At this point I knew i had the majority of my final images, and i knew what specific shoots i had yet to do to fill in the gaps, so i decided to try and experiment with organisation and building my narrative through the images. Drawing from the work of Katrien de Blauwer, who uses images with similar forms/structure to pair together, I chose to go through all my images and match up those with similar lines or shapes. Obviously not all matched up perfectly, so I also used their colour scheme and how they fit with my project idea (winter->summer). In the end I only had a few images left, and I worked out what sort of images i needed to resolve the problem. I also chose to keep some images solo in the photobook if i felt they just worked best that way.

The images below are sorted into a rough order of what i expect them to be in the photobook, but i know that i’ll probably change this around and switch it up as i add the final images, so for now it’s only a placeholder. They start off with the “winter” photos, and progress through to summer.

images that need pairing-

Some of the images above that still need pairing won’t be used in the final book if they just don’t work, but some could also be individual images.

This shoot required a little more planning, as I knew that i needed more “winter” type images but as the weather kept getting warmer I wasn’t sure how to go about it, until I realised I could use the early morning light to show coldness in the same way I used the light at sunset to show warmth and summer. SO to achieve this I woke up before sunrise and went out to a secluded beach, La Coupe, where there should be a good view of the sunrise. Unfortunately there was quite a lot of cloud cover that morning, but I think it had the intended effect and overall I think it payed off.

Initially i had about a hundred and fifty images, but a lot of them could be discarded because they were either too dark or too bright, so I ended up with 23 images going into the next stage.

Then I went through and cut out the duplicate images using the “compare” function below to choose which image worked best out of all that were similar.

Finally I had fifteen images from this shoot (plus a couple taken the evening before that fit in with the rest of them) which I felt properly conveyed the sort of cold, wintery vibe I set out to produce, so I’m glad it worked out.

FINAL IMAGE SELECTION–

For this shoot I knew I needed to focus more on portraits, specifically of young people, and I wanted to take advantage of the good weather and the particular light during the few hours before sunset. I used a few of my friends and we went down to St Brelade’s in the evening.

The bulk of the images totaled about two hundred images, so the process of going through them took a little more time. I used the same process as before, starting off my colour coding the images I wanted to carry on with in yellow, and then going through them at the next step and flagging them as “pick” or “reject”.

After filtering out the yellow images, I went through and flagged them as “pick” if i wanted to keep them. I based this on whether they were the best of two duplicates/similar looking images, whether they fit in with the idea of my final photobook in my head, and whether they used the same sort of technique and style as the artists I studied.

This left me with 16 final images to move on and begin editing.

During the editing process I didn’t change much, only minor corrections which were easily made in Lightroom, then exported the images in with the rest of my final images from other shoots.

In the end, I think it was a good idea to take portraits with this light and in this location, and the candid nature of the images make them feel natural and conveys the emotions felt at the time pretty well, in my opinion. If I had to change anything I would probably have tried to do some more traditional, posed portraits, but I have more time to do this so it’s not a big issue.

FINAL IMAGES-

I went on a walk from Beauport to St Brelade’s and around the surrounding area, just after midday, in an attempt to take more landscape photos, as opposed to close-ups like I did in the previous shoot. I finished with about 80 photographs, which is less than I would have normally but I tried to focus on the images fitting in with the rest of my idea. Because of the weather and the time of day, these images will probably be used in the “summer” part of the book, nearer to the end.

I went through and selected the pictures I immediately liked, leaving me with about sixteen. I chose them on the basis of whether they were technically good images, and also if i liked them personally, but I didn’t analyse them in too much detail.

Next, i cut down on any duplicate images by using the “compare view” function in Lightroom, and thinking of how I would have to edit each image in the future. Like this I managed to end up with about ten images, shown below, to make whatever edits necessary and move to the group of final images from the other shoot(s).

Overall I liked this shoot, I think it resulted in a fair amount of good quality images and I think it was successful as a whole.

FINAL IMAGE SELECTION-

For my first photoshoot I decided just to go on a walk through a nearby valley and see what caught my eye and inspired me from my natural surroundings, collecting a large variation of images in whatever styles suits the particular subject best and then later on working out which to keep and use in my photobook. This resulted in several hundred images of different plants. trees, birds, flowers and general landscape scenes which I narrowed down in Adobe Lightroom.

Firstly, I went through with the colour labels and either chose red or yellow for whether I wanted to discard the image immediately or move on to the next selection process. This ended up with me having roughly 70 images to work with.

Then I went through and either flagged them as “keep” or “discard” depending on whether there were other similar images which worked better, or if they were duplicates form a slightly different angle, or if they just overall didn’t work as well with the other images as I had hoped. This left me with 37 images. I then edited the final group of images a little, just making any corrections to the exposure or when the colour balance was off slightly, before exporting them out of Lightroom.

Once they were in my files I was able to analyse them against each other, physically putting them next to other images and comparing them in a range of different combinations, before separating them into two folders: “yes” and “no”. I decided against deleting any of the images in the “no” folder, as I could change my mind or my vision of the project could change slightly and they would be necessary again. I was also aware of the fact that I could end up using even less of these images, depending on how the other photoshoots go, so this selection is in no way final, but with some I already have an idea of how to use them effectively in the book.

