My next shoot i decided to create was a beach den as this was the most common den i made as a child. I spent pretty much my entire childhood down the beach building dens so it was really important that i included a beach den within my project. I decided to use St Brelade’s beach as we had a spot up by where the boats are parked that we would always go to. This was key in inspiring our beach dens. The boats and tractor trailers provided a basic structure to began to build our dens coming off the sides of them. Otherwise down other beaches such as St Ouen’s we struggled to have a starting point to build the dens off. I have mentioned previously how important it was in den building to consider the environment and to find the perfect part of the location where you had a starting point. I thought it was therefore really important to build a den in this location.
For my beach shoot i didn’t really want to take my photographs on a sterotypical sunny day. I wanted to get a different atmosphere to the photographs rather then just sunshine. The most memorable dens on the beach where the ones when there was weird weather or i used something slightly different to build the dens. As we have been having so much fog recently i thought it could be quite interesting to create a den on a day which was really foggy. It actually turned out that i got the best of both worlds as the day i choose to take the photographs was a sunny day and also very foggy as it rolled in as i was taking the photographs.
When choosing what materials to use to build my den i wanted to use those that i would have used at the time to build dens. I therefore thinking about the basics of the structure decided to bring a wind brake to act as a wall. Down beaches where we had very limited places to build dens as there was no beginning point to the structure we would always use wind brakes to create walls and then drap material off them. The material i decided to use were sarongs as these were the things i used down the beach as a child to lye on and to dry ourselves after swimming. They were the best blankets to use as they are very light weight and can be folded up small so many could be taken with us down the beach and then used for various things. I have also decided instead of pegs like i used in my garden den i will use rocks to weight down the blankets as they are a material that is readily available down the beach.
Below is the location in which i have decided to build my den. I wanted to choose a part of the location which conveyed that the den was built down the beach but without the photographs appearing like a sterotypical beach photograph. I therefore decided to take the photograph looking back towards the less extensive side of the beach. I had to take the photograph at the end of the line of tractors and boats in order to have enough room to take the photographs from far enough away from the den.
This shoot did not turn out like I wanted it to or how I expected it to. The results are interesting and although they do show the colours that I was expecting the makeup/facepaint that I used on the model could not be seen very well and so that aspect of the shoot did not turn out too well. The images are also not all of a fantastic quality, I had hoped that the water would be clear but the pool cover had been left off for a long time so there was a lot of drt in the water. I also encountered the issue that the water was way too cold for me or the model to be able to stay in the water for more that a few minutes even though it was incredibly sunny.
I would have preferred to have organised this shoot at a different time of day as well as midday but due to time constraints for the pool owner and my model this could not be helped. This did help however because although the light was not fantastic for shooting above the water I really needed the very bright and direct sunshine for the underwater photographs. Because this was one of the first attempts to use the case for my digital camera under water I was not very experienced in using it, I needed to borrow some small dumbbells to weigh the case down so it could sink with me, because of this it was difficult to handle under the water and even more difficult to handle above the water and some of the settings were difficult to use in addition to keeping the lens cover from creating dark corners.
The colours that make up the images are quite nice, they really help to create the kind of effect that I was looking for but I would have prefered for them to have more structure to them. The all felt kind of flat and uninteresting. I tried to get a variation of different shots due to the low quality of the images but all it did was confuse the results of the shoot, there was no linear storyline to the images, again partly due to not being able to stay in the water for too long. despite my dissatisfaction with the shoot I still took the images in the contact sheet above and edited them all to see if I could get some better results from them.
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This is the result of the editing. I only passed them through Lightroom quicky with some small exposure changes, clarity adjustments and on a few I changed specific areas. There was not much that I could do with these images other than this in Lightroom, but I have attempted editing them in Photoshop to see if I can get any different results from some more abstract editing. This experimentation is going to be shown in the next blog post.
