All posts by Emily Heaven
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Weekend plan
This weekend I have decided to conduct an interview with my Grandma and Grandpa, as in my picture book I would like to have some subheadings where I display my grandparents feelings/thoughts on a chosen subject. The subjects I have chosen to interview my grandparents about are; Faith, Wales, Music, Family and Jersey.
I would also like to look into my grandparents own archive and try and find some photographs of my Grandpa during his singing career.
Finally, I plan to take a trip down to their church on Sunday and capture some images go them at their service and their contribution to their church. For example my Grandpa playing the organ. My Grandma preparing tea and coffee, for after the service.
Finals from October shoot
I went for another visit to my grandparents house this October half term to see them unpacked and settled in. They have unpacked their furniture and started to make the house more homely. However they haven’t hung any paintings or pictures on the wall as they had lots hung up in their old house, therefor they have lots to choose from. It was also my Grandpa’s Birthday. They are very sociable people and have a large circle of friends who sent cards, called and visited on him on this day. Two of their closest friends, called round for a cup of tea whilst I was photographing.
I have chosen a couple of finals from this shoot which I think portray my grandparents very well. I managed to get a nice portrait of both my Grandma and Grandpa and some nice photographs of around the house. My first photograph is of my Grandpa;
I really like this photograph because of the soft lighting and the neutral colours used throughout. My Grandparents house is a new build therefor they have been able to choose the colour of the walls, carpets, interior ext. They have chosen browns and beiges as a general colour through the house. You can see in the photo that there is nothing that stands out due to bold colours therefor it gives the photo a calm and gentle feel.
My Grandpa is sitting on his piano stool, where he spends a lot of time. He is looking through his Eisteddfod paper work, which is an annual Jersey event which he has participates/ helps out in every year. My Grandpa is a big music lover, as he plays piano and the organ for his church every Sunday. However he is mainly a singer. He has been singing in choir’s and performing solo performances ever since he was a child.
The one thing that I would change about this photograph’s composition is; I would move the brown plant from behind his head. As I think the photograph would be more atheistically pleasing if it wasn’t there. To further this photo, I would like to take a portrait of my grandpa in his brown chair, this is his chair that he always sits in, and watches his sport matches in.
This portrait of my Grandma has a similar colour scheme of browns and neutral colours. I really like the couch that my grandma is sitting on in this photograph because it adds lots of different textures to the photograph; the brown leather on the arm rests, the studded detail and the cross patch material on the majority of the seated area. As well as detail from the textures, the photograph contains other details such as her glasses are steamed up from her tea. I really love details like this is photographs, because it adds character.
My Grandma is also on the phone in this picture, I think this is a good representation of what type of person she is; very sociable and likes to keep in contact with all her family members and friends. I do like this portrait because I like the angle, lighting ext. But if I were to reshoot, I would take the photo without the cup in front of her face.
This photograph is of their new bedroom, I like the photograph because of the line of symmetry running through the middle. The matching nightstands which both have a book and a bible, a lamp and a mug coaster.
Just before coming upstairs to photograph my Grandma ran up in front of me saying;
“No Emily you can’t go up there yet, I haven’t even made the bed. I can’t have people thinking I don’t make the bed in the morning”
This is the last final from this photoshoot. It is of my Grandpa and his good friend, who has come to visit his on his birthday. They are in their front room, and are having a joke about something.
October Photoshoot
Community shoot
The community event that I have chosen is my year 13 sports day. All of the forms were asked to create teams, and each person would put their name down for a field and track event. This is one of the very few school events that Hautlieu do therefor everyone was asked to participate. Each form was designated a colour to represent them, and the form were told to wear these colours.
I mainly focused on photographing people. Here are my photographs from my shoot;
My Tracking Sheet
Four week plan
Week one: 12th -18th October
- Mind map of the theme community
- photoshoot for the theme of community
- present photographs
Week two: 19th-25th October
- Finish community work
- Do another shoot of my grandparents
- case Study of Atlantus
Week three:26th-1st November
- Archive work; grandparents old house and Fathers life
- Present and analyse shoot work from grandparents and archive work.
Week four: 2th- 9th November
- Bring all of work together, and tie them together in a post
- Explore a piece of research for community
Community
The second theme from ‘Family, Faith and Community’ that I decided to look into was Community. I decided to make a mind map displaying my thoughts about this theme.
My first idea for a photoshoot in response to the theme of community is the idea of everyday life of a teenager. I think this is attractive to me because I am around teenagers everyday and I am very familiar of what they get up too. I usually don’t think anything of these activities however I think they will be interesting to photograph and to compare to the life of an adult. And also compare to the experiences and the activities adults had when they were teens. I would also be interested to investigate the social trends of a friendship group. I find that most friendship groups have similar fashion, hobbies, humour ext. I wish to photograph these trends and present them as my response to community.
