bright sun combined with the city's unique architecture created interesting shadows nearly everywhere I went in the city. I thought it was great to be able to explore somewhere in a different country through photography since I'd solely been taking photos inside of London before this so it gave me a completely unique perspective in comparison to what I was used to. I found it very refreshing to be able to capture photos of places that I wasn't used to or that I'd never knew existed.
For this photoshoot I took what I learnt about light and shadow in Paris and applied it to the industrial theme that I had explored earlier in my photobooks. I really like the colour of the sky in these photos, I think the contrast between the deep blues and the brighter oranges and pinks work really well.
These photos are pretty much proof of concept for concert photography and quite low quality since I took them on my phone, I would like to get some better photos but it's difficult to bring my camera to gigs. I feel like the venues I've been going lend themselves well to photography and I've already seen some great photography taken in similar places. I think that concerts are a good thing for me to experiment with now because I've been finding my style of photography boring recently. I've wanted to get into portraiture a lot too which is great in this kind of setting. I want to get some kind of camera that could fit in my pocket but whilst still having good quality.
AUG76
SEP70
I found these sets of photos as slides in a junk shop, there were two seperate boxes, labelled as 6 years apart but as I was scanning them in I realised that these photos are of the same people. I think its pretty sad that such interesting photos are just being disregarded as "junk". I am interested in the story behind these photos, who these people are and how they managed to get to this location. There are more slides in similar cases in the junk shop that I intend to buy and scan in at some point too, I'm hoping that they will also be of these same people so that I connect more to the story of them. There isn't a lot of information that I can get from the photos, but by the looks of it the one from 1970 are holiday photos from the Netherlands (maybe). I think that the photos show the personality of the subjects very well and I am very grateful that I have found them.
JAN76
OTHERS
What is it within your photography that you are really interested in?
I like different things from different parts of my photography, I don't have one thing that I have more of an interest in than anything else. The way I want to take photos isn't to look out for something specific or to go out with photos that I intend to take already in my mind, instead I just want to put myself in a nice location and then take my photos impulsively.
What is it about your project that you want to know?
What I want to know most is how I'll be able to connect different interests and ideas I have into a final piece.
What is it that you want to document?
I'd rather not decide on what I want to take photos of yet, I'm a lot happier with having lots of ideas of what I want to do and then being able to connect them, I have a lot of different interests and plans when it comes to photos and photoshoots, so hopefully I can capture something from all of them and then try and find some bigger theme to create something new with everything I have.
How much do you want to document what you see?
I don't want to create documentary photography and I'm very open to changing things in the photo or even implying things through the way I present my photography in a way where the photos don't represent the subjects accurately.
What do want to share with the viewer?
I don't have an exact idea of what I want my personal investigation to be yet but something I'm sure I want to do is share a story. Whether it's through text or through the images themselves or if it's a real story or something that I make up.
What do want the viewer to experience?
I don't want to imply anything to the viewer too much, I'd prefer it if audiences would come up with their own interpretation and have different experiences.
Have you documented in great detail a photographer or groups of photographers that have also photographed a similar theme/story/subject?
I think it would be difficult to research photographers with a similar theme, story or subject since I'm still not sure what direction I want to take the project yet, but I don't particularly want to research any photographers for my personal investigation. I'm sure I've done enough of that throughout studying photography and now I just want to let this project be uninfluenced and unrelated to any other artist or work so it can be more personal to me.
One artist that I have investigated earlier that I think have influenced me in the past are Stanley Brakhage. I'd like to try to use different photo chemicals and inks at some point.
I like different things from different parts of my photography, I don't have one thing that I have more of an interest in than anything else. The way I want to take photos isn't to look out for something specific or to go out with photos that I intend to take already in my mind, instead I just want to put myself in a nice location and then take my photos impulsively.
What is it about your project that you want to know?
What I want to know most is how I'll be able to connect different interests and ideas I have into a final piece.
What is it that you want to document?
I'd rather not decide on what I want to take photos of yet, I'm a lot happier with having lots of ideas of what I want to do and then being able to connect them, I have a lot of different interests and plans when it comes to photos and photoshoots, so hopefully I can capture something from all of them and then try and find some bigger theme to create something new with everything I have.
How much do you want to document what you see?
I don't want to create documentary photography and I'm very open to changing things in the photo or even implying things through the way I present my photography in a way where the photos don't represent the subjects accurately.
What do want to share with the viewer?
I don't have an exact idea of what I want my personal investigation to be yet but something I'm sure I want to do is share a story. Whether it's through text or through the images themselves or if it's a real story or something that I make up.
What do want the viewer to experience?
I don't want to imply anything to the viewer too much, I'd prefer it if audiences would come up with their own interpretation and have different experiences.
Have you documented in great detail a photographer or groups of photographers that have also photographed a similar theme/story/subject?