Having confirmed a plan in producing photographic responses to my travels throughout the Mediterranean, I wanted to investigate some methods in making this kind of photography more original unique. As discovered in my previous blog post, the genre of Travel Photography is now very crowded due to its accessibility and ease of involvement. There is little originality in documenting the landscapes and atmospheres of foreign locations as it can essentially be done by anyone. Consequently, I may have to indulge in some peculiar methods in order to make my work more personal and distinctive. With this plan in mind, I began looking at the work of Carlos Spottorno. Carlos Spottorno is a Spanish documentary and Travel photographer with an artistic background who has focused his main personal projects on subjects related to power shifts, economy, and social issues that shape the real world. Born in Budapest in 1971, Spottorno has travelled all across the globe, generating editorial, commercial and personal projects that possess some fork of message or deeper meaning.
One of his projects called “The PIGS” bears some visual resemblance to the work I am producing due the synonymous European environments explored. For this project, Spottorno intended to capture Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain through the eyes of the economists. PIGS is a term coined by the business and financial press as a way to refer to Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain during their current financial plight. These countries are all united in facing vast loss in historical prominence and are hence grouped together under this banner. What started as a pejorative label used by neoconservatives, mainly from English speaking countries, was eventually taken up for some time without any qualms by the media. Excessively high levels of public and private debt, government deficits, a property bubble and very disappointing political and economic policies, have put the PIGS in the crosshairs. It is alleged that the PIGS won’t be able to bear the pressure of sharing a common currency with their stronger European brethren. Spottorno states:
“I have often asked myself how, after so many centuries of splendor, could these countries have come to their current destitute state. What happened to Greece, the cradle of Western Civilization? What became of Italy, heir to the Roman Empire and endowed with one of the richest artistic heritages in the world? What went wrong with Portugal, the first global naval power in history? At what point did Spain and its empire, on which the sun never set, see the onset of their decline? I believe the root-cause of our countries’ current sorry state of affairs is to be found in the distant past. Issues that for many centuries piled up on our doorsteps are now rearing their heads and plain to see.”
Spottorno continues, arguing that the PIGS view themselves, rightly, as the architects, and as the stem cells from which the idea of Europe developed. Southern Europe resists admitting its loss of political stature in the global political arena, seeing itself as the wellspring of Western Civilization. Spottorno sees The PIGS as old, cynical and individualistic countries. I think this is a really interesting concept, and I something that I have frequently thought about in the past. Its quite staggering how these countries were formerly, some of the most powerful and dominant forces on the planet and now are simple, weak shadows of these former identities. I think that Spottorno had an excellent lead for a photographic project here, due to the passion he had behind the project. He attempts to illustrate the stereotypes brought up by the term PIGS. In other words, what we would see if we were to translate into images the articles we read in the financial press. He intends to present how he imagines economists perceiving these countries. The result is a collection of clichés, some true and incomplete. The same way a travel guide carefully avoids anything seemingly unattractive, this book shows much of what we find embarrassing, oftentimes rightly, and at times unfairly. What stands out the most is the glaring absence in these images of all that is positive, beautiful and promising in these countries.
In this photograph, we see a young gipsy holding his horse after cleaning it. In some parts of Portugal, like in other european countries it is still possible to see working horses in urban context. Nomad gipsies settlements are in the middle of town, generating sometimes troubles between them and the other people living in the areas. They are accused of being dirty and chaotic, besides dealing with drugs and crime. This is a clear highlight of the plight endured by Portugal and he transformation experienced through history. I like this photograph a lot, a powerful composition evoking a lot of emotion. The boy and the horse are stood central dominating the frame and drawing the attention of the viewer. Nevertheless, in the background, we see the urban landscape, a white blocky building providing the context and message. The building features an interesting lighting setup as certain faces are shrouded in complete shadows and others in complete light. A nice contrast is created that doesn’t distract from the subject and his horse but ensures our eyes naturally meet this component.Carboneras, Almería: hotel “El Algarrobico” was built in a protected Natural Park with the complicity of local authorities. Popular activism and the pressure made by Greenpeace stopped the project, although after a decade of legal activity it has not yet been demolished. Nevertheless, It’s interesting, though, that many locals would like the hotel to start operating, and revitalize the poor local economy. This photograph is really interesting as we see a lot of opposition and clashing of certain messages. Typically we associate tourism with lush landscapes, clean architecture and bright, vivid colours. However, within this photograph this idea of tourism which is ushered in by the family sat upon the beach, is conflicted by the surrounding landscape. This abandoned hotel that still remains to be demolished is just sitting there, whilst the dingy colours of the surrounding environment produces quite a depressing tone. We truly see the repercussions of this failing economy and stereotypes surrounding Spain have been challenged.
