I will start off by doing some market research as what is considered to make people most happy and what people think is most beautiful about themselves, And ways in which I could evoke these emotions and objects through my own work. I will do so by asking many people where I live and my friends, and possibly too looking into past research across the globe, and if what we see as beautiful is dependent on our culture and how much money and wealth we grew up with. This could also be 5 questions in relation to beauty and happiness. These questions will be
1.How would you describe beauty?
1st person: an individual idea that is a cliches within the eye of the beholder. 2nd: It is a construct of an individuals happiness. 3rd: something you personally believe to be over exceptional a personal belief 4th: well… specific to a person and what makes someone happy.
2. What or who is the most beautiful person of thing you have ever seen?
1st person: I believe the most beautiful thing I have ver seen is a new born baby, and puppies, innocent new life, something which is full of hope. 2nd: I think…the most beautiful things are the masters of art and architecture. 3rd: A landscape an idealistic landscape 4th: in a landscape the sun, nice weather , a reflection of happiness, you feel happier
3.What brings you happiness?
1st person: living in the moment, the comfort of my family and the stimulation of books. 2nd: Living without stress. 3rd: food, art my friends and sleeping 4th: music pop and a singalong
4.Where is the one place across the world that brings you the most joy and why?
1st person: Jersey, it is home and if it is beautiful, I love jersey. 2nd: being at home in jersey. 3rd: my grandparent house in France 4th: Corbier, it was were my pops used to visit form the age of 19-79
5.what are you most grateful for?
1st person; I am most grateful for love. 2nd: Health 3rd: being born into a privileged society. 4th; family friends and opportunities.
12:01 AM, January 1, 1990. The Grateful Dead perform their traditional New Year’s show at the Oakland Coliseum. Photo by Stephen Dorian Miner
This is not only an insight to the subjectivity once again of the fine art of beauty, but the imagination of each individual mind. Due to the results from this, I believe people in jersey especially are able to see their privilege and do not take for granted, they love landscape new life innocence and health, to my mind they have perfectly described what theatre of life describes, they turn personal connections and emotions into locations. Also something which I find very interesting is that no one said beauty is people, most people associate within a landscape something they love or an experience, and I think this allows myself to see I am working in the right direction.
So far my project has been about the bad is of looking more towards accessing different versions of light and more abstract communicates of nature, I believe this could perhaps be one of the large influences of my book. If I was to start breaking doen my project into four key factors is light even make the capturing of these factors easier to see.
Light is the most important basis of my project as whole. Light has the power to present and change how something or someone looks completely and whole. Because of this trying to photography light is an interesting and also a very applicable way which I could look into capturing my own work. Due large areas of my work begin more prominently focused on the presentation of landscape and flowers and natural beauty, many fo the shoots will be taken during mid day, this is interesting as this is possibly the hardest time in order to couture an achieve the most successful photos. Mid day light can be harsh and increase strong shadows and strong inflictions of heavy light, making anything look worse and showing an inability to really see the piece itself. However I too belive I could use this as an advantage. The over- exposure of light can also be seen as a heavenly and almost romantic way in which you can see something, daylight can elevate an image and bring about an almost type of romanticism. I must be aware o the image I am trying to capture and the effect that I want. However I believe with the availability to change the iso and exposure I should just have a large range of capabilities with what I am able to capture within my work.
This image in particular inspired me as their is a mystery, lack of identity yet still and evident and frankly obvious sense of beauty. Perhaps I too could bring someone when photographing my resivour shoot in order to help show copious amounts of ways I could express beauty within the water, landscape , light and yet almost the person themselves. Another part of light every different some this, is the slo shutter speed high exposure of night time shoots, trying to show a diffuse of movement is hint the light. I believe this shoot is also extremely important because you are theoretically appointing with light itself.
rain
Rain as natural element go is probably the most negative one when comparing it with its connotations and associations of sadness and dull. however this is why I think it would be so beneficial to capture it as an elements of beauty, and perhaps even happiness. Rain as we know already can be seen as a very romantic elements, where people fall in love of where peoples emotions are susceptible to the most vulnerability. Due to rain falling and being seen in so many different forms, the ability for this shoot is so much. I want to show different variations of how one elements can be shown romantically and to be an expression of self beauty and or a reflection. Perhaps I could even add in people to make the photos themselves more poetic as a whole composition itself.
