After reviewing all of the best image that I had taken over the course of this project I realised that I needed more for the element of Fire. I gean to think about that different ways in which you are able to photograph fire so the image don’t become repetitive. So I had the idea of photographing the sun as this is the biggest source of fire know to man. For this shoot I wanted to photograph the sun it creates the most interesting light which is at sunrise and sunset, as I have already done many shoots focusing on the sunset I decided to photograph the sunrise to see if the light produced was any different to that at sunset. For this this shoot I woke up at 4:45 and drove to st Catharines break water for 5;15as the sun was supposed to rise at 5:30 an I wanted to photograph the change in the light. Overall I think that this shoot went very well, I did get some image that are similar to others that I have taken, but in the images the light is very unique and different from any other image that I have taken.
In this shoot I have created more photographs of steel surfaces for me to work with in my edits. My previous photographs of steel surfaces were mostly of brushed steel and therefore there was not a lot of texture to add interesting features to the photographs. I have photographed more worn and rusted steel to provide character and more emphasis to the steel exposed over the building faces. This rust also hints at the age of both the steel and some of the houses, and links back to political landscapes due to showing how something can be changed over time through wear and tear.
Edits
The below edits are edited in the same style as my previous double exposure edits. I did this through photoshop – I layered the photographs of the steel over the photographs of the building faces and used the ‘darken’ blending option in order to bring the rusted and ruined textures to the forefront resulting in double exposure edits that are more characterized and interesting than my previous edits due to more colour and layers.
Analysis
When capturing this photograph of a house face I used the natural lighting from the area, as I did when capturing all the other similar photographs of building faces in the shoot. This use of natural lighting allowed for the shadows and contrast to be displayed naturally within the image, which was helped by using a deep depth of field, shutter speed of 1/60 and an ISO of 200. These settings ensured that there was enough time to allow light to enter the lens but not so much time that the photograph became overexposed. There is a slightly cold colour cast in this photograph which matches to the metal structure layered over it (which have connotations to cold).
The photograph is in black and white it appears due to the natural silver of the metal face layered over the building face. This lack of saturation allows the shadows and contrasts to be brought forward in the photograph which leads to a wider tonal range and a more dramatic and effective photograph. The texture of the metal can also be seen throughout the composition as the metal bolts go up the side of the photograph whilst the lower half shows the texture of the brushed steel and brings the photograph to life. The photograph is set up so that the door is set along the lines of the rule of thirds which makes the photograph more aesthetically pleasing for the audience.
This photograph is from a set of compositions that I have made in which I have layered photographs of steel over photographs of building faces resulting in abstract compositions with texture. The idea behind this is that houses and office buildings are increasingly being built with steel structures in Jersey rather than the traditional granite base used. This steel gives a forecast into the future of housing and shows what will potentially be the base of houses as buildings develop and change. When this photograph is seen as part of a set it shows how buildings are all unique and different even when they are designed as batches.
His ongoing series, Dark Line – Thames Estuary, focuses on the point where England’s longest river meets the sea. Arranged in diptych or triptych, the photographs look to obscured, uncertain horizons, evoking a sense of departure, loss and longing. The textured, yet often desolate images present a Thames that is sometimes violent, sometimes still. “I wish to make work that does not literally describe what is in front of me,” says Kander. “I do not wish to focus my lens and capture a millisecond of realistic information.” Throughout Michael Martens ‘sea change’ book he has also used the diptych or triptych method and therefore I will aim to try and complete some to implement into my photo book that i plan to do.
From an interview with Nadav Kander :
Could you describe the project for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet?
NK: Dark Line follows the Thames Estuary, the part of the river where it widens and slows down, where the river reaches the end of its journey and enters the North Sea. I’m very interested in the idea of journey and destiny, which works perfectly with the notion of the river widening, slowing and ultimately ending – and yet is the end really the beginning? To use T.S. Elliot’s quote, ‘In my end is my beginning.’ Does the river end or does it begin? Does it get evaporated and rise up into cloud and rain again, and do the cycles of life just continue onward? Is it not as human beings we’ve become caught up in having a beginning and an end?
I think that these ideas that Kander has described is really thought provoking and allows his images to contain a much deeper meaning than they would have otherwise. This sense of questioning reality and the notion of thinking ‘is this the beginning or end’ really allows a deeper thinking into life and essentially our perspective. This links to the ocean and the way in which we don’t know what lies beneath the surface, creating a sense of unknowing. This was taken of interest by my previous artist Jem Southam and i think it is interesting to see how different artists have explored similar ideas with a similar subject matter yet in different ways. Also Hiroshi Sugimoto displays a similar view presenting a different way of looking at a relatively boring subject matter, thus being the ocean.
The fascinating thing about this series is how unrecognizable the Thames is. It feels moodier and slower than in reality. I think this shows us Kander’s view of how he feels about the world around him and what slow moving, dark water means to him. In an interview he said “I don’t necessarily feel like that every time I’m there photographing but it’s how I feel about it more generally.” Kander elaborates in the interview to say that “there’s a lot of fear of the unknown” suggesting that the sea is the unknown after a bad experience when he was a child. On the other hand, despite the sense is isolation and mystery, Hiroshi Sugimotos project presents us with ideas of feeling a great sense of destiny or even voyage of where it might take them.
I think as a result of looking into this project I want to firstly create a series of diptych and triptych’s with my images that i have already collated. I also will conduct a photo shoot at sea level which will differ from my previous shoots that are often higher up, on top of cliff tops. Within this photo shoot, I will aim to portray a sense of darkness and the unknown by editing them in these ways but also using the weather to my advantage to enhance this.
These are the tidal times, and the times of first and last light, sunrise and sunset for the day that I am planning to take photographs.
For this photoshoot I visited three different beaches along the west coast of Jersey; Le Braye, Watersplash and l’Etach. I also visited Plemont Bay briefly. I took photographs around the predicted time of the low tide, 1100hrs.
The images I took from this shoot:
I felt that some of these images worked well because of how clear the image showed that it was low tide, and that some of the images were very natural. However, in some images there was the issue of ‘clutter’ signs and cars were taking away from the natural landscape and leading the viewer’s eye away from the subject of the photograph.
I then visited the same areas from the same position as the first set of images at 1300hrs, to show a middle ground between the low and high tide.
I felt that these images weren’t as effective because the tide had now come in slightly but it was not significant enough to show a drastic change and therefore they weren’t as exciting to contrast with the other images in the shoot.
What I would change/improve on for my next photoshoot.
From this photoshoot I have realised that I need to ensure that my images don’t have unnecessary clutter in them, such as signs, vehicles and people who would distract from the focus of the images. For my next photoshoot, I am going to take photographs from more angles in order for me to clearly show the contrasts between high and low tide.
