For this project I wanted to experiment with the editing for some of my images, inspired by the style of Vasantha Yogananthan, who has his film pictures hand painted. They use unrealistically pastel colours to create Pictorialist inspired images.

For these images I tried to take inspiration from the work of Vasantha Yogananthan and colour these using photoshop, making the original image a black and white multiply layer and then placing my chosen colours underneath. For the images above, I did not spend very long on them and struggled to get clean lines and a nice colour scheme.

Because of how messy they looked, placed a blur filter over them to try to make the colours mix together a bit nicer but I still did not quite like the result.

For my next attempt I used a simpler image and referenced the colours of the original to try to make it more accurate. I like this a lot more as it looks a lot neater.

For my next experiment, I took an image from my parents’ wedding and placed a gradient over my mum, I really like the contrast between the colour and monochrome.

This decision was inspired by some of the images in Yogananthan’s last photobook called Amma, where figures are painted over with bright colours.

Photoshoot contact sheets

This was the first photoshoot I did, I wanted to create a very feminine photoshoot which showed interests of my group through things such as posters. I conducted this shoot in December on a winters day, the light was quite dark so I did use artificial lighting. I asked my friends to act as if I wasn’t there and to do things which they would normally do.

This shoot I did after a night out, i snapped photos of my friends as they were in conversation to try and attempt an authentic shoot. I decided to take images of this gathering as i feel it was a good representation of teenage life, and gave an authentic inside perspective of a teenager with their friends.

I began using the flag tool to select my favourite images. Doing this, i selected any images which i liked and thought were suitable for my project with a white flag. I then used a black flag to select the images that weren’t suitable or effective e.g blurry images, images where the subject wasn’t in frame and images which i felt didn’t hold much impact.

I then went through with the star tool to narrow them down, 5 stars for yes, 1 star for no. I ruled out which images were my favourite by using the XY feature, this was especially helpful on images that were similar and i needed to chose between the two.

To start off, I selected my favourite images from my 3 photoshoots and put them in a new folder in Lightroom to create my photobook. All the images I selected were edited previously after their respective photoshoots and I had 62 photographs overall, and my book once finished consisted of 42 pages and I used around 40-50 of the photographs which I selected for the book. I decided not to use certain images as I could not find anywhere for them to fit into the book, and they did not match the style of the book too well.

Complete photobook

I decided to predominantly use black and white images for my photobook apart from the cover and a couple images within the book, I chose to do this because it creates a focus on the subject within the photograph and not anywhere else due to the lack of colour, I also believe that it makes the images look much more eye-catching and effective. I did not want to add a title for my book, as I want people who look at it to come to their own conclusion about what the book is about instead of being told by a title. I used a lot of double page spreads in the book as well as some juxtaposition to add some variety to the book and help with the narrative of the book. As well as this, I put photos on pages in a variety of different layouts and sizes to make the book much less repetitive as well as including photographs of people instead of just all skateboarding photos. Overall I believe that I did very well on this photobook project.

---

Images i’m working with

---

---

The goal for these photoshoots was to come out with some images similar to those of Hiroshimo as discussed in previous blog post where I showed my first attempts at creating these images.

---

I have been experimenting with colour grading and filtering with this set of images as some of the images look a lot cleaner in monochrome, and some of Hiroshimo’s images are black and white too.

While Hiroshimos work is a collection of images of the sea/sky horizon I wanted to include some elements related to Jersey such as rocks, buoys, piers, boats etc.

I plane to arrange these images in a 2 page spread grid in my photobook with all the horizons level.

---

Final Images

---

My photobook contained over 40 images ranging from photos of the beach, rocks, landscape and history. Shown below are some of my favourite images throughout my rock project. All images below have been used in my photobook layout.

Photobook Preparation:

To begin our main mock preparation, we researched and deconstructed photobooks to help further understand how to create a good book. I looked deep into a photobook named ‘Beyond Here Is Nothing’, which taught me how to construct a book and write a good essay.

Leading up to our mock exam, we did many different photo shoots and small projects to be prepared for our essay and photobook. We went to La Hocq, L’Etacq and many other places. I created a photo-zine which is similar to my final photo book.

