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…

In the end I had two zines focusing on similar themes of family. Some images were shared by both zines as they followed the same central device of community but both end results being very different.

This was the first zine I made. Although I liked how the candid photos provided an intimate insight into family dynamics at family gatherings and dinners, I felt that they seemed to clumsy and not as put together as I would have liked as I also refrained from editing them too much which made the photos seem too amateur, which perhaps considering the nature and context of the concept of the zine is on brand. To amend this I remade the zine with more polished images and more of a plan on how to layout the images to create better syntagma.

Out of both zines this is my favourite. It is more polished than the first and is realistically better for a newspaper than a zine which is why I used it as my draft for our class island identity newspaper project. This project has been beneficial in educating me on my own family’s history, as well as teaching me new skills on media software such as InDesign.

Virtual Gallery

Below are the images I am using for the photobook. Most of these are old family photos from my grandmother and mum and dad. There are also some recreations of old family photos at the end and some title pages including the front and back covers.

Write a book specification and describe in detail what your book will be about in terms of narrative, concept and design with reference to the same elements of bookmaking as above.

Narrative: What is your story?
Describe in:3 words

My Family Story

A sentence

Where my family comes from and who came before me

A paragraph

I want to find out about where I came from and who came before me. I was never able to make many memories with my grandfathers from both my Dad’s and Mum’s side of the family. I want to get an idea of who they were and get to know them through the images I find.

Design: Consider the following

How you want your book to look and feel

I want it to be dull on the outside but colourful on the inside. I want it to feel like a hard back photobook

Paper and ink

I want the ink and paper to be faded so it has a very retro album look. I want it to look like an album that was made years before

Format, size and orientation

I want it to be an A4 size and portrait orientation

Binding and cover

I want the cover to have an image of the negatives that my family photos were developed with

Title 

Decouverte Du Moi. My family has French heritage so I decided to name it something French which translates to discovering myself

Design and layout

Single full bleed images

Single images non full bleed with white border

Editing and sequencing

I want to sequence the images like a family time line from the first images I have of my great grand parents to my parents and me.

Images and text

Above is the front and back cover of my photo book. To make it, I used the title Decouverte Du Moi and included my name and title again on the spine of the book. The covers are made up of all of the dates from the photos I used in the photo book. I added a light yellow filter to allow the dates to be seen clearly.

Above is the finalised layout of my photo book with the additions of the few recreations of images that I have made. I have experimented with different layouts of pages for example, instead of two photos just next to each other, I put one photo bigger than the other below or above the other one. I think this looks better than the draft I had before.

Above is my first recreation that I finished. I recreated an image of my uncle when he was a baby next to a car. It is not an exact copy however I wouldn’t want it to be a replica as I want the images to be inspirited recreations rather than replicas.

The next inspirited recreation was an image of my mum and uncle on the hood of a car. I recreated it in front of my uncles house as the original was taken in front of my great uncles house. I used my mums car in the image and I think it is a good outcome.

The last recreation is of an image of my uncle and mum when they were children. The image has a blue/ grey colour to it so I applied a colour scheme to the image in photoshop to make it more accurate. I cropped the image and I think it is another good outcome.

Above are some examples of different layouts for photos to make the pages look more exciting versus two photos next to each other.

Outcome

The outcome from the photo book project is a book which reflects me and my family. It shows moments from my family’s history in which happy moments have been made, as well as sad moments. From the best to the worst moments family carries on and i believe that shows a real power to do with photography as a way of recording moments as well as how together, family is strong and overcomes the toughest of challenges.

The images seen on the pages of this newspaper supplement are extracted from a variety of projects and final outcomes produced over a two-year academic programme of study by a group of A-Level photography students at Hautlieu School. In their final year the themes of Identity and Community offered a specific focus and through a series of creative challenges students developed a body of work that were inspired, partly from visiting heritage institutions to learn about aspects of Jersey’s unique history of immigration and exploring migrant communities and neighbourhoods in St Helier in a series of photo-walks. In the classroom additional inspiration was provided from workshops on NFTs (non-fungible token) and digital art, embroidery and textile art, animation and film-making, zine and photobook design led by professional artists, designers and teachers.

As part of the research and contextual studies students were asked to engage with some of the key questions raised by the Government of Jersey’s Island Identity project and explore through their own photographic studies how they interpret and identify distinctive qualities of island life. What can we learn from looking at a set of photographs produced by young islanders? At first sight they show us a seemingly random set of images of places, people and objects – some familiar, others surprising. On closer inspection each image is a visual sign and also a conundrum. For example, a fish stuffed in a plastic bottle may ask us to consider more closely our marine environment, commercial fishing or food consumption. As a combined sequence of images they represent different views that in many ways comment on a wider discussion on some of the primary objectives explored in the Island Identity project, such as ‘how we see ourselves’ and ‘how others see us.’

The newspaper was kindly sponsored by Deputy Carolyn Labey, Minister for International Development and Assistant Chief Minister who in her foreword shares her personal thoughts on what makes Jersey special to her in context of the Island Identity project led by her department. She says, ‘identity involves searching our soul, engaging with difficult issues, and asking not only who we are, but how others see us and what a vision for the future might look like. The perspective of students and young people in this debate is critical. Identity is a broad and far-reaching concept, one unique to all of us. This collection of images recognises both our differences and our commonalties. These times may be uncertain, but in my view the topic – ‘what Jersey means to you’ – is a fundamentally optimistic and forward-looking one.’

