Category Archives: Inspiration

Filters

Author:
Category:
Inspiration, Planning, Research

Art Student – Planning

Leave a comment

A stereotype that I certainly currently conform to is the archetype of a female art student. This stereotype can be broken down into various sub groups but the on running theme is that the modern day, young, female art student is middle class and a little pretentious. When exploring this stereotype I want to look at two different subgroups of the art student stereotype that I believe I conform to, these being the messy, scruffy, slightly edgy, doc marten wearing practical student and the more style conscious, fashionable, club kid/ Harajuku inspired, heavily-active-on-instagram type student. I feel that on somedays I can dress stylishly, put on some fun makeup and look very well put together and on other days I wear comfy clothes, throw my hair up in a bun and get covered in charcoal and paint. There is rarely an in-between.

The above moodboard depicts the more relaxed, scruffy art student for this shoot I plan to wear my comfy maroon jumper from my school trip to China in 2016. I often wear this jumper when I’m lounging around the house, doing art or just want to feel comfy. I wear this jumper so often that my mum has to tear it off my body in order to wash it. I also want to wear a pair of denim dungarees, I don’t usually wear these when painting because they are not particularly comfortable but I feel that it will complete the art student aesthetic. I also want to play off the idea of what people think an artist at work looks like, so I plan to wipe some paint of my face and arms as well as tucking some paint brushes into my bun.

Above is my second mood board for my more fashion forward, heavily active on Instagram, art student as well as some photos from my personal Instagram page. I want to create a harajuku fashion inspired look with pastel colours and fluffy hair accessories (pictured below) and my fun monster’s inc backpack. In terms of poses for this shoot I want to try some cutesy, bubbly smiley poses and perhaps some images that include taking selfies for instagram as the case of my iPod in bubblegum pink and cat shared which would fit in with the pastel them I want to create. For the first shoot I plan to use my blue back drop as the maroon jumper I plan to wear will almost certainly clash with the pink. However for the second shoot I plan to use both the pink and blue background because the outfit that I have selected (pictured below) will work well with both colours.

Inspiration, Research

The ‘Washed Ashore Project’ – Beach & Ocean Pollution Inspiration

Leave a comment

Since completing my previous shoots, emphasising the issue of beach and ocean pollution, I next wanted to explore this problem from a symbolistic viewpoint. Using this same kind of stage photography that I have presented before in my project, I hope to capture meaningful and striking images wich will aim is to spark positive change in consumer habits. When deciding how to portray common beach/ocean pollution in an insightful way, my first instinct was to create pieces of art that tells the story whilst subtly putting to use the discarded materials. Before deciding on my designs, I found inspiration for this shoot from an amazing organisation dedicated to informing and influencing the public of this same pollution issue. The ‘Washed Ashore Project‘ is a non-profit community art project that brings pollution to life, awakening the hearts and minds of viewers to the global marine debris crisis.

Founder and artistic director, Angela Haseltine Pozzi, is a successful internationally exhibited artist whose expertise has led her to community involvement in multiple areas. Angela’s evolution as an artist shifted when she noticed immense amounts of plastic pollution on pristine southern Oregon beaches. As she learned more about ocean pollution from plastics and marine debris she became motivated to do something about it. Thus, the Washed Ashore Project was born. Angela decided to enlist the help of hundreds of local volunteers to clean up the beaches and use all the debris to construct massive sculptures of the sea animals most affected by the pollution. These sculptures now tour as the ‘Washed Ashore Project’ travelling exhibit, educating and inspiring countless people from diverse backgrounds to take action in their own lives to prevent contributing to this global problem. Her work continues as Lead Artist, designing and creating a multitude of sea creatures from the ongoing tonnes of marine debris with the goal to have a global impact. As the leader of a team of dedicated employees and hundreds of volunteers, Angela has vowed that this effort is her calling and “until we run out of plastic on the beach, we will keep doing our work”. Below are a few photographs taken as examples of these breathtaking sculptures that represent the sea life affected by plastic pollution…

Above is a huge sculpture depicting what looks like a great white shark created using an array of different discarded materials. To put these masterpieces together the ‘Washed Ashore Project‘ volunteers collect rubbish that has been removed from beaches through community cleanups. This pollution is then washed, sorted and prepared for the creation process. Each sculpture is designed and directed by a professional artist and then formed through a collaboration of Washed Ashore team members, volunteers and students. The meaning behind these sculptures is to symbolically present our ocean pollution crisis and inspire change in our modern consumer culture. I love the use of small plastic items to collectively display such a textured and detailed masterpiece. The size of the shark and its surroundings, plus the sheer amount small and dangerous pieces of plastic collected from the beach, really make this piece something to think about.