At the end of all this I ended up with 28 images that I chose to keep and move on with into the next stage of my photobook.

(POSSIBLE LAYOUT)

For my future photoshoots I know I am going to focus more on landscapes and scenes rather than individual plants, flowers and trees, and I also am planning to produce a series of portraits to use alongside these other images, possibly posed in similar positions. For example, the images below almost look like two heads looking at each other and two people of different heights standing next to each other, so I am going to make images with a similar form using people to mirror them.

As I said before I know I’m not going to end up using all of these images, but I do quite like some of them and I’m trying to think of interesting ways I can incorporate them into my photobook to best represent my idea of spring as a period of transition.

NARRATIVE-

in three words: winter, spring, summer

in a sentence: the slow but gradual transformation from cold, harsh winter to soft, warm summer, adding in some comparisons to how people change/age over time.

This photobook will be a study on how the weather, environment and general mood changes as the weather warms up and the seasons change from winter to summer. The season of spring has always been represented as a period of transition, and often also as a period of rebirth- not only in a religious sense but also environmentally. I want to have the images seem natural and as if they are seen through your own eyes, and I’m planning to do this by not over-editing the images and carefully using angles to my advantage. I also want to do some portrait work as well and add that alongside, to represent how humans age over time and the transition of youth to adulthood and old age.

DESIGN-

• portrait orientation
• colour
• some text throughout the book (quotes?)
• most images in pairs, some as individuals
• fairly simple editing to keep the natural theme
• title along the side of the book as well as on the front

I don’t have plans for a name yet, but I want it to be short and something to do with the spring, or the changing of seasons.

Katrien de Blauwer is a Belgian artist who calls herself a “photographer without a camera”. Her chosen medium is found imagery: she collects and recycles images from old magazines and papers to re-purpose in her work. She has several published books showcasing these talents and her work evokes the style of photomontage. She often obscures the identities of the people in the images she uses, either by cutting it out of the image, using paint or marker pen, or else covering it up with another image entirely. This generates a sense of anonymity that allows any individual to “recognise oneself in the story,” as her website states. She has quite a distinctive use of form and shapes, using strong lines to contrast or match two images together.

DE BLAUWER’S IMAGES-

IMAGE ANALYSIS-

I particularly like this image because of the contrast between nature and humans. The way de Blauwer used the clear lines of the trees to lead down into the people’s legs in the bottom half of the image is interesting and also slightly humorous, as it creates an impression of a sort-of half-man half-tree being. It is also a fairly sweet image, as it can be assumed from how close the people are standing that they are a couple. The fact that she took these images from magazines and newspapers speaks to her skill and artistic eye, and shows her dedication to creating interesting and engaging photographs that showcase the best parts of their original pieces.

https://www.katriendeblauwer.com/?nspl

winter:

• winter coats hanging up
• hats, scarves, gloves
• “cold” landscapes/scenes
• early morning mist
• bare trees, dead flowers/plants
• sombre portraits (parents)

spring/transition:

• flowers blooming
• signs of plant growth
• water running

summer:

• smiling candids (friends)
• sunsets/ golden hour
• blue skies, bright green
• strong vibrant colours

Robbie Lawrence is a photographer based in London with an extensive set of photo projects on his website.

http://robbie-lawrence.com/

A VOICE ABOVE THE LINN-

Robbie Lawrence first travelled to Linn Gardens (on the west coastline of Scotland) in 2-16, and met the gardener of over fifty years, botanist Jim Taggart. Jim utilised the environment’s particular climate to grow a variety of plants and flowers from all over the globe, and eventually when he became too old to actively go out and collect specimens he passed it on to his son Jamie to recover new plants. Unfortunately Jamie disappeared in the mountains of Vietnam and his body was only found years later, leading Jim to keep his garden as more of a memorial to his son than a true botanical garden. Robbie Lawrence made two visits to the Linn Gardens, and on the second he found out that Jim had died at the age of 84, leaving the gardens to become overgrown and wild. This distinction is clear to see in Lawrence’s images, as the physical differences between the landscapes have changed and an overbearing sense of abandonment.

The book conveys the cold and somewhat lonely climate of that area of Scotland juxtaposed against the clear love and dedication Jim Taggart had for his gardens, and in a way his son. The colours are all natural but mostly either dark or over-exposed and muted, and there is an overwhelming abundance of green in different shades and hues. I particularly like Lawrence’s use of light: soft and delicate, perhaps like the plants and flowers within the gardens.

L’ÉTERNITÉ ET UN JOUR-

This collection of portraits was part of a project for Revue Magazine, taking images of women from various generations in Israel. Revue Magazine’s website says he “captures the emotions of the women…revealing a beauty that is neither artificial nor compromised.”

Robbie Lawrence’s use of light here is also interesting to me as he plays with shadows to project different emotions and general feelings with the image. The women are all portrayed fairly naturally, and the photographs don’t feel invasive or intrusive, just observing. The fact they are in black and white is also intriguing, as there are other images within this project which are in full colour. This could have been done to remove and background distractions that colour would have provided and have the central focus be the women, or to make the images feel ageless and removed from any particular time period. Most of the women are facing the camera lens straight-on, looking directly down the lens into the viewer’s eyes, sometimes with the result of looking almost defiant.

For this photogame we were given a list of objects or places to photograph in our own particular style, using the environment around us.