The Identity and Community newspaper is the fourth supplement produced in collaboration between Hautlieu School Photography Department and Jersey Evening Post. In 2018 the first issue was The Future of St Helier and last year the themes of Love & Rebellion explored experiences of isolation and lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. Photographer and teacher Martin Toft, comments: ‘The question of ‘what makes Jersey special’ matters a great deal to every islander and as visual signs, the images printed on these pages are an attempt – not so much to provide answers – but rather asking questions about the essence of this island we call home, and how it actively will overcome current challenges in shaping a prosperous future for all.’

Evaluation

With my 2 photographs of the paper bag and the lighter in the sand they were both influenced by Anthropocene and the island identity. The paper bag photograph was a reflection of my identity and the connection I have with Anthropocene of the island especially the littering of fast food packaging such as McDonalds. With the other image of the beach it shows an overlay of the beautiful views this island presents with a contrast of how people treat it with disrespect. These photographs become a representation of the hidden truth and how instead of it being hidden in the photographs they are the main focus of it.

For this photoshoot I have decided to base part of my work on Nick Hannes as I feel that his set of images ‘garden of delight’ may show a clear and strong effect on ones opinions on the way in which different lifestyles; as Nick Hannes captured people doing their daily activities which shows the different ways in which people live in the community. To some extent I feel that Nick Hannes work has a powerful meaning to his viewers as each photograph he has taken is very different with a different meaning behind the photo.

My best photos from shoot 1 –

I feel that these are my best images at they clarity reflect the lifestyle in which someone who lives in Dubai may have. Additionally I also enjoy that these set of photographs all have specific connections and relations throughout. Nick Hannes work inspired my work as his worked helped develop my ideas and thoughts.

My Best Photos from shoot 2 –

These photos completely juxtapose the other images in which I took as they show that in Dubai although it can seem that there’s not much poverty due to the fancy cars you see, skyscrapers as well as numerous other shopping malls. These photos reflect a different community to the other photo shoot as they show different cultures as well as what one may call the “traditional Dubai’ / “The Old Town”.

Overall I feel that this photoshoot went significantly well as I manneged to explore different communities in which Dubai has as well as portray `Nick Hannes ideas. I decided to experiment to see if these photos would look better in black and white; however I felt that that was not the case because you couldn’t see the main details of the photographs as well as the different contrasts and tones throughout.

After putting together these photos I decided that there was not enough variety and although I really wanted to include the archival documents and photographs, they did not seem to fit in. To combat this issue I created a montage based on the portrait of my grandmother with a bricolage of her family photos and her own grandmothers immigration papers and documents.

Using photoshop and the object selection tool I took key components from the archival subjects and pasted them over the initial portrait of my grandmother which I edited into black and white with a sepia wash to fit within the zeitgeist of the time period the other images came from. I replaced my grandmothers’ head with her grandmothers and scattered images from family weddings to create an image of unity and fit the prompt of identity as family is an important aspect of identity. To further stick to this identity prompt I used the typography from my great-great grandmothers certificate of registration that was taken from her alien identity card on her arrival from France to Jersey. The letters were severely damaged sue to being over a century old so I had to fix them on photoshop using the spot healing brush as well as redrawing some of the letters utilising the eyedropper and brush tool.

To re-establish the connection between family I pasted in the signature from the identity card. I intended to make the writing lighter and have it blend in more but was unable to do so, instead keeping it bold to make the family connection stronger. To create a link between the old and young identities of my grandmother, I included a photo of her as a child on her shoulder to show the importance of sticking to your roots, this is a very important message for my grandmother who grew up in abstract poverty raising her younger siblings and still works hard to take care of her family

As many of my projects are connected with the subtopic of food I decided to continue that topic of study for my segment in the newspaper using a collection of photographs taken for previous projects. To achieve this I used InDesign, which I had previously used in my Zine project and set to work curating my favourite images to present my work over the last year. I used a mix of full bleed spreads as well as juxtaposition sots which include my great great grandmothers alien identity card contrasted by a portrait of my grandmother. I edited my photos on light room with a range of black and white and others with cinematic and vintage filters to create deep meaningful colours and imagery relating to vintage cookery books. Initially, when searching for my photos I realised that a vast majority were compressed low quality images so had to do further searching to find the raw images on my SD card to ensure the photos would be high quality with minimum pixilation and blurriness.

After putting together these photos I decided that there was not enough variety and although I really wanted to include the archival documents and photographs, they did not seem to fit in. To combat this issue I created a montage based on the portrait of my grandmother with a bricolage of her family photos and her own grandmothers immigration papers and documents.

I designed the layout for my first zine by matching silhouetted shapes unconventionally, The photos contrasting between portraits and landscapes taken in town between candid’s taken at a family dinner. With the second zine I followed a less conceptual idea with all photos being centred around the family and the only photographs not on a family member being archival documents of family members and a platter of seafood which I used to represent the central theme of food that brought my family together.