Moodboard

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Ideas

In my zine, I am showing images from my Oregon trip. After some thinking, I have decided to do multiple zines, with one showing more objective, ‘touristy’ type images, mainly of landscapes and architecture. I then plan to do one or two other zines with my more personal photos, which document a more personal journey through Oregon and reflect my experience more intimately. If I was to do a third zine, it would include mostly portraits, but at the moment I am just planning to do two.

Story and Narrative

What is your story? Describe in 3 words:

New, isolated, connected

A sentence:

My experience of an entirely different culture for the first time as a teenager.

A paragraph:

My story is that of an 18 year old navigating a new country for the first time, experiencing culture shock, meeting new people and visiting new places. My story documents my personal experiences of my trip to the USA, but also more common, touristic images. My story features different ideas, such as life in rural America, documenting cliques, landscapes, and as well as more personal portraits and other images which tell a story of my own experience.

Narrative: How will you tell your story?

I will tell my story through two zines, each with different sides to my trip. Firstly, I will use first zine to tell my personal experiences of the more typical American experiences, for example the landscapes and citizens. I will also tell the story of some societal issues I saw for myself on my trip, such as the mistreatment of Nstive Amercians. These aspects are not necessarily directly linked to my personal experiences as much, but things linked directly to the America which I experienced, and its issues.

After experiencing these things, I decided to do my own research on the issues that I saw, to ensure I knew more about what I was documenting. Even though this research was not carried out before I took my images, I think it informs the making of my zines. My interest in societal issues in America was also sparked by a book I read in my English class in the US, which is mostly the reason I decided to include my images documenting native american culture in my zine. This book taught me about the experiences of teenagers of a completely different culture to my own, which I didn’t have much idea of before I came to the USA. This book influened my choice to make a second zine, of my more personal, teenage experiences of my trip. I like how I have decided t do this, as it means I can produce a more personal and thoughtful outcome. There is a memory attached to each one of my pictures from my zines, and I like this. After carrying out my photoshoots, and editing my images using Lightroom, I will make collections of my images ready for the two different zines. From there, I will place my images into the zine, experimenting with different placement ideas and layouts.

Selection process

After importing my images into lightroom, I separated all my images into subfolders of my Oregon trip for each photoshoot. It was important to organise my images like this as I had a lot of pictures – they were all very different photoshoots and having them separated made my selection process much easier.

Best images selection

After sorting out my contact sheets and categories for each set of images, I began to filter my images for each photoshoot to pick my best images. In lightroom I used the P and X tools for my best images and images I did not want to keep. I then went through them again, making a new subfolder for my best images, with colour coding, and a star rating: 4 stars (good image, one of my best) and 5 stars (one of my best images, important to include in my final outcome). I used different colour coding to filter different kinds of best images: green for rural landscapes, red for urban landscapes, and purple for portraits.

Urban Landscapes

Examples of my editing

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Rural Landscapes

Examples of my editing

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Portrait images

Examples of my editing

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Evaluation

Overall I think my editing was quite successful. I tried to show a range of different edits, both B and W and colour. My editing was made more successful by the light in some of my shoots. Particularly, in my urban shoot, the light was great which made my editing easier – I shot during the start of golden hour, which helped to create a softer light with less glare and overexposure.

In my shoot from the parade I dealt with a bit of overexposure which I think I managed to correct quite well using lightroom. I also found cropping a very useful tool, as quite a lot of my images needed compisitionally changing. Using the cropping tool as well as the rule of thirds helped me to make a lot of my images much more compositionally balanced. In a lot of my images, I tried to create edits with vibrant and rich colours. I normally like to edit with lots of grain and a faded look, but for these images I wanted to try a different look, more vibrant and saturated. I think I acheived this quite well, but some of my images were too oversaturated at first – I edited some of my images, particularly the ones from the parade, twice or three times to make sure I was happy with the overall image.

How do archives function as repositories of Knowledge?

Photographic archives are collections of photographs, which can be held by libraries or museums. These have long been essential tools for researchers and photographers. Photographs in a photographic archive may be created or bought together for a specific purpose or reason, or an individual or broader audience. For example, someone like a scholar, or researcher, may take photographs and assemble and preserve them for future research. This would then be a private archive. An archive may also be a creative or documentary record of one individual or firm such as a professional photographer’s archive, a scientific archive, or a news agency. Many private or commercial photographic archives have found their way into research institutions, such as libraries and museums.

“As the internet has begun to show, ‘Archive fever’ is a prevalent aspect of human behaviour, with everyone collecting something or other, either as objects or via photographs”

Archives, Networks and Narratives, David Bate

Many people, in fact most people, keep personal photographic archives. Things such as photo albums of family members, or even photo collections on mobile phones, can function as archives. Organising these by important dates, events or people, categories our knowledge and our memories of our own personal experiences and people we know, as well as how we feel about them. These images and collections could also provide others and society things about you: obvious things like where you’re from and your family, but also things like how you feel, your life experiences, and things you’re interested in. As the digital age advances, more and more personal archives online are readily available, such as on social media, or online galleries, which shows more of a readiness to share more about one’s life than before technology was so advanced. It also highlights increased freedom among society, especially freedom of expression, which can be seen through more creative photography and how society (in general) is more of contrasting.