I think it would be difficult to research photographers with a similar theme, story or subject since I'm still not sure what direction I want to take the project yet, but I don't particularly want to research any photographers for my personal investigation. I'm sure I've done enough of that throughout studying photography and now I just want to let this project be uninfluenced and unrelated to any other artist or work so it can be more personal to me.
One artist that I have investigated earlier that I think have influenced me in the past are Stanley Brakhage. I'd like to try to use different photo chemicals and inks at some point.
This was my first attempt at a collage for this project, I'm not entirely sure why I chose these photos or the order that they're in. I don't think that these photos are very thematically or visually similar but I still really like how this came out. I think it might be because I experienced these moments and the experiences give off the same feelings to me. It may also be because the range of how i felt during these moments is so large.
These are my scans of some photos (some were mine and some were from the slides) that I have ripped up. I wanted to experiment with using physical processes and I'm pretty happy with what I finished with. The photos were ripped more or less randomly, so it introduced an element of chance into my photography, an example of this benefiting me is when i accidentally ripped part of the statues head off when creating the 4th photo, I was annoyed at first but then I realised that I actually enjoyed the way it looked so I finished ripping the two pieces of paper apart to "decapitate" the statue. Something similar also happened with the photo of the pigeon and the photo of the moon, I don't think I would have thought to split the images in these ways if it wasn't for the risk and chance the act of carelessly ripping the photos added to my process. I also enjoy the texture of the ripped photos that shows up in these, I feel like using photoshop can be useful in a creative process but I don't think something like this would be able to be fully replicated through the use of software. Throughout pretty much all of my photography projects I have mainly relied on digital methods so I'm glad I chose to experiment with this because I like the results a lot and I think these photos would be good to incorporate in the collages that I'm planning to do.
Some photos I took over the half term break, I think they are alright in some ways, mainly being able to capture the moment well, unfortunately I feel like they are too similar to each other and also the quality is pretty bad since I took these on my phone. I think that these photos seem fairly lazy, I think what I'd really like to do right now is to be able to experiment with some high resolution good photos, but I find the small images and the unfortunate cropping/lighting puts me in a bad situation when it comes to exploring ideas and techniques with my photography. Despite this I do really like the subject matter of these photos, I think the locations and people that are in these photos are definitely what I want to pursue in this project I just think that the way that I took these photos are letting them down.
This is probably my favourite piece of photography I've made so far in this project, I like the way that the photos visually fit with each other especially because the photos have a range of processes in which they had been made as well as how I combined photos that I had taken with found photography.
These are some more collages and compositions I've made using a mix of my photos and found photography. I like these ones a lot more than my previous attempts, I love the difference in shapes and sizes of the different photos as well as the difference of subject matter. I surprised myself when it comes to how well some of these photos added to each other. When displaying these photos I don't want it to be too obvious what the origin or the process of individual photos are, so their purpose can just be to compliment the other photos. The idea of being able to tell stories by using completely unrelated things is an idea that I definitely enjoy and want to expand on.
I am going to make these longer collages into a sliding video. Maybe also incorporate some text or animation.
The photos I've taken here fall victim to the same flaw that I've been seeing a lot in my work. None of these photos were taken with much in mind besides the fact that 'it looks cool', not only do I want the photos I'm taking to be better quality, I'd also like for them to be more meaningful to me.
This is the big collage that i have been using to create a video scrolling across all of the photos, it's a combination of some old collages and some new ones. Although I do think this is pretty cool I feel like the magnitude of this collage takes away the charm of its smaller versions. The amount of photos piled next to each other made me realised that I had no story or idea behind this big piece, sure it shows off some of my favourite photos from the project and from other projects but it seems so meaningless when theres no real importance or purpose given to the photos. I think there is definitely a right way to go about this and I want to use this as a learning experience. Something I feel has restricted me in this project is the fact that I have no overall idea that I want to pursue with my work. My choice was 'construction of a photo' which I feel is so vague and uninteresting that I have no real aim when I take photos or compose collages. I've said before that I want to be able to tell stories with my photos in this project but I don't know what story I want to tell or what ideas I want to express.
I've decided that the relationship between photography and music is something that I want to explore through my work, these concert photos were all taken just with my phone impulsively and I still like how they've come out, so I feel like theres a lot more to explore in this field. A concert is perfect for the kind of photography that I want to create because of all the different performances and interesting lighting. I feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what I can explore in music photography.
This is what I did to branch out from my music photography into something related but slightly different. These photos are of my friends before or after a concert, I feel like the community of music scenes is something far less touched on by other concert photographers, so I was glad that these came out the way they did. I
Evaluation:
I think this personal investigation has been a very rewarding experience, I feel like I've learnt a lot about what I want my style to be like and have improved a lot as a photographer. I experimented and investigated a lot of styles and genres of photography that I was inexperienced with before. Although I'm not entirely sure that I've fully explored everything that I could, but I know that this has put me in the right decision towards what I want to make. I'm confident in the fact that this investigation is something that is close to my personality. |