Daily Archives: April 29, 2016

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Experimentation

EXPERIMENT – STUDIO SET-UP

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As part of my photo-book, I want to create a section which is directly linked to challenging the idea of the ‘advertising language’ used to advertise products, locally and also in a wider, more general sense. Whilst I have touched upon this idea through photographing somewhat in the style of Martin Parr. I wanted to take this a step further by copying the more controlled, studio style images seen regularly to advertise food in the most attractive and enticing way as possible.

In order to achieve this I will firstly have to create a mini-studio set up at home. I will do this by using pieces of cardboard paper to create a plain base to then place the product on. If I am taking a photograph of a box of eggs for example, I will place the box so that it can only be seen in the context of the background. I am going to experiment with different background colours along with shooting in different ways: experimenting with angles, composition, form and lighting.

This process will very much be an experiment because I have had no previous experience setting up this a studio environment to take images. Furthermore, I believe that this process will be in many ways challenging because it is pushing me out of my comfort zone in terms of the sort of images I usually produce, based more on instinct and what I see. I will instead however be required to take a step back and carefully consider composition.

My main focus will be however to make best use of lighting. I am considering using chiaroscuro lighting to create strong images with a high level of contrast, a feature I admire in the work of British photographer David Bailey. However at the same time I will need to be careful in the fact I am trying to create bright and colourful images, and using such a lighting may in fact be too strong, cancelling out the power I believe colour will deliver. I will therefore experiment with this chiaroscuro lighting to create black-and-white images, it I believe this is effective I will inclue some of these images in my edits, before attempting the same lighting with the colour images, and if this is not successful, then I will consider another form of lighting which would better suit colour images.

I hope to create images which are done so exactly in the style of an advertising product that it serves to mock it. It  order to distinguish my opinion with the images, I will need to include in the images a clear barrier which makes the sense of parody and mimicry I am trying to evoke more obvious. One way I may be able to do so is through taking the packaging off my images, for example including a raw steak on its own rather than being either in it’s packaging or cooked and on a plate. This, I believe will simplify my concept and make what I am showing visually, more raw. It will also show local Jersey produce in a way which is in many ways is more revealing by the simple act of not including any advertising in the images. This will give the viewer the opportunity to access the product without the distraction of any manipulating factor.

Therefore I believe that such a style can be considered in many ways a mockery because I am effectively satirising the role of advertising images by showing seemingly ‘normal’ and ‘uninspiring’ images in a way which is usually considered to achieve the exact opposite. This sense of conflict I am trying to create will invite the viewer to consider the deceptive nature of advertising images, which I believe will link very well to the entire theme of the project.

I will take a series of 30-50 images before producing a contact sheet and editing. After viewing my images I may consider evaluating what went well and perhaps what didn’t go so well, and if I need to – produce another shoot to make these corrections.

Simplicity will be the key to this shoot. There will also need to be a sense of control to the images, showing the same background all of the time. One influence I have taken from this is the extremely interesting series entitles “No Seconds” series by American photographer Henry Hargreaves. In this controversial series he captures the haunting images of death row inmates’ last meal requests. He believes food preferences speak volumes about a person’s character and personality in any setting. Death row choices are an extremely powerful example of that theory. This story shows this sense of ‘rawness’ in perhaps its greatest detail. Although I would simply not be able to create a mood in such an effect, it is this sort of concept of simplicity speaking great volumes which I am trying to get across.

Ideas, Research

Jersey Asylum | Research

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On Monday afternoon I went down to 3C International to meet photographer/filmmaker Tom Killick to see the images that he had made of the abandoned asylum. As I am unable to get access to the building at such short notice I found seeing the images that Tom had created to be extremely useful and gave me a better insight as to what it looks like and has given me some inspiration on what kind of images that I should make. Something that surprised me was that the building looks a lot more modern that I had anticipated, I had originally imagined it to be all decaying, dark and rotting brown/black walls. It was quite the opposite, with there being white walls and the building looked in better shape than I had first thought. I really hoped it would look a lot creepier and old as you would hope for an abandoned asylum, which would’ve made extremely fun staged images but it was a lot nicer than that. I found that in most of the photographs there was just disregarded furniture and files all left in massive piles. There was only one padded cell in the entire building which had been stripped when the building was first abandoned. The other rooms weren’t actually too bad and seemed to be ok living conditions, with a bed, sink and mirror. Some of the rooms had TV’s in them that were put behind a glass wall so that the patient wouldn’t brake it. For some reason I thought that the asylum would be really small and that there wouldn’t be many residents there but when looking through Tom’s photographs he showed me images of all of the files and paperwork of these people, many of which said RIP and there were mass piles everywhere. I was shocked at the amount of patient that the Jersey asylum had in just over a 100 year period and the amount of them that died too seemed really vast. I didn’t think that such a small island would have so many mentally ill in their asylum. I do understand that in the early 1900s that there was this stigma against people with mental illness and no one really understood it unless they themselves were or had experienced it. Many cases would have been for depression or postnatal depression which is now treatable with medication and counselling. I feel that back then if someone was feeling depressed others didn’t get it at all and thought them as crazy and so they would be referred to the Jersey asylum which is really sad as it is something that needs help and depression isn’t a mental illness that benefits from isolation. I found Tom’s images really great as they show the exact state that the abandoned asylum is in and have really helped me to get a better understanding of what the inside of an asylum would look like, even if it is abandoned, and has given me greater knowledge on how I can construct a good response. I want to try and recreate some of the scenes and rooms in Tom’s photographs and create some sort of narrative and story behind it. This will come from all the research that I have done on the life of local lunatics and how they were treated in the late 1800s before the asylum was originally built.

About | Tom Killick

Tom Killick is an Australian filmmaker/photographer who is currently living in Jersey. Along with two others, Killick has set up his own television and film production company called 3C International where they create advertisements for companies including Sure, Natwest, ITV and Durrell zoo. They are currently working with Durrell zoo and Henry Cavill. The team have also travelled to places including India and been to international fashion events to capture some unique fashion trends and crazes. When I met with Tom he told me about his fascination with being able to photograph places that ordinary people/citizens don’t get access to and so the abandoned Jersey Asylum was the perfect place to go. He was actually asked by the States to make photographs of the entire building while it was still in an alright state as now it is decaying and not stable enough for people to go in there and visit it.

3C International Showreel