Also, we made 3d sculptures using foam board and paper to present some of our images from the My Rock project. This gave me some inspiration about what images can be used in my photobook.

To help with writing my essay I was tasked to write an essay on photo archives. I believe this was very useful for me because it taught be essay techniques and structure that was needed when writing our recent essay.

Project Evaluation:

Overall, I am very happy with hoe my project has turned out. I really like the way my photobook displays both L’Etacq and La Hocq’ beaches in a layout that suits me best. However, next time I will definitely make sure that I go on photo shoots relating to my essay, as for this project I didn’t gather any images leading up to the exam, because of that I had to use photos from past projects to create my book.

What went well:

I believe my overall editing process has gone very successfully when linked towards the layout of my photobook. Also, I think that my essay was written in a quality manner writing over 2000 words. My use of image selection has very much improved since our last mock exam by choosing images that are much more useful and related to the topic.

How can I improve:

I defiantly could’ve went on many photo shoots that linked towards the topic of my essay ‘Youth Culture’ rather than having to use past images of rocks and beaches. Also, next time I create a photobook I need to gain more images that could be used in the book due to this time I only had around 50 useful images when next time I want to gain at least 100.

The aim of my project is to show two photos in the same spot with the tide in and out.

I started by selecting my images by using the pick/reject tool in Lightroom.

This was useful for me because I could see which images to use for my work.

Here I am using the box draw tool to only adjust the settings on one part of the image. This is particularly useful when taking seascapes because of how much the sea and sky contrast, so to fix that I changed the exposure for only part of the image.

In Lightroom I also used the crop tool and the automatic transformation tool to line up the horizons in both photos so they looked the most similar:

Before:

Process:

After:

Photography: Personal Study Essay 

Question: In what ways can photography capture being Portuguese in Jersey and the sense of belonging? _________________________________________________________________________________ 

Jersey to me acts like a tutorial level in a video game; a safe, closed off area that allows me to learn and develop skills before I move on to the real world when I am ready. I value this idea as it is quite comforting at times to know that I have a place to explore with all kinds of people, however, I often find myself feeling quite insignificant due to the isolation that being on an island brings which is sometimes exaggerated due to the fact that I am Portuguese living on a British island. The disconnection from both the Portuguese culture and Jersey’s culture leaves me in an awkward position as I find that I am too Portuguese for the English people and too English for the Portuguese people. I would like to explore the Portuguese experience in Jersey whilst touching on the topic of mental health as it is something I have first-hand experience in and feel as though I could fully delve into, including both the positive and negatives rather than sugar-coating it, which is why I’ll be exploring Daniel W. Coburn and Dianna Markosian’s work on their experiences with family.  

For this project, I’ll be using a mix of snapshot and documentary photography including some postmodern approaches to image making as I believe in order for me to successfully create a project that represents ‘the sense of belonging’ in regard to culture, I’ll need to explore the realistic aspect of my project, capturing images of how life is for myself and my family in our day to day lives. I’ll be rejecting the idea of an objective cultural experience through the use of text – collaborating with my parents to get in depth details on their experiences in Jersey and attempting to capture more complex and creative images exploring stereotypes that people often use against Portuguese people. Alongside that, I’ll be looking at photography through a historical perspective and its important links to social sciences, specifically anthropology and ethnography. I’ll be using a digital camera throughout my project along with a mix of older images from my parents in order to help me achieve my goals which will create a point of comparison between what their lives were like pre-Jersey up until today. 

I’d like to begin by exploring the word ‘belonging’ both what it means and its implications. Belonging is often described as a feeling of security and acceptance, comfortably being able to exist within a space without fearing social rejection or being outcasted which I believe links with photography due to how the definition of ‘the sense of belonging’ is subjective. Various individuals can have different ideas and interpretations of the phrase which can include both positive and negative connotations, making it an interesting feeling to explore, especially photographically as it has no limits, allowing for a more experimental approach to taking images.  

Photography, historically, has links to various racist and sexist ideologies such as believing that the white man is the ‘ideal’ and ‘most true’ form of human due to colonisation, Peter Hamilton uses the Darwinist evolutionary theory to explain this as ‘what was considered “superior” the look and shape of the Western European face and body] was compared with what was considered ‘inferior’ [the look and shape of any other type of face and body]” (2001: 84-93). The book ‘Decolonising the camera’ by Mark Sealy [2019] examines how ‘Western photographic practise has been used as a tool for creating Eurocentric and violent visual regimes’ throughout the past, asking if the camera has been used as a “liberating device” or as an “oppressive weapon”. This is due to how photography ‘began to be used as the West explored and documented “the rest of the world”’ (Hamilton 2001: 85), dehumanising groups of people through images that have been described as ‘remarkably similar to those that Tagg identifies within a medical, educational and legal institutions’ (Sealy 2019:106). It has been noted that within these images the people are ‘photographed one by one, isolated in bright lighting and evenly lit shallow spaces’ [Edwards 1997: 56], implying through the use of the visuals that these people are being viewed as subhuman, which can be further seen through Huxley’s ‘recommended use of measuring rods which subjects were positioned’ (Edwards 1997; Hamilton 2001).  

My parents, despite trying to keep me in touch with our culture, often struggled to communicate with me growing up, despite English being our second language, as I found it to be my preferred language, which eventually led to me forgetting Portuguese altogether by the time I was 5. This affected my relationship with both my parents, especially with my dad. His job didn’t require him to speak English as much as my mum’s did, leaving a wall between us as neither knew how to talk to one another, often needing my mum’s presence in order to have a coherent conversation. Despite the fact that we lived together, we felt like strangers which is similar to American & Russian photographer Diana Markosian’s series ‘Inventing my father’ where she depicts her relationship with her father after not seeing him for almost 20 years, as she left without a goodbye at age 7. Throughout her series, she addresses how they viewed each other as strangers despite being family, focusing on the awkward tension between her 23-year-old self and her father and uses text alongside her photos to help express how they tried to rebuild their relationship. Her other series ‘Mornings (With You)’ is a more confrontative series on their relationship as she sets up the camera directly in front of the table both she and her father are seated at and takes raw images of them both together as they both reconnect. I believe her work links into my own due to how she explores her identity in terms of both her family and culture as she actively photographs her life and how the disconnect due to her moving as a child left her confused in her sense of belonging, stating ‘there was just this real desire, a real passion to expand my own sense of place, where I belonged – I didn’t know where I belonged’ (Markosian in an interview with NOWNESS 2021) which is what I myself aimed to capture within my project. 

Daniel W. Coburn is an American documentary photographer whom I believe also links into my project as his main focus is family. He uses his photography as a way to document his family which allows him to create a raw set of images rather than a stereotypical family photo album that only includes the positive aspects of their lives. In his series “Next of Kin”, he includes rough, mostly posed, images of his family behind the scenes exploring his family history in ‘parable of love, reverie, respect and quiet tragedy’ (Coburn 2012) which directly links into my project in terms of theme as I would like to take some candid images of both myself and my parents at times where we would not normally pose for images, capturing us in our day to day lives without creating the typical family photo album which Martha Langford argues is a performance, presenting a constructed version of the identity of its participants (Bull 2009). 

For my photoshoots, I began by taking some experimental self-portraits as I knew this project was personal to me and I wanted to start within my comfort zone – in my room. This way, I could explore my own identity without needing to expose my family to the camera before I was ready to. I used different types of lighting, poses, props to accentuate my facial expressions and emotions, trying to portray a sense of solitude. Throughout the shoot, I started to generate more ideas of where my project could go and was quickly ready to move out of my comfort zone and take day-to-day photographs of my mother as I knew it would be more difficult to capture my dad due to his work hours. This led me to going to my mum’s part-time job and capturing the environment, trying to peak at what part of her life was in providing for our family which was quite interesting, especially as she exposed her distaste for some of the company’s actions. The next shoot involved taking images of my mother at home, contrasting the environment from before, which allowed me to have some images of moments that wouldn’t typically be seen by others as they’re not classes as ‘special’ enough to capture. Next, I rephotographed some old images of my parents and other family members from when they lived in Madeira from a photo album that my parents had created as I knew I wanted to use them to create contrast within my project. I ended the photographing process by taking one final photoshoot of objects/areas around our flat in order to have proof that we’re people living our lives, adding a sense of normality to the project which I think helps to tie it together. 

