Daily Archives: September 24, 2019

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Final Outcome: Home Sweet Home

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PHOTO SHOOT PLANNING:

WHO: In the images below, I have chosen to capture my immediate family, my mum and brother, in my mind they are the most fitting people for this photo shoot as they are generally quite photogenic and willing to have their portrait taken.

WHAT: These images were taken for the project titled “home sweet home” which aims to explore the different family dynamics of various people, showing in a series of environmental portraits what they get up to in a daily basis.

WHERE: As the title suggests, the images were taken in my family home.

HOW: I used my regular DSLR camera in order to create the images, this time instead of using regular JPEG files, I set my camera to capture RAW images, which I feel ended up with better outcomes, producing high quality images.

WHY: In order to explore the styles of environmental photographers such as Michelle Sank, the project aims to further increase our skill range as photographers, especially in the realm of working with models and communication with them. It also aims to increase our skill range as documentary photographers.

WHEN: As it is with most families, the images were taken in the evening, when most of my family comes together. I felt as though this was a both good and bad time of day as the lighting wasn’t ideal due to the sun setting earlier at this time of year, eating I’m having to use artificial, indoor lighting, which often ends up with blurred or grainy images. Yet this was also an advantage as I was bale to capture my family just arriving home, still in their work clothes, and what they’d look like on a day to day basis.

WHAT I AIM TO CAPTURE:

In terms of the mini project “home sweet home”, the main objective is to capture envionmnetal images of my family within my family home. The portraits are aimed to be natural and unposed, with the subjects going about their everyday tasks undisturbed. It aims to capture them in a setting which they find out comfortable and natural. It is anecdotal to the action of beef like a fly on the wall, just observing from a side line instead of putting big focus on posing and looking good for the camera. In the images below it is very clear that both the subjects are relaxed and passing on with their day without any attention being paid to the camera.

FINAL OUTCOMES:

FAVOURITE OUTCOME:

CRITICAL ANALYSIS:

VISUAL:

In terms of the visual aspects of the image, I find it quite interesting due to the positioning of the model, it is quite ambiguous with the sort of situation and mind space she is in. Her hands are covering her face suggesting perhaps shyness, embarrassment or fear? The plain and simplistic backdrop means that the model stands out dramatically, making her the focal point off the image. The positioning also further helps to do this. When editing the image, I made sure to dramatically increase the contrast as I was keen to bring out the creases and age spots on the hands, giving more character and signs of the age of the model to viewers. I also felt that an overall black and white, monochromatic colour scheme would be best for the images as it reflected the somewhat down, and sad mood of the overall environment and models. The monochrome can also be symbolic of the mundane nature of the portraits as it is simply recording the everyday activities of the models and nothing more.

TECHNICAL:

It was overall a more challenging photo shoot as firstly both the models were fairly shy to be on camera, but adding to our skillset as photographers is to communicate and reassure them which I was able to sue throughout the entirety of the photo shoot. A big issue was also the lighting, as it was the evening and theses are conceptually meant to be environmental photos, I did not use any other assisted lighting, therefore I had to do with the above head lighting from the lamps, which wasn’t ideal but still allowed for good, well exposed images. When shooting the images, I used the RAW setting in order to get the best quality images as I often find that shooting in dim or low lit areas, the images are very grainy, but using this setting meant that it was a very high quality image despite the environment. For a small portion of the images, ad this one, I used a tripod to get a direct shot of the model, at eye level. Due to the low lighting as well, I used the manual setting the camera and used an exposure of 800 in order to get a well exposed image.

CONCEPTUAL/CONTEXTUAL:

In order to explore the styles of environmental photographers such as Michelle Sank, the project aims to further increase our skill range as photographers, especially in the realm of working with models and communication with them. It also aims to increase our skill range as documentary photographers.

For this photo shoot I decided to solely focus on my mum and brother as I consider them the closest and most important people in my life. My brother in particular isn’t very fond of having his photo taken so therefore in the images you can see very clear discomfort in his facial expression and stance ,making the images portray more than just a family portrait. I’m very keen to explore both my family history through personal archival images and my immediate family now.

CONTACT SHEETS:

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas

Photo Assignment 1: Home Sweet Home: Environmental and Candid

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My first assignment was to take a range of environmental portraits that help to reflect the culture, economic and social backgrounds of the subjects in the images, and to capture a series of candid images, showing un-posed life and events occurring naturally, often without the subjects knowledge that the image is being taken in order to keep a sense of naturalism. The environmental portraits are supposed to accurately reflect the subjects in the photographs, showing aspects of their personal lives, which are normally left unseen behind closed doors. As houses and homes often reflect the beliefs, social and economic classes, and culture of the individuals who live there (through belongings, style and the people themselves), I decided to take a range of images inside the subjects own houses, as well as in places they feel comfortable, that are personal to them, I order to better reflect who they are as individual people. In contrast to this, the candid photographs are meant to reflect the raw, natural events and occurrences in the subjects lives.

The first contact sheet includes all of the images from my environmental photo-shoot:

The second contact sheet includes all of the images from my candid photo-shoot:


During the editing process, I used a selection of different editing techniques. I cropped a few of my images in order to place the subject at the centre of the image sombre attention could be drawn to them, and with most other images I altered the colour balance/saturation/contrast in order to either raise of reduce the contrast of the images.

Above is a selection of some of the basic adjustments I made. I often altered the contrast of the images in order to highlight the outlines of the subject, and for a few images I altered the colour balance of the images to highest the main colour of the image (for example, emphasising the red and magenta mid-tones in the first image allowed for a highly saturated pink, which I feel produces a better example of the personality/style of the subject). Furthermore, I reduced the saturation of a number of images in order to reduce the viewers concentration on the colours, and focus more on the actions/poses of the subjects, which I feel in a number of cases is important for the reflection of the mood/meaning of the portrait.

AO1 Develop Ideas

ARTIST STUDY – Robert Adams

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Robert Adams is an american based photographer who worked primarily during the 70’s. His photography has earned him several rewards including 2 Guggenheim fellowships, a MacArthur fellowship and a Hasselblad award. Robert lived in Denver Colorado for the majority of his life and as such attended the university of Boulder Colorado. Between 1964 and 2009 Robert began shooting photos under the collection known as ‘The place we live’ showing the evolving landscape and social climate of the place that Robert Adams called home for the majority of his life. A lot of Roberts work features a documentary style of photography however some of the images do have more of an artistic styling to them. Most of the images are shot using quite harsh lighting presumably on film. The source of lighting varies between images however more use natural sunlight. there are however quite a few examples of night-time shots using various forms of artificial lighting.

Colorado Springs, Colorado © Robert Adams

The lighting used in this is a harsh natural light likely taken around mid day due to the intensity of the shadows as well as their direction. Since the image is in black and white there is no discernible color temperature nor tint. The image is quite high contrast with no visible light source in frame or glare. The aperture appears to be quite small as the whole frame is in focus. High speed film was likely used due to the harsh natural lighting visible in frame however the aperture appears to be small and that might’ve required compensation to be correctly exposed. since a lot of his shots are of various buildings and american architecture often prioritizes speed and cost of materials resulting in rather geometric shapes of buildings, the images often feature strong geometric elements often consisting of rectangles. There are some patterns created in the image consisting of various tiling or masonry elements in the buildings. Although a lot of the images aren’t necessarily of homes they are still of his hometown.

Most of his daylight shots were taken very similarly to this image in terms of technical elements.

Mobile Homes, Jefferson County, Colorado © Robert Adams
Methodist church, Bowen, Colorado © Robert Adams
Lakewood, Colorado © Robert Adams
Pikes Peak, Colorado Springs, Colorado © Robert Adams

His night-time shots differ from his daylight shots in that they often feature a visible light source and sometimes utilize glare within the image.

AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Unit 2 Portrait

Bob Le Sueur (Photos)

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For the photos of Bob I knew that we would be in the studio this means that the environment is heavily controlled. The rule of thumb for studio flash light is to have your camera at 100 ISO, 1/125 and at f/16. The reason for this is that the flashes are used to simulate the daylight and this group of settings will always be roughly right for daylight. Using studio lights with a shutter speed of over 1/200 will not work as the shutter will block out part of the light and will be too fast for the flash of light that the lights will give off.

For this photo I had Bob facing side on to me and then gave him a point to look at which was down to my right, I then focused on his eyes and framed him in the center of the image, I was using a 50mm zoom so I could get a top torso shot with space over his head. For the editing I boosted the texture and and the clarity, also making the contrast larger to show the mall wrinkles and features on his face.


For the left image I thought that I would focus on Bob’s nose as it is a prominent feature of his face to do this best I thought that a profile would work. I made it black and white because it shows well the contrast in his hair and it shows the lines and contours of his face well. I also gave him a high point to look at to show his jawline more. The image on the right was similar to the first in composition but I changed it to black and white and had him look up.

This image was taken to show his walking stick which is something that he has with him all the time and it has scratches, chips and dents which give it its own character, I had Bob lay his hands on top of eachother so that there wasn’t a big empty space that there would be if his hands were side by side. The focal point was the ring finger of his left hand as it has a chip in the nail. I put this image in black and white so that there is a big contrast between the darker wrinkles and the highlights and his nails.
AO1 Develop Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Unit 2 Portrait

Bob Le Sueur (Stories)

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Robert (Bob) Le Sueur is an occupation survivor from Jersey who has been credited for his role the escape and survival of multiple Russian prisoners who were held in Jersey. For this and other Humanitarian work he did during the occupation he was awarded an MBE, and was on the Queen’s birthday honours list in 2013. When Bob came in he had some great stories to tell about life in the occupation here are some of my favorites:

A Porky interruption: This story starts on the morning of July 1st Bob was awoken to the sound of German planes flying overhead and went to look out at them to see if they had doped bombs again, as they did a few days prior, but they hadn’t they dropped 2 parachutes which at first could be soldiers but were too small. They ended up being containers that held a message to the leader of the military of the island. The message said that if the island wasn’t to surrender within 24 hours it would be carpet bombed which would have almost wiped out the population of Jersey. The states were unsure of the best cause of action as they had heard false propaganda showing the germans as rapists and evil people. The only words of advice that would be given by the crown and the uk government was to ‘do the best for the population’. There was a crowd growing in the royal square in front of the states. To control the crowd a man named Capt. Bentley, who was an affluent businessman within the islands, went out to address the crowd and then started barking orders at them. Telling them to get into line and quiet down. In this moment of great tension as Bob described it a bird flew over top and then relieved itself all over the captains pork pie hat, the crowd then erupted with laughter. Bob says this was a heaven sent message to relax the people and break the tension.

The Slavic Soiree: For this story bob talked about a party that he was involved in. He didn’t say what it was specifically for but he said that they had them for everything from the last day of having a gas supply to people’s birthdays. Bob then enlightened us on the best way to make sure that everyone that comes to your party has a good time. He said “invite guests that haven’t eaten properly in months, cook a rabbit and then serve them calvados” which is a sort of distilled cider that had a higher proof than vodka. At this party there was one man who lived with them who was a Russian escapee. Before the party however this man had gotten into the calvados which meant that his Slavic side came out and then he started doing ‘Gopak’ dancing and singing slavic folk songs at the top of his lungs in the middle of town. As he was doing this a German patrol passed by but luckily they were singing their own chants so the Russian couldn’t be heard.

Bullet Bike: This story took place on liberation day. Bob, the Russian from the previous story, one of the people the Russian lived with and two girls were all together when they got the news that there was an American destroyer that had been spotted passing Normint point and at this point they all knew that there had been an armistice signed for the western war (Japan was still going at it). When they got this news they all got on their bikes and then went to cycle out to the end of Victoria pier. On the way however, some misfortune befell Bob, when he was going past the German tunnel entrance that was filled with weapons and guarded by two soldiers, which is located opposite the old lifeboat station or the rowing club, his bike tyre which was made of a hose pipe as there were no more tyres the clasp that held it together snapped. This sound was comparable to that of a gunshot which made the German guards anxious and could have almost gotten Bob killed but they saw what had happened and was ok. When he looked up to see if his friends had stopped for him they were almost gone already, he said this was fine though as they saved him a good spot to watch the destroyer come in to St Aubins bay.

‘Bob collecting his MBE’
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portrait historical artist REFERENCE

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Leonardo da Vinci is arguably the most famous painter to ever live, most of his work was painting portraiture he painted standard and formal portraits mainly this is when the main focus is the model in the frame, they have nice clothes on. The framing was normally done by thirds for lots of his work with the shoulders and upper torso taking up one third and then the head and the empty space above the head taking up the rest. He has the subject doing different poses and facial positioning in most of his paintings, some are looking straight then others to the side some are looking forward with different body positions and have their shoulders facing off to the side.

Image result for Leonardo da Vinci portrait paintings

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Write up – Battery Moltke

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Intro: Upon visiting Battery Moltke we found that there were a great amount of unique and dynamic photographic opportunities. It was interesting to learn the historical backgrounds behind the different areas whilst also aiming to capture effective images of the era in time we were studying.

We started off by visiting the remains of the larger outside cannons which had been pained to resemble the colours of what they would have been during the occupation. Lower angles suited these areas better when photographing due to the solid single coloured background of the sky which highlights and exaggerates the colour patterns on the cannons.

We then visited what used to be an emergency dorm incase of attack by the British during the occupation, which was situated under many metres of concrete below the surface. It has been renovated to contain similar furniture if not the same as when it was in use, also being fitted with a small cabinet of relics such as newspapers like this one. These came to great use when I later experimented with photomontage.

A reinactment of a likely photo one of the soldiers may have posted near their beds or work station of their partners whilst separated during the occupation .
An interesting machine inside of the sleeping quarters in the bunker. Although I cannot remember its exact purpose it still makes for a captivating image highlighting the bizarreness of some machinery during that century.
We then travelled through corridors, one of which I found very intriguing which was this one. The reason being that its purpose was being a chamber which, incase of a gas or chemical attack on the germans by the British, would sanitise any soldiers who may have been exposed to the explosion or attack, stopping them from contaminating others.
This image I found particularly striking because of its significance in universal recognition. Viewed as a symobol of despair and hatred among most it shows how powerful am emblem can be. It is particularly worthy to note how many, who did not want to, were obliged to represent what this emblem stands for and were expected to sacrifice their homes, their families and their lives for it during those times of despair.
“Eintritt Verboten” – A German sign which reads “Entry Forbidden”.
A German anti-aircraft machine gun which had been restored too near enough original aesthetics.
The most powerful images was able to capture during this project was this. After having wondered around the grounds of the main Battery Moltke bunker tunnels I had come across this dark, lonely and eerie corridor. What makes this image so powerful are the textures and colours portrayed in the image. The texture can be seen through the walls which are all made of poured concrete, which can also be seen to have large stains running down the sides, giving an impression of blood and gore to highlight the evil that was running though these hollow pits. The colours, being predominantly dark oranges, browns and blacks just add to the overall mood, giving the tunnel this almost visual representation of what some would describe as ‘a pathway to hell’. I believe this image is a very good indicator at what life was life to live in these bunkers and how psychologically impacting it must have been to some of the soldiers who actually resided in them.

Above are two final images I found were especially well taken due to the photographic techniques I had used to capture them, with the main one being using the manual focus to highlight areas I wanted the viewers to pay particular attention to, for example the workers facial features and clothing in the left hand picture, and the distant bunker in the right hand image.

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Interview with Occupation Survivors:

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As part of the Occupation Vs Liberation side of our project we were given the opportunity to interview and photograph two occupation survivors. Friends, Hinault and Joyce De Le Haye came in and told us some personal stories of their experience of the occupation. While Joyce came off as rather shy, Hinault had no problem telling us about the time he tricked a German soldier into drinking too much cider.

Raw notes

‘I got a German soldier drunk.’

Hinault left school on his birthday when he was 14 years old to work as a Heard’s man on his father’s farm. It was his job to look after 20-25 cattle, only receiving help from his parents to milk them.

Once the occupation began farmers were forces to grow several ‘Vergies’ (areas of land) of wheat. During September the wheat would be harvested. At the time Hinault was too young to lift the harvested sacks of wheat so he was tasked to fill up jouts (2 gallons) with cider to give to the farmers. Everyday one German soldier would stand guard. One day a ‘young soldier with a nice personality’ stood guard. The soldier would always smile at Hinault when he walked past.

‘I wondered if I could roll this one over. I never distinguished if it was brave or foolish.’

The soldier, not used to drinking cider, kept accepting Hinault’s offers of more to drink. Before long the soldier was ‘flat on the floor’. Hinault went to tell father what he done immediately. However, Hinault’s father didn’t believe him, so Hinault took him to see his work. Upon, seeing that his son was telling the truth, he exclaimed in Jerais (Jersey-French), “The kid has got the Jerry drunk!” There was still a few hours until until the sacks of wheat were to be collected so the farmers took this as an opportunity to steal some to keep for themselves.

‘I was a hero as far they were concerned.’

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas

Hedley and Joyce

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Hedley Hindult & Jocye De La Haye

Hedley Hindult is age 93. He was living in Jersey during the German occupation. Hedley was accompanied to the talk with partner Joyce De La Haye (maiden name Blanchet) , who also witnessed the German occupation on the Channel Islands.

When Hedley was talking to us about his memories he stated that it was hard to remember everything because he was only 14 at the time of the occupation, but even now when he thinks or talks about it he gets upset, due to how hard and scary it was. He then proceeded in saying that he left school at the age of 14, which was very normal in those days and worked on his fathers farm as a herdsman for a cattle of 20-25, which was his main responsibility on the farm. Every farmer at that time was compelled to grow wheat on the acres of land they had, so they could make bread for the locals, along with the German soldiers. Hedley made it aware to use not only did his fathers farm grow wheat and herd cattle, they also made cider. After he told us this, he then continued to tell us a story that he remembers when working on the farm. That one day as young solider around 20 was at the farm to count the wheat after it had been stacked. He said that the solider was a nice man who was always smiling. But Hedley has seen the German looking at the cider barrels and offered the man a drink, and the solider was obviously not going to decline so he nodded and Hedley produced. The solider drank it down quickly that Hedley kept offering him drink after drink. Hedley then went back to his cattle to finish off his jobs, to when his father found the solider lying flat down, this is when they had all realised that he got so drunk that he passed out. So they used this too their advantage and kept a few barrels of wheat behind for themselves. Ever since that happened the Germans would always send 2 soldiers.

After Hedley had told us this story, he carried on talking about life during that time. He said that everyone use to speak Jèrriais , this is because the Germans wouldn’t be able to understand what they were saying. Along with talking about Jèrriais , he told us he has a daughter who use to speak fluent Jèrriais but now no longer speaks it.

Joyce said she couldn’t remember much alike Hedley but she was able to recall small events. She said she would walk to school everyday, which was about a mile and quarter, at the age of 6, but she would be barefoot as shoes where a privilege in those times of the occupation. She said that you weren’t allowed on the beach, to go fishing, that everything was under control by the Germans. They were given food parcels that came from Canada, every family got one Joyce mentioned but it was only the necessities they got, but everyone in the community helped each other out. At such a young age, she said she had to create her own fun with her friends, but it was hard with a German post every half a mile, but she mentioned that parishes would put on dances as a means of entertainment, however with this said the Islanders has curfews throughout the year, during winter is was 10pm and summer 9pm and you couldn’t get away with being late as it was definite you would be passing a German post at some point on your way home and if you were caught you would have you registration card take off you.

On the day of liberation Joyce was at home with her family as it was too far to travel into St Helier. But Hedley was a bell ringer in his local church, he rung the bells between 9am-1pm and after that he went with his girlfriend at the time to St Helier, but he said you couldn’t really see anything due to the mass crowds.