Looking back from a modern perspective, some archival photographs could be seen to be boring, or uniteresting. I think in the ages of early photography, it was less common to produce informal, unposed images in comparison with today, and the thousands of ways to capture a subject. That poses the question of whether some archival images are good resprosities of knowledge, as they often seem to be posed, and seem very formal. It could be argued that they are not, and they only represent the “best” parts of a subject, or the part the photographer wanted to bring across. – However, this can also be argued with almost any picture today, due to the ability to manipulate what we know about something through a lens. It is therefore clear that this problem is not new, and not the fault of the ever increasing use of digital media, but can be seen in archival images also.

The Société Jersiaise, Jersey’s main historical society, with aims of the “Publication of Local History” and among other things “to found a library, mainly historical and archaeological” was established in 1873. It continued to grow through the century and realised its’ aim of opening a museum in 1877. With the practice and collecting of photography identified from the mid 1800s, collecting and photographic research continued from there. From there, interests in scientific and documentary records increased, and these patterns of development have continued to get stronger over more than 140 years. In the present day, the remarkable archive that is The Photographic Archive of Société Jersiase contains over 100,000 images dating from the mid 18-40s to the present day, and it is the main collection of Jersey based photographs from the ninenth and early twentieth century.

One key photographer that is important when thinking about Jersey’s photographic archives is Edwin Dale. He was born on the 3rd January 1882, and was first entered the world of photography afer entering the photography Eisteddford competition in 1913, for which he won four first prizes and two second prizes. He was not a full time photographer, and made a living running his father’s leather, boot and shoe shop at 63 New Street in St Helier. He had a passion for photography, and his preferred subjects to shoot were scenes of the harbour, churches, houses and country lanes. He also took intruigiung portraits of islanders at work. He had a love of motorcycles, and used this to travel around the island to take his images. Even though he is not considered the first Jersey photojournalist, he can be seen as one, after covering events such as the 1911 royal visit, and the lead up to world war one. Around 1914, roughly 14 of his photos were published as a series of postcards. – His work is considered among the most iconic images of the island from the early 20th century, which has been made into a collection within the Société Jersiase Photographic Archive.

Edwin’s images are crucial to Jersey’s photographic history and archive for a few reasons. They show the life of islander’s during and just before the first world war – this makes these images, part of the Photographic Archive, a repository of knowledge that is essential to understand the struggles of those before us on our small island. Not only that, his portraits also give us more information of fashion during the early 20th century, the mood of the island and its’ society, and the landscape, which has drastically changed in the last 100 or so years. Most of his images, except some portraits, appear unstaged. – This factor means that Edwin’s images within the archive can be seen to be good basis’ of knowledge, as they show an unbiased, “truthful” point of view of what he was photographing. This repository of knowledge helps to add to our understanding of Jersey’s past, and makes in easier for us to compare what life seemed to be like in the early 20th century wth Jersey’s society nowadays.

This image above is one of Edwin Dale’s. This is image is somewhat imformal, but still staged, which raises questions of the setting and year which it was taken in. I chose to analyse this image for this reason, as it makes the viewer question not only the actual image, the subject’s odd pose and the reasons for such, but also the reasons behind it – It is clear in this image how different the actual attitudes surrounding photography and its’ uses during the time are to the modern, fluid ideas of photography in the present day. The woman’s expression is firm, along with her rigid body. These two elements would have made more sense if the subject was in more of a conventional position, because of its’ seriousness. This put together with the strange pose in which the woman is posed is an odd combination. I think the strange nature of this image could suggest a slight playfullness to the image, almost hidden, as if it isn’t allowed. The seriousness of all of Edwin’s other images juxtaposed with this image creates a huge contrast – this is why archives are important. The contrast, and slightly weird nature would not have been noticed if it wasn’t for our access to photographic archives. Therefore, this images proves that photographic archives are great sources of knowledge for research and discovery, as well as comparison, to reach conclusions.

Overall, after reviewing and studying photographers important to Jersey’s photographic history and archives, I believe that archives mostly function very accurately as repositories of knowledge. They enable those in the present day to research and examine previous times in history. They can be used to examine the way society functioned at the time, how people felt, the fashion, as well as the landscape. However, as I have mentioned, it can be said that archives do not function accurately as repositories of knowledge – images within the archive sometimes are not telling the “truth” of a subject or place, and it is difficult to decipher what we know is correct and incorrect from some archival images. This makes it difficult to gether historical information and knowledge from the images. This problem is also prevalent in modern photography, with the controversial problem especially within photojournalism, of whether we can trust the information pictures give us. Overall, I think that as our society advances and we begin to reflect more and more on our past and compare it to our future, photographic archives, like the Photographic Archive of Société Jrersiase, will become more and more important as a source of knowledge and understanding for all.

