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Experimenting, Exploring, Recording

Deadlines, Opening times and work over Easter

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EXTRA SUPPORT BEFORE EXAM IN CLASSROOM
Tue 17 April: 3:30-5:00pm – MR T
Wed 18 April: 3:30-5:00pm – MR T
Thurs 19 April: 3:30-5:00pm – MR C
Fri 20 April: 3:30-5:00pm – MR C

FINAL PRINTS DATES:
Select your final images for both EXAM and COURSEWORK (if you haven’t completed this already)

Wed 18 April 15:00
prints ready Tue 24 April
Tue 24 April 15:00
prints ready Mon 30 April
Wed 25 April 15:00
prints ready Wed 2 May

EXAMINATION DATES:
Groups 13A and Group 13E 24 April, 30 April & 1 May.
Group 13D 25 April , 2 mAY and 3 May
15 hrs controlled test over 3 days

CLASS LIST + EXTRA TIME
For those of you who have extra time – check when this has been allocated.

A2 Photography Exam 2018

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE COMPLETED THE FOLLOWING WORK BEFORE EXAM BEGINS

PLANNER for A2 EXAMINATIONS 2018

PHOTO-SHOOTS: Record and explore your final 3 planned photohoots.
It is essential that you complete your principal shooting over Easter and return on Tue 17 April with a few hundred images ready for further post-production and editing. Remember first final print run is Wed 18 April

EDITING: Make a rough edit of shoots (you can come into school and work on classroom computers or alternatively download a 30 day free trial of Lightroom/ Photoshop from Adobe. Click here for more details.

EVALUATE: What went well? how can you improve/ develop work from here? Describe visual/contextual links with research, artists references, exam theme. Analyse your best two images following method: FORM, MEANING, JUDGEMENT, THEORY/CONTEXT.

FINAL OUTCOMES: Consider what your final outcomes will be and how to present them ie. single images or a series of images, diptych, or triptychs, grids etc.

PHOTOBOOKS: For those who wants to make a photobook – begin to make a selection of images – think about narrative and sequencing (what is the story you want to communicate and how you are going to do it in a series of images).

RESEARCH: Support book design with research and analysis of at least one other photobook by other photographers. Follow these steps here in your understanding of design, concept and narrative.

BLOG POSTS: Go through all your blog posts and make sure that you have completed them all to your best ability, e.g. good use of images/ illustrations, annotation of processes/ techniques used, analysis/ evaluation of images and experimentation. Remember to MAKE YOUR BLOG POST VISUAL and include relevant, links, podcasts, videos where possible.

To achieve a top marks we need to see a coherent progression of quality work from start to finish following these steps:

RESEARCH > ANALYSIS > PLANNING > RECORDING > DEVELOPING > EXPERIMENTING > PRESENTING > EVALUATING

 

 

Experimenting, Recording

wabi sabi // 26.3.18 shoot

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After school I went out with my camera to take some images of different things I found. Since my project is about insignificant things and imperfect beauty I mainly tried to look for the tiny details that we usually ignore. My project is also about growth and decay so I tried to find things to link to this such as the beginning of a growing flower or a decaying leaf. My project is about life in general so I also took images of tiny insects such as ants. However I wanted my images to by visually interesting so I looked for certain angles and frames and different ways I could use the subject such as holding the ant in my hand rather then just capturing it on the floor. I images are taken in my garden, house and also in green Island beach. They were all taken after school. Most of them have a small f stop because I wanted to highlight only the smaller details that I wanted the viewer to take in.

I used Photoshop to edit the images because I wanted to create the same atmosphere as I did for my previous shoots. It was the brightness that I wanted to replicate but I didn’t have to edit the image that much because I used the camera settings to create the aesthetic I wanted. Some images suited a black and white filter better then colour because it revealed the finer detail much more. When editing the images into black and white I used a much larger contrast because this made more of a difference between the dark and light areas which makes the image more visually interesting.