In conclusion, Markosian and Coburn’s work used their own families to create their series’, emphasising the personal aspect of their images which in turn also helps to portray their feelings towards their cultures. Markosian’s work specifically focused on her father and how she lacked a sense of belonging due to her experiences within her culture and family which links into my work as I also used the lives of my parents alongside my own in order to portray the sense of belonging in regard to culture. Coburn, on the other hand, used his images to reject the idea of a typical family photo album, his work differing from Markosian’s as he embraced the idea of capturing the negative aspects of his family, going against the idea of performativity in terms of photography in favour of a more raw and realistic set of images. I also think Coburns work is similar to my own, despite the fact that his work doesn’t link into the sense of belonging, due to how he used rough images of his family like I did, exploring his family at different moments throughout out their lives which is what I did within my own project in order to create an unfiltered view into our family life. Although my work doesn’t represent everyone’s cultural experiences, I believe I’ve managed to capture how the sense of belonging can differ between individuals and help outsiders to understand how isolating it can be at times. 

__________________________________________________________________________________

Bibliography: 

Bull, S. (2010) Photography. Abingdon: Routledge, pp105-106 

Coburn, D. [2014] Next of Kin URL: https://www.danielwcoburn.com/next-of-kin Accessed on 08/02/23 

Edwards, E. [1997] Ordering Others: Photography, Anthropology and Taxonomies Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, pp.56 

Gov.je [2021] Population characteristics URL: https://www.gov.je/government/jerseyinfigures/population/pages/populationstatistics.aspx Accessed on 01/02/23 

Hamilton, P. [2001] Policing the Face Humphries/London: National Portrait Gallery, pp84-93 

Langford, M. [2001] Suspended Conversations: The Afterlife of Memory in Photographic Albums Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press 

Markosian, D. [2013] Inventing my father URL: https://www.dianamarkosian.com/father Accessed on 08/02/23 

Markosian, D. [2016] Mornings (With You) URL: https://www.dianamarkosian.com/mornings Accessed on 08/02/23 

Markosian, D. [2021] NOWNESS interview URL: Photographers in Focus: Diana Markosian on turning her family story into a soap opera Accessed 29/01/23  

Sealy, M. [2019] Decolonising the camera: Photography in Racial Time London: Lawrence & Wishart 

Virtual gallery link: https://www.artsteps.com/view/6364da4f84fb1fe866c22cc1/?currentUser

Gallery evaluation:

Overall, I think my gallery was produced with a good layout. I like the way the black frames mix in with the colour of the rocks and creates a contrast. I think the three photos of La Hocq tower shows a great sequence whilst contrasting against each other.

Narrative: What is your story?

• 3 words – Organic vs. Synthetic
• A sentence – A book detailing the conflict between the organic (natural) and synthetic (unnatural/man-made) elements of the modern world.
• A paragraph – The relationship between (conflict, co-existence, integration into…) the organic and synthetic, capturing the ways they combine and simultaneously oppose one another, creating an otherworldly and unnatural relationship. Using colour, shape as well as meanings behind each image to create links between the two in order to visualise them easier.

Design: Consider the following

• How you want your book to look and feel – I think a slightly rough-feeling book could work nicely with my project, as my book is meant to show the rough contrast between organic and synthetic. In terms of looks, my book will be, like most of my other work, on the colourful and vibrant side.
• Paper and ink – I think the ‘Premium Lustre’ paper that Blurb offers will be good for my photobook as it offers a good quality. I might experiment with black-coloured pages as it might fit nicely with the aesthetic of my images, especially the night photographs.
• Format, size and orientation – I will be using a portrait orientation, as it could be a good format to use as it will fit with the dimensions of my images better. My book will be 20 by 25 cm, which is the standard Blurb portrait sizing.