The next two photographs depict other transportable and inspiring pieces of art that portray a few creatures who are most affected by ocean pollution. The first sculpture on the right shows a carefully crafted sea turtle put together using discarded materials found on the beach such as water bottles, boots, shotgun shells, detergent bottles etc. The sculpture on the left depicts a Marlin fish created using things like sunglasses, toothbrushes, fishing lures and a toilet seat. I love the textured effect these creatures are given by being made up of such tiny pollution elements as well as the array of colours that can be presented. The size of these sculptures, along with their beautifully thought out structure, can definitely emphasise this pollution crisis and give the public a good idea of just how massive it is. All artists, volunteers and designers involved in the creation of these pieces will have been influenced by our current consumer culture. The sculptures’ construction is truly a community effort, with volunteers collecting, cleaning, sorting, and building the sculptures together.

Inspiration, Planning

Blonde – Planning

Leave a comment

As I am exploring different stereotypes within western society that I conform to or have conformed to in the past, I thought it appropriate   to explore the well known “dumb blonde” stereotypes. Above is a mood board that I compiled, including images of fictional sassy and strong blonde characters, Regina George and Elle Woods as well as blonde celebrities, Pop singer, Christina Aguilera and reality tv pioneer, Paris Hilton. Regina George is the perfect example of the 00’s it-girl, she is the queen of her high school and is both loved and envied by her peers. Regina is also presented as bitchy, mean and unloyalw, however by the end of the film, Regina as well as the other female protagonist mature and are able to make peace and unite as women. Elle woods, in my opinion is a excellent on screen and on stage role model for women everywhere. In the film “Legally Blonde” which she stars in she is initially presented as a typically dumb blonde airhead. Her character develops throughout the film where she decides to become a lawyer, breaking stereotypes, empowering women and staying true to herself. Christina Aguilera is a famous pop star who has been celebrated for her unique voice and impressive pitch range. Aguilera has experienced bad press in the past due to the media being focused on her outward appearance (her makeup, hair and weight) instead of focusing on her amazing ability to be incredibly singer, dancer and actress. Paris Hilton is great granddaughter to Conrad Hilton, the founder of the chain of luxury Hilton hotels. She is stereotypes as a dumb, superficial, blonde trust fund kid who parties, sleeps around ad spends her families’ money. However she mist be commended for her entrepreneurial skills to star in several reality TV shows, create a line of clothing and be a public figure as well as a household name.

Above is the confirmation for a lace front wig that I ordered from amazon in order to create my blonde character. As I no longer have blonde hair I had to find a good quality wig that would allow me to create a realistic and polished appearance of blonde hair. As previously stated in my initial mood boards I made the decision to dye my previously bleached blonde hair back to my natural light brown colour. I made this decision for two main reasons, the first being that I wanted my hair to remain long and healthy and be done with the constant upkeep of root and the second that I had a number of bad experiences being a young blonde woman. I experienced cat calling much more frequently than when I had pink or brown hair, the most popular being “Hey, Blondie”. I also experienced multiple scenarios on the one time I went clubbing with blonde hair, two different men in different clubs thought that they had the right to touch me without asking or even talking to me.  I hate that men associate blonde hair with someone who is “easy” because I believe this is why those men thought that they could do whatever they wanted. I have experienced much less catcalling since being a brunette again, only two instances in two months and I have had no bad experiences out clubbing either which reinforces my reasons to believe that it was my hair colour that was sending the wrong message. As a feminist I want to live in a world where women should be able to have whatever hair colour they want without being judged, but unfortunately that is not the world we live in and my safety comes first.