I belive using the way different ways of tracing rain and using a piece of glass as the first shoot, to be able to show the droplets of water. Secondly I believe I am able to capture a more heavenly approach to the done full of water if I were to go out a night whilst it was raining and shine a torch in order to highlight and show a strong bright light, capturing the soft little sports of the other after.
Fire
fire is the subject which is probably the less applicable shoot for my project itself, as it is the most tricky to photograph and also as I do not. know how fire will directly fit into my narrative. My artists ads their own personal emotional influence on what they believe to be beautiful. Fire is a natural element which causes happiness but mostly chaotic fear, however if I were to concentrate more on the contrast between finding life within the chaos and pain of the world and still showing elements such as fire to be beautiful, it would benefit me to do this shoot. Despite water having sad connotations, it does posses the power to kill, unlike, it is not the same as the aggression and mass pain fire can size to cause. Water is meant to be beautiful even when drowning, however, fire is smoke, burning and a strength which I think people find hard to romanticises. The closest aspect tot his element I could fine within my work, is accessing the ability to capture light in such a bright or vicious way.
I do belive it would be interesting to experiment within the way you could show the same element of attitude of fire without the same colour tones, because of this I chose the image above as I believe it has the same movement and hectic feelings and attitudes that could too be seen within the elements of a real fire. I belive it could be the colour connotation are the areas which effect the negative feelings towards the aspect of fire, so changing the colour could make it beautiful without having to be over aware off the aggression of violence ability of the fire itself.
Wind
Wind is a natural element which has the ability to form and create new compositions, it allows something that used, to be still or static with hardly any life of movement to be a free flowing. wind is an element which can be described in many different mannerism ‘ a sea breeze’ a hurricane. These differentiating aspect create the difference between love and fear, which is interesting as this too has connotations between that of beauty and chaos. However I believe you could use the power of wind in order to create a beauty and movement within flowers and natural elements. in relation to god, wind could be perceived as an element of the trinity, due to this much of the experience seen to be a gust of wind in many religions is perceived to be an act of great power.
This shoot is similar to my first shoot, focus on blurring of the elements of the power of wind, and creating a fluidity within a solid structure, perhaps I could add elements from my pre existing shoots to help me discover and develop additionally shoots I could take in order to access a new more religious value to my work.
In this shoot I have developed on my previous shoots in which I have looked at the faces of housing blocks, office blocks, houses and other types of commercial buildings within Jersey. In my previous shoot I explored the area of Havre Des Pas and took photographs of houses in the area to demonstrate how the houses can have similar features and materials used due to being in the same geographical area whilst also having these features changed slightly in each house to make each house unique and different. In this shoot I have photographed an estate in St. Peters to show how similar the houses in estates can be – they are often designed in bulk to create a quick and easy building process and so leads to lots of similar houses with the same style and layout. Of course, even when looking at how similar these houses all are, there are lots of features which make the houses individualistic, such as the paint colour or the style of window or the curtains. All of these features go towards emphasising how factors such as personal taste can create something ordinary into an individualistic feature that can make the house stand out from others. The essential idea behind this shoot is to reinforce the idea of variance and similarity in previous shoots and to show how even though something may be produced to be similar, there will always be differences.
Below I have continued to edit these photographs in a sharp black and white in order to emphasise the individual features of the houses and apartments. I originally decided this due to inspiration from Tim Booth who, when photographing portraits through hands, found that the black and white prevented the viewer from just focusing on colour and rather focusing on the deeper features and shadows that are brought out when using a strong black and white. I believe that it is important for me to continue to use this contrasting colour scheme as it makes it effective for when I make edits with these photographs later on, such as with GIF’s or with double exposure edits. With some of these edits I am going to experiment cutting out natural frames and layering it over photographs of natural rock faces as I begin to study geology and granite in Jersey.
