Photography Final Evaluation

Photography Final Evaluation

The requirement for this project was to create a series of photographic stills that explore documentary photography. My first impression was a positive one, I really enjoy photography and I had been waiting for this project since the course started. Though the only outstanding thing that I had a problem with was the 'Documentary' part of the title. To me any form of photography is documentary photography but I felt as if they purposefully put that in the title because we were focusing on something very specific. I was right. Our brief required us to document a person, someone other than ourselves. That was a big problem. Whilst we were being briefed a lot of us were panicking, thinking of people we could possibly document and it turned out that a large portion of us had nobody.

Despite that we still had to continue with the project. I started to research some photographers that work with documentary photography and stumbled upon one called Kitra Cahana, an american photographer. The research seemed to come very easily, I found a lot of her projects and instantly fell in love with her work. They were all so vivid and expressive and best of all they were true images of peoples lives. It felt great to get back into analysing photographs and with her work the ideas came quick and fast. I also researched Duane Michals who is more well known than Kitra Cahana and he was actually one of the artists in the project brief. I mainly chose to research and respond to him as a large portion of his photography and work use narrative, something very essential to our project. His work was amazing and the fact it directly linked to our brief was ever so better. It gave me a chance, ahead of everyone who didnt choose to research Duane Michals, to look into different types of narrative.

The only issue I had with responding to my artists was my lack of a subject. I had nobody to photograph, nobody to document in the same way that they did. That was my only limiting factor in this project and so my first steps were to figure out what to do... To try and combat my problem I brought a camera with me during a day out with some friends and took some quick photographs without anyone knowing as the people I was with didn't want me to take pictures of them. That was my way around, sneaky photographs. Amazingly I did manage to find some good pictures I took and luckily they seemed to fit into a lovely little series.These were for a response to Duane Michals. I found it easier to respond to him first instead of Kitra Cahana as she tended to document people unknown to her whereas Duane Michals was simply about narrative and story. I managed to overcome my obstacle by working around the rules. I didn't have permission to take the photographs but I took them anyway.

A lot of the feedback for my response was very positive, in fact it was much more positive than I had expected. It seemed that my work didn't accurately represent my struggle with the project. Despite not presenting a finished series of images like everyone else had it didn't seem like I struggled finding someone to document. One piece of feedback was that "It doesn't look like you didn't know what you were doing, but it doesn't look planned either. It seems unexpected, photos taken in the heat of the moment". That was really pleasing to see because that person had figured out exactly what had happened and they hadn't criticised me for it.

This project is really hard to pull any strengths from. If I were to say anything it would have to be problem solving. I had a major problem and I still do. I am still without a final series of images for the project but I feel that without my small level of problem solving during my artist research and response I would have nothing to show for the two weeks of photography. 

Week 11 | Photography

The second week was all about editing and selecting the right images from our contact sheets but seeing as I didn't have the images it was difficult to complete that task.

Instead of focusing on my images I tried to fill out my book with research and pages of photography research so it 'seemed' like i had done some work. One photographer I focused on was Duane Michals. Michals is a photographer who is known to use sequences in his work, these sequences tend to create a narrative in which a story can be interpreted.

This was a piece that I analysed, its a very notable piece mainly because of who it was made for. The piece in question is called 'Dr Heisenberg's Magic Mirror of Uncertainty' which he created for Vogue Magazine.

The subject is seen staring into the mirror in an innocent attempt to see her reflection, only to be surprised by what she sees. Her reflection is seems morphed beyond human proportions, becoming unnatural and borderline monstrous. What is striking is the fact that there doesn't seem to be anything remotely wrong with the mirror, usually a crack or a bend would create such a distortion, yet the mirror seems in perfect condition. This then leaves you to wonder if it is the woman creating these reflections. The reflections arent accurate and therefore hint at a more metaphorical meaning, perhaps the many faces the subject has, seeing as, in a few she has one or more faces however abstract they may be. Could she be discovering herself?

Duane Michal's use of narrative was a very prominent aspect of the photography topic of our course. A large part of our brief was to create a series of images that tell a story and of course what is a story without a narrative?

I did actually try to respond to him, which may be a surprise... I managed to take a number of photographs whilst out with some friends.

After annotating my contact sheet I had to try and link a couple so that it would at least seem like there was a narrative to it. A lot of them were just quick snaps but when I took them I made sure to take a few shots in quick succession so that, if by chance, I would capture some motions and movements that could suggest certain things.

The four images I ended up choosing were in fact the first four photographs I took during my day out. They weren't of anything special but a pair of feet. Two of the images have a large amount of motion blur considering the size of the frame. The composition across the series of images was also very similar which makes it a lot easier for the images to be linked. What I most liked about the four images is how they do not seem to represent much yet they hold a lot of potential for interpretation. Is this a positive series or a negative series? Is the subject dancing? Is the subject running? If so, running from what? There are a lot of questions that need answers when it comes to figuring out what this series depicts.