 

Above are the outfits that I plan to wear for the blonde stereotype photo shoots. I want to create two images that display the character in different way. In one image I plan to wear sunglasses and a pink v-neck dress, inspired by the LA valley girl look that paris hilton is so well known for. In the second image I plan to wear a Mariah Carey style christmas dress, inspired by the iconic cinematic Jingle Bell Rock scene in “Mean Girls”. I also plan to use the above blue backdrop as I feel that using a pink one may look strange with a dress of a similar shade as well as clash with the red of the christmas dress.

 

 

Inspiration

Film

1 Comment

Why Use Film?

Recently I have begun to use film to take photographs with. I did not use it in my coursework but I do plan to use it for my exam to a degree. Film does not have a huge number of advantages over digital for the purposes of an A-Level course but I feel that it is important to understand where photography has come from if we are to use it properly today. Film also increases the challenges with photography, not being able to see the image straight after it has been taken makes it hard to be sure that your focus is set correctly or that the image is not under/overexposed. One of the biggest hurdles that I have encountered is the set ISO of the roll, this effect makes it difficult to use a roll for more than one shoot, and the ISO needed must be assumed before it is loaded into the camera. The set number of exposures that can be taken on a roll can also be a challenge, often it would be alright if one roll is completely used to load another roll of the same film and continue shooting but with my project being about water and one of cameras being an underwater camera this roll cannot be changed while still around the water. This factor limits me to 24-36 exposures per in water shoot. In doing so I am forced to think a lot more about each image, the framing and composition of each image is much more important because I cannot simply delete the image and take another, what you have taken is what you get. Another major drawback is the price, buying film is expensive (£5-£8 for a roll) and getting it developed, scanned and/or printed is even more expensive unless you learn to do it yourself (the cost really makes you value each exposure that you take). All of these reasons combined make film a difficult thing to shoot with and it makes me glad that I have access to excellent digital photography equipment for relatively low prices.

Even with all of the downsides of film it is still  a lot of fun to shoot. The grain of film is sometimes seen as a downside of film over digital but I like the effect that it gives to the images. They have a certain softness present that can be achieved in after editing of digital photos but will never be quite right. The way that the individual crystals will change under the different light is recognised as an organic process, they do not change to specific values. This is something that favours film over digital, with digital the information for each pixel is defined, there is a certain point that a colour can reach before it becomes another colour, this change is a gradual change and not a one-or-the-other change. The smoother transition through colour ranges or from black to white is the biggest visual advantage of film over digital.

Orangina – Ilford FP4 Plus 125

The image above is one that I took on a recent skiing trip. The gradient of light in the clouds at the top of the image is fantastic, to get this kind of flow of from black to white would be harder to achieve with a digital camera.

I also recently bought a fully manual 35mm film camera from a local charity shop. Only costing me £10 including the lens this camera only needed a little fixing and a clean up before it was ready to use. The camera is fully manual, the only aid on it is a light meter and the focusing meter. All of the individual settings (aperture, shutter speed,  focus  and ISO) have to be set separately for the images. Although doing this for each photo can be tedious at times the result is that I have spent more time learning about what settings all of the different scenes will need, getting used to balancing the aperture and shutter speed to fit the ISO has really helped me when I am using my digital Nikon for different shoots.

One of the other aspects of shooting film is the chance for it to become corrupted in different ways. The four images a bove were from the same roll as the other black and white image above but have suffered a light-leak (someone opened the back of my camera), this is where unintended light somehow or other gets onto the film and exposes it. This causes the film to become discoloured if it is colour film or to become completely white like the images above for example. Although technically ruining the image, the effect of this can sometimes make the images much more interesting than they already were. Film can also be corrupted by going out of date, the image below is one that had been sitting in a camera of my mum’s for about 15 years, this has changed the film’s colours quite a lot giving the image the super funky blues and the heavy grain. Again while technically ruined I really love the image, the colours again making the image more interesting that if it was just as it was means to be. it is not something that would be used for a documentary style of image but using exposed film for artistic purposes is perfectly legitimate.

All of these things have convinced me to pursue film photography as an aid for this project. Mainly I will be using my digital camera but there is definitely still a place for film in my project.