   

Analysis

Review and Reflect

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So far, I am happy with the progress I have made in photographing light and in doing this translating spiritual experience into my images.  My first shoot I took images of the sky and more specifically the sun as the main source of natural light.  This links to the story of Genesis and of creationism as I am tracing back to the origins of nature and also symbolically light outshines the dark as new replaces old.  I believe these key concepts have successfully outlined the meaning of freedom through philosophically exploring the spiritual freedoms that exist within and beyond nature.  My second shoot I believe reflects this mentality whereby I took images of light through a church glass window with blurred focus and using blue filter which represents the idea of spirituality because both these elements link back to purity and how nature is pure because it is created by an intelligent creator for a specific purpose.  Alexander Mourant’s work heavily inspired me in these two shoots where he takes photographs that are based on an experience which was similarly what I dad as well.  Because of my religious environment as expressed in my previous project, my photos were also taken with a religious/spiritual experience that it was based on.  In order to help explore creationism and the characteristics of nature, I believe that by doing this, this has effectively helped me explore the metaphysical in natural processes as well as the physical.  Therefore in these images I have taken so far up to this point,  I believe I am conveying my own spiritual connection with the world and because of that, using that as a basis as to why change occurs in nature.

 

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FREEDOM AND LIMITATIONS // REVIEW

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I am happy with my progress over the last six weeks. Initially when given the project title i was excited to start and new project and make images. Once i had research the theme of freedom and limitations i decided to go down a political route of feminism and women’s rights for my project. This was a topic that i’ve always been interested in and was excited to research the subject, find out more about it and make images of my representation of women’s rights and feminism. From the beginning of the project i think that my ideas have developed a lot. i researched a lot about the background of feminism and how womens rights have progressed over the last century as well as where they were at right at the beginning of time. I have also looked at some of the huge feminist artist such as i compleated a detailed artist reference on Cindy Sherman which is hugely relevant to my project and also gave more depth to my knowledge of the topic. I think that my ideas have been sustained and focused as i have compleated my target about of artist references as well as continued to make photos on experimental and planned shoots each week. However i think that i could improve on my photoshoots if after i completed them i reviewed each shoot in more detail looking at what went well and what could be improved after each shoot and then taking this into consideration for my next shoot and following shoots which i do for this project.

I have responded 4 times for my project so far however the first shoot was an experiment looking at the technical aspects which i wanted to consider throughout my project. I think that my shoots have been really successful and so far i am really happy with all of my responses. MY favourite shoot so far was my initial shoot which was compleated at Lara’s house. The outcomes for this shoot where extremely successful, with the outcomes being what i had hoped produce during this shoot. Furthermore for all of my shoots i stuck to my plans as well as staying focus on what my project is focusing on, Feminism. However i still think that i could produce more shoots exploring further how women were represented in the 1970’s compared to how they are presented today. I am happy with the experimentation which i have included in my shoots. I have looked at using different types of lighting such as natural lighting and considering the where to place my model so that the lighting is behind me and going onto the model, however have also experimented with taking images with artificial light which create a warm tone to the images. I think that there are clear links which can be seen between by artist references as well as the research that i did at the beginning of my project. I have been consistent with focusing of the similarities and differences of how women are presented in our modern society compared to how they were presented during the second wave of feminism predominately in the 1970’s.

I definitely still think that there are areas i have yet to explore during my project and more shoots that can be done to enrich my project with lots of photographic responses to show my understanding of the key theme. However one thing which i even more so am aiming to look at compleating in the next stages of my project is looking at women in film in the 1970’s. I plan on watching a couple of movies based from this time period which have female protagonists. Whilst watching i will be considering the role they have to play, how they are portrayed and represented and if they seem to have equal rights to males. Furthermore i am going to o some research on essays which have been written on the female representation through film as well as some feminist articles which  i have found. Over the next three weeks i aim to compleate a shoot a week again so when i comes to just before the examination period i will have compleated six formal responses to the title ‘Freedom and Limitations’.

