Group crits

So yesterday were the first group critiques of the assignment, and I took to them the images from the first two shoots that I had done.
We discussed how my images seemed to work alright, and how there was a sense of fear to them, and they were slightly unnerving however what mainly came out was that they lacked an overall theme and that I wasn't clear on expression of the unknown as I had wanted to show.
I was told to try and refine my idea, keep shooting and perhaps explore this idea of fear even more, of an mysterious character, and to possibly develop a narrative within a series, such as someone being chased through the woods.

I think that the idea of a narrative could be an interesting theme to play with, however I feel that someone being chased through the woods could be seen as a little cliche. I need to refine my ideas and shoot again.
I was also told to look at photographer Tim Simmons, who I have heard of before and I will look into at a later date.

Second shoot

As I planned to, I went out again last night to shoot, but this time with more control. I once again returned to Stanley park and this time found a location that would suit me better. Again it was in the middle of a group of trees and included the sky in the backdrop, but this time I used the headlights from a car as my light source, and with careful positioning I was able to have some of the trees obscuring the direct glare from the light, making it softer and more hazy.

Below is how I had my shot set up, just without my model yet in place.



The contact sheet below shows the images from the shoot, and in them they show a variety of positions in which I placed my model. It was a difficult choice in where to place him, as I wanted to show someone creeping toward the camera, and to make people feel unsettled and anxious as who it was and what they were doing.


The two images below, I feel work the best from the shoot and I am happy with the results. With the first I chose to have the model on the left of the trees and have him hunched down looking towards to camera. However I think it looks a little too obvious for what I wanted to show and the one below it works better.



This image I think looks particularly good, and I have edited it in photoshop to give it a slight blue tint, making it seem colder and more mysterious. I feel that the position of my model is much better here as he is slightly hunched and creeping towards the viewer as they would see it also the shadow being cast from him works well as it beams right towards the camera.

Ideas...

I want to have my omdel stood amoungst a gropu of trees, with directyl behind them, car headlights beaming through.
The model stood in front of the beams will diffuse the direct glare from them, creating a more soft, beautiful light, and at the same time they will beomce silhouetted.

First shoot

I decided that at this point it would probably be a good idea to go out and shoot something, and get myself back to grips with photographing in the style of my second year image.

I knew that I needed a location with lights in the background which could then silhouette my model in the foreground. I found a group of trees in Stanley park that could obscure the glare from the lights in my backdrop, and so create the effect that I wanted, and so I decided to set up there.

The contact sheet below shows the images I shot on the night.



I really just wanted to experiment and refresh my skills for shooting at night. I really don't like the images I shot, as they are out of focus and don't give any sense of an eerie feel to me. In order to obscure the glare from the lights I had to have my camera low to the ground and so I could not see through the viewfinder, and subsequently the photographs are out of focus.

This is not a practical way to work, and clearly I need to work harder to find a better location that suits what I want to shoot. I also realize now that it is difficult to work with lights that are fixed and I have no control over, and so I will need to use a light source that I can direct.




I intend to go out again tomorrow and re-shoot in a better location with more control.

Ori Gersht

I think that at this point it's a good time to begin my research, and so I've started by looking at a photographer who I'm also using as part of my dissertation, his name is Ori Gersht.
In particular what I'm looking at here is his Rear Windows series, where Gersht has photographed the night skies above London from the window of his flat, over a period of two years.






What Gersht wanted to show were the dramatic optical effects of light and atmosphere. The photographs were shot at twilight, and mingled together with the light pollution on the sky, they make a series of really beautiful images.



It is the aesthetics of the photographs, and not the comments of light pollution that I'm interested in here. He has used a various filters throughout to enhance the colours, making them in some cases more vivid, and others more dull looking.
I think the photographs look fantastic, in particular the change of gradient in the colours as they run from top to bottom in the frame. The colours are so striking and simply make the sky look amazing.



There is certainly a lot that I can take from this series when looking at what I'm am going to be doing. Due to the fact that I am going to be shooting at night, the use of filters could be something interesting to play with as a way making the colours really eye catching. What I also like about Gersht's images are the compositions he has used within them. Having the sky as the focus and the the city below as only a fraction of the image really works well, and could be something to experiment with in the future.