• Binding and cover – An Idea could be to place an image on the first page of the book and cut a hole out of the cover to reveal some of that image underneath (which I would like to contrast with the rest of the image), like a window.
• Structure and architecture – I think organising my images into a structure representing a day – night cycle could be effective, to do this I would make use of my photographs taken in the day at the start (or middle) and put my night photographs in at the end (or the start/end as I have two night photoshoots). I will organise my images based on shapes and colour as opposed to a linear narrative, as this will allow me to formulate the structure and layout of the page spreads much easier.
• Design and layout – I would like to use a range of double/single page spreads, along with some pages having 2 or 3 images on them at once. I will have ‘repeating’ page spreads – which have a similar pattern or meaning others.
• Editing and sequencing – I have edited my images to have as much colour as is reasonable, as well as some black and white images to create a juxtaposition. I will sequence the images in a way that juxtaposes the key themes of organic and synthetic (and perhaps night and day, which is an afterthought idea).
• Images and text – I will likely only include my images and the essay within the photobook, with no additional text or captions. This will allow the photobook to flow slightly better
• Title (This is subject to change) – Something along the lines of The Plastic Biotic – a juxtaposition between words representing my key ideas.

Moodboard of Ideas

Contact Sheets

These are the contact sheets for my archival photos that I will be using throughout my photobook. I have picked images that represent both sides of my family and ones that show where they are connected through my parents. There are also photos that show family friends that my parents met when they came over to Jersey, these people have become my family and I think that this is a good way to show how the relationships have developed over time.

Selection

I would like to use all of my archival photos in my book but for some (yellow) I will try and include them in collages as I don’t feel that they have the best quality or I don’t want them to be displayed one a page of their own. The other images (green) are the photos that will hold meaning on their own as they show links between friends and family which is what I am trying to portray throughout this photobook. I have also excluded one photo as I have made the decision to put that as my front cover as it is one of my favourite images out o the collection.

Collage Experimentation

For my cover and throughout the book I wish to use archival photos to experiment with to make different collages, below I will show some examples of me using different photos to play around with to eventually pick the one that I find the most fitting to be on my photobook.

Above are my first experiments with making a collage, I did one for both my mum and dad as I wasn’t to have a collage for both the front and back cover of my photobook. I started by creating a black background for my photos to be one as I felt that it would be more fitting for the images that I wanted to use. I then took a few images that show each of my parents and moved them onto this background, I found that for my mums collage as I used a portrait photo instead of landscape it was harder to place as there wouldn’t be a boarder around all of my photographs. After finishing these experimentations I didn’t like how they turned out against the background, I feel that it is to plain and contrasts with the images that I used.

Below is my second experimentation, instead of using a plain background I decided to use one the archival images of a city in Turkey which my parents frequented for holidays. I used similar images to the ones in my first experiment but I feel that they look better with this background and it also holds more of a story as it was a place that they loved as well as complimenting the photographs used. I will be using these collages as my front and back cover as I feel that they will grab someone’s attention as well as keeping a structured narrative.

Photoshop Experimentation

For my experimentation with photoshop I have used a few different techniques so achieve the results below. For the two portrait images I first used polygonal lasso tool to select the first layer of triangles around the photograph, I then went into adjustments and selected vibrance, this allowed be to increase both the saturation and vibrancy as this did not achieve the desired effect I also used the photo filter. This effect allowed be to chose a colour that can be adjusted whether I wanted it to be intense or mellow. I have also decided to use a gold metallic background to go with some of my images which I chose to pair with the line work.

Above I have some of my landscape images that I will be using in my photobook, I have displayed two styles of editing hat I will be using throughout my book, my third image is editing the same as the portrait photographs above. For my first image I had layered the original image on top of a gold metallic background, I wanted to use gold as I felt that it complimented both the red and white line work which will be shown in my different manipulations. I will be using the gold as a layering tool or as a way to remove someone from the photo but still have their silhouette. I felt that the gold will hold a uplifting vibe to the photographs, to achieve the adaptation in the first photo I used the polygonal lasso tool to pick out the individual after I then outlined the two after people featured in the photograph with the red paint brush tool. For my second and fourth images I have used the polygonal lasso tool to make the triangles around the original image, I then turned these triangles to black and white to contrast with the different colours that are in the original photographs. I like how the saturated colours in the images make the black and white shapes standout and more clear. I next out lined each triangle with the red line tool, this helps to make the photographs flow better together as they have something connecting each other. In both my second and fourth images I make a duplicate layer so that I was able to move my cut outs but still have the same photograph underneath, I think this adds the final edit as you can see what it looks like with and without colour.