Journeys And Pathways Test Shoot
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Times of the day: Photoshoot 1
To respond to journeys and pathways I decided to photograph the sky throughout the day every hour so I would be able to capture the different positions of the sun as well as the movement of the clouds and the colours of the sky. I set my camera onto a tripod and placed it near a window so I could capture several images of the sky from inside my house. The viewer can then see the gradual progression from day to night from one viewpoint.
This project relates to the theme since it’s the journey of the day from sunrise to sunset. I started taking images at 11:00 am and finished around 7:00pm. Once the time got closer to 5pm, I decided to capture more images frequently since this time of the day is when the sky changes the most in terms of colour.
I decided to create a gif with these images on the website GIPHY to show how the sky changes throughout the day in a quick video that continues in a loop. I decided to have each image show up for 0.2 seconds to create a slideshow.
Times when an image was taken
- 11:20 am
- 11:40 am
- 12:00 pm
- 2:50 pm
- 3:30 pm
- 4:00 pm
- 4:30 pm
- 5:20 pm
- 6:00 pm
- 6:20 pm
- 6:40 pm
- 6:50 pm
- 7:00 pm
- 7:10 pm
Evaluation
Creating a gif to present these images was a good idea since the viewer can rapidly see the movement of the sun and the clouds. The gif also turned out smooth when played since the images were all taken from one angle. Taking images through the window helped to frame the sky.
Future Photo Shoot Idea
An idea for a future photo shoot is to take several images throughout the day of the tides so the viewer can see the extreme change from low tide to high tide in Jersey. Jersey may be a small island, but it can boast some of the biggest tides in the world. When it recedes, the immense body of water seems to melt into the horizon, only to surge back to shore with alarming speed.
Response to the Boyle Family
The photography work of the Boyle Family that I’m responding to typically examines the surface of the earth, road markings and manhole covers.
I walked around the urban area of St. Helier. I wanted my images to have the same style as the Boyle’s photographs by capturing pictures of the ground from my viewpoint. This displays the view that everyone sees on a day to day basis but never looks at twice.
When taking pictures, I made sure to show the various different qualities on the ground. Like the Boyle family, I wanted to capture images of street corners, roads with yellow markings, different textures of tarmac and cobbles.
Once I had enough photos, I made a contact sheet to help me select the best images. There is no editing on their images so I kept it minimalistic by slightly adjusting the contrast, brightness etc. I also cropped the images into a square since they had unwanted space around them.
Contact Sheet
My Response
Editing and Developing: 3
Chosen Photograph:
Chosen Own Response
Above shows my chosen response to edit and enhance in response to my chosen advert. I have chosen this photograph as I feel my model is placed in one of the best positions and it is also one of my clearer images. As well as being clear I feel even though this photograph is slightly bright it gives me room to adjust this and experiment with it.
My aims for editing this photograph is to generate a response that clearly shows a resemblance and a link towards the original photograph and to also show some suggested inspiration towards Cindy Sherman.
Editing Process:
Editing 1
To being with I started by adjusting the brightness and the contrast of the photograph, the photograph I was recreating had quite dark tones and wasn’t too bright so I was trying to recreate and generate this.
Editing 2
Next, still keeping in mind the style of the original photograph I was recreating I decided to add ‘noise’ to the photograph to create a more believable recreation to create an almost blurred image without loosing any sharpness on the features.
Editing 3
Finally I went back in with the brightness and the contrast editing for the final touches to create it more similar to the original I was recreating.
Final Outcome:
This shows my final edited outcome, overall I feel happy with the way the photograph turned out in resemblance to the original. I feel I have created a successful photograph with what my aims were and that I have personally met them.
Final Outcome
Recreation 3 // Balenciaga Paris | 80’s
For this photoshoot I will be taking another of the print advertisements that I have found to recreate in some way similar. I will again be keeping in mind Cindy Sherman and the way she embodies ‘characters’ and try to have my subject try this and have their own take on the image.