My plan

As well as executing planned photoshoots, I plan to bring my camera with me on walks through town, to school and anywhere else I go. This will help me to capture (mainly) unstaged, everyday life in my images.

Photoshoot plans

	Lighting	Genre	Idea	Camera Setting
Photoshoot 1 – Rodeo and parade	Natural	Landscape and Portrait	Documentary, sport photography	Landscape, portrait, sport
Photoshoots 3 and 4 – football games	Natural, floodlight	Landscape and portrait	Sport, Documentary	Sport, portrait
Photoshoot 5 – Baker town and outskirts	Natural	Landscape	Documentary	Landscape
Photoshoot 6 and 7- hikes	Natural	Landscape	Landscape	Landscape, portrait
Photoshoot 8 – garden	Natural	Portrait	Portrait	Portrait

Photoshoot 1

Below are two of my contact sheets from the rodeo I went to while in the US.

In this photoshoot, I struggled a bit with different settings – I started off in landscape, which I initially thought would be better. I then realised, as I began to shoot, that the movement of the horses in the images was too blurred in this mode, even though the rest of the image was well in focus. I then decided to switch to sport mode for images that contained lots of movement – this enabled me to take lots of pictures quickly with minimal blurriness, and I think this helped me to capture high-movement images in the best way as I was able to select images from a large set and ensure my best images were of the highest quality I had.

Also in this photoshoot, I struggled to capture a lot of the action as my lens did not have a high enough zoom. I did not anticipate this, and in the future, I would have either tried to sit closer to the action or bring/use a lens with a higher zoom for situations like this. In my images, the composition is often too busy or not focused enough on one part of the image. Because of this issue, in my editing, I will have to utilise cropping quite a bit in order to make sure I still have balanced, exciting compositions.

Evaluation

In this shoot, I realised that it would have been ideal to have a zoom lens. I think I produced some good images but I think that the action and focal point in each image are lost due to the lack of zoom in each image.

Photoshoot 2 – Rodeo Parade

Below is a selection of my images from my photoshoot at the Rodeo Parade. I had a lot of images for this photoshoot so have only included certain contact sheets.

In this photoshoot, I was again shooting moving subjects, but not as fast as my first photoshoot. This enabled me to use portrait and landscape modes more effectively, depending on the subject. If my subject was a single person, or group of people and nothing else, I used portrait mode which helped me to capture detail in the faces of my subjects. When capturing multiple subjects as well as background and surroundings, I used landscape mode.

Due to the weather conditions on my day of shooting I experienced some quite annoying overexposure in my shoot. I tried to combat this by changing my ISO and shutter speed and shooting from different angles and positions. I will also need to fix this further in my editing I think.

Evaluation

Overall I think this photoshoot was one of the most successful from my trip, as I produced some images I really like that I think show a different part of American culture that I had not experienced before. Even with my problems with overexposure, I think this photoshoot was overall very successful and produced some good images for me.

Photoshoot 5 – Town and Surrounding Areas

Below are my contact sheets from my photoshoot of the town I stayed in, Baker City, and its’ surrounding area, Baker County.

When planning this photoshoot, I decided to shoot during the golden hour, early evening. This was because of the exposure issues I had in my previous shoots – I did not want to ruin my pictures and make the mistake of shooting at the wrong time of day. I think this really influenced the quality of my images for the better. I think the quality of the light made the shadows and shapes of buildings stand out more, and I’m glad I shot in the golden hour.

Evaluation

Overall I think this photoshoot was one of the more successful of my trip. I think my decision to shoot in the golden hour was a really good idea as it made the lighting much better than in some of my previous shoots from my trip away. Where I stayed on my trip the light tends to be very bright and glare-y during the height of the day, with no clouds, so shooting later on really helped this I think.

Photoshoots 6 and 7 – Hikes

Below are two of my contact sheets from both hikes I went on.

These shoots were not my best from my trip away – I don’t think they link necessarily link as well as I would like to my chosen artist studies, but I think the variation in my images is also good. Again, in this shoot, I wished I had a zoom lens to capture more detail in the mountains.

Evaluation

Overall, I think this shoot could have been improved by shooting at a different time of day to improve the lighting, as well as a zoom lens to help my pictures improve in terms of detail and composition.

Photoshoot 8 – Garden shoot

Below are my contact sheets from my photoshoot taken in the garden – this was my main portrait shoot.

This photoshoot was one of my favourites, and overall it was quite successful. It was unplanned, so I think this created better pictures, as they looked a bit less awkward and I much prefer this to my pictures looking super staged.

Evaluation

Overall, I really like this photoshoot. I think I shot at the right time of day, which helped me to achieve nice light in my images. I would have loved to have had my portrait lens when shooting, but as I was travelling I didn’t. Even without my portrait lens, the portrait mode on my camera worked well with the light when I was shooting so overall I’m happy.

