Here is a video I made using iMovie of the beginning stages of the demolition process of our new house in 2009. This was the first beginning stage of the whole re-development which has been happening since late 2015.
From this video, I hoped to show time through the two angles I captured. This all-in-all was a pledge to alleviate the theme of development which is a re-occuring theme I’d like to run throughout my project.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDNoudjyufI
A picture story is a group of images, roughly ranging from 6-8 pictures. For a picture story to be powerful, it contains 7 types of shots, including:
Person at Work – These photographs are very realistic and usually quite natural. These photographs makes you think about the types of things they do and why they are doing them. They make you think about the context more, and why the context is important.
Relationship Shot – A relationship shot doesn’t always have to be the stereotypical loving relationship. It can range from love to hate, abusive to affectionate etc. It can also be an emotional thing, such as the relationship between workers, or the relationship between two objects. It is important to notice the key aspect of the relationship, how it works and why are they apparent.
Establishing Shot – This is one of the most important aspect to the picture story. It portrays the main context of the story, giving out detail of where it is and what is happening. It describes key aspects of the story.
Detail Shot – These type of images range from doing close-ups of objects to images of people. Commonly, I did detailed shots for some of my portraiture work last year. I think this images are very effective and enabled the audience to focus on the foreground rather than everything that is going on in the picture.
Environment Portrait – An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features. It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience.
Formal portrait – A portrait is an image of a person’s face that clearly displays their likeness and may often display some aspect of their personality. A formal portrait is not a snapshot but a carefully arranged pose under effective lighting conditions.
Observed portrait – These images have more than one person in. The main focus to the image is the person getting a portrait taken, but there is always another person in the image ‘observing’, it doesn’t have to show their face just their presence.
Headline, text and caption
For the text in this picture-story I wanted to explore what people thought of memories and their interpretations of these invisible sentiments. However, when I was researching I found it to be very difficult to find what people thought memories actually were. Most of the information I found was very scientific which is not the sort of thing I wanted for this particular project. I wanted the piece to be a poetic picture-story therefore the words I used needed to reflect this. So in order for the concept to work I decided to ask my family’s ideas of what memories are, what we need them for, what they are made from and whether they exist at all. I wanted to take a philosophical approach to this area of work because I think specific philosophers have some insightful ideas for example Sartre.
The headline for the picture-story is also very poetic. I wanted the title to explain everything about the picture-story as well as not giving anything away.
What is a memory? What do you think our memories made up of and why do we have it? Does everyone have a memory? Can our memories deceive us? Are they reliable?
Due to my first picture story being very poetic and artistic because I wanted it to reflect the haziness of the memories of my grandfather therefore, it was important the photographs almost merged together. The only image that is slightly separate in comparison to the others is the archival image on the bottom right hand side, because it is a memory of my mother, it made it realistic and truthful listening to her remember it so vividly. Therefore, the second picture story is more simplistic and only focusing on the images singularly rather than looking at them as a merged sort of collection.
I have played around with the arrangement of my picture story on Photoshop and have found an outcome that I am starting to like. I wanted to incorporate the archive photograph into the background of the image as it makes my pictures stand out and look more effective. The title is important as the Governor has to stand out the most as he is the most important individual in the story. The portraits look effective as a three, 2 in colour and my main character in black and white (my dad). I have left space for a couple more images in the bottom right corner, however, I like how there is space otherwise it will be too overwhelming. The colours in this picture story are very bright and I like how their is contrast between the black and white background with the coloured photographs. I am going to experiment with a few more designs to see which is the best outcome.
For my headlines i wrote ‘Living with Anxiety’ as my title for my picture story of my mum. I think that this was the best thing to name the picture story as it says what is going to be put across into the images. On the images in this picture story the text i put for it was –
Your wedding day can be one of the most special days of your life, by sharing it with the ones that you love it will make the day, all that more special for you and your loved one. By placing all of your friends and family in the same room all together it will bring back memories of ones that you once all shared. All of the decorations at a wedding usually represents the personalities of who is getting married, this can be shown through sentimental little things. On the day of the wedding the bride will be in her wedding gown with natural makeup on, which will make her natural beauty shine, the groom will be in his suit and will be looking the best he has ever looked, as this is the most special day of both of their lives.
For my mums picture story the images shows my mums everyday life and things that she does. The largest photo which is on the page is the establishing shot where it sets the scene for all of these images. In my text i looked up anxiety online and wrote about my thoughts on it.
Traditional picture story:
For one of my other headlines on my wedding shoot i choose ‘The Wedding’ as my title, then for my text i wrote about weddings in general and also added a tiny bit of information about this wedding and the style of weddings.
Your wedding day can be one of the most special days of your life, by sharing it with the ones that you love it will make the day, all that more special for you and your loved one. By placing all of your friends and family in the same room all together it will bring back memories of ones that you once all shared. All of the decorations at a wedding usually represents the personalities of who is getting married, this can be shown through sentimental little things. On the day of the wedding the bride will be in her wedding gown with natural makeup on, which will make her natural beauty shine, the groom will be in his suit and will be looking the best he has ever looked, as this is the most special day of both of their lives.
These are my two picture stories that are on my wedding shoot. In these two picture stories i wrote about a traditional wedding setting.
Magazine double page spread:
On Friday 2nd November, we went on a trip to the Jersey Museum to look at the exhibition of photographs from the Jersey archive. The photographs were all put in one red room. I like how they chose a bright colour to put as the background to these black and white images. However, I don’t like the way they have set out the images as it just looks like they haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about how to set out the images and captions effectively. It doesn’t represent Jersey as it should. The title is very misleading, “125 Years”, when really the photographs only have a range of 50 years. I would have preferred if they had put less writing about the images as it just looks like it has been chucked on under and above the image. The quality of the images are not at a high standard either and could have been displayed bigger. They also didn’t contrast black and white images with coloured images as they are look the same which didn’t catch my eye as much. It looked like a pin board with small paragraphs underneath, it could have been set out more artistically with more thought behind it.
I found an image that I really liked as I was instantly drawn to it. This image is of a class of children going on a field trip it looks like. I think I was drawn to at first as I love children and my career path has always been to teach children, and this image is really sweet of them in matching raincoats and wellington boots. I like how uniformed the picture is, the teachers in traditional clothing shows the vintage style to the image which is what I love. I also how it is in black and white as it makes it more powerful and shows that the picture is very old and sentimental.