Exploring, Inspiration

Water – Mystery and Mythology

Leave a comment

Water – Mystery & Mythology

Since the beginning of human civilization we  have always had an innate sense of fear surrounding the sea and what it contains. 71% of the earth’s surface is covered in water and so it is has the potential to home so much life, much of which we still do not know about. With a maximum depth of 11km finding all of the different species that call it home is not something that is possible, even with today’s technology we cannot catalogue all of the different species as we would like to. There are species that exist in the oceans that we will likely never come into contact with, there is simply so much space that we would never be able to see it all. If this is true today it understandable why our ancestors had tales of the Kraken taking down ships and giant sharks swallowing people whole.

This sense of mystery and the unknown really lends itself to the subject of environment because even with this fear of the unknown people still made the sea and water their environments. Fishermen and women as well as merchants and explorers use the water to travel around and made a living out of traveling on the water. This often leads to stories about the disappearance of ships under relatively regular circumstances being labelled as mysterious or linked to higher powers or mythical creatures. Even from the days of the Ancient Roman Empire through to more recent times these stories have existed, and have only been exaggerated by sightings of giant squid and unexplained disappearances. These kind of disappearances capture the imagination of the public and artists alike.

Often artists will try and show these events and the mystery and fear that surrounds them, found on old maps these images are not very descriptive but still give a sense of mystery that these creatures can just appear out of nowhere and will attack ships. The water and the sea are their environment and we are intruders in their homes and they do not like it. This sense of the unknown is something that I could look into for my project, I have always been fascinated by mysterious disappearances of ships and people at sea. One of my favourite stories as a child was that of the Mary Celeste, possibly the most famous example of disappearances at sea. It captured my imagination and started my love and fear of disappearances at sea (although I love the sea one of my greatest fears is being stranded at sea out of the sight of land).

The main story can be read about the ship here but as it is an insanely well known story only some of the details may be new. The fact that the ship disappeared along with its crew in the first place is not that remarkable in the first place, although unexpected it was not an impossibility, but what is so confusing is that the ship was found intact without a soul aboard, looking as if the crew and Captain’s family had just got up one morning and had all just jumped overboard leaving everything behind aside from a single lifeboat. Many different theories exist as to what happened to cause this but no one will ever truly know so theories will stay as just that, theories.

“Without a shadow of warning we found ourselves in the water.”

This hasn’t stopped people from creating art based on what they think could have happened. The sketch above shows one of these theories, it is based on a theory that all of the people on board the ship were on a part of the deck that then collapsed (this website talks about this particular event). There is no real evidence to support this theory but it was popular at the time, the image captures the suddenness and fear with which the crew must have left the ship. Ether through an accident like what the image above depicts but alternatively if they voluntarily left the ship through their own devices but without physically being forced.

Click on this image to go to the artist’s page

This idea of it being a ghost ship is a romantic notion that has gained a lot of association with the ship. The modern painting above really associate this with the ship. The ship is seen just as a silhouette on the water, non-solid it seems to shift in front of your eyes making this seem like a real, ghostly apparition.

Ultimately all of these different pieces of artwork (not just about the Mary Celeste) are driven by a fear of death. Humans are built and coded to survive. The header image shows this very well, the chaos of this attack shows the human resolve to survive that drives us all every day. The man lifting his axe to this creature really shows the heroism of these people and ultimately that the people who work on the sea are often the ones who will have to work the hardest just to stay alive when things go wrong. Out at sea there is no help other than yourself or if you’re lucky enough your fleet, this has even transferred over to the modern day. In the middle of a long ocean voyage for members of the merchant navy on cargo container ships there are often only very basic medical facilities. this can mean that in a major medical emergency like heart attack or ruptured spleen there is often nothing that can be done. The isolation of the sea like this is not something that I could easily represent but I could try. Without being in one of these environments I could not truly represent this kind of mystery of isolation but I could look at doing something surrounding unexplained sea creatures and other mythological creatures and experiences.

In the end it may be scary to imagine what still lies out there in the oceans, undiscovered and undisturbed. But even the creatures that we know about can be pretty terrifying too.

Exploring, Inspiration

Water Research (Non-Artistic)

Leave a comment

Water – Non-Artistic Properties

Water is the building block of life, it is essential to the survival of all life on earth. All living organisms are made up of water in their cells, this water allows them to hold shape, allows chemical reactions to occur and in the makes up about 70% of mammal’s and 80% of fish’s body mass. Because of its importance it is something that has been intensely studied. Much of the information on this page is not that relevant to artistic work but I will list off some specific points about water and its properties and will look at a few in-depth.