Doug Dubois

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Doug DuBois, born in 1960, is an American photographer based in Syracuse, New York. He is an associate professor and department chair of Art Photography at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University. The bulk of DuBois’ photography is portraiture, and he is well known for photographs of intimate familial scenes. He creates re-imagined depictions of domestic spaces anticipated the transformations of family life among a “tidal wave of late-capitalist individualism and aspiration.” DuBois is a recipient of a 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship, and his work is in the collections of MoMA in New York, SFMOMA in San Francisco, LACMA and the Getty in Los Angeles, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

DuBois was born in Dearborn, Michigan and grew up in the suburban New Jersey community of Far Hills.  As a teenager, he began taking photographs with a rangefinder camera he found in his father’s closet. He has a younger sister Lise and a younger brother, the composer R. Luke DuBois, who appear often in his early photographs. In between his undergraduate and graduate educations, his father suffered a near-fatal fall from a commuter train and spent several years convalescing in the home, and DuBois documented this process as a “kind of emotional protection.”

All the days and nights

These family portraits formed the basis of a body of work surrounding his family that would continue for twenty-four years and eventually come to be published by Aperture as a photo book titled All the Days and Nights. The photographs in this series document his changing family: his father’s recovery from his injuries juxtaposed with the descent of his mother, his father’s sole caretaker, into the depths of depression and mental illness, the subsequent dissolution of his parent’s marriage, as well as the maturation of his brother and sister.

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Avella

DuBois’s interest in the family, both his and others, is also evident in a subsequent photo series, “Avella,” which chronicles life in the deindustrialized coal-mining town of Avella, Pennsylvania, where his father grew up. To learn about his family’s hometown DuBois would drive his grandmother around in his aunt’s car while she identified local landmarks and told stories, often taking pictures as they travelled. He documents the decay and blight of the town, but also the families which live in such an environment of insularity and lack of opportunity. The photographs challenge American “myths” surrounding upward economic mobility and question how American families survive amid economic uncertainty.

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My last day at seventeen

The themes of economic uncertainty and provincial life are likewise central to DuBois’ recent photo series, which was published as the book My Last Day at Seventeen. These photographs depict working-class teenagers in a housing estate in Cobh, County Cork, Ireland after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger economy as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. The series represents the anxiety inherent to the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and how the subjects’ anxiety regarding the future is mirrored by their economic uncertainty. Shot over five summers, the series presents an “endless summer” in which precariously-situated teenagers perform identities informed by an international popular visual culture but mediated through a local context.

“I’m not a social reformer. In shooting these pictures, I had no agenda. They might borrow from the rhetoric of documentary photography, but I’m not a documentary photographer or a photojournalist.” DuBois said that, instead, he found himself “working like a storyteller, creating something that was based in truth.” Sometimes, he explained, “I even gave the kids some direction, like one time when I asked one to jump up on a wall. That’s not journalism.”

An unexpected component of My Last Day at Seventeen, which appears between various sequences of its colour photos, is a series of brief story vignettes presented in comic-book form. Drawn by the Irish illustrator Patrick Lynch, they feature the recollections of an unidentified narrator who looks back at incidents in his young life against the backdrop of the collective life of the Russell Heights group. Other characters appear, too, including two young women who go to a downtown shop to look at baby carriages. One of them is pregnant, with a baby due soon but without the means, either alone or presumably with the man who fathered her child, to afford the costly pram she covets. On the train back home, the two friends sit in silence, as the pregnant woman rubs her swollen belly.

Similarly, DuBois said that almost as soon as he began getting to know his young subjects, he could sense some complex, overlapping strains of real-life drama that bound many of them and their families together. Inevitably it informed the spirit of his photos. “I wasn’t trying to make a book about Irish youth or even the young people of Cobh or Russell Heights per se,” he explained. “What I created was fiction, a lyrical story set in summer about a moment we all know, when you’re just about to take that first step and become an adult. I’m basking in that moment.” In My Last Day at Seventeen, that moment is at once bittersweet and urgent, languorous and daunting — a slow-moving, time-killing, endless summer, in which, at least until life’s seasons irrevocably change, one can dare to dream of remaining forever young.

DuBois carefully composes his compositions with supplementary lighting and uses either a medium format or a large format folding camera with a cloak. He does not consider his work to be documentary, he views each photo as a collaborative endeavour between artist and subject which is based on truth. DuBois will often stage or recreate photographs, sometimes even alluding to visual works which are not his own, and has borrowed the literary term “creative nonfiction” to describe his work.