 

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ARTIST REFERENCE // TODD HIDO

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Todd Hido, born in Ohio United States, is formally recognised for being an American contemporary Artist as well as being a Photographer. As an artist he is now based in San Francisco where his works have featured in many top magazines and websites such as; Elephant, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazines and many many more. His works are displayed in private and public galleries as collections and he has over a dozen books published and is a world renound success. his most recent monograph titled Excerpts from Silver Meadows was released in 2013, along with an innovative b-sides box set designed to function as a companion piece to his award-winning monograph in 2014. His works mainly involve the photographing of urban and suburban housing around San Francisco however he has traveled around America to make many of his series. However he also does a series of portraits where he focuses on women He used to get a model and take them to a motel or hose which was nearly completely bare and slightly run down look to it and photograph them looking scared and as if they had been a subject sexual acts. However this was done in a positive way to bring about awareness.

I was most interested in Hido’s portraits as the context behind the reason to him taking his portraits of women links to the limitations of women and shows them as be subjective and lacking freedom even in the modern day, which relates closely to how women’s rights and how they are portrayed through photography have changed.

Official Website

interview with Todd Hido

ANALYSIS:

The image by Todd Hido is of  women in a motel room in america, she is seductively lying across the bed without trousers on. Just by stating what can initially be seen in the image we get a sense of what the narrative Hido is trying to display through his portraits. Tom Hido  has made his name internationally from photographs that are conspicuously absent of people, has spent the last year clicking nude portraits of women in shabby motel rooms around the Bay Area. The images represent a mid-career gamble for Hido. Nudes are rarely the stuff an art maven will drop $10K for, much less if they contain elements of erotica, which Hido’s do. Or, perhaps, the art world will again hail Hido’s ability to capture the dramatic tensions inherent in the body, just as he did with households. this image is an example of the erotica which has recently been shown in his images. I think that this is showing showing a new and refreshing light that hasnt really been seen over the past few decades. His work, similar to what began to emerge in the 70’s, shows the sexual side of women and how they are objects of erotica. Tom Hido portrays the women to be seductive and although not nude in every image he portrays a lot of playfullness in his images and they seem to be very suggestive.

In terms of composition, Tom Hido’s portrait shows his skill as a photographer. He has cleavily placed the model just off the middle of the photograph. As she is slightly to the bottom left of the image, this way the photograph isn’t breaking the rule of thirds and also allows for a big amount of background to create a strong frame. I do think that it is purposeful that Hido has created this portrait in this way, the huge amount of framing must have been purposely done as it is technically to much but creates a very dramatic and intriguing image, as we are left wandering why it has been taken at such a distance when image similar to this are normally captured closer up. However it leads out mind to thin what the purpose of the image may be and i think that the model is so far away to show the distance that some women feel from society. Women subject to prostitution often don’t chose that life but die to poverty and background they are forced t live this erotic life which distancing them from society. However we are unable to really understand any more about the narrative behind the image as the walls are striped bare and there is nothing on the bed. The only idea we get of what is going on is the models body position.

Furthermore the colours of the image are very interesting. deep pink tones of the image emphasize a darkness in the image and how this isn’t a happy, simple scene to look at. The lighting is also crucial in this image. Women who are living these lives don’t tend to be showing what they are in broad daylight and showing a sense of erotica is usually in a dark environment. From the image we can understand that the  direction of light is coming from a near window just out of the left side of the image. the window is not shown but we can see that the left side of the image is a lot brighter and well lit and as be move into the centre of the image the women casts a show onto the wall behind her and then on the far right of the image is really dark and underexposed. The photograph also has a depth of field. This depth in the image is created by the only three objects in the image keeping it simple and focusing out eye on the three things the photographer wants us to be considering for the narrative of this image. The include; the bed,the model and the room itself. Depth is created by the wall being in the far ground of the image, the model being just in front of the wall in the centre of the image and then the bed being in the fore ground of the image bringing layers to the image.

