After drawing inspiration from a range of photographers including Tim Booth, Huang Qingjun and Lewis Bush, I have come up with a few ideas for photo-shoots in response to ‘Variance and Analysis’ that will explore the topic in different aspects including repetition, personal belongings that make someone individual and personal features.

Shoot Idea 1

My first idea for a shoot is to photograph the hands of different people.  I have chosen to focus on a person’s hands as there are man features on a hand that give indication of the person that they belong to – they can have clear veins running through them, they can have calluses, different skin tones and then everyone is guaranteed to have different lines running throughout their hands due to their genes as well as individual fingerprints.  I have taken inspiration for this shoot from photography Tim Booth who did a project titled ‘A Show of Hands’.

I could approach this shoot idea by doing either close up photographs to create abstract photographs emphasising the lines in the hands or by showing the whole hand.  I could experiment with this by using different types of lighting such as natural lighting or flash as well as using inks or paints to highlight the features of the hands.  I could further experiment with this route by printing off the photographs and bringing the lines and details within the hands to life by placing a physical object such as string along the lines to create a 3D effect.

Shoot Idea 2

My second shoot idea is to photograph blocks of flats around Jersey and then photoshopping the resulting photographs to create repetition and patterns of the photographs in order to create a sense of monotony within the photographs and to show how repetitive blocks of flats can be.  The resulting photographs will be very symmetrical and will almost create illusions.  I could also approach this idea by photographing the symmetry and repetition within the blocks of flats and then presenting the photographs alongside each-other multiple times in a typographic style.  I have drawn inspiration for this shoot idea from Lewis Bush’s work on ‘Metropole’ as well as the blocks of apartments in cities such as Hong Kong

Shoot Idea 3

My third photo-shoot idea draws inspiration from Lewis Bush’s work on ‘Trading Zones’ in Jersey.  In one segment of the work he showcased cards showing what the public though of finance.  From this I believe that I could explore the unique hand-writing style of every individual through asking them to write what ‘Variance and Similarity’ means to them.  The result of this will be a range of cards showing a variety of hand-writing styles which may be messy or neat which ultimately will give a slight insight into a personality trait of the person.  Hand-writing is unique to everyone as everyone learns from a young age to write in different ways – some write quickly and messily whilst others take pride in ensuring that their hand-writing is neat and almost art-like.  The aim of this shoot would be to show the wide variance in people’s styles.

Shoot Idea 4

My fourth shoot idea will focus on the personal belongings of different people.  One way in which I could look at the personal belongings of individuals is by photographing the items that people carry around in their school bags on a day-to-day basis.  This could be an interesting shoot that will give an insight into the personality traits of the individual as everyone will have different variations of items, some people may have more unnecessary items in their bags whereas some may only carry the minimum.  This shoot idea takes inspiration from Huang Qingjun’s work ‘Jiading’ meaning ‘Family Stuff’ in which he photographed families along with their belongings in rural China to show the effect that modernisation is having on the population of the rural areas.  I could present this in a typology style way so that the viewer can easily see the similarities and differences between what people carry around with them.