This is one of Doug Dubois’ images from his “Avella” collection. The tones in this image are warm, with orange and green, as well as red as the most vibrant. This image is a little dark, especially in the corners – the top of the image’s corners are the darkest. This darkest around the image creates a natural vignette and makes the subject and white surroundings more vibrant. In my opinion, this image does use the rule of thirds: the subject is situated almost directly in the middle of the image, slightly to the right of the middle third. This helps to create a balanced composition. The windows above the subject also fall perfectly within the middle third, as well as the steps in the bottom middle third. To me, the natural leading lines in this image lead the eye from the bottom corners of the image, up, past the flower pots up the steps and ultimately to the focal point, the subject. There isn’t much noticeable contrast in this image, except for the contrast between the green steps with the white outside of the house. This creates a feeling of separation in the image between the steps, the outside world, and the house. Although subtle, this contrast could relate to the town – after doing some research on the town in which the photos are from in the “Avella” collection, I know that it is a poor, ex-mining town, in the country. The contrast in this image could relate to themes of separation or a feeling of difference from other parts of the area, hinting at the struggle of the population of Avella.

Doug Doubois’ influence on my work

I plan to take inspiration from mainly the “Avella” collection, as it ties in with a style of photography that I like, and it also links to the area which I’m photographing. Although it is not an ex-mining town, Baker and its’ surrounding areas face the same small town, and rural issues, with a similar community outlook and landscape. I think it will be interesting to compare my images taken in Baker with those of Doug Dubois’.

Robert Adams

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“I think if you placed me almost anywhere and gave me a camera you could return the next day to find me photographing. It helps me, more than anything I know, to find home.”

Robert Adams

Robert Adams is a photographer who has documented the extent and the limits of our damage to the American West, recording there, in over fifty books of pictures, both reasons to despair and to hope. “The goal,” he has said, “is to face facts but to find a basis for hope. To try for alchemy.” Adams grew up in New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Colorado, in each place enjoying the out-of-­doors, often in company with his father.

At age twenty-five, as a college English teacher with summers off, he learned photography, choosing as his first subjects early prairie churches and early Hispanic art, subjects of unalloyed beauty. After spending time in Scandinavia with his Swedish wife, Kerstin, however, he realized that there were complexities in American geography that were worth exploring. In the 1970s and ’80s, Adams produced a series of books—The New West, Denver, What We Bought, Summer Nights—that focused on expanding suburbs along Colorado’s Front Range, books that pictured heedless development but also the surviving light, scale, form, and silence of the natural world. He also examined this mixture of humanity’s imprint and nature’s resilience in the wider western landscape (From the Missouri West) and the Los Angeles basin (Los Angeles Spring, California).

The turning point in Adams’ career was the publication of his highly acclaimed photo essay, The New West, in 1974, which catapulted the image-maker into the public eye. Divided into five sections, the book takes us along the front wall of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, presenting a representative sampling of the entire suburban Southwest. We are first confronted with two, light-drenched images of sprawling prairies, where the only sign of human intervention are electricity pylons and wooden fence posts. Then these open fields are shown bearing signs, first: No Trespassing, then: For Sale or Lease, and you begin to feel the shadow of commercial opportunism ominously approaching. Sure enough, the next section depicts the rapidly growing expanse of tract houses and mobile homes popping up along the Front Range, breaking us in with an image of the foundations of a single tract house being laid in a sparse stretch of land, before presenting us with an entire town of these compact white abodes, which nevertheless appear tiny and somehow insignificant against the backdrop of the towering mountains and an omnipresent sky.

 Depicting the unwavering presence and beauty of nature in the face of human intervention was, for Adams, a key element of the project. As he explains in the book’s introduction, “Why open our eyes anywhere but in undamaged places like national parks? One reason is, of course, that we do not live in parks, that we need to improve things at home and to do that we have to see the facts… Paradoxically, however, we also need to see the whole geography, natural and man-made, to experience peace; all land, no matter what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolute persistent beauty.” And indeed, even when Adams zooms in on the man-made – be it a woman strikingly silhouetted between two windows of her neat brick bungalow, a packed Denver car park or a peak-side gas station, complete with enormous sign – there is an inherent, inescapable allure, stemming from the photographer’s aptitude for composition and ability to encapsulate the atmospheric quality of light so unique to the area.

Robert Adams’ influence on my work

I chose Robert Adams as one of my photographers to focus on for this project due to similar themes in his work to what I plan on photographing – I plan to photograph the idea of the “new west”. The area in which I’m staying is an old gold mining town, known for its’ wild west – esque elements and I plan to photograph this historical element. Furthermore, Adams captured a lot of prairie land, which is similar to the landscape in my location – I think it will be interesting to capture similar landscapes to his in more recent times to compare and contrast. I want to include a photojournalistic element in my images also. I am going to try and capture living in the town in the modern day, and see if those wild west elements of Baker City are still present today – in this way, I am including history in my images and research, which I like as it helps me inform the ways I plan and execute my photoshoots.

After selecting my images for my joiners in Yellow and red, I edited one image from a set in the desired way. In this case, it was black and white.

After selecting the one I had just edited, I then selected all of the images for that joiner, then clicked ‘Sync Settings. This edited all of the images in the same way. This was helpful for my joiners with lots of images, which would have been very time-consuming to edit separately.

