Contexual studies lesson blog:

Sequences.

In this very first lesson we were given two hand outs one with information about Keith Arnatt and his project 'Self Burial' (1968-69) in which Arnatt shows the idea of disappearance in a single sequence- presenting his images on a t.v screen. And the other hand out showed Duane Michals' project 'Things are Queer' (1973) and in this sequence, he keeps changing the meaning of the images by a surreal transformation of perspective and view. I was very interested in both these projects, I found them fascinating. We were told to go create our own sequences around college, this is what I did:

Ethics in photography

We had a discusion about ethics are in photography and when peoples etchics are applied to images taken by photography and the impact an image has/can have on peoples ethics. We looked at different photographers, images and projects that have raised ethical issues and talked about whats etchically wrong about them, and whats not- privacy, death,rasicm, children- mostly it's the way that we photograph (some of)these things and how we act that makes it good or bad. Sally Man's images of her children playing naked raised some concerns but she simply stated it was a natural thing for her children to be doing and she was just documenting them- I personally think that whilst some of the images are beautifully composed and taken, there are etchically wrong for me, so I don't want to even look but on the other side theirs the images taken by Philip Dicorcia, where he took images of people without their permission or knowledge which almost got him sued- I don't think these images are etchially wrong at all to be honest, the people are in a public area, out by their own will and want and a secrete snap of them shouldn't get them all wound up, compared to the really etchially wrong images that are out there such as the campaine by Benneton which aimed to shock people: they used a huge rage of offencive and shocking images when advertsing. We talked about what photography and images we would and wouldn't take and I came to the conclusion that I would photograph: Weddings,Babies(studio),Animals,Music photography, Crimes Scenes(science/crimes), I'd photography documentrys of things but if anything bad was happening I'd definatly try to help them and I wouldn't photograph: someone getting shot/stabbed etc,documenting war, pornography/nudes, paparazzi, dead bodies(forensic),anything rasist or offensive. Ethics are basically based on personal opionion and thought- something that can be ecthically wrong to someone else can be acceptable by another- it's just a case of whats too much and whats just enough when taking images that could be offensive.

Paparazzi
We got a chance to explore being a paparazzi photographer and experience ourselves first hand what its like to be one, having to map out where to be, run around chasing whoever it is and trying to get a "good" photo whilst running and having a hand in the way from the unhappy subject. We had to pick a place to wait for our tutor to come walking from and when he walked passed we had to talk as many pictures as possible, trying to get one "use-able" one and follow him around.

Here are some of the images I took on my phone:

It's safe to say that whilst paparazzi photography isn't hard with the technique side although it is hard to capture I picture that isn't blurry/out of focus, spoiled by either framing or unwanted content(hands) or simply  not being close enough to the subject. I really enjoyed this lesson as without experiencing it myself I never would have realised that although its not technical in any way, it's still extremely hard to do and do successfully. I learnt as well that people who are paparazzi can spend years of their life dedicated and lose everything in the mean time trying to get one photograph that's worth thousands or more. 

Documentary
In another lesson we learnt about the effect that documentary photography can have and how it can influence opinion and in some cases change laws.

Lewis Hine ( 1874-1940) an american photographer who was best known for his work in the early 1900's. His most legendary project, when he went around mills and factories in disguise taking images of the under age child workers trying to show and shock people of the horrible work conditions the children were working in, showing how unhappy they were and how unsafe it was for them- his images were so powerful that they were used as visual evidence in a case that made it so children would never be forced to work ever again. His images showed people the truth they needed to see, changed opinions and laws. When Hine took the images of the children working he got to know them and learnt a little about them and made the information about them captions for each image- the captions made the images stronger and made them even more shocking because paired with the images the information made the children more real, it created a personal attachment to the children in the images to the viewers and gave that extra boost of shock that really disturbed people.

Dorothea Lange(1895-1965) famous for documenting the great depression an it's effects on people and most famous for her project documenting rural poverty and highlighting the migrant labourers and farmers- it was in this project her most well-known image 'Migrant Mother' as taken- her images made sure that the people suffering didn't die of starvation as the government saw her images; the conditions they were in and things they had to do just to stay alive and rushed aid to them. Without Lange's images no-one would have known about these people and how they needed help, her images brought them to attention of others and it made a difference doing so. Lange also got information about these people and added a caption to the images. 

Don McCullin was the last photographer we looked at in this lesson. The greatest war photographer of all time. He started off being a aerial photographer for the RAF then went on to cover the battlefields of Cyprus, Congo, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh - "The War Years".  He spent many years shocking people with the grim reality of war and life out fighting them. McCullin gave people an insight to war like no other, his work most often seen as too much to cope with-  each shot he captured had some much emotion within it and each filled with the horrid truth that people were normally hidden from or tried to hide from. His images are so powerful, it's hard to believe that there real and the people in the images are real- truly shocking. 