The photographs within the PIGS project represent, visually, my initial intentions for this study. The photographs concentrate primarily on the landscape and significance of the local environment which is what I wished to do as well. They occasionally feature a subject within the foreground who can provide context and intrigue surrounding the narrative. Nevertheless, my travels around the Mediterranean do not possess the same kind of depth and meaning that Spottorno has here. The reason why the PIGS project is so successful is due to the direct, concentrated proposition organised by Spottorno. He has discovered something that he is passionate about and ensured absolute focus upon this for his photographs. On the other hand, this kind of depth or internal meaning is absence from my work, meaning minimal focus would be achieved on my shoots. This is why I would like to find something more unusual for my work, and fortunately Spottorno has another project that I would like to reference.
LA GRIETA / THE CRACK
In December 2013 reporter Guillermo Abril and Spottorno received from the assignment of preparing a series of stories about the European Union’s external borders. THE CRACK is Spottorno’s field journal as he followed the border from Africa to the Arctic with the aim of identifying the causes and consequences of Europe’s identity crisis. Halfway between a photobook book and a graphic novel, in as much as it uses narrative elements of the latter, the end result is not a story based on actual events: these are actual events. At the time the media’s coverage was focused on the migration flows in Melilla and the Southern Mediterranean. The great migrant exodus in the Balkans, and the attacks in Paris and Nice were still a long ways in the future. The war in Ukraine seemed to have stabilized, and the United Kingdom hadn’t yet voted to leave European Union. These and many other events would take place over the course of time it took them to cover their assignment, which took them all the way from Melilla to the Arctic. After three years working on the story, several covers, dozens of pages in magazines, and a World Press Photo, the authors set out to convey, with the 25,000 photographs and 15 notebooks they had compiled, the story of what is happening on the European Union’s borders, making use of an innovative narrative form.
This project is a perfect example of how to present Travel Photography in an innovative and original way in order to separate it from the crowded genre and boring photographs. Spottorno has borrowed the aesthetic of comic-book art presenting his images upon paneled pages with a typical comic-book filter employed onto the images. The pages feature speech bubbles and narration boxes, just like a comic book would, enabling a narrative to be told. The idea is very imaginative and a good representative of the originality I intend to capture for my travel photography. By presenting the images in this way, Spottorno is provided his travels around the globe with a story and sense of progression. The portfolio becomes more than just images, and Spottorno has created a professional and sophisticated final product. This is something that I would like to replicate for my Environmental project, essentially utilizing the travel photograph as a backdrop for something greater and more creative. Whilst the visuals of the PIGS project can still be echoed, I would like to incorporate an individual style through the editing stage, perhaps taking advantage of my artistic abilities as I have done in the past. The next stage is to try and think of an concept i manipulating my shoots that is original and individually relevant.
The sea is an incredibly powerful force. It is often taken for granted that we can co-exist safely with it but this is far from the case. I have already looked at the mysteries and mythology that people think of when it comes to the sea but now I am going to look at the true destructive power of the sea. The sea is one of the most powerful forces on earth, it takes life like it is nothing. Countless lives have been lost to the sea over the years, even with masses of technological advancements in recent years we still cannot protect ourselves from its awesome power sometimes. Although dated one of the best example of this is the Titanic, supposed to be unsinkable the massive loss of life from the tragedy proved that the sea is and always will be king.
Final Farewell
This painting was created after the sinking to commemorate the loss of life. Titled “Final Farewell” is gives a very melancholy notion of the ship sailing off into the sunset, towards better things that would not come, and that in the end the Titanic’s journey would end with 1,503 people perishing on its maiden voyage. There are not any artistic, photographic works based on the Titanic due to the final resting place of the ship being 3.8km under the water but there are plenty of paintings. Many do not focus on the sea but instead the humanity and the loss of life, as well a fear. Fear is something that I could definitely tap into with my project being based around water.