  • Modern measurements are based on water: 1 cubic meter of water weighs 1 tonne, 1 liter of water weighs one kilogram, 1cm³ of water weighs 1 gram, the boiling point of water is 100°C, its melting point 0°C and it takes 1 calorie being burnt to raise the temperature of a liter of water by 1°C.
  • 71% of the earth’s surface is water and 95.5% of that is salt water.
  • It is the largest single environment on earth and contains all of the top 10 largest animals alive today.
  • Each molecule is made up of three atoms. Hydrogen is the most abundant atom in the universe and the third is Oxygen.
  • “Light entering or exiting a water surface is bent by refraction. The index of refraction for water is 4/3, implying that light travels 3/4 as fast in water as it does in vacuum.”[1]
  • Water takes a lot of energy to go from a liquid state into a gaseous state. This is called having a high latent heat of vaporization. This keeps water at much the same temperature all of the time and means that it is a stable habitat for organisms like fish, plankton and some mammals.
  • For all animals that have lungs it is important for them to have moisture on the inside of their lungs otherwise they would not be able to take in Oxygen. Oxygen from the air has to be dissolved into a very thin layer of water coating the inside of lungs so that the Oxygen can get into the bloodstream.
  • Excess water intake can kill someone. About 6 liters taken in quickly can kill an adult male. Water intoxication as it is known causes cells in the brain to swell and burst, often being fatal if it has got this bad.
  • Drowning is incredibly easy and needs a terrifyingly small amount of water. As a lifeguard my self this is something that I am incredibly aware of, we need water to survive but it can also kill us so easily.

Refraction is something that could be very useful for my project. There are an immense number of different ways that you can use refraction of water artistically. The image above shows one of these examples, refraction of the light that is reflected of the background has passed through the water and because of the double curve of the glasses and the water the images have been flipped and all three are different due to the relative angle of the viewer to the background and the glass. This is really interesting and something that I could look at in more detail.

One of the typical uses of refraction in photography is to show a clear image that cannot be seen in the background. The example above shows this really well. The background cannot be seen clearly, it is simply a yellow blob. But when you look at the droplet of water that is in focus the background is now visible. Brought forward and flipped the spherical shape has created this new version of the flower, almost trapping inside this droplet of water and seemingly preserving it. The bonds that hold water together are called hydrogen bonds and from between the hydrogen atoms, these bonds are not very strong but when in a body of water so many of these bonds form that they become a relatively strong bond, this is what creates surface tension and holds water molecules together to form droplets like the ones above. This allows for these kind of photographs to be taken.

One other use of refraction is in this kind of photography. Half-and-half photographs in water show this effect very clearly, the distorted effect of the light entering at  different speed and angle  make the two halves of this duck look like they are separated, alternatively the bottom half of the image looks like it is bigger or closer than the other part, I see quite a few different artistic uses of this, it can give some really surreal effects.

Bibliography:
  1. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/geoopt/refr2.html
Exploring, Inspiration

Theme 1: Water

Leave a comment

Water

Based on my first shoot I have identified a theme that I am considering pursuing further. Water. Water is something that is an integral part of all environments, civisialiations are based around water, in the desert the only places that permanent communities are set up are are near to water. 40% of humanity live near a coast line [1] and throughout the rest of the population they almost all live near to some source of water. Human beings need water to be able to survive and so it is an essential piece of our environment. Living on a small island as I do my life is also more connected to the water than most people would be, I have spent my whole life around the sea, I feel lost if I am too far away from the coast. The world and places that I have visited seem incredibly far away and distant from other civilization unless they are near to the coast. It is incredibly difficult to explain but I feel isolated and alone if I am a distance from the coast, even if there are people all around me I feel like the community (village, town, ect…) are isolated and alone, unless the are near to the sea. There is a great degree of comfort that I gain from being near to the sea, this is probably linked to my family history, my Grandfather on my mother’s side was a fisherman and his father before him, all the way back for a long time. My mother also had these close links to the sea and drove me to this with a lot of my childhood being spent at the beach and out on the water.