Links to my dissertation

There is a really great benefit in following down the route of this new idea, and that is because it really links well to my dissertation. My dissertation is all about mood lighting, twilight and the cinematic, where a lot of emphasis is on looking at dark, surreal looking images. This goes almost hand in hand with my studio work, as a lot of the research I've already been doing for my dissertation will certainly be relevant for the brief. It was also allow me to really get involved with the assignment, as for this term I will be focusing primarily on one core idea.

Further thinking...

I was looking at some of my past work recently and came across an image that I shot in second year as part of the write your own brief assignment. It's a photograph that I particularly like and really like shooting it, however at the time of it we were not really encouraged to make bodies of work, so it is a stand alone image.



When I shot it, I wanted the image to have a really eerie and supernatural feel to it, and for it not to be fully clear what was going on in the frame. I wanted a sense of the unknown to be present where anxiety and tension could be built up to make the viewer on edge.

And so I've decided to develop this idea into my Theme, working on the premise of the unknown with an eerie feel to it. I understand that this again is partly more a technique in shooting, but working with the idea of the unknown could be an interesting idea to work with. I still feel unsure of what I'm doing, however I want to work with this, research into it and shoot some images to see where it goes.

After my tutorial

So I had my tutorial with Sarah the other day and we discussed the new ideas I had formulated about Baroque style imagery.
We talked about how again, I didn't really have an idea or Theme, but a style I wanted to photograph in. We also talked about how everyone shoots images in this style, everyone mimics the work of Wall, Di Corcia and Crewdson.

It made me realize that this is actually true, and everyone does it, and they are never as good as. I'm beginning to get frustrated with this assignment now, as I seem to keep hitting walls and not getting anywhere. I just hope some inspiration can come from somewhere...

New ideas

I think that it could be really interesting to shoot Baroque style images, and to really exemplify the everyday abd mundane.



I have chosen here to look at contemporary photographer Jeff Wall, and his staged images.






His photographs look fantastic, really dramatizing what would be a fairly ordinary occurrence. I could take some everyday situations and add this drama to them, really make them stand out and look almost over the top. It could be interesting to look at the work of Phillip Lorca Dicorcia and adopt a black humor to my images, making them appear quite strange and dark.

Proposal

This is my proposal that I handed in to show my intentions for the brief.
When talking with Sarah about the proposal, it became to clear to me that it what I had come up with was not sufficient enough for a Theme. What I had established were the technical aspects of what I wanted to do, how I wanted the images to look, and not an overlying Theme and ideas.

After leaving I decided that it wasn't the idea of Wealth and Poverty I wanted to pursue, but just the style in which I shot them. And so I now realize that I should first try to think of an idea and then later figure out ways in which to photograph it.

First thoughts

So now that I've had a few days to let the brief set in and think about it a little, I've come to realize that it could be harder that I first thought.
Having such an open brief is great, I can shoot anything I want to, work in any way that I want, but that is also the problem for me. I've always struggled to come up with ideas when the brief is so open, finding it hard to narrow down what it is that I actually want to do.
As the brief states that it would would be good to follow on from the focus of the previous unit, I decided to look back at the work I did for it, hoping that it could give me some direction.

Looking back at my images that I produced for the D and AD brief on Wealth and Poverty, there are lots of aspects that I like about them. I like the fact that they are shot on square format, the colours and the particular crops that they have.





I have my proposal to write to give to Sarah, which will talk about following on from this series.

Unit 303...the brief

Well, I'm back again writing a new log/blog book for the new brief entitled 'Theme' which runs for about ten or eleven weeks.

We're asked to build on previous work for this unit, so that we can produce images that have a personal identity which continue development of existing ideas. This in turn should allow us to identify a theme within our own work, and a visual way in which to approach it.
Also a high degree of risk is encouraged in this unit, so that we produce strong and distinctive work.

For the final deadline, which is on Monday 9th of March at 2pm, we are asked to hand in:
A minimum of 6 portfolio quality prints
A logbook which should provide evidence of at least 9 shoots
An updated website
A full C.V
An artists statement