Another element that ties in with this fear is the sense of randomness of the sea. On the land things can generally be anticipated much better, roads do not usually just breakdown, buildings will not suddenly collapse and for the most part even some of the worst weather can be hidden and protected from. most of the deaths due to bad weather on land are based around water too, floods and tsunamis caused by natural disasters kill more than the rest of the natural disaster itself usually. On the open water this does not apply, the randomness of waves and the sea conditions makes it an incredibly difficult thing to predict. The image above shows some of this, although over dramaticized the different direction of the waves really lend to the notion of randomness and chaos that is going on. The splashes of white from the cresting waves contrasting with the deep, dark water of the troughs makes the painting a very interesting one to look at. This kind of thing can also be captured in photography, a much smaller example of this can be seen in my work from my first shoot.
Today we have the advantage of satellite mapping and forecasts to inform us of the dangers of the sea and what there is lying ahead of us but this is not always enough and cannot always capture and be aware of everything. The photograph above is of a “rogue wave” that crashed over the MS Stolt Surf on the 4th October 1977. Estimated to have reached a height of at least 22m before crashing over the ship and subsequently causing a mass of damage to the ship that left one of the sailors hospitalised. furniture, port holes, electric cables and lights were damaged with the boat beginning to flood. The ship’s engines were at risk from being broken, but thankfully they managed to keep them running, if not then they would have ended up lateral to the waves and if this had happened then the ship could have easily been split in two and it is unlikely that the crew would have survived. These rogue waves were originally considered mythical n nature but recently have managed to be properly studied, this had confirmed that they do exist, occurring in open water, usually at very substantial depths there is no way to predict when these waves will occur because we have no other knowledge about them. Often linked to disappearances of many ships with unknown reasons for disappearance they are terrifying, for many reasons but mainly for the reason that they are truly random.
Even on land people cannot always be safe from the awesome power of the sea Tsunamis are a real danger to many people who live in these disaster prone areas. One of the countries that is often hit by Tsunamis is Japan, in 2011 the country was it by a Tsunami that caused massive destruction to the county’s coastline. Destroying homes, causing the leak of radioactive material from a nuclear power reactor and killing almost 20,000 people this disaster made headlines around the world for a long time. Again being incredibly difficult to predict there was little warning and because of the devastation caused people did not know how to react. The photographer Paolo Pellegrin was one of the first on site to record the devastation and destruction.
His photographs are a very real look at what happened to the country in the wake of this disaster. His shots are all composed the same way, using a wide angle panoramic style the images show an incredible amount of detail due to a very high contrast. This incredibly high contrast further emphasises the destruction of the area by giving the viewer lots of information to take in, this causes them to look for longer and notice even more details. The apocalyptic levels of destruction being caused by a simple wave is immense, the sea is not something to become complacent of. It has the ability to create the kind of destruction that is seen in these photos, at random and without warning. One of the most powerful elements of these images for me is the boats being beached so far inland, these are boats weighing hundreds of tonnes and they have been ripped from moorings and anchors designed to hold them against everything that nature can throw at them and they have simply been plucked with the ease of plucking a hair and dragged inland by the storm surge. Pellegrin’s images lend themselves to this idea of randomness that the water produces, items are strewn everywhere with no order or care. And yet these people called this place their home, it was their environment and now it is a completely different environment that people can no longer live in.
Francesca Woodman was an American photographer who created black and white images often using herself or other young, female models as the subjects. During her life time her art was not well-known and it was only after her death (she committed suicide at 22) that her work received attention. She is considered to be a progressive feminine voice in photography and her work explores themes of isolation and self-displacement. Woodman explained to her parents (who were also artists) that she used herself as a model as a matter of “convenience” because she was always available and knew exactly the effect she wanted to produce with an image. The main subject of her work was broadly an exploration of her own body in relation to space. Her photographs test the boundaries of the body but she rarely revealed her whole body with her face often blurred or masked and parts of her body are hidden behind elements of the environment. This creates an interesting relationship between observation, self-display and mystery. Some critics have interpreted this as an attempt to resist the male gaze with the tendency to camouflage herself. In some images Woodman also most becomes one with her surroundings by blending into the wallpaper or floor so that it becomes difficult to distinguish between the two. By fragmenting her body in this way, hiding behind furniture or using reflective surfaces such as mirrors to conceal herself she dissects the human figure and emphasises isolated body parts. This creates the idea that she is simultaneously there whilst also absent and relates to the idea of disappearance.
Woodman often used long exposure techniques to capture movement within her images and create surrealist compositions . The concealed figures have a mysterious, ghost-like quality . There are also no modern buildings in her work which the critic Elizabeth Gumport describes in this articleas crumbling ruins “whose disintegrating forms evoke the wrecks admired by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic revivalists often cited as [some of Woodman’s] major influences”. Woodman often photographed herself nude or wearing old-fashioned clothes such as white petticoats and is typically sited in empty dilapidated rooms containing old furniture. Her photographs look as though they belong in a much earlier time with her choice of costume meaning it is impossible to date the images and the use of old buildings and absence of modern objects create a Gothic appearance. Woodman was apparently an avid reader of Victorian Gothic fiction such as novels by the Brontes which could be said to be reflected in her work with the idea of spectral female figures, confined to attics. The soft focus and black and white nature of her images is also similar to the style of earlier generations of photography which further emphasises the timelessness of her work. The soft greys that shade her images add to the mysterious tone and show her eye for light, shadow and form.
Critics have disagreed about the meaning and purpose of her art with some comparing her to surrealist photographers (with her use of Surrealist motifs such as mirrors, gloves, birds, and bowls) and others hail her as a feminist hero. Her images are also very personal, lending them an autobiographical quality and therefore interpretation of her work is often based on psychoanalysis in light of her suicide. However her images are also often subtly amusing and contain playful visual jokes such as the example below with her arms covered in bark and mimicking the form of the trees. Family and friends have argued that while many think her work was about death and disappearance, Woodman’s light-heated sense of humour and energy is also apparent in her work. They say that “Her life wasn’t a series of miseries” and she was fun to be with.
I have researched the work of Francesca Woodman because her art has inspired many contemporary photographers within the area of performance and self-portraiture. In my own work I am also going to be considering the relationship between myself and different environments and I am going to experiment with a surrealist approach, using long-shutter speeds. I am also intrigued by Woodman’s use of props such as mirrors and this is something I am going to use, potentially within the context of old buildings.
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 herebut 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.
Idris Khan is a London-based artist that was born in the UK in 1978. After completing his Master’s Degree at the Royal College of Art in London in 2004, he has received international recognition for his minimal, yet emotionally powerful photographs, videos and sculptures. His work has been featured in many exhibitions at international venues including the ‘Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art’ , Canada; the ‘Hayward Gallery’, London;and ‘Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton’, Paris. As well as this his work is in the permanent collections of many institutions worldwide such as ‘The Saatchi Collection’ in London and the ‘San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’.
Whilst Khan practices more as an artist than a photographer, he often employs the tools of photo-mechanical reproduction to create his work. In particular we have been asked to explore some of the digitally remastered and powerful photographs he has created, such as the ones presented below. To create these intense abstract pieces he builds up layers of his images digitally, allowing him to meticulously control minute variances in contrast, brightness and opacity. The outcomes of this technique is often a large-scale print with a surface that has a remarkable optical intensity. Below are a few of my favourites from his work on this subject. I chose these portrait photographs over some of his more busy landscape pieces because I love how he has transformed subject matters that are so plain into beautiful and emotive images.
Stephanie Jung is a freelance photographer based in Berlin, Germany. Her interest in this field began at a young age as her father was a very passionate hobby photographer. During her studies in Visual Communications she discovered her passion for experimental photography, finding inspiration in a photographer she met and worked closely with named Sabine Wenzel. Since graduating in 2010 she has been focussing on fine art and portrait photography, travelling to big cities to capture perfectly the vibrant and hectic scene. This fascination with urban life stems back to her small town upbringing, her work shows the beauty in both the calm and busy moments of everyday life in populated areas.
However, Jung’s work is not just about city life, it’s about time and transitioning, about capturing special moments and getting lost in time. Like Khan’s work above her pieces are very technical and emotive scenes that have been transformed and edited into beautiful works of art during their post production. In an interview about her work Jung quotes that the “layering is something which became important and almost self-evident to me, as it represents best what I want to show with my work”. Below are some of my favourite examples of her bright and intricate work that truly capture the busyness of the city life. I chose these photographs as examples as I feel they show a good variety of scenes, colours, and emotive qualities.
