On 20/06/17, we took a photography trip around the north-west coast of Jersey with photographer in residence, Tanja Deman. I found it very enjoyable because it forced to me to tame images that were outside of my comfort zone and what I would not usually photograph –  being landscapes. I also had to, throughout, the day, think about how I would use the images I capture to create a unique and creative series of work relating to what Tanja Deman has shown and told us to show my understanding of her practice. I believe that creating some photo collages will be a fun task because I have no done this before, even on the academy in took part in during Easter I stuck with plain images. Therefore, with the images form yesterday I think I will try out some photo collages and after looking through what I have produced, I shot some good frames which included quite plain and barren landscapes of fields etc which I believe will work well if I was to insert another image on top of this.

Before we took the coach to our starting point at Grosnez Castle, we had a talk from. She explained her work to us and went through her overall aim from taking photographs and whats she intends to show from her photo collages – the overall narrative – photo collages are what she solely focuses on. She firstly showed us work that inspired her, being photo collages from the 1900s where artists would use body parts to create works that used a combination of different body parts to create a new being, for example John Stezaker, here’s an example

Here is a link to John Stezaker’s page on the Saatchi Gallery website

This artist would also tell a story through using two images, one being a portrait and the other being a landscape positioned directly on top of the portrait to create a new narrative and meaning behind two completely different images. Tanja said that photo collages were used to create a new space which, after looking at several of her examples and older artists, realized this made sense because old spaces are replaced by updated worlds, often fantasy based. An example of this concept being Italian architecture firm from the 1970’s, Superstudio who specialized in paper architectural design by altering and defacing existing photographs and then collaging different images together to create a new space. As there were nit many new buildings being built and developed during the 1970’s, Superstudio used paper architecture to develop this concept; encouraging the beginning of urban art following WW2.

I wish to attempt to try out this style of Stezaker in my own images and took this into account when taking my images by experimenting with self-portarits but using a long-shot to capture my whole body and the landscape behind me and also positioned some models when an idea came into my head about what I could do. I tried to capture some macro shots as well to use. 

Tanja told us at the start that she usually may have to go back to her location to re-take some images if necessary if one or two didn’t match the lighting or composition she wanted. However, we don’t have time to do this so we had to limit ourselves to realistic goals. Which I believe I achieved well because I knew what I wanted to do going into the task and had a clear goal.

When we got down to L’Etacq after a very scenic walk that lead down to the bay and Faulkners Fisheries, the photo opportunities were limited to the beach as we were no longer above sea level where we could capture cliff edges etc so I did not take many images but still some that I believe could help me whit my image collaging. Also, due to the hot and sunny day it was, the sun was constantly shining so natural light was a great source of lighting for my images but it was constantly changing direction so I had to alter my camera setting regularly to adjust to how the sun was positioned. I was always in manual mode and used an ISO of 100 at all times, set my f/stop to f.11 or sometimes f.9.0 depending how if I was taking macro close up in some greenery where the lighting was darker and had my shutter speed set at 1/125 to allow for a crisp and clear image. I used the ‘daylight’ white balance.

Overall, I found the day very enjoyable and thought there were some fantastic photo opportunities which I believe and hoe I used to the best of my ability. Although I have explored outside my style of photographic work, I think it is something that I needed to encounter in order for me to progress and I hope I can create some interesting and eye catching works, preferably photo collages so that I can experiment with the style and get Tanja’s views on it. I wish to use historical example of photo collage work also.

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