My final joiner.

Here I tried removing and selecting random images from this joiner to create a different composition.

My second joiner – I like the way the true perspective of the cliffs have been manipulated – this links to the idea of space and perspective that are present in David Hockney’s joiners.

This joiner with a black background.

This is my joiner as a 3D sphere

Here I tried moving parts of my joiner around to create a ripped, disjointed effect.

This was a less successful joiner – I had not taken pictures of the right side and the horizon enough, so the horizon became wonky and blurry.

Here I cropped the joiner at the right, to remove most of the unsuccessful part of the joiner. I then ripped the parts of the joiner up. I don’t think this was that successful as an experiment.

Here I added one joiner on top of another, changing the opacity to show the different landscape underneath.

Experimenting with cropping of multiple exposures.

Different arrangement of multiple exposure.

Turning one joiner upside down and enlarging the two.

Inverting one joiner and enlarging both joiners, different opacities.

Final Joiners

Contact Sheets and Selections

Below are contact sheets from the class trip to L’etacq. After importing them into lightroom, I used the P and X tools to filter out images that I didn’t think were as successful.

I found, when taking images inside a cave at low tide, my images were overexposed. This was because the light was streaming into the cave from above, which caused very bright images.

When selecting images, especially in this shoot, I was looking for clear and well composed images. This was especially important with the rural landscapes in this shoot, as I wanted different elements of rock to be included well in each image.

Here I have selected in yellow and red my images for my joiners, in order to separate these from my normal photos.

Best Images

Below are my best images, edited using Abode Lightroom.

I chose this image as one of my best images due to the strong leading lines and balanced composition. The leading lines take the eye from the middle of the image upwards to the left middle and top of the hill. I also like the different textures and tones within this image (enhanced by my editing), such as the different green tones of grass and vegetation, and different types of rock.

I chose this image as one of my final images due to the different textures and shadows on the rock face. I think editing in black and white helped to enhance these features was very effective, as the added contrast helped to increase the darker tones in the crevices of the rocks.

I like the interesting composition in this image, as well as the deep and moody tones. I like the composition in this image because of the three parts that are each distinctly different – to the left there is a small rock with vegetation, the right a more intense, orange rock, and finally to the right in the foreground a grey rock with little vegetation. These parts act as a frame for the other parts of the image, for example the whitewash at the bottom of the cliffs, which becomes a natural focal point.

Here I produced two different versions of one image – a black and white edit and one in colour. I think that producing two edits for this image was a good idea as in black and white, the crevices and details of the rock are more prominent than in colour, due to the high levels of contrast and texture. However, in colour (below) I think this image works well as it shows the different variations of colour and texture in the whole image – the grass, the rock, the sky, and the sea. Whereas, in the black and white image, the darkness of the rock kind of takes over the whole image more, making the other parts more insignificant.

Evaluation

What went well: In this shoot, I think I produced some well composed images. I didn’t deal with much over exposure, except when shooting in the caves. I changed my settings especially for the location before I started my shoot which really helped with this.

What I could do better: If I was to do this shoot again, I would maybe shoot the caves on a darker day, to ensure the exposure was balanced in those images. Furthermore, I would make sure to hold my camera steady, or even use a tripod like David Hockney, to take my joiner images, as quite a few of them came out blurry. This was because I was taking so many images so quickly. Next time I take joiners, I will take my time more when taking the images to achieve clearer, more successful images for my joiner.

Who is David Hockney?

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David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century.

Hockney has owned residences and studios in Bridlington, and London, as well as two residences in California, where he has lived intermittently since 1964: one in the Hollywood Hills, one in Malibu, and an office and archives on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. On 15 November 2018, Hockney’s 1972 work Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) was sold at Christie’s auction house in New York City for $90 million (£70 million), becoming the most expensive artwork by a living artist sold at auction. This broke the previous record, set by the 2013 sale of Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog (Orange) for $58.4 million. Hockney held this record until 15 May 2019 when Koons reclaimed the honour of selling his Rabbit for more than $91 million at Christie’s in New York.

Hockney was born in Bradford, England, on July 9, 1937. He loved books and was interested in art from an early age, admiring Picasso, Matisse and Fragonard. His parents encouraged their son’s artistic exploration and gave him the freedom to doodle and daydream.  Hockney attended the Bradford College of Art from 1953 to 1957. Then, because he was a conscientious objector to military service, he spent two years working in hospitals to fulfil his national service requirement. In 1959, he entered graduate school at the Royal College of Art in London alongside other young artists such as Peter Blake and Allen Jones. He experimented with different forms, including abstract expressionism.

He did well as a student, and his paintings won prizes and were purchased for private collections. In addition to pools, Hockney painted the interiors and exteriors of California homes. In 1970, this led to the creation of his first “joiner,” an assemblage of Polaroid photos laid out in a grid. Although this medium would become one of his claims to fame, he stumbled upon it by accident. While working on a painting of a Los Angeles living room, he took a series of photos for his reference and fixed them together so he could paint from the image. When he finished, however, he recognised the collage as an art form unto itself and began to create more.