From analyzing Hidos work it has influenced my work by making me think about the use of natural lighting that i use in my images and how i could experiment with natural lighting but also maybe a spot lamp which would create a different sense of lighting in the images

 

Analysis

Comparison // mine and rinko Kawauchi

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After doing my first body photoshoot I wanted to do a comparison of mine and Rinko Kawauchi’s images. I used Kawauchi as my main source of ideas because her images have a very spiritual element within them. Her images are bright which creates this pure atmosphere. I tried to produce this type of effect in my images using Photoshop to create this aesthetic Kawauchi also uses a very small f stop to focus primary on one particular spot within the frame, while the rest of the image is blurred. I really like this technique because it helps the viewer to focus on specific details within the image.

I have chosen to compare these two images because they are very similar in the terms of angle and subject. Both of the images are of an eye because the eyes are a very important features of the body. They are an extremely spiritual element because the eyes are what inhabits us to witness the world around us. Our eyes allow us to see pain, fear, love and happiness.  Kawauchi’s image of an eye is a much closer framing then mine and her f stop is also a lot smaller then mine because I wanted to capture a lot more detail then she did. I wanted to capture more of the face as well. The angles at which the images were taken are the same. The image is of the left eye being taken from the right side of the face. The brightness and feel of the image is similar to Kawauchi’s because I wanted to replicate her atmosphere. The colors however are different, mainly because of the background within the image. Kawauchi uses a blue background for her image whereas I wanted to have a colourless background because I wanted the focus to be on the face. Kawauchi’s image is also slightly brighter then mine because it was taken outside using natural light which created this soft, natural feeling. Mine was taken during the evening in a bathroom so I had to try reproduce this effect using camera settings and Photoshop. 

The hands are another important part of the body because we use them every single day to do almost everything. They also change a lot as we grow up because they start decaying and gaining what we call imperfections such as wrinkles and scars. We also use our hands a lot to express different emotions such as fear and love. The image by Kawauchi and my image have many differences because of the angle of the subject, the age of the subject and the colours are very contrasting. Kawauchi has captured the back of the subjects hand because she wants to capture the wrinkles and veins of the subject. I wanted to capture the wrinkles on the palm of the hand because they revealed much more detail then the back did. Kawauchi used a much older subject then I did because I simply used someone that was there at the time which was my mum. The picture was taken in my bathroom because I wanted a simple white background whereas Kawauchi takes the image in a random place so the background has more detail in it. Since I used my hand to cover part of the flash, it created a pink tinge to the image whereas Kawauchi’s image has a very cold, white light because she used the daylight from outside.

Experimenting, Recording

shoot // body 1

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This shoot was the first of the body shoots. I planned to use myself as the subject because I just wanted to get simple images of different parts of the body but it was a lot harder then I anticipated. I asked my mum if I could use her as the subject instead. The shoot turned out very well because I was able to capture the image that I wanted. I aimed to get the details of the skin and the form which is what I managed to do. The shoot was done in the bathroom because I needed a white plain background. The shoot was done in the evening so the lighting wasn’t the best. I decided to use the flash to help capture the details.   I wanted a pure, cool colour to the images so I used white fluorescent as the white balance setting. When I used the flash it was making the images too over exposed so I used my hand to cover the flash slightly. This created a really nice effect of a pinkish colour to the images. Overall I am very happy with the results of the shoot.

I made sure I got all the different angles I wanted to get such as the feet, hands and the face. I also wanted to get some of the bone structure because its an unusual part of the body. When I was photographing the hands and feet I wanted to get the unusual angles that nobody really captures, such as the soul and the ball of the feet. When photographing the hands I wanted to capture the insignificant details such as the wrinkles and folds. For the face, I wanted to fragment the individual details such as the eyes and ears.

Since my project Is about growth and decay and capturing the insignificant details this is what I wanted to try and represent within this shoot. I made sure I captured the growth of the body and the way its changing through time. I captured this by photographing the feet and hands, and the wrinkles which show the decaying of the body. Also by focusing on the hair and it changing to grey shows how its changing over time.