Background:
The era of the 80’s evokes very visual aesthetics that can be found specifically in this era. The high brands found in the 80’s prove to still set trends for today’s fashions, most of which people are familiar with Chanel, Versace, Armani and Balenciaga. The 80’s saw a rise in women moving into professions that were previously dominated by men. This trend sometimes lead women in these professions to not be taken seriously as they were often seen as primarily objects of desire rather than independent with ambition. This social issue created a movement named “Dress for success” or “Power dressing” with encourage the wearing of mote angular clothing that generally made them appear larger through the use of shoulder pads or sizable lapels and collars.
For these reasons I am choosing for my third recreation to produce a photograph resembling one of the Balenciaga adverts produced in 1983. I feel at this point I can show some of the developments of how woman and adverts were produced, in this era heavily woman were going into business work and were creating a new name for themselves.
Plan:
I will again be doing the photoshoot in the studio as this is most likely where the original was taken as it seems to be quite a stage studio like photograph with studio lights. I will also ask my subject to dress in a way similar to that of the original photograph, for example with a shirt of a similar style with the added skirt and bag. As it being a recreation I would like to get the outfit as similar as possible however there may be slight alterations of colours as to what is available however I would like to keep the same concept in place.
Third Recreation:
Balenciaga Paris | 80’s
Above shows the advert I will be trying to produce. The photograph is a studio taken photograph that I will try to recreate. I dressed my model in a way that replicated what the original model was wearing as well as wearing a similar hair style to that of the original photograph.
Contact Sheet of Photoshoot
Above shows the contact sheet of my outcomes from the photoshoot. I feel the better photographs are the ones that are coming slighting closer to the model rather than the ones which are father away. Some of the photographs turned out slightly dark however I feel that the majority of the photographs worked well and how I wanted them to be produced.
Unedited Best Outcomes:
I feel that these three are my best outcomes from the photoshoot due to where my subject is positioned and how they are some of my more clear photographs. I am going to move forward and edit one of the following photographs too enhance it to be more like the original photograph.
Best Outcome 1 
Best Outcome 2 
Best Outcome 3
First photo shoot
Although this photo shoot was supposed to be inspired by Easton Chang, I have decided to use it as more of a test to experiment what I enjoy/am best at taking photos of, that’s where the lack of theme throughout the photos comes from. I will use my next photo shoot to take the best photos I possibly can using the knowledge I’ve learned from this test.
I have decided to scrap most of the images from this photo shoot as they are either slightly blurry, or not to the standard I anticipated them to be. However, there are one or two photos which I liked from this shoot and have therefore used.
Le Hocq:Experiment 1
My Concept + Photo Shoot
I wanted to focus on Le Hocq beach as I lived nearby and I wanted to be able to take pictures throughout the day. I wanted to capture the journey in which the sun, clouds, water takes on a typical day in Winter. I was lucky to have enough that the weather was good and the sky was clear, but that did mean I had to ensure my pictures weren’t over exposed due the harshness of the sun, this was difficult. I started taking pictures at 1 pm and took pictures every hour until 7 pm. I held my camera for the post part but for several photos I put my camera on the wall. The picture below aren’t of every hour but are the best to represent the movement of the sun and change in brightness. I aimed to create a timeline for an afternoon at the beach, to show the true beauty of one of my favourite beaches in Jersey.
Analysis
Overall I found my first experiment to be reasonably successful. If I were to do it again I would have used a tripod and kept it in the same place for the duration of the shoot in order to have more emphasis on the change in just one particular part of the beach, but this is useful to know for my next photo shoot. I feel like my photos are pretty self explanatory, as they are just a timeline of Le Hocq beach, I used a medium to large lens for my photos as I wanted to focus in on specific parts of the beach but also capture the full atmosphere. I edited my photos in Photoshop by lowering the brightness, increasing contrast and lowering the exposure for the pictures I took earlier in the day. These pictures are personal to me as they are the view I having being seeing for the last 8 years, day in day out, so for me it’s nothing special in day light, but when the sun goes down it creates a different scene for me, something familiar yet exciting. I wanted to empathize how repetitive views don’t always have to be boring, the weather changes, the sun position changes, the sky is never the same, clouds are always moving, they change shape, the sun is always moving.