Joiners

During the early 80’s Hockney began to create ‘joiners’, now they are photo collages. When he first began to produce these he did them with Polaroid prints and later on he did them with 35mm, commercially processed prints. He created joiners by taking multiple and varying Polaroid shots or photo lab prints of just an individual subject. Then with these shots, he would arrange them into what almost looks like a patchwork, to create an overall image. One of Hockney’s first ‘joiners’ was a photomontage of his mother. A big aim for Cubist feel, he established this through taking shots at different perspectives and at different times. His work ranges from Landscape, Pearblossom Highway #2 to portraits,  Kasmin 1982, and My Mother, Bolton Abbey, 1982.

This is one of Hockney’s most famous Joiners of an American Highway. This image is made of thousands of photographs and is almost 2 meters high by 3 meters wide. When seen in real life your eyes can explore it from corner to corner. Hockney would have had to bend down to photograph the floor, climb up ladders to photograph the street signs and walk down the highway to photograph the horizon. All this took him 8 days so he not only warped space and distance but also showed the passing of time in one image. The image also showed the scene from multiple viewpoints – just like the way we see the world.

This is another one of Hockney’s famous joiners, taken with his two friends. He took this over about an hour, as his friends completed the crossword. The colour in this image is muted, and the image is slightly grey/blue-toned. This is influenced by the high amounts of grey and blue in the image: the walls, the hair of both people, and objects on the table. – The white balance in this photo is cool-toned, however, there are warmer tones in the faces of the two people. The image is mostly balanced in exposure, but slightly overexposed in some parts of the photos of the subjects – this is a sign of time passing in this piece as the light was changing throughout the shoot. The lines of every image placed together created shape within the piece, and create a natural focal point in the centre of the image. The background is much plainer than the foreground: it only really features a wall and manipulated placement of two windows, one to the left and one to the right – The background’s plainness enhances the business of the foreground and centre of the image. There is an influence of cubism in this image, which is a huge part of David Hockney’s influence on his joiners. The way the image’s shape and look have been altered from what the real view of the picture would have been related to the key themes in David Hockney’s joiners: Time, because of the different obvious time and lighting points in the piece and space, because of all of the different angles and altered placement of images.

What is a Geopark?

 A geopark is a unified area that advances the protection and use of geological heritage in a sustainable way and promotes the economic well-being of the people who live there. There are global geoparks and national geoparks. UNESCO Geoparks are territories presenting a unique geological heritage of international value. They are places where thoughtful visitors can meet, experience and touch the “Memory of the Earth”. The 4,5 billion years of history of our living planet. Geoparks are also places with an exceptional natural heritage. Fascinating landscapes, varied ecosystems, and significant biodiversity are valued there and allow visitors to understand the current challenges of our planet. The intangible heritage is the precious witness to the long and intimate relationship between the local population and the Earth. Today extremely threatened, its conservation and transmission constitute an important mission of the Geoparks.

UNESCO’s work with geoparks began in 2001. In 2004, 17 European and 8 Chinese geoparks came together at UNESCO headquarters in Paris to form the Global Geoparks Network (GGN)where national geological heritage initiatives contribute to and benefit from their membership in a global exchange network and cooperation.

On 17 November 2015, the 195 Member States of UNESCO ratified the creation of a new label, the UNESCO Global Geoparks, during the 38th General Conference of the Organisation. This expresses governmental recognition of the importance of managing outstanding geological sites and landscapes in a holistic manner. The Organization supports Member States’ efforts to establish UNESCO Global Geoparks all around the world, in close collaboration with the Global Geoparks Network.

Geoparks can be considered for multiple reasons, including:

• They are considered to be wildlife havens, meaning the animals that live there are undisturbed and protected 

• They can be used as natural laboratories, which provide a site for experiments and research on nature

• They can be used as educational resources, allowing students from many subjects (history, geography, science(s), photography, etc…)

Jersey Geopark

jersey is a strong contender for this special designation because of our Island’s exceptional geology and our important cultural heritage which forms the outstanding surroundings we enjoy every day. Whether exploring Jersey’s diverse landscapes or seascapes there are lots to discover and inspire you.

Jersey’s Geological Heritage – Sites of Special Interest (SSI)

The Island of Jersey has geology that is significantly different to that of the United Kingdom and even from that of the other Channel Islands. Many of the island’s geological sites are of regional and international significance and some have attracted global attention. 

In recognition of this, the States of Jersey has designated 22 of the island’s most important outcrops as Sites of Special Interest (SSIs) so that they may be protected from development and preserved for future public enjoyment and research purposes. All the Island’s geological SSIs are covered here along with information about their location plus basic descriptions and photographs which highlight each site’s significance and its salient features. 

The Jersey Geology Trail

The Jersey Geology Trail, around Jersey in the Channel Islands, GB, reveals a remarkable variety of rock types and structures exposed in Jersey. The beauty of Jersey lies in its cliffs, bays and inland valleys. This beauty is the result of the island’s geology, the colour and the different hardness and structure of the rocks, and their response to the changes in climate over the years.

The Jersey Geology Trail is fascinating, with Precambrian to Lower Palaeozoic rock types varying from shales and sandstones, through andesites and minor basalts, flow-banded and spherulitic rhyolites and ignimbrites to flash-flood conglomerates. These are all folded and intruded by a variety of gabbros, diorites, and various striking pink granites, and a swarm of dolerite dykes plus lamprophyre, porphyritic felsite, rhyolite and various composite minor intrusives dykes and the odd sill. Metamorphic rocks also occur and range from contact metamorphic hornfelses to Green Schist Facies igneous rocks with various minerals easy to see. Finally, these are all overlain by various Pleistocene and Holocene loess, peat and forest, sand and head deposits seen around the coasts from shore to cliff top, in the valleys and marshes and in a fine dune system on the west coast.

Dr Ralph Nicols

Your Jersey Geology Trail guide is Dr Ralph Nichols who graduated in Geology from U.C.W. Aberystwyth in 1958 after reading for the then-called triple crown of Geography, Geology and Economics. In the summer of 1957, He was awarded a study tour of the Kirkuk oilfield in Iraq which inspired him to study carbonate rocks. his lead in 1961, to being awarded a PhD for an interpretation and micro-fossil correlation of the depositional environments of the isolated outcrops of Carboniferous Limestone along the North Wales coast from SE Anglesey to the Great and Little Orme’s Heads and the Llanddulas outcrops.

In 1966, He moved to Canada to join a small research team with the Saskatchewan Department of Mineral Resources, responsible for part of the search for deep oil in the Devonian carbonates under the Prairies. I also became a Lecturer in Geology (in the ‘Extra-Mural’ Dept.) at the University of Saskatchewan, delivering a geology course for the Arts Faculty students who needed science to complete their degree.

He then returned to Jersey and became a teacher. He obtained a post teaching his hobbies – Geography, Geology and Outdoor Activities Later, He became Head of Humanities, which included Geography, History and Religious Education. He has also joined the Geology and Archaeology Sections of La Société Jersiaise and later helped to establish the Jèrriais Section, and also GCSE and A-Level Geology and Archaeology courses for night classes at Highlands College of Further Education. This enabled him to learn so much about this incredible island which has a greater variety of things natural and historical than he has ever found in such a small area.

Evaluation of my process

Artist References

Even though I didn’t end up creating a collage in the style of Laura Romero or Anastasia Savinova, I am still grateful I chose them as my first artists – I found my locations to shoot from these two artists’ ideas, and wouldn’t have found my areas to photograph if it wasn’t for these two artists. I decided not to use collage with my images as I ended up realising the images I had taken would not respond to the artists’ work very effectively, and wouldn’t produce the quality of work that I wanted. After researching and realising I am more interested in documentary photography, such as Peter Mitchell and Sharon O’Neill, I began to research photographers who documented the wealth divide, social housing, economic issues, and poverty. I then found. two artists that I felt would help me to produce the best work I could, which would inspire my work.

Photoshoots

Photoshoot 1:

This photoshoot was mostly successful, however, I had trouble with the weather towards the end of my shoot so I had to reshoot the next day. The first part of the shoot was more successful, as there was no rain, and the overcast skies helped me to achieve the bold lines and intense shapes which I wanted to achieve in my images. On the other hand, I had trouble with overexposure in this shoot and found this an issue in my editing, which I will discuss below. To improve this shoot if I was to do it again, I would ensure the weather was better for my shoot further in advance, ensuring better exposure and brightness. (preferably sunny weather conditions with the low wind to ensure my images are not shaky or blurry).

Photoshoot 2:

This photoshoot, in which I took pictures of industrial buildings, was successful, but I did not end up using most of the pictures. I completed this photoshoot because initially, my idea was to produce collages of housing and business buildings, however, my idea developed into more of a photojournalism style, after researching further on the issue and related artists. Even if I didn’t end up using these pictures of industrial buildings in my final outcomes and the rest of my project, this photoshoot allowed me to further fine-tune my idea, and without this shoot, I may not have decided to alter my idea and complete a third photo shoot. Lastly, the Ann Street brewery that I photographed was next to De Quetteville Court, the main location of my third shoot – I would not have discovered my location for the third shoot, and it would not have been so successful – I would not have found a location that linked as closely to my chosen theme, and my final piece may not have been as effective.

Photoshoot 3:

I found this one to be the most successful of my three photoshoots. I think this is because I carried out this photoshoot after further research and had a more informed idea of what my project was becoming – therefore I had a clearer idea of the shots, areas and ideas I was trying to achