West is a combination of a journalist, photographer, model and at one point an actress. The subjects of her photos are her friends who just happen to be some of the biggest idols of the 20th century and possibly all time. They include; Mick Jagger, actress and dame Helen Mirren, David Bowie and Robin Williams. Apparently, she’s always had a camera by her side that is why she is able to take deep personal images of stars in a way that they wouldn’t normally have been photographed. It’s almost as if she’s preserved a special time that will never be seen again. Some of the images are from her subjects most intimate times of their lives. The themes surrounding her images are the journey of youth and life, people and connections and documentary. The message of being young and having fun that comes from her images is completely different from the reality of being young today which is something I plan to explore in my shoots as well as being young and having fun. Being young in the 21st century is no longer just about having fun. There’s exams, social media and lots of other things that distance the youth of our time to the youth of her time.
Art and photography was a constant thing in her life. Her great-grandmother was a keen photographer. At the age of 18 at a bus stop she was spotted by Robert Whitaker, who took pictures of the Beatles, he wanted to get a couple of shots of her which started her modelling career. This then opened the door to a world of the icons we know today. She was even in a movie with Helen Mirren. One of her most famous series is called ‘The Long Night,’ which are photos from when Ronnie Wood’s wife went into labour for 24 hours and West, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, Bob Ellis and Sandy Castle all stayed at the hospital over night.
For my response, I will be going around town and taking photos that are out of the blue and unique. Most of these photos will be in the spur of the moment, so I don’t know what the outcome of these photos will be until I take them.
Needs to be black and white, also needs to be cropped
Needs to be black and white
Leave in colour
Also needs to be cropped slightly, black and white
Crop and edit to black and white
I am really happy with how these photos turned out, but I think if I edited these photos they would look much better.
Final Images (Edited):
I edited these images on photo shop
Overall, I am really happy with how these photos turned out and I think I captured Damian’s style really well. I really like this style of editing and I think I will utilise it again.
In this photo shoot I intended to go back to the bunkers and recapture some of my successful images using my images which have been printed out on acetate, A4 paper and and 8 A3 sheets of paper to build up a massive image of the bunker. Doing this allowed me to show further exploration into the bunker idea, as I felt that this idea allowed me to come up with multiple ideas and I wanted to be able to look at different ways of capturing the bunker. The idea was to hold the acetate images up to the lense in order to create a distorted image, I will also hold the acetate next to the bunkers and in different positions around the bunkers, I will also hold the 8 A3 images up to showcase the size comparison and wanted to emphasis how isolated the bunkers have been and to show how they change overtime. Moreover, I believe conducting this photo shoot will help to showcase Jersey’s journey through the second world war. I intend to use my DSLR canon camera with manual settings, which will allow me to control my white balance, ISO, shutter speed, focus and aperture. The shutter speed I will be using should be quick as I am not wanting to have an intended blur, I will also have the ISO low so there is no noise created. However, at some points I do intended to experiment with the ISO to really emphasis the idea that the bunkers have been isolated and almost make it seem like the images where taken during the war. I will be using artificial lighting, as the bunkers are outdoors and it will allows the images to seem more naturalistic and will portray my intended effect more successfully. At the moment I am unsure what I will do when it comes to editing the images, however I believe that ideas will come to me and allow me to show experimentation with my images.
Contact Sheets:
Evaluation:
To evaluate this shoot I believe that I have been able to produce some successful outcomes which showcases the bunkers as being isolated and also shows how they where used during Jersey’s Journey through the second world war. I believe the idea itself had a lot of thought and showed clear experimentation, but was harder to execute then I originally thought it would. One issue was that it was highly windy so I had to use assistance to hold up the images next to the bunkers so it did not blow away, which means that I will have to crop a lot of the images. Moreover, the acetate was not as see through as I thought it would so it only produced shadows of the bunker in the background when I held it up to the lens of the camera. Although this was an issue, it also helped to produce a strong outcome as it created abstract looking images which I believed presented the isolation of the bunkers in a new and different way. Another issue was that it was hard to hold the image and adjust the camera settings, so some of the images taken are over exposed, or the picture within the image is moving which has created a blur. Needless to say I have managed to collect some successful outcomes, which has allowed me to explore the bunkers in a new way to showcase there importance during Jersey’s second world war. In addition, I believe the good images show my ability to adjust and confidently use different camera settings to create different affects as well as showing my creativity towards a simplistic idea and subject.
Action Plan:
As an action plan I am still unsure how I want to edit the images, but I am sure when I start to manipulate the images I will be able to think creatively and produce strong outcomes from the photo shoot. I intend to level and adjust the curves, I want to experiment with the different types of blurs, use of layers and potentially using a color splash in order to showcase these images in to present how they are isolated and the bunkers importance during the second world war.
As a continuation of my experimental photo shoot to collect images which I could use in the future, and to gain ideas of what I could focus on for my final piece, I took a few more images which I believe could relate to the theme of Journeys and Pathways.