I selected the best images from the shoot and edited them using Photoshop. I wanted a variation of angles and details and I am happy with the amount and variation I have. The editing was very simple because I was happy with the colour and exposure of the images all ready. I made the images slightly brighter and lessened the contrast to create this pure bright atmosphere. I didn’t crop any of the images because I was happy with the framing.

Analysis, Evaluating, Experimenting, Presenting

Photoshoot 1 – Product

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Contact Sheets

2 Stars

3 Stars 

4 Stars

5 Stars 

On Adobe Lightroom, I was also able to narrow down my edits even further to the ones I would likely use in the magazine end product and the ones shown below would be the selection I would again have to narrow down even further to leave me with just 5 images that I would be happy to show in my magazine. In real magazine publications of fashion coverage, a photographer/editor would only have room to select between 5 and 1- images, if that for the final cut as you need to keep the audiences interests hooked and this is easily done with a good handful of effective images. I was able to colour code the shortlist of edits I selected that I believe would work in a magazine whilst taking into account pairs of photos that could work and trying top include a range of portraits and landscapes as well as close ups and wide shots. Below is a primary screen of the selection process and the final selection of images to choose from for the final cut.

The yellow colour coded images represent the edits I may use and these are ones I am insure on in terms of if they would actually work in the magazine and although they are goof images I feel they work well, I have chosen to select, with a green colour code, the bets images that would look most effective in a magazine when put together, however, this distribution between the green and yellow images may change later on as I may decide to remove some green ones and replace these with some yellow ones.

Analysis, Evaluating, Planning, Recording

Exam Progress Log 21.03.18

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Early last week, I uploaded a blog post outlining my intentions for my first two photoshoots and mentioned that I would be carrying out both of these shoots of that week (beginning Monday 12th). As well as this, I produced a blog post covering my plans for both of the shoots.

On Wednesday 14th, I did manage to carry out my first shoot of the project (excluding my practise shoot) and this was with Peter Le Gal. I have collated contact sheets from this shoot and have completed my edits of my best images also. Looking back on the photoshoot, it was very successful but it was the first stage at which I realised that my intentions may be more difficult to follow through than I first forecasted because doing this shoot made me realise that working with people I wasn’t very close with would be more difficult that I first anticipated because of the difficulties in communication we may have but I will become more comfortable and use to shooting and directing my models as I progress through the shoot. Apart from this, the shoot was successful and I retrieved many positive outcomes from it which I will present soon in another blog post.

However, I was also supposed to do another shoot on Thursday 15th – the day after but because of the weather, I had to cancel the shoot for that day that I was supposed to do with Max Feighan, as planned and postpone it until the week after (thus week beginning Monday 19th). The weather was looking very rainy and grey and this was not what I wanted to shoot in as it would make it very difficult to get a goof handful of successful outcomes from it and as it will be my first time shooting with Max, I wanted it to be the right conditions in all aspects. I have contacted Max again and ask ed if he is available to shoot on Saturday 24th instead which he said he was and is our shoot that was supposed to go ahead last week is now going ahead this Saturday. However, I have told him that this may change again depending on the weather. We will be basing the photoshoot in Les Quennevais Precinct as I feel this will be a very effective location for an urban look and feel  Therefore, the post outlining this second shoot will not be published as soon as I thought and I have had ot re-arrange how I structure my work because of this unforeseen and external circumstance that cannot be controlled. However, this will still be my second shoot if it goes ahead for the 24th and I have also arranged my third shoot on Monday 26th with another confirmed model, Emanuel Nobrega and I will be uploading my planning process for this in the latter of this week.

My plan for the remainder of this week is to upload all relevant evidence of my shoot with Peter form last week including any contact sheets, edits and evaluation/analysis of the photoshoot as well as showing evidence of my recce report of the location we shot in which I carried out before the shoot on Wednesday. As well,m I will still be carrying out any relevant planning/research I need to in the background and this will be uploaded when a piece is completed thoroughly. I will also be staying in contact with models in the background as I have been so far to maintain a relationship and keep them in the loop of what is going on.