I made sure to include my editing process in my book, this has always been something I've aimed to do as it shows my ability to use editing software such as Adobe Photoshop. It also helps to evidence how I got from the raw files to and edited series.

Week 10 | Photography

Photography

The Lives of Others.

Our new project is photography and our brief was based around the lives of other people. Upon hearing the brief I was a little sceptical, mainly due to the fact that, although I enjoy photography, I'm not that fond of photographing other people. 

The first week of the project revolved around studying the history of photography, we started right at the beginning with the history of the first lens. It was a small piece of glass that allowed for magnification. It was quite fascinating to learn how and when photography started.

    Besides that, our brief required us to document another person and so researching documentary photography was very key in getting to grips with this type of photography. I started to explore a range of documentary photographers and found one called Kitra Cahana.

Cahana is a female documentary photographer from America who has done some amazing projects exploring real world situations, crisis's and even just groups of people that she finds interesting. There was one project of hers which I became very interested in is her work with Nomads. The photographs she took were amazing, they were effective at capturing the adventure and mystery behind a lifestyle we aren't so familiar with.


These are a couple of my favorite:

This image depicts what must be a nomad inside of a train. The subject looks like a young male who looks rather worn out, tire and generally quite knackered. He is relaxing and enjoying a cigarette whilst the train travels. The atmosphere of the photograph is a very mellow one, this is largely due to the dark blue overtone that dominates the setting and feelings the photograph evokes, feelings of cold and wet. The flame on the cigarette is the only thing that is showing any sort of warmth and the nomad is the one cigarette, it could simply tell us that this particular nomad enjoys smoking or it could also suggest his constant search for warmth in the cold bitterness of the world. He has encapsulated himself within the belly of the carriage, again this could be for warmth, possibly protection or is he hiding? Hiding from authority, from certain people or hiding from responsibility. The cigarette is often associated with rebuking and rebellion against authority, an authority the nomad is possibly battling.

This is also one of my favorites, the photograph shows four young nomads enjoying themselves at a train station singing songs whilst they are either waiting for a train or planning to camp out on the platform overnight. Next to the group stand a couple who are noticeably less 'nomadic'. They are dressed differently as they clearly live different lives. Whilst the two bystanders live a generic, western, middle class life, the group of nomads live a far more complex life of survival, adventure and discovery. The two groups are physically separated by the space between them as well as the support beam in the frame. They are also socially separated. The use of the support beam between them, however accidental is may have been, has helped at enforcing the idea that these are two different types of people who share different values, goals and aspirations. It is interesting to note that the nomads are having fun and enjoyinh their time together whilst the two bystanders look eagerly over at them, almost enviously. Their behaviors differ. Cahana has used framing to capture the idea that although we are fundamentally the same, aspects of people's lives, culture and identity are different.

Documenting our Partners

After we got paired up we were tasked with creating a portrait that represented the individual we were documenting. It seemed like a brief introductory into documentary photography and this seemed like a good way to do it. My partner was Nicola, she claimed she was fun and enthusiastic and she wasn't afraid of the camera lens. That was great because I didn't have to worry about hiding her face or obscuring it in a way that she was happy with, that was better for me. I can be a bit more free with how I want to document her.

I wanted to be creative and because she said she is fun I didn't want a straight up portrait as that wouldn't exactly reflect her nature. I started to take photographs using extreme angles and using mirrors to my advantage so that the portrait would look interesting and exciting. Despite this it was difficult to have a variety of different shots, all of them turned out roughly the same as if they could have been in a series.

After a lot of failed shot attempts and failed ideas we went to the bathroom so that I could get a clean shot of her in the mirror. She said she was fun and generally a happy person, cheerful if you will so I asked her to stare at herself in the mirror and something amazing happened.. She started laughing simply because she was looking in the mirror which was brilliant for me and i definitely didn't pass up the opportunity to capture it

They were alright images, I felt they appropriately expressed the type of person she told me she was but I wasn't very happy with them. They were good but they were't quite Carling. I think the reason I didn't like them so much was because I didn't feel they were adventurous enough. 

Because of this I couldn't settle on this image and therefore took another couple of images whilst we were waiting for everyone to get back. However these images were taken without her knowledge.

This is the photograph I decided to use for Nicola. It wasn't staged which was the best thing about it, it was natural, it was Nicola in her most raw form. 

Graphics Final Evaluation

The requirement for this project allowed and expected us to explore and create a Fan-Zine. The Zine itself had no requirements other than a minimum of 12 pages. It could be on a subject of our choice but preferably something new, original and interesting. I was originally quite sceptical about the project, creating a story wasn't something id say I enjoyed but that was where I had misinterpreted the requirements. I had failed to take into consideration that what we were creating wasn't a novel but a mini magazine. Something, short, sweet and ultimately fun.