The first place I will try to shoot is Grosnez. I hope to get the castle in the planet which I think could be very interesting. The second place I would like to shoot is Les Landes, you can get a few farm houses and trees on the planet which would look good adding the houses to the rural landscape yet not over-crowding it.
The Les Landes shoot will be at the green dot and the Grosnez shoot will be at the orange dot.
After my first response to Michael Marten where I contrasted a particular location at low tide and high tide I was particularly taken by how the change in water drastically changed the landscape. When reviewing my images, I felt more of an attraction towards the images at high tide. The high water makes me question what exists beyond our reality. At high tide we cannot see the sand and rock formations that are covered by the water, so this makes me think how much more we cannot see in our reality. Questions such as what lies above and below us are stimulated making me wonder how much do we not know. Existence is a never ending process and there is so much more to learn and explore. With these ideas, I wanted to create a sense of power and overwhelming feeling that links to the undiscovered realities that could be out there. Due to the full moon, there were some really big tides in the week that i knew would create some amazing displays. The power of the ocean, creating what can be seen below, shows the force of nature which may be distorting our reality and preventing us from seeing things. Essentially this photographic response is displaying the emotions felt when questioning reality. I feel like photographing the ocean links to the ideas of Zen Buddhism due to the relaxation the ocean can create, helping to disconnect the mind from reality and see beyond this.
Contact Sheet
Edits
Analysis of shoot
Overall, I think this shoot has been a great success. Not only does it show the effects of high tide but it has elements of power, force and underlying symbols that reflect emotion. The destructiveness of the ocean seen in these images act as a metaphor for the anger people have in the world. Emotion cannot be seen, and I wanted to explore through this imagery what it could look like if it was seen. Through my own past experience, I felt as if these waves demonstrated these emotions perfectly. Through my contextual studies on Zen Buddhism and Metaphysical, I wanted to have underlying messages through my images other than what they actually are. Therefore, the purpose of these images other than the aesthetic beauty of them was to show a sense of emotion that one cannot see in our reality.
In the mid-1950s Jasper Johns was searching for a way to move beyond Abstract Expressionism. He took the radical step of destroying his previous work and began painting a set of motifs that included numbers, the American flag, and the alphabet. These instantly recognizable images allowed him to reintroduce subject matter into his work, freeing him to explore other painterly concerns. One of the found images that Johns employed was the target, and from 1955 to 1961 the artist produced several dozen paintings and drawings that explored this device.
Initially, Johns chose a palette of primary colors, a preexisting schema as found as the image itself. The artist’s use of oil and encaustic (pigment mixed with hot wax) created a quick-drying medium that recorded each drag and drip of the brush in almost sculptural terms. Indeed, these gestural nods to his Abstract predecessors allowed him to investigate the subtle nuances between form and material. There also exists a tension between the idea of the representational (a target) and the notion of the abstract (the geometry of concentric circles).
Target with Four Faces (1955)
In this work, Johns merged painting and sculpture as well as engaging the viewer with “things which are seen and not looked at.” Johns relied upon newspaper and fabric dipped in encaustic (pigment mixed with hot wax) to build the surface of the painting. He also made plaster casts of the lower half of a female model’s face over four successive months and fixed these out of order in a hinged, wooden box that he attached to the top of the canvas. By incorporating the sculptural elements in the same space as the painting, Johns emphasized the “objecthood” of the painting. This merging of mediums reinforced the three-dimensional object-ness of the paintings.
Beyond the material surface of the work, the concentric circles of the target imply the acts of taking aim, as if you were shooting in archery for example. However, Johns excluded the model’s eyes from the plaster faces, and therefore prevented any chance of an exchange of gazes between the viewer and the faces in the work, this forced the viewer to examine the interactions between the painted target and the plaster faces. Viewed through the lens of the Cold War era, the seemingly benign images can imply the targeting of the anonymous masses by global political powers as well as by corporate advertising and the mass media.
In connection to my own project, Johns’ work follows an abstract genre and incorporates circles in the simple design of the painting and this is what my project follows, circles. I would like to incorporate this idea by perhaps using the image as inspiration for images of targets in the modern day, archery for example. These targets are circular yet serve a different purpose to Johns’ art.
As an art student, I belive it could be beneficial for my work to progress if I were able to add another skill to create a more dynamic style into my own work. As I am combining beauty, a sense of abstract and light into play, it could really benefit my work if I experimented within the possible outcomes of using paint to create a dynamic composition and also images which to work well into my narrative without being incredibly repetitive. Not only does this style of painting not create a whole new piece, but the movements and lines only benefit and expand the composition already there. It is not creating a whole new piece which has no relevancy to photography at all, but adding a more dynamic feel to a landscape piece. Much of the paint itself, is then further edited in photoshop to make the image even more illuminating and create more of a premis for relevance within the original image itself. The majority of these images below are based off looking at the colours of the key parts of the original image. This too is how I would create my own composition. For this experimentation, I want to develop the possibilities of painting in two ways, physically printing off the pictures, painting on and then colour correcting on photo editing software after to create a clear vibrancy for the paint, or however, secondly I belive it would be possible to try and create these effects of painting on photoshop, however, I feel this would destroy the point to create a painted edge to the piece.
The concept of painting onto a photograph is much more modern and contemporary, and this progressive style. Ben Hecht is a truly unique mixed media artist, using original photographs and painting over them with handmade encaustic paints (made from beeswax). Instead of purchasing paints, Hecht creates all of his paints from scratch. He sources his beeswax locally, mixes it with dry pigments in his colours of choice, and adds crystallised resin to finish the process. He prints his photographs large scale (often over 40 inches on any side), and then manipulates them through the use of paint. He tends to play with photographs of the ocean, manipulating them by adding greens, blues and whites, creating a beautiful 3D piece of work that is part photograph and part painting.
These two pieces are based off the influence of clouds and the sky, and forming off the basis as if the clouds were to continue to form into a direct observational of art itself. The effect of the first piece, is more of a slight influence, only showing small lines overcoming the sun. This slight influence is interesting as it is not as a huge progressive change as others seen from this artistic work. The same smaller lines are visible in the second, but the amount has increased varies amounts. The copious small lines where done with the intentions to look as though they are small specs of light purposely found within this area of the sun or the sky. To my taste I prefer the larger thicker lines, however, I do understand why the artists chose otherwise. All the delicate lines work better within the founded darker pieces of the clouds and sun itself.
To my mind the image above is the most dynamic and possibly inspirational image for the forming of my project. Firstly they have edited a fold within the original image, so they knew where or how they could paint on the composition they intended. However, in this case the lights are edited on repeated of colour in order to form dynamic lines, and not actually physical paint. Consequently this is an option for my own development, however not my original idea. I belive the use of the bright lines throughout enhances the interesting light of line within the composition, and too the triangular shapes creates a form surrounding the tree and creating a subject of importance within the image itself.
I believe the copious possible outcomes is what interests me to experimenting within this painted or photoshopped technique. I will definitely experiment within the presentation of these images, As too they will create a more dynamic and again personal impact as I would be adding my own stroke and impact into the image themselves. The amount of interest found where the line is draw, creates a new sight of vision to how we look at a piece, and this is why I believe it is a successful technique.
Concept: I will capture the various changes in facial expression, some emotions may be more obvious than others.
Props: I will experiment with the use of a spray bottle to get the same water droplet effect that is seen in Roni Horn’s ‘You Are The Weather’.
Lighting: Natural lighting, The weather will affect the mood of those pictured.
Camera Settings: Adaptable to whatever the weather conditions are. I will use a large aperture to gain a shallow depth of field and will crop the images so that only the head region is visible in the image.
David Benjamin also plays a key part in my influences, for without him, I probably wouldn’t have come up with the base layers for my images and the colour balancing I used on all of them.
I colour balanced each layer using yellows and reds, each layer dedicated to one of the categories, Shadows, Midtones or Highlights.
It is a similarity and a difference between our work, as I filtered 3 images where as he uses only one singular image, and also I used all parts of the colour balance where as he only uses the midtones on a black and white image to adapt the images without darkening or lightening the images too much.