Truth, emotion, meaning. Three main things I learnt when researching these photographers; to have opinion changing images that shock and make a real impact and connection with the viewer you have to have a meaning to the images, a truth to the images that people don't normally see and the images have to be emotional- in order to make other people feel when they look at your images, you must be able to feel something when taking the images. 

 "The Camera Never Lies"

Historical and Contempory Image Minipulation.

It was in the 60's when lots of different editing programmes where coming out that National Goegraphic moved the Pyamids in their cover image closer together, that made people realise that if they can move pyamids, it should be easy to get rid of a few blemishes, freckles etc which pretty much started off the image minipulation craze.

In 1860, Edward William Mumbler created his first "Sprit" photograph using a double exposure technique. These photographs were popular with familes with cival war victims, with so many people dying around this time- people went for a "sprit" photograph to be taken to feel comfort after loosing a loved one. But Mumbler was taken to court for fraud in 1869 was people knew it wasn't really their loved ones in the images and some recognised them as Mumblers own family members- people knew it couldn't be possible so after Mumblers success and riches, he lost it all and died a poor man.

Pictorialism:

Late 1800's, people wanted to make images more artistic and creative. In 1854, "Fading Away" Henry Peach Robinson made an image up of 3 different images from different negatives: a composit image. And Jerry Uelsmann, a contempory photographer who used the composite technique too said "When I went to New York to show people, they would say it's interesting but it's not photography"

In 1867 possibly the first case of celebritity retouching was to an images of Charles Dickens taken by Dicken's offical photograper's Gurney & Son- Mattew Brady Studio took this image and retouched it, published it in 1867 and claimed it was there image but it was fake- the images was taken six year previously and they'd retouched the image in the darkroom, adding hair to Dicken's head, changing his shirt & beard etc.

Contempary digital retouching

Amy Dresser- very good with editing light & skin in images. She's famous for what she can do with reject images that mess up, she gets sent images in the middle of the night and is told she has a certain amount of time to make an image go from being a mistake to being a "mastepiece"- She using the old techqiues of dodging and burning but on modern programmes rather than in the dark room, she does this to create illusions of things(rather than making someone literally skinnier, she'd give the illusion of it as well as saving bad images she can also completely created an image that isn't real from compite images and using this techquie of using muliple images in order to create one.

My thoughts on minipulation etc:
I don't like either Amy Dresser's way of minipulating at all, I feel it's far too fake and obvious- just pure lies really but I do understand why and feel like some minipulation is needed/done: I think if its kept low key and isn't lying or creating an illusion then its harmless. The old ways of minipulation was much more sutal compared to now, and this is seen compared to Amy dresser's work which goes abit too far sometimes, but I do agree that sometimes her retouching of the images does make the image look better, but other images just look completly fake.

Food minipulation:

we watched a video made by Mcdonalds, showing why their food looks different when brought in store to the images they take of them- the video showed how a professional cooking and food decoration team take hours preparing this one burger and the care put into it, they say that they have to move the contents of the burger to the front of the bun, in order to show whats in side it, showing people what their buying, after everthings in place they have to melt the cheese just right to their liking and when the pictures done they go forward to editing any cracks in the bun off and worping the cheese to the perfectly shape..they mentioned that the in store buns take about 4-5 minutes to make, against the hours spent making the one they photographed and they also said that the boxes they use condense the buns size down with condentation and the insides arn't all pushed to the front which is why the burgers are smaller in store.

The video seems to answer the myth of how they look so different quite well but it just highlights the fact that you don't pay for what you see in the images, the burgers have being enhanced and fair too much time and care had being put into the making of the burger considering no care at all is put into the store brought ones by the looks of it. I agree though with why they do it: no one wants to see a horrible looking burger on an advertisement- this wouldn't make them want to buy it, sure it would be coreect but it would ultimately fail in marketing Mcdonalds and the food.

Dorethea Lange's possibly most famous image, 'Migrant Mother' was retouched as an april fools by a photography magazine into an haux article. The retouched involved making her smile, changing her shirt, making her look cleaner and all around unhappy and poor- people reacted badly to this 'joke' and the company had to apologise. When I first got told about this, I couldn't believe it to be honest, I just thought it was disrespectful and horrible- why would anyone want to mess with documentry images like that? any documentry images showing war, the great depression etc just shouldnt be messed with at all- it's offensive and cruel to be honest. These images stand for more than any other would, it's history and a time which people stuggled and died- serious times in which some people alive today could have being going through and other people who arn't around today because of these times that have familes and children that are/could affected by these times. They just too much emoion on this subject weather you have a connection or not, it's just not something you joke about really.