To help us experiment with new techniques and make our individual projects more diverse we were asked to do our own quick responses to this style of fine art photography. Our objectives are to show that we can copy, adjust, blur, and blend layers using Adobe Photoshop; creating a set of images inspired by the artists I have researched briefly above. My results of this ‘in class experiment’ shows newly created versions of a few of my AS final pieces that I thought would work well transformed using this technique. The first two images on the top row are inspired by Stephanie Jung and show movement and time through an everyday town landscape and an environmental portrait. The bottom two resemble the abstract work of Idris Khan depicting a sense of fragmentation and dark contrasted tones…
Before continuing with my documentary approach to this project, I first wanted to find out more about the applications of this type of photography. ‘Conservation photography’ is defined as the use of the photographic process, within the parameters of photojournalism, to advocate for conservation outcomes. By combining nature photography with a proactive, issue-oriented, approach to documentary photography it can be used for protecting nature and improving the natural environment. Conservation Photography furthers environmental conservation, wildlife conservation, habitat conservation or cultural conservation by expanding public awareness of issues and stimulating positive action.
Throughout its history photography has developed as a powerful medium to empower conservation. Although it was not as widely acknowledged, photography has served this role since the 1860’s. For example, the powerful images of Carleton Watkins were successfully used to stimulate the establishment of Yosemite National Park in 1864. Since then renewed emphasis on photography for conservation arose at the beginning of the 21st century. This was primarily in response to the human-caused environmental crisis, recognising that the global pattern of abolished ecosystems was not sustainable. The modern field of conservation photography was formalised in October 2005 with the founding of the International League of Conservation Photographers by photographer Cristina Mittermeier. Many people agree, conservation photography falls into two broad categories, both of which are equally as valuable:
The snapshot: a quickly framed image of a naturally occurring scene, taken by chance with not too much time or effort. Images will not contain any manipulation or staging and are strongly connected to documentary photography and photojournalism.
The carefully crafted image: a series of skillfully crafted, high-quality images that tell the story in a more powerful way. Images will most likely be at least a little bit staged, as dramatic framing can often increase the photograph’s power and meaning.
Throughout my project, I hope to demonstrate both of these categories of conservation photography and use my images to spread awareness. Below are some stunning images depicting many different types of provocative conservation photography….
Artist Reference – Andrew Mcconnell:
Irish photographer, Andrew McConnell, started his amazing career in 2003 when he decided to concentrate on documentary work, driven by a desire to tell the stories of people and places that remain under-reported in the international media. Among numerous honours, McConnell has won two 1st place prizes at the World Press Photo Awards, 4 National Press Photographers Association awards. His work is widely recognised and has been featured in many publications such as ‘National Geographic‘ and ‘The New York Times‘.
I have chosen to explore him as an artist reference for looking and conservation photography, mainly because of his amazing project, entitled ‘Rubbish Dump 2.0’. Although this project explores many humanitarian issues it also says a lot about modern society and our ever-growing impact on the environment. In this series, Mcconnell uses the second category, mentioned above, to portray a dumping ground for computers and electronic waste from Europe and the US located in Ghana’s capital, Accra. Every month hundreds of tonnes of e-waste end up here as countries in the West attempt to unload their ever-increasing stockpiles of toxic junk. Of the 20 to 50 million tonnes of electronics discarded each year 70% will end up in poor nations, and in the EU alone 6.6 million tonnes of e-waste are unaccounted for every year. The disposal of electronic goods in the West is a costly affair and must be done in an environmentally responsible manner, however in places like Ghana there are no such regulations and as such toxic metals like lead, beryllium, cadmium and mercury are continuously being released causing untold damage to human health and the environment…
The second photoshoot that I’m planning for this project is still based around water but instead of looking at environmental portraits like last time I am going to be looking at some abstraction and specifically colour. Based on my blog post about colour palettes I am going to be looking at blue/green for several reasons:
The sea water at the moment is way too murky to be able to use it for underwater photography. I have been trying each weekend to see if the water is clear but every time it is the same thing. No visibility at more than ~1m can be found at the moment.
It is too cold to be able to stay in the water for a long time even with a wetsuit on. And after about 2 hours my ability to operate my cameras is severely limited, often photos will be blurry because of me shaking and water movement.