There are many photographers that have used water as a part of their work. Although usually not the main feature there are some like Tanja Deman whose work has the water as a highly integral part of it. Her project titled “Saltwater” looks at the underwater environment is a kind of activism in response to the threat of oil companies wanting to start drilling in this coastal area. This would have been terrible for the environment due to possible oil spills and other contamination from the general process of creating these rigs and housing the crews. Her works usually have some focus on structures; buildings and natural structures and how humans interact with them. A particular connection is felt between her and the sea, in an interview with Süeddeutsche Magazine Deman talks about how closely connected she is with the water, she says that

“the sea has become part of my personality”

and talks about how the people who have lived in the same place as her for over 1700 years have their whole lives based around the sea; fishing and tourism being the main industries in the area make the connection between these people and the sea one of the most powerful connections. This is something that I was trying to go for with the first shoot that I did but it did not properly work out that way, it was difficult to show that kind of raw connection between people and the sea without taking images over a much longer time frame. This kind of time frame is not available to me for this project so I’m going to have to look at another way to explore the water.

Instead I’m going to look at trying some more abstract methods and concepts for representing water as an environment. Looking into the use of colour under the water would be a good way to study this.

  1. http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/es/papers/Coastal_Zone_Pop_Method.pdf
Analysis, Inspiration, Research

Environment – Travel Photography History

Leave a comment

Travel Photography

I wanted to investigate Travel Photography in depth, researching its foundations and history. Doing this will provide me with an insight into the original purpose of the genre and the reason and artists behind its creation. Travel photography is a genre of photography that may involve the documentation of an area’s landscape, people, cultures, customs and history. The Photographic Society of America defines a travel photo as an image that expresses the feeling of a time and place, portrays a land, its people, or a culture in its natural state, and has no geographical limitations. As travel has become more accessible, the genre is opening up more to amateurs and professionals alike. As a result, this category of Photography is much more crowded in Modern art society. Nevertheless The appeal of photography was as obvious to travellers in the 19th century as it is today. Photography made its earliest steps as a medium when in 1839 Louis Jacques Daguerre introduced a photographic process called the Daguerrotype. The first owners photographed their local area within Paris like the Notre Dame Cathedral, the river Seine and le Pont Neuf. However using a Daguerrotupe was a complicated process that required a lot of equipments and chemicals such as amalgam or alloy, of mercury and silver. It would be very difficult to transport the camera and equipment around long distances and the travelling photographer had to carry with him a portable darkroom including enough chemical to have a mini laboratory. As a result, Travel Photography was very rare at the time. 

A portable darkroom in 19th century Ireland.

In 1851, Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process which became a standard photographic process until 1880. This new process reduced the exposure time to only 2 second , compared to the daguerrotype and colotype. However this did not help many travel photographers in their task as the equipment was still incredibly difficult to transport. In the 1850s the standard photographer outfit was the large sized camera, tripod, glass plates, plate holders, a tent like portable darkroom,chemicals, tanks, and water containers.Photographers carted their equipment around the world. In the mid 1800s, pictures taken for scientific purposes were of great interest to people in general and with the help of the collodion process reproduction of photographs became convenient. With the invention of the printing press, photography became commercialized as the demand due to tourism increased. However, this new era of photography was not accepted well by the purists who debated that commercialization had spoiled the craft. By the end of the 19th century tourists could take their own pictures. In 1888, George Eastman, the founder of Kodak invented a camera using a roll of film.he camera came loaded with a 100 exposure film and a memorandum book that had to be filled in to keep count of the photos. When the film was finished the camera was posted back to the factory. The camera was written with the films and loaded with a fresh film. In the first year Eastman sold 13000 cameras. Kodak had made photography accessible by millions of people across the world.  Photography had become a mass medium and tourists were traveling with small and easy to use camera.

