Final images

To recreate Troy Paiva’s style I used two continuous lights and added a grid and coloured gels to them. The grid allowed me to narrow the light so that it only lights specific part of the objects I wanted. The colours gels allowed me to add contrasting warm and cool colours just like Troy Paiva does. The camera was set to a very slow shutter speed of between 30 seconds and 8 seconds of exposure time. Since we where shooting in the dark this permitted some ambient light to get sucked in to the exposure. As I moved from the location to location, I had to change the shutter speed to adapt to the ambient environment and in some shots I decided to use flash light rather than continuous light. This helped to isolate the subjects. Off course the camera was always on a tripod. This is very important for slow exposures.

photo that I chose:

The three first pictures are from the same shoot ”Domestic waste”. Each of those three pictures presents different waste. The image I especially like is the first one the ”McDonalds rubbish” because it makes you question how something that is loved by young, old people can be very bad for the environment and pollutes our planet. Those packaging can be found everywhere like on street floors or the beach … But what if we took the packaging of our favourite fast food and turned it into an inspiration from a 17th century painting. Is like what Mat Collishaw or Krista van der Niet does. Let’s convert our waste into art!

The second picture I especially like is the third one since
we can see a place that use to be used, now completely abandoned. The colours and patterns of the floors let us guess from what period the hotel was. We can see the unused chairs left on the tables, rubbish everywhere the carpet is dirty… and all this makes me think about what this room was for before, why is it no longer used. The only thing left now are the memories. The last two photos are from my second shoot ”Ingrained in nature”. This shoot had a different meaning for me since I wanted to represent the fight that nature must wage against an anthropogenic element, in the end nature tries to adapt to it and grows up despite everything. The building is hidden in nature,
and its colours are the same as the forest: brown, green, yellow, blue

Review and Reflection

I like the finals results of my photos I think I managed to interpret what I wanted to show. In the first controlled conditions I did, I was a bit disappointed because I didn’t focus on little details because I was not well organized in terms of time. But in this controlled conditions I got better organized and I managed to put the details I wanted like well place the objects, change them, transform them and I also explored more in my idea than the last time. Another thing I had to improve in my last controlled conditions was lighting and sincerely I think it’s something that I handled well in this theme.

In general I like to explore with colours in my work and specifically for this theme I have used a lot of colour. Over the years the meaning of colours has evolved and depending on the sociocultural context and other factors such as age or gender, they are capable of evoking one or more sensations. The most curious thing is that, despite its long history, it is still an area in which much remains to be discovered.

Colour Theory/History

Colour theory is a set of principles for choosing the best colour combinations. This harmonious relationship of colour can be represented visually with what we know as a colour wheel. Within the colour wheel there are two ranges of colours, warm (expressing joy, passion or enthusiasm) and cold (expressing relaxation, success or professionalism).

To understand how colours affect us we must be clear about these basic concepts. We must keep in mind that when photography was born (1839) everything was in black and white, so the first photographers could not count on color as an ally to build their compositions. They had no choice but to focus on other aspects such as light, lines or textures to make photos stand out more among them. From 1935 on, the first color slide film (Kodachrome) began to be used and that opened up a whole world of possibilities. Modern photographers could now show a more realistic representation of a scene and with colors similar to those seen through the human eye. Although color photography would also have another purpose, because photographers were going to find a new way to attract attention and add impact to their images

Todd Hido

The majority of Todd Hido’s photos of rural scenes are taken during single, lengthy drives. The principle subject of his work is the nature of normal and counterfeit light in the American scene, as in reflected sunrays or the enlightenment of a TV pouring from a mysterious window. Todd Hido use a lot of cold colours that gives you the feeling of isolation and abandonment.

Plan

What: Soil pollution: The most common type of pollution caused by household waste, industrial waste and agriculture. Knowing the causes of pollution on earth will require us to be a better guardian of the world that we are living on. #

Why: On this shoot i decided to focus on the domestic waste left behind because i want to make people aware of the waste that they leave and is contantly causing damage in our planet.

When: Like Troy Paiva, I chose to do this shoot in the evening. Troy Paiva takes pictures around the evening, using openings of a few minutes to catch the discernible time entry on a lonely edge.

Where: I chose to shoot in a place that is derelict and that represents the things that have been left behind because they no longer have or can find any utility.

Contact Sheets

My First Selection

Comparison

Both of the images let you guess that they are taken in the evening because the colours effect are more efficient on the image and there’s use of flash. The lights are obviously artificial lights since they are colours effects. I decided to use strong colours (blue / red) while Troy Paiva use lighter colours (pink / purple) which have less impact on objects. In Troy Paiva’s photography purple is the dominant colour and in mine is red. The tones are almost the same in both of them we can dark parts around the objects that’s what makes them stand out however mine shadows are darkest than in Paiva’s image. The lightest parts are on the objects. This contrast creates a mysterious atmosphere on both of them. We can see on both of the images different geometric shapes like the tv, table and some organic shapes like the curtain, the waste… The object that can be found in the two photos is the old tv who is not from this generation however Troy Paiva’s tv looks more old and damaged. On the image of Troy Paiva the photo is taken from further away so the Tv is in foreground on the middle and the lights are exposed on the background this creates a lot of space on the image while I decided to zoom in so that the TV is not the main object on the foreground but also the waste and the lights are on the objects
as my image is taken from very close and the objects are stacked on top of each other there is no space.

Plan

What: This shoot represents the view of abandoned places how they are merge with nature, and how nature can always find the way to fight and continue growing .
When: I decided to do the shoot in the middle of the day to full appreciate nature in all its glory.
Why: As in my last shoot, Im trying to make aware of the damage we are doing to the planet and especially show how nature is wise and we dont know how to respect it.

Contact Sheets

First Selection

Comparison

Both of the images are taken from the outside so there’s use of natural lights, the light is soft. The main thing on the two images are the buildings covered in green, the nature that continues to grow on these buildings. The shapes are not the same, Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre have geometric shapes on their image since the building is a repetitive pattern of rectangles mine on the other hand there more organic shapes since the rocks on the building are curvy. However in my picture, the contrast between the lights and the shadow on the building create straight edged so geometric shapes. In Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre’s image we can see shade in the building which creates depth and creates more space. There’s also negative space above the building since the photographers decided to take picture of the sky as well on the contrary of my picture in which we do not find a lot of negative space. On both of the images we can find to types of texture one soft (plants) and the other as strong as a rock we can recognize these textures by the soft lines on the plants while the buildings and the stones have stronger lines. The colour pallets are roughly the same we find grey, different types of green, blue, brown, yellow…

Test 1 b/w

Test 2 Blur

I wanted to edit my photos to explore new ideas and meanings. To create a story between humans and nature. For that I used photoshop. I decided to use different special effects like black and white, blur… For the first picture I used the lasso tool to select the middle after that I inversed to select only the outside part of the it . I choose to put the outside in black and white because I wanted to give an more sad atmosphere to it. I highlighted the objects to show the waste. For the second picture I decided to use the lasso tool again to have two parts one that is full of rubbish and the other that is clean. To create the part full of waste I cut out parts of chairs from another photos then I pasted them on my image. With these effects I want to show a side that we could have if we do not pay attention to what surrounds us. The two tests represent the waste that we live with. For the third one I decided to do something simpler I use a picture from my second shoot because it had more nature to it. I just use the blur tool to demonstrate the nature vanishing bit by bit.