My second idea for a community photography shoot is to photograph a community event. I can photograph the activities going on, and try to capture the mood of the people around.
Tom Pope
Before the summer holidays we met Tom Pope for the first time at the Jersey Societe where he talked about his projects planned for the summer. I recently visited his exhibition in town where his final work was shown. There was a several different works that all were associated with Jersey as an Island. Overall I found Tom’s work very interesting as it was created off of a contextual background, I liked seeing how he worked the Jersey archive into his projects.
The Film
The main piece of Tom’s work that I found interesting was the film. This was presented on a projector down in the ‘dungeon’. Tom’s film was about his adventure that he had where he travelled across Jersey with an old fisherman’s boat that he had bought locally. His Journey started at the Hungry man, and finished out at St Ouen’s bay with a beautiful sunset. Tom had a group of constantly changing people who helped him push the boat to the other side of the island. Alongside this group of helpers, Tom organised for some local musicians to come and play along side him as entertainment. He also encouraged the public to come and take part.
I really like the experimentation that Tom used in his video through sound, it was all sounds that were relevant to the action going on in the film. For example the sound of footsteps, or the sound of drilling when making the wooden crate with wheels on (which the boat rested on so it could be pushed easier). I think that the use of sound made the video more exciting as a viewer as it is appealing to more than one of the senses, hearing, as well as visual. Because of the use of sound, I found that this film differed from Tom’s usual style of work as he usually does not edit the video’s and just presents them as they are filmed. I think its interesting that Tom has experimented with editing the video, and shows that his work is beginning to change as he experiments with new presentation tools.
Throughout the film, black and white images appear, These images had been selected from the Jersey archive by Tom, and had given him inspiration to create the projects that he did. I really like that Tom’s projects have more depth to them, and hold some context of Jersey’s history. A further way that Tom used the Jersey archive in his work was his Badge Project.
The Badge Project
Tom Pope enjoys using the element of change and playfulness through his work, to make it more exciting and random. A project where he expressed these ways of working was through his Badge Project. Tom looked at over thousands of photographs in the Jersey Archive and selected some that particularly took his eye. These photographs he copied and enlarged.
“Many of Pope’s works are interdisciplinary, combining performance, photography and moving image” -Gareth Syvret
Tom bought these archive photographs out to different events with him and asked members of the public to flip a disk onto one of the photographs. Wherever the disk landed, he would use that circle of the photograph and make it into a badge. Tom did this project as he wanted to start getting old photographs from the Jersey archive back into everyday life. So rather than doing this in a more traditional way he decided to do it in an abstract way of creating an accessory.
I like the selection of images for the project, because they are all in black and white, therefor give that ‘old photograph’ feel. I also think that these photographs come from a range of different times which makes the project even more abstract and intriguing for me. All of the photographs were presented in a pile with the cut out badge holes in them. I like that the images presented at the exhibition were the original photographs used in the games however I didn’t like they way they were presented. They were all in a pile, therefor you couldn’t see any of the images except the top one.
An interesting way that this project could have been developed, would be if the old archive images were connected, in a visual way to recent photographs. For example the badge project to have also been played on recent images, to bring the whole collection of Jersey’s images together.
Here are some other images taken from Tom Pope’s exhibition;
Martin Usborne
Martin Usborne spotted Joseph Markovitch in a park in East London about 8 years ago. His main intention was to photograph Joseph to try and win a photo competition. However after speaking to Joseph and discovering some of his querks he decided to use him as a project, and make a book about him. I very much like this book and after reading the words and studying the pictures in detail, I feel like I know Joseph Markovitch quite well.
Joseph had lived in East London, Hoxton for 86 and a half years, and went on daily walks around the city. On these walks he would talk to many people as he loved to discuss his views on action movies, Nicolas Cage, how technology might blow up the world ext. He walked around the city in an oversized blazer which slipped of the shoulder and a plastic carrier bag in hand, which always contained a carton of orange juice.
Here are some of my favourite photographs from Martin Usborne’s book about Joe;
This is one of the first photographs presented in the book ‘i’ve lived in East London For 86 1/2 years’. It is captioned with Joe saying
‘A lot of young kids do graffiti around Hoxton… it’s nice. It add’s a bit of colour don’t you think?’.
I think that this photograph it really attractive because of the explosion of colour behind Joe and the spray painter. The painting of Donald Duck looks like it is reaching out and grabbing onto the two men which I think adds a comedic effect. From looking at this photograph you can tell a lot about what was going on at the time. The spray painter is still holding his can of paint and all of his stuff is still laid out on the pavement, which says to me that Joe went over whilst the painter was still painting and interrupted him in order to have a conversation with him.
Here are some other photographs of Joe;