Du Camp and Flaubert

Flaubert in Egypt is a book composed of excerpts from the journals of two young Frenchmen, Gustave Flaubert and his rich Parisian friend Maxime Du Camp. Flaubert, in 1849, had dropped out of college and was at loose ends. Du Camp suggested that they go and photograph the monuments of the “Orient.” Flaubert jumped at the opportunity, and that autumn the two hopped aboard a ship bound for Alexandria, Egypt. Travel as we know it did not exist in the early 19th century. Only the very rich, mostly aristocrats, could afford the time or money for a visit round Europe. Most people had no idea of what the world looked like because, before photography, travel books featured only line drawings at best.Du Camp had studied photography, and for the trip took along his wooden Calotype camera, a tripod and jugs of chemicals. Invented by Henry Fox Talbot, Calotype photography was never very popular because Talbot strictly licensed his patented process. The fees he charged made it less attractive than the free public domain Daguerre process. But Du Camp smartly realized the advantage of the Calotype for travel. His camera was relatively small and easy to carry around. It used ordinary, readily available, high-quality writing paper as the media for its negatives. The writing paper itself could be partially sensitized in a hotel room or even a tent, and once dried, be conveniently stored and carried around until needed. The big drawback was that while the Daguerreotype is incredibly detailed, a Calotype print is much softer because the print is made from a paper negative. However, by shooting paper negatives, Du Camp could make any number of contact prints from them upon his return to Paris. By comparison, the Daguerreotype was a singular photograph from which no copies could be made. Du Camp was planning ahead to produce multiple copies of his travel albums.

Du Camp and Flaubert traveled through North Africa, Egypt and the Middle East, taking photos and keeping detailed diaries. It was a landscape as dangerous and chaotic as it is today. They had to fight off bandits and the occasional anti-government rebels who fought from camelback. Naturally enough, their exploits also involved dangerous liaisons with native women, belly dancers and prostitutes, and the consumption of quantities of alcohol and exotic drugs. Despite these distractions, the men stayed focused on their mission, producing hundreds of photographs that captured, for the first time, some of the great manmade wonders of the ancient world such as the pyramids, the statues at Aswan, the Sphinx and more.

Arriving at a site, the work of making photographs would begin. Flaubert apparently would do his best to avoid actual work, letting the porters put up the darkroom tent, while Du Camp would scout out locations. After placing the camera on a wooden tripod, Du Camp would duck under a black drape so he could frame and focus his image on the groundglass.Then he would go into his mostly light-tight darkroom tent and brush the sensitized side of the writing paper with a solution of gallo nitrate of silver — a mixture of silver nitrate, acetic acid and gallic acid. This was an accelerator that increased the paper’s sensitivity to light. After blotting the paper dry and placing it in a light tight holder, he would go back and load it into his camera. Now came the trickiest part of 19th century photography. Exposure was learned strictly by trial and error. Once he found the right exposure time, Du Camp would remove the holder’s light slide and take the lens cap off. Using his pocket watch, he would time the exposure and then replace the cap. Exposure complete, he would return to the darkroom tent to develop the negative. This required brushing the paper with gallo nitrate again while gently warming it over a hot pot. This produced a visible silver image that was fixed with hypo, the same hyposulphite of soda modern film development uses. This dissolved the unexposed silver iodide, which was then washed away, leaving a pure silver image on the paper.

The prints were mounted on heavy paper, and then bound in albums that Du Camp sold in 1852 under the title “Egypte, Nubie, Palestine, Syrie.”This was arguably the world’s first travel photography book and the images amazed the public. It made Du Camp famous almost overnight. Hearing and researching this story has been really insightful and enlightening in my investigation on travel photography. It makes you realise how much photography has developed and how lucky we are today. Today’s snapshooters have no idea how hard it once was to photograph the world, something they can do now so easily with just the press of a button.

Inspiration, Planning

Environment – Specification

Leave a comment

When assigned with the theme of environment, I wanted to try and capture the lifestyles and settings of me and my friends. Nevertheless, this concept as an individual project is quite generic and predictable and I feel as if more imagination is required in order to make my work unique. When provided with the brief of ‘environment’ one of the first instincts is going to be the multiple environments of a social group. I don’t want to jump straight to this idea, as the process will be followed by a plethora of other students. My thinking process at this stage was conceptualizing ways in which that I could incorporate some kind of personal element or unique characteristic into this generic idea. I came up with the idea of utilizing disposable cameras. Everywhere I go, I take a disposable camera with me.  I really enjoy taking photographs with disposables and love the ‘old-school’ vintage aesthetic that they bring. I think that I love them so much due to the subconscious nostalgia they bring. When I was a child and technology was not quite as advanced, my family and I would always use disposable cameras. We would take them on holidays and vacations as they were cheap, easy to use and did the job. If I look through my house, I will find thousands of disposable photographs documenting my childhood  right from the day I was born. I love the physicality of them and how they will always be there, regardless of the advancing digital technology. As a result, I actually prefer using my disposable as oppose to the camera on my phone or canon. I came up with the idea of taking a photograph of my environment with a disposable camera before passing it on to a friend and instructing him or her to do the same. This process would be repeated until more than 10 people have produced images of their personal settings and environments. I like the process of this project, as it involves the participation of a small community and the documentation of multiple environments. It provides the viewer with a quick, sneaky insight into the life of multiple characters. This project takes advantage of the portable, compact and light nature of a disposable camera demonstrating how we can easily transfer images and memories between one another. When providing my friends with the camera, I will simply instruct them to take 3 photographs. This is the only guidance I will provide them. Doing this will ensure that they are not conscious of the brief and fabricating photographs that are not representational of their lifestyle. I want the photographers to produce work whilst unaware of its purpose.