Zine & Video Zine Assignment; TASK 3. (Post 2)

I went onto InDesign because I thought will all the ideas I have for covers I'd be able to make some of them possibble drafts but when I started I soon discovered that whatever my cover will include, it will always just be a title and a picture and this will be utterly boring; like my first attempt above... so I think I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board, search for some artwork that can be related to the band name that I can use for inspriation for the cover because unless I have something else within my cover I will never be happy with it.

(^The original sketches to the computer made cd covers on the first post)  

 

I made another draft of a possible cover, this design is built on from one of my sketches. 

I'm much happier this this layout/design than my first attempt but it still needs work.

Second time filming, 8 videos of song "play throughs":

First time filming, 31 videos of band rehearsals, interview attempts, and filler shots:  

I made another draft of a possible cover and a draft of the double page spread page: 

Filmed the interview, 34 clips: 

the interview questions:

One Square Mile Assignment; Understanding Location Photography.

Location photography is where you chose to do a photography project or shot on a location instead of choosing to use a studio where it's more easily controlled. Going out on location means that your going to the subject rather than the subject going to you, it means the location it's self can be used as the subject and a lot more exciting things can be achieved through choosing to do location photography,  the only downside is theres so many ways location photography can go wrong and be unsuccessful since weather, condition of the area, people and lighting are uncontrollable at the best of times but these things being uncontrollable may be just what makes the pictures good.

To be able to do location photography successfully and to the best possible standard:

1) Choose a location: 
Choose a location that's relevant to the shoot, use more than one location to have more choice, variety and effect/feel. Visit the location/s at different times in the time to see which times enhance the location the most or to fit best with the project. Plan and find new locations and sights in advanced for projects.
2) Position: 
The location is not the only important factor when doing location photography, finding and standing in a position which gets the best photograph is also a key factor; the position the picture is taken from can dramatically effect the image and what it's saying. After finding the best place and position, compose the rest of the shot : the leading lines, lighting, shapes so that everything about the image is leading the viewer into the subject matter. Experiment and taking time when finding the perfect position helps.
3) Available lighting: 
if using natural light the time of day is really important when doing location photography, depending on what lighting is wanted/ what feel and atmosphere that is needed choosing a certain time of day over another time of time of day will help; for example if a soft light is needed use dawn or dusk. If the lighting still isn't right, using reflectors, mirrors or flash can be used to help get the right lighting if needed.
4) Use equipment:
equipment is not always needed and location photography can be done with out it but sometimes having that extra equipment helps- for example, if doing long exposures you need a tripod to stop camera shake and keep the image straight. Adding different filters can adjust lighting, create a softer feel the image, correct colour and loads more different effects that you wouldn't have being able to create without the use of equipment.

One Square Mile Assignment; Test Shots & real shoots.(Part 2) & Evaluation.

On the day shoot I re-took my strongest night time images and took some new shots too. I think looking through the images I took of the day shoot they do have a completely different feel and effect brought to them- the images look lighter, clearer and sharper- almost as if their more alive than the night time images. The colours aren't as dull and pulled back. Shadows are still a playable factor though which I loved because I have a choice to "move" the shadow around in my composition to how I like, giving the images another layer of context and the contrast between light I aimed for. I'm glad I did a day time shoot to have being able to recognise the difference time of day makes on images. 

When I was going through the day time images that I took of the places I'd already I noticed that I missed one out that may be used in the final images so I went out and took some last minute shoots of it but unfortunately the light wasn't touching the wall yet other than these too little bits which at the time I thought would be good for the picture but during post production in my efforts to get the picture to be less dull, it made the two spots of light go overly orange coloured and I'm not sure how to avoid it, I've tried but whatever I do just ends up making the light spot look silly. 

What I did in post production of all the images was: add a slight warm filter to add to the streetlight's effect and make the images seem softer toned plus I needed the images to look like a set and this was one of the common factors I made between them. I also adjusted the levels of each image and added some contrast; because the images seemed to unrealistic- the colours too flat and I wanted the contrast between light/dark to really pop out. On some images I cropped in because a few times I took the image from too far away and got some unwanted parts into my framing. Also in some images I adjusted the highlights and shadows because with the images being at night, I lost some of the details I would have got if the images had being taken in the day and some images needed a slight rotate to be straighter. And the images I took in the day had to have the white balance adjusted a little as the colours were a tiny bit off correct. 

Showing the different between original images and images I'd post produced: 

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Evaluation/Review:

I think that I picked a project that required a lot more time than I actually had to do it in; I did multiple shoots but never came out with the series of images I wanted instead I kept shooting a few possible images that could be in the series and bits of maybe a different series of images. The tripod I was using was the college's and that didn't help my rush for time, only being able to book it out when it was available and most of the time it wasn't. The whole project would have gone much more successfully if I'd of had more time to think and more time to shoot as my narrative was not fully clear and decided to me until I'd had at least two shoots done and the shoots I choose to do at night, I didn't feel safe walking around on my own with my camera and a tripod so I asked my parents to go around with me and they complained about the cold so I had to rush then as well- time was a crucial part of this project and being slow and I struggled with the slowness but it's clear now that if I was to do this project and be happy with it I'd need to base it over a longer period of time, I'd need a tripod of my own to use whenever I required it in which I'd go out for at least two hours every night shooting around the area.

The good things that have come out of this project are the fact I had a chance to do a completely different style of photography- I challenged myself in many ways one main way being having to slow down when thinking about the shots I need and what I want them to say and another is using a tripod which I've never done before this project. I came across another series idea based on walls which I might continue doing; I also may use them images as my final presentation for this project since I feel them images are perfect as a set matched with the fact I don't feel I have any other images from this project which I can say that about.. I'm afraid by using them though I'll be doing the wrong thing because they don't really say the narrative and therefore don't fit the brief  so I'm stuck between having a good final presentation of images or having filler images which fit the brief  What I found challenging was trying to get the clear narrative I wanted, I tired so hard but somehow nothing seemed to do it, also again the time I had to do the project in was a challenge in it's self as I stupidly picked a project which needed a lot more time to complete it.  

Although the project was more or less unsuccessful to me I did still really enjoy it(even though the images I was producing were un-enjoyable to me) I enjoyed the change and really thinking about what I was doing, I enjoyed having the narrative behind my project and making it come out in images, I enjoyed working at night(even though it was freezing) because I got to see the effect it has to images, how shadows can be used and settings played around with, I enjoyed the struggle to produce the images I wanted and I enjoyed not being able to complete them because of this.. even though I would have loved to, I do like that the project itself is left unfinished because it provides wonder as to what could have come of it and it's always there for me to pick back up again and plus it's taught me that not all photography project ideas will work out like you plan.

The project has defiantly developed me as a photographer and I will certainly take the things I've learnt from doing this and use it in everything else I do; to really take time to think about what I want to say/accomplish with my images, to not be afraid to do new things and change my mind, to be more confident because I really hated the images I was producing when I first started the project but after the crit it was clear that people saw something in them that I didn't and it work for them. I'm defiantly going to be a lot more careful with the projects I do and what rules I set myself and I also I've learnt that even if I don't enjoy the images I produce all the time, you never know who might like them so I shouldn't trash a project idea before showing my work.

My work relates to Richard Billiham the most I think; the straight on, long exposure, night time feel and also the use of light,shadows and lines. I think my images have some search for information like Paul Grahams does too not to his extent but it's there for sure and I think I achieved the emphasizes of shapes I wanted sort of like the Bechers do in their images.

When doing the project I chose to do it at night because I wanted to make sure no one was around as I wanted the images to be about the area and not the people living there(kind of like when you shoot people on a white background to take them away from the location to make it all about them but I took the people away from the location instead to make the only focus the location), but I also chose to also do a day time shoot because I wanted to see the different effect it makes and I also wanted to highlight the differences time of day has on the same areas. I chose to edit all the images in the way stated early in this post because I was trying to edit them as little as I could to keep them more realistic and truthful but edit them in a way that was effective and added to the over all feel to the images. My series of images fits the One Square Mile brief because the images I took are with in One Square Mile of my house. 

Final Images & Image Order:

I decided to order the images like this because the images are paired as night/day images, the night time image after the day time images because night follows day. And I chose to have two images "joined" together then a space between every two images rather than a space between each single image because I thought it would be more effective presented this way because both day/night images are right in front of the viewer, then the next etc so the differences between them are more clear and obvious.

Each image comes in a pair and there's a few more images which I want to add/may add to the final set but I need to take the second image to go with them before I can add them. The first image below is the picture I defiantly want to add into the final images and need to pair it with a day time image and the picture below that is a possible image I may use/pair into the final set.

I retook the day images I took of the image above and this is the contact sheet:

and here's the image I chose and edited: 

I felt that it wasn't quite fitting with the rest of the images I chose to use in my final images so I edited the saturation and contrast a touch so that it didn't look as flat colour-wise. Although I'm still unsure about weather it fits or not, it was taken on a completely different kind of day compared to the other day shoot I did- the weather and lighting is dull where as the other day the weather was sunny and bright and its effected the image in maybe a far too obvious way, this wall image may not get to be in my final presentation after all.