For my second shoot I decided to photograph my grandfather’s possessions or items related to him that my mother has kept. I found lots of condolence cards and letters addressed to my family, offering their sympathy and sorrow. The first photograph is of a small card/postcard addressed to my grandfather’s mother from my grandfather and his siblings. I especially liked this item because of the old style writing and the colour of the paper. I think it is very vintage and shows the heritage of my grandfather’s life in an image. It is also due to its beautiful simplicity, it is just a casual piece of writing, filling their mother in on their well-being. My mother has written a small memorial message in the JEP for the past ten years. Each year she has kept the newspaper in order to keep my grandfather’s memory alive. I selected a small number of items which I thought represented and symbolised my grandfather as a memory. The third image is of a letter my mother received from my father’s parents.
I took inspiration from my artist references regarding the different styles and ideas of taking images to represent someone who is invisible. One of the ideas was to photograph not only the front of archival images but also to photograph the back of the image as it normally has some sort of writing of information like the date it was taken, who was in the photograph or even the occasion. It is also interesting because it reveals more information then the photograph could. The discolouring of the back of the image brings a vintage sort of feel and gives the photograph life and heritage. Furthermore, the actual style and design shows the time which the photograph was produced, the photograph with the date ‘May 31st 1993’ is a much more recent photograph possibly produced in a group, whereas, the one above is much older and has more history and depth to it.
Here is a bit of an experimentation that I did while the Hautlieu School production was going on. I was asked to go down to the drama department and make images throughout the day where cast and crew were performing for their first proper audience of a load of primary school children. I decided to make images from behind the scenes to get more of an inside view of what goes on backstage before and throughout a proper show. I wanted to capture the expressions and emotions of the actors and those watching. I found this to be a great and interesting new experience to be able to go into a more professional environment and for the cast to be comfortable and welcoming to being photographed. The behind the scenes action began at around 10AM and went on until about 2PM. In that time I made over 700 images and have gone through and edited them all and narrowed it down to my favourites in this post. Most of the images that I made throughout the day are from behind the scenes and give a bit more detail into the goings on in a Hautlieu School production. The images are documentary style and are simply behind the scenes of the school production giving the spectator more of an insight into what goes on when the actors aren’t on stage and turned on as well as some images from their performance in front of their first proper audience.
As part of my project for Gatherings, I thought I should get some photos of the workplace as it is where people gather daily, and as my Dad now works for IPES, I asked if I would be able to go and photograph the office after everyone had gone home and I was allowed to. I chose three images from those I took to put into the photo book, which is a high n umber since from most of the shoots I have done I have only selected one image, but I felt they were different enough to all be included.
I like that there are no people in these images because it leaves it for the person viewing the images to imagine what kind of people use these spaces and what they become when they are busy with the people working there.
I have also spoken to a friend who goes to church, and he is going to introduce me to the priest so I can inquire about taking photos during/after a mass, so I can start to incorporate religion into my photo book.
From my photo shoot I have chosen the best photographs and edited them above. I did this photo shoot in the evening which meant that their was very little light in some of the rooms this effected my camera settings, because of the lack of light some of the photographs turned out in a more of a yellow colour and some other photographs were grainy, although I was able to fix this when I edited them in lightroom. I am happy with this photo shoot overall because I was able to get photographs that were different from the other houses that I have visited, I think these photographs include a lot of background and detail which gives the viewer a bigger insight into the personality and the environment in which I am photographing.
Over the Christmas Holidays, I visited my family in Birmingham and decided to take photographs in the style of a story as this was the last week I was spending with my sister before she went travelling. I only see my family once a year if that, so thought it would be nice to document my time there. My nan has also fallen very ill so this was a special time to spend time with her, but unfortunately she didn’t let me take photographs of her as she looks very poorly as shes lost about 2 stone. She didn’t want me to remember her like that so I respected that. I did manage to get one photograph of her however, just to document my time with the whole family. My cousin Dylan was my main character as he is the youngest member of the family and his hair photographs well.
These are my favourite images from the shoot and the images I would put into a book if I was to use these as my finals:
