Over the last couple of weeks I have focused on looking through lots of archival images and objects that focus on my parents from the times they were together. I then found a camera with several images from 2010 which was the year after my brother was born. On this camera there was lots of pictures of my mum and a few of my dad. Also on this camera is the only pictures I have access to from one of the only holidays we went as a family of four. Although I am not going to use several of the images I would like to take some that capture the interior of our home which my mum no longer lives in.
From the archival images I have found a photo of our house and where I first lived before I moved here. I am going to use both images one in colour and one in black and white. I want to display the images close to each other because I want it to contrast In colour. I also have several images that I have taken in black and white therefore would like to maintain some elements of colour in my final book.
This is the original image before I edited it or cropped it. As you can see the image isn’t in the highest quality due to the year and device the archival image was taken on. At this point in time both my parents weren’t rich. My dad lived in Jersey when I was born and my mum lived looking after me. He worked so we could afford this house which was built by my dad and a group of his mates. This image is significant in my project because it is where their story began and this is the first place I called home.
This is the image in black and white and after I edited it in Lightroom. I also changed a few of the settings like the contrast and brightness. Too make it look even older than the time it was captured I used the grainy effect in Lightroom. I like both the copies of the image as they both capture something meaningful but one actually looks more sad which is the feel I’m going for.
The images above I have chosen to use as a compare and contrast. On the left of the image above is my mother and on the right the picture is me. Below on the left we have a picture of my little brother and on the right we have a picture of my dad. The reason I have chosen to use these and present these like this was to show the difference in time, culture and even the way we were dressed. Both images of my parents were taken in Madeira, whereas the image of me and my brother were in Jersey. I wanted to show the whole aspect of change and adapting as this was something I have had to do for most of my childhood. I also liked the idea of showing what my parents looked like at similar ages and have this element of innocence and childhood coming through in my phonebook.
I have also chosen to edit more of my archival images so that they’re not all the original image. I have chosen to use double exposure setting on photoshop and the cropping tool to take out elements of the photograph.
This is an image of my mother as a child. The reason I have chosen to bring out the black dots of the image and create this double exposure is because I have done a similar image of my dad. I will be presenting both of these pictures across a double page. Using these dots adds elements of excitement and also adds a childlike atmosphere to the image. The double exposure me is used to represent how I felt about my parents divorce. I was always in the middle of their divorce so for the most part I felt like I was being divided into two.
I later chose to crop myself out of one example as I had cropped one out of my dad. I cropped myself out of this picture as an experiment and originally wasn’t even going to consider it for my phonebook. But after having considered the layout and narrative of my photo book I decided to do this to create that feeling of separation.