A mood board of Travel Photography which demonstrates the kind of work I wish to be producing for this project.

My second idea also incorporates the use of a disposable camera but for a different purpose. For this project I would focus on tourism and travelling. In early April, I am travelling on a cruise around the Mediterranean, visiting dozens of cities around Europe. This includes locations such as Rome, Florence, Pisa, Athens, Pompeii, Monaco, Marseilles and Barcelona. Typically, disposable cameras were perfect for tourists, allowing them to carry small, lightweight cameras to capture their adventures that were inexpensive and temporary. They prevented the hassle of packing a chunky camera that could be easily damaged, also ideal for families and travelers in the late 20th century who could not afford professional cameras. Nevertheless, disposables have gone out of fashion, rarely used due to the introduction of smart phones and their ability to take great photos whilst maintaining the compact lightweight physicality shared by disposables. Although disposables are still sold in stores, their popularity is a shadow of its former self. I would use a disposable to capture the culture and individual atmospheres of each city, looking at landmarks, historical sites and famous locations.  This is known as Travel Photography. Travel photography is a genre of  photography that may involve the documentation of an area’s landscape, people, cultures, customs and history. The Photographic Society of America defines a travel photo as an image that expresses the feeling of a time and place, portrays a land, its people, or a culture in its natural state, and has no geographical limitations. Many travel photographers specialise in a particular aspect of photography such as travel portraits, landscape or documentary photography as well as shooting all aspects of travel. Alternatively, this can idea can be done without a disposable camera and then I can produce a larger quantity of work.

Inspiration, Research

Anna Di Prospero

Leave a comment

// A N N A   D I   P R O S P E R O //

Anna di Prospero is an Italian photographer who has been working on a self-portrait series called With You, where she appears alongside family members and friends. i like that even though it’s a self-portrait series she isn’t necessarily the star of the images – but the focus if rather about her relationship with these important people in her life. however you may interpret it, the images themselves are absolutely beautiful – with an amazing rich colour palette that runs through the entire series.”

Anna’s images pair rich landscapes with intimate portraits in a bid to form both aesthetically pleasing and contextually thoughtful images. Many of her images make use of the double exposure technique which combines multiple layers of photos to create a final composition. Often this process makes use of landscapes and textures overlaid with forms and figures as seen below in Anna’s own work.

Much of her work is shot though a window such as the above creating a seemingly natural double exposure which makes use of reflections occurring within the image. This photographic technique and style creates a double image within a single frame where two photos can be seen together rather than separately. The landscape above shows an urban garden and swimming poor reflected onto herself and her family member. Perhaps by linking each part of her family to a particular area or setting an emotional link is created between person and place. 

Other examples of Anna’s work feature what could be seen as ordinary double exposure techniques such as digitally – or manually – layering two images over each other with a difference in opacity rather than relying on natural reflections and lighting. In the two photos above, flowers have been overlaid across the figures forming unusual compositions. The muted colour palette in Anna’s work helps to carry her aesthetic and supports her overall theme of identity and confusion within the midst of reality. Using her family as models within each of her tableau images, Anna finds herself in the people who mean the most to her.

Water plays an important role in many of Anna’s images representing a different reality which she tends to be being pulled out of or falling into. The second image here has a strong symbolic reference of the help and support given to her by her family and friends who literally pull her out of the deep water she is trying to escape from.