The pool that I have access to is a light blue colour on the inside, this will mean that without placing something into the water for a new background this colour will have to be included.
The final and simplest reason is that water is blue. To represent this underwater environment I cannot completely ignore the colour of the substance when colour is the focus of the shoot.
After using and seeing the results of my first shoot I decided that, although a lot of fun to use, it will not always be practical to use for this project, time constraints and constraints on the number of photos that I could take drove me to look for a waterproof case for my Nikon D5200. I had already been considering buying one but this need for one just gave me the justification to do so.
This is the case with my camera inside. I purchased it from DICAPACthrough their Amazon site. It is nothing special, just a zip-lock seal which is rolled down to seal and held with velcro. It allows be to use a camera which is much more versatile underwater or in conditions where the camera may become very wet. I plan on using this for the shoot but if the conditions permit I might try using my underwater film camera.
The main idea for this shoot is to have a model wearing make up be under the water or interacting with the water. to make the images even more surreal I am going to be using my male friend as the model, I will be borrowing the makeup and makeup skill of some of my female friends. I will be aiming to use blue/green coloured make up to go with the background and hopefully have a slightly matching color pallette. I am not sure what the images will turn out like but I am excited to see and try.
While spending some time just browsing YouTube I came across a video that caught my attention and I thought that it would be very helpful to my photography work. It is by a photographer called Ted Forbes, he produces lots of very informative YouTube videos about photography and watching this video really made me look back on my own work and think about what worked, what didn’t and why.
In my previous photography work something that I have neglected to give enough thought to is the colours of my photography, this is not so much based on ignoring the bright, vibrancy of the colours that I have taken photos of but instead the matching of the colours in the image and how they work with/against each other to make it. I’m slightly ashamed to admit it but as I now look back on my previous work this is not something that I have even properly considered before. As I do look back to some of my favourite work of mine I do start to notice this connection of colours that I did not plan most of the time but which did, for the most part, work.
This is one of my favourite images that I produced from my AS work. Although now, with a more critical eye I can pick out a lot of issues and negatives to it, it still works well to elaborate my point. The colour pallet used in this image is a very simple one; black, whites and reds. But as was touched on in the video sometimes the best photos do not have the brightest, or most vibrant colours. The image above works because of this, there is an almost monochrome effect to the image with the colours of the red from the guitar just bringing interest to the image. The reds are not even bright or vibrant, they are relatively plain but complemented with the rest of the colours in the image this works very well.
Using the Colour tool that he suggested I decided to look at the colour pallet of one of the images that I took when I went out diving. More specifically I looked at the water (and sky) in the image. I selected the 5 main colours that make up the water in this image and how they flowed between one another. Being relatively dull colours they do not leap out at you on their own let alone inside the image with each other. They do however mix very well together, by looking just at the water in the image you can see this well. The reflections and shadows of the rocks and the reflection of the blank white sky (that’s how it looked to the naked eye too) are all mixed together by the waves in this image giving a real mix of these very similar colours that the film (Kodak Ultra Max 400) captured very well.
Photographer: Brooks Sterling
The way that waves have the ability to mix colours so well, blending with reflections and waves really makes it an interesting subject to shoot. Even when shot in black and white there is still a great degree of interest shown to the images. The way that the light bounces off the water in all different directions due to the smallest, most unpredictable ripples and from random positions means that water is something that always has some higher degree of interest to it than a plain sky or uninteresting background, sometimes making the water in an image more impressive than the intended subject.
Photographer: Roni Horn [1999]For some like Roni Horn the water is the subject and the colors are very important. The at first seemingly dull images just need to be looked at for longer. When each square inch of the image is looked over with care as intended more springs out than expected. The outline of something being reflected in the image above is apparent but what the object is, is cast into doubt. This particular piece of reflection stands out because it is not following on the trend of the colour palette of the rest of the image. The colour palette that I have done below for the image shows the regular colour palette of the very dark blues and black being contrasted by this very bright white with a tinge of blue to it. It really stands out and draws attention to the specific part of the reflection. This can also be seen in the right of the image but as it is a much darker shade of with (grey) it fits in with the image much better than the very bright white.
These techniques have inspired me to do a shoot based around this and incorporating water into it. I will detail the plan for this shoot in another blog post.