Editing and Developing: 2
Chosen Photograph:
Chosen Photograph
Above shows my chosen image to edit and experiment with, I have chosen this photograph as it was one of my most clear image and I feel that my subject is positioned well in the frame and there is good eye contact and facial expressions with the camera. The lighting is also good for in this photograph there is no need for too much adjusting of the brightness in this photograph which is why I have chosen to edit this photograph.
My aims while editing this photograph is to create a yellow tint in the background of the photograph to replicate the yellow background of the original poster as I feel this will really help the photograph to become better and enhance it.
Editing Process:
Editing 1
I began by adjusting the brightness and contrast so that I have a good base for adding on the filters for the colours.
Editing 2
Editing 3
For the next two steps I experimented, adjusted and edited the strengths of the yellow and red colour tones coming through in the photograph. I did this so that there were already tints coming through and to make it easier to place the yellow warming on top.
Editing 4
Here I selected the whole background area surrounding my subject, when adding on the warming and yellow filter I didn’t want them to mess and alter the colours and tones of the subject in the image, I wanted to try and keep the red and the blue of her shirt and head band so I selected al the way around her body and around the frame of the photograph to have a specific place to add the filters.
Editing 5
After adding on the filters I experimented with cropping the photograph down so that the subject fills more or less of the frame and see where it sits best as I did not want too much unnecessary blank space above her head.
Final Outcome:
This shows the final outcome for how I edited the photograph, I used the warming filter (81) as it had more yellow tones in which I felt worked well with the original photograph and also worked with this recreation. I feel this photoshoot and editing was a success and that it generated an accurate outcome I am happy with that I feel works well.
Final Outcome
Recreation 2 // Rosie the Riveter | 40’s
Background:
“We Can Do It!” is an American World War II wartime poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost female worker morale. It was seen little during the war and was rediscovered early 1980’s and was widely reproduced, often called “We Can Do It!” but also called “Rosie the Riveter” after the iconic figure of a strong female war production worker. The image was used to promote feminism and other political issues begining in the 1980’s, it was incorporated in 2008 into campaign materials for several American politicians. Compared to all this during the war time the image was strictly internal to Westinghouse, displayed only during February 1943, and was not for recruitment but to exhort already-hired women to work harder. People have seized upon the uplifting attitude and message to remake it into many forms including self empowerment, campaign promotion and advertising.
I am choosing to recreate this specific poster to indicate the changes in this era of the 40’s as I feel it has that showing of development and progress and is a widely known poster, it represents how woman were being treated at the time and suggests towards how they were being advertised as they now took on ‘mans work’. I feel that it is a good example to show how women began to be portrayed when men weren’t there and then that it got picked back up during a strong female movement.
Plan:
For this photoshoot I will be taking the image in the studio to give me the best lighting for recreating these AD’s I will use two different subjects one in each of the images. I am going to be dressing the subject in clothing that is almost exact or close to what the subject in the original image is wearing.
For the second recreation seen below I will adjust the persons hair and find clothes and props best suited to the photograph. The aim of this photoshoot is to create an accurate recreation of the photograph below and try to show and explain some of my inspirations coming from Cindy Sherman.
Second Recreation:
Rosie the Riveter | 40’s
Above shows the Poster I was recreating, for this recreation I took the photographs in the studio as this enabled me to have a plain background as to edit the image on and the poster itself also has a plain background. I dressed my subject the same or similar as the figure in the original and took the time to get her to pose in the same manner.
