When making my photobook I want to make sure the images flow into each other. I will make sure they do this by looking for things in common between images such as things that are inside the image, colour or textures. I will also look for contrasting attributes such as composition and the main subject of the image.

For the layout I want to create a balanced book which has double page spreads, singular images and pages with two individual images fitting the pages differently, some being full bleed and the rest with a white boarder.

Changing the page layouts:

When constructing the front cover I wanted to make a wrap around cover meaning the image will follow onto the back cover too. I also wanted to have the cover image in the middle page of the photobook to link it together.

I added the title and my name to the front cover of the photobook. I also added the coordinates of Greve de Lecq to the first page under the image which sets the scene for the entire book.

Adding texts:

Final book layout

Evaluation

I think that the photobook looks how I intended it to with different layouts and a clear flow of images throughout that link to each other. The images used are clear of where they are but also have different views of Greve De Lecq that is not photographed as much. The black and white contrasting the colour images works well with the look and message because the colour images include the old images from my childhood and black and white is often linked to the idea of old times which links to my project about re-visiting places I visited as a child and seeing things from a different perspective.

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This shoot consisted of four different frames to produce four final edited images. Here is the contact sheet from the shoot:

Editing

In the style of Paul M Smith, I edited these images similarly to the other tableaux photo shoots I have done so far, creating a washed, grainy film look to the final image.

Similarly to the previous shoots, I took multiple photographs of the same frame with the same subject in multiple different positions in the shot. I used the same process and stages of editing as before too:

Selection

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Layering and Blending

Final Edits

I repeated this process for another three sets of images from the shoot to produce these final images:

Here are my final edited photographic responses for Paul M Smith (the editing process is in later blog posts)

How do archives function as repositories of knowledge? 

Archives are fundamental to humans’ culture as a connection to past, present and future. As philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it!” They are repositories of knowledge historic documents and photographs which are stored in archives are, themselves, knowledge. 

In the modern day, pretty much everyone has an archive available to them in the form of a phone. These phones have made photography incredibly accessible for the ordinary person. By doing this, photographs have become less permanent and significant in contrast to photos from 100 years ago when barely any were taken, and they were treated as irreplaceable and treasured by those who kept them. In the digital age photos are just not seen as important, and often are not kept very long, deleted soon after being taken. In an era of cancel culture, social media has become an archive filled with images and messages that could, with a little digging, make or break a person’s career. The Société Jersiaise, founded in 1873 is a learned society with a focus on archaeology, providing efforts to preserve the islands heritage and identity. Their archives contain over 125,000 photographic images ranging as far back as the beginning of modern photographic history in the 1840s. In recent years, the group has led the excavation of early human and mammoth remains at la Cotte de st brelade which has allowed a greater understanding of the islands geographical past as well as its previous proximity to France 250,000 years ago. This archive is beneficial to the islands cultural heritage as the archive holds many jèrriais language documents, a language that is quickly becoming extinct. It could be argued that the elitist nature of membership only clubs such as The Société Jersiaise inhibit the sharing of knowledge and disregard the working class as the cost of membership to the club for an ordinary applicant is an annual fee of £60 which many everyday people cannot afford. In comparison the British government in a move to increase education made virtually all museum entry free, relying on donations and merchandise sales but mainly their government funding to stay active. This instance illustrates the detriment of privatisation of educative resources.

The oldest physical archive in human history is the Library of Ashurbanipal which was built in the 7th century BC and contains over 30,000 clay tablets, which includes the Epic of Gilgamesh, a historically significant poem from ancient Mesopotamia which is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and later influenced Homer’s own epics. Both the library and poem help to educate contemporary society, as The Epic of Gilgamesh is though to prove the great flood recorded in the book of Genesis. The oldest artefact discovered are the Lomekwi stone tools from Kenya which are 3.3 million years old and teach us the culture and lifestyle of our early ancestors.

Time capsules have been a means for depositing knowledge to share with the future for hundreds of years, being some of the most basic and rudimentary archives, available to all sorts of people. In 1977 Voyager 1 was sent on a never-ending mission to outer space with an phonographic record dubbed the ‘Golden Record’ which was inscription with diagrams to help extra-terrestrial lifeforms decipher it. The record contains a range of images, music, sounds and greetings to educate space farers about the humble human. Another example of time capsules and their use as archives is the Crypt of Civilisation which was built between 1937-40. The Crypt contains seeds, a typewriter and children’s toys as well as a toy gollywog among other objects to act as a microcosm for the 20th century. The brains behind the project were university founder Thornwell Jacobs who was inspired by the excavation of ancient Egyptian tombs and wanted to create a similar experience for future generations to help them understand society in the 1900s. The crypt is impenetrable and is set to open in the year 8113 A.D, 6000 years after it was built. It could be argued that ventures like this are pointless and that the funds dedicated to them would be better off helping people, especially in America where healthcare is a privilege and not a right however projects such as the ones mentions throughout this essay are vital to the ontogeny of the human race. Through the documentation of the past we learn from mistakes and successes which allow us to advance as a society.

Gallery of Final Prints

I took some of my final images from another shoot and put them into a virtual gallery layout. I chose images that have similar tones so they work together.

I started by placing the images into the virtual gallery as seen below.

I then placed the images accordingly and angled them so that they look like they are actually in the gallery. I then applied blending options such as bevel and emboss and drop shadow to make them have depth and look 3d. I applied the same amount of these blending options to each image so they look the same.

Below is my final gallery layout with the images placed with a 3d depth look to them. I like the way it turned out and I think it shows what the images will look like in real life and also if the images would work with each other.

For this project i have decided to create a photobook relating to Jersey Identity involving seascapes. Firstly i will be designing my photobook in Adobe Lightroom. I will be aiming to include roughly 50-80 images of Jerseys coastal areas, bays, and out to oceans horizons etc. My photoshoots will be based around the west coast of Jersey during the hours of dusk and dawn and occasionally midday depending on the light source.

During the rainy days of march, i took a quick photoshoot midday in a range of areas down st ouens bay. Firstly i will use these images to create a draft photobook to inspire my ideas when completing my final shoots. I opened these image in lightroom and took a few of the best ones to make up a book…

With the tided being out when the photoshoot took place, I will be needing to revisit the same areas with the tide being in to capture more detailed images of seascapes. I then selected the best images I wanted to edit in “develop” and put them in a separate folder to use when finishing of the final book.

here is a final look at how the final layout of my photobook will look like…

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