I was very brief in my research, although the project was a graphic design project I didn't feel compelled to research a graphic designer. This was partly due to my inability to find a graphic designer who also created zines and because I wanted to create an original Zine in my own unique style. We did however manage to have a hands on session with many zines to get to grips with what they generally look like, feel like, the format and common characteristics such as how they're bound and what material they're made from. We had the chance to encounter many zines on trips to comic book stores and in class. Many of us hadn't experiences Zines before, I feel like I really benefitted from this as it allowed me to envision my Zine a lot better. I did eventually manage to find a creator and designer I could take inspiration from. Their name was AE Ritchie and they had created a Zine about tying in the natural with the electronic, combining images of brain scans and botanical illustrations. However the topic of the Zine wasn't what intrigued me, the fact that the designer had uses tracing paper as some of their pages. That I found very interesting and decided to experiment with it in my work.

I think my experimentation was ultimately a little bit flawed, in the sense that I had a very strong sense of what I wanted to create and so that limited my attitude toward experimenting with different ideas. I was cautious of wasting time creating ideas that I was sure I wasn't going to use. However when it mattered I think my experimentation was thorough. When it came to choosing my pages and playing around with tracing paper, that was when it became clear that experimenting was very fundamental to the success of a project. I explored using whole tracing paper pages, part tracing paper, photocopying onto tracing paper, sticking printed images onto tracing paper, using the tracing paper to trace the images, etc. In the end i was able to step back and decide what worked best for me. Originally I was confident in my ability to trace the images I was going to use but after experimenting my mind had changed and I had finally settled on photocopying onto the tracing paper as it was more efficient and it kept true to the images I was using.

The areas I feel need improvement are endless, each and every aspect of my work could have been improved so much. I feel I didn't fulfill my expectations with this project. The part that bugged me most was how I bound my Zine. I really could have tried experimenting more with book binding, using the number of pages to determine the success of my experimentation. I didn't take into consideration how many pages I was creating and so when it came to stapling my Zine together it didn't quite work because my Zine was far too thick. I therefore had to create a method to bind my Zine that I hadn't represented in my book at all. It was a last minute ditch at creating a finished piece. Although I guess that leaves my Zine up for improvement and development, which it definitely needs.

Week 9 | Graphics

This was the fourth and final week of the graphics unit in our course and being the final week we needed to have produced a finished Zine by the end of the week so that we can take part in a group crit.

I had decided how i wanted my Zine to be bound so I went about collecting as much tracing paper as i could so that I had enough. I then began to cut the tracing paper to the size of my pages which was a move id later come to regret. The issue was that, due to time, I was going to photocopy onto the tracing paper and for me to do that I needed a paper size of a4. I had loads of tracing paper pages cut down to almost a5 which was a waste because it meant they couldn't be printed on and therefore I couldn't use them.

This meant I had to get even more tracing paper and make sure I had them cut down to a4.

With that all out of the way I needed to assemble all of my pages together on a computer in order to print them. I amassed all of the memes I had and along with the facts I began to create each page. Now the easiest way for me to do this was by using Photoshop. I created a canvas that was the size I wanted, imported the memes I wanted to use as well as the facts/figures and then I had to save the file as a Jpeg image so that they didn't take up much space and I could print them easily.

In the end I managed to create 16 pages with content and then a start and ending page. I sourced all of the facts I used with website links on the back page to credit where I got my information from.

The pages printed nicely and looked very slick and clear. The black ink looked especially great against the translucency of the paper.

After printing came the tricky part. It was tricky because I hadn't anticipated how many pages I was actually planning to make when I was gathering book binding ideas. I hadn't planned for the Zine to be so thick. The idea was to simply staple it at the top which seemed simple enough except for the amount of paper the staple had to actually travel through.

To solve my problem I had to use almost six staples through the Zine to overlap and staple groups of pages together. It worked but it wasn't very attractive.

Contextual Studies | Genius of Photography

An Observed Photograph opportunity

A B&W Portrait

Contextual Studies | The First Days of Digital

The Digital Revolution

In time for our project with Film we were shown a documentary about the Digital Revolution and the uprising of some of Hollywoods most exciting directors. A lot of these films, almost all of them, I hadn't actually seen before. 

We looked at Directors such as Quentin Tarantino who is famous for his coveted collection of creations including:

 - Resevoir Dogs 1992 

 - True Romance 1993

 - Pulp Fiction 1994

 - Jackie Brown 1997

 - Kill Bill Vol 1 2003

 - Kill Bill Vol 2 2004

 - Inglorious Basterds 2009

and 

 - Django Unchained 2013

The documentary touched upon subjects that covered Tarantios use of mundane, real life dialogue that is used in heightened situations, his homage to other film makers through his use of transcription, his post modernism and of course his re-occuring cast members.

The documentary also covered other film makers such as Gus Van Sandt, Matthew Barney, Baz Lurhman and Jane Campion. Although I hadn't ever come across many of these directors and film makers it was really interesting watching the documentary and seeing how each of them compares and what makes them all so unique.

The seven basic plots of any film are:

 - Overcoming the Monster

 - Rags to Ritches

 - The Quest

 - Voyage and Return

 - Comedy

 - Tragedy

 - Rebirth.