Contact Sheet of Outcomes
Above shows the contact sheet of my outcomes from the photoshoot, some of the photographs came out a little dark however I should be able to edit these images and fix that in Photoshop.
I feel I have tried to show my inspirations coming from Cindy Sherman through the work by having my subject en body the person in the original ad and begin to represent herself in that way.
Unedited Best Outcomes:
Below shows what I think to be my best outcomes before I am editing the images to enhance them more and edit them to be more like the recreation. These are the four I think are the best however I will only experiment with editing one or two of them.
Best Outcomes
Experimental photoshoots
Before I started to do photo shoots based on other photographers, I wanted to get a rough idea of what would be good to photograph to start me off on the theme of Journeys and Pathways. As an experimental photo shoot, I went out on multiple occasions and took pictures of what I thought could fit into the concept of the theme.
Contact sheets:
In these images I concentrated on getting images on which I thought could relate to the theme. I took images such as actual pathways, the water and waves coming in on the beach, pictures of my feet walking, pictures of the view from when I was on a plane, and footsteps on the beach.
Chosen images:
Final edited images:
In this image I decided to add more colour and to blur out the further steps to create more of a depth to the picture. To do this I first cropped the image to get out the unwanted parts in the background and then played around with the brightness and contrast, increasing them both equally to lighten the light areas and darken the shadows. I then went and increased the exposure a little bit, and increased the vibrance and saturation a significant amount, making the sand look more golden. I finished with changing the hues in the image.
What I like about this image is the neatness of it, the sand around the footsteps seem calm and natural, and then the footsteps in the sand bring some sort of chaos with them, messing the sand up as they go. This could portray the effects which the journey of someone can bring, making their imprint on the surroundings around them. I also like how the image becomes darker as it comes closer towards the camera, as it adds to the depth of the picture.
What I should have done to improve the picture was to maybe angle the camera more upwards, maybe getting more of the surrounding beach which would have added more to the image. I also think I should have maybe darkened the edges of the image when editing, which would have given it a nice effect and made the viewer focus more on the footsteps than the actual sand.
In this image I decided to edit it only a little bit. I first cropped the image so it was smaller and focused more on the moving leg, and then I went and increased the brightness and contrast in the picture. I then followed on by going straight onto the vibrance and increasing that only a little bit to give the image more of a colour to it, and then finished off by using the dodge tool to brighten the whites of the shoe, making it pop out against the dark background and rest of the shoe.
I like this image because it has a certain movement to it, as if the person in the image is in a rush to get to a certain destination, and I feel as if that’s clear in the image. While the surroundings are all blurred and moving, the foot in the middle of the image seems to be more focused than the rest of it, although it too was caught in the middle of movement like the rest of the image, and I feel like that gives it a nice affect.
However, I feel I could have done better with this image by getting it more focused on the foot and leg in the image. While it’s not as blurry as it’s surroundings, it’s still a bit out of focus and I think it would have been more successful if I had been able to get the camera to focus on it a bit more.
In this image, I wanted the viewer to focus more on the path and less on the beach surrounding it, so to do this I started editing this image by dropping it down to a point where the stone pathway was the only thing you can see in the middle of the image, removing the sky and most of the sea out of the photograph. I then blurred out the surroundings which were further out, and a little bit around the image to make it easier to focus on the pathway. And then, to add a bit of colour and light, I increased the brightness and contrast like i’ve done on my other images, and then increased the vibrance and played around with the hues until I got my desired outcome.
What I like about this image is that the stone pathway is right in the middle of the image and continues vertically until right to the end, which was the effect I was looking for. I also like how each side of the pathway are different, with one side being nice and sandy while the other side seems almost swamp-like and covered in seaweed, which could be interpreted in many different ways.
Although, what I don’t like about this image is the quality. Since I took it on my phone, it didn’t come out as good of quality as a digital camera would take it in, so I think i’ll be re-taking this image again but using my camera instead of my phone, and see what kind of results I get, and hope that it’s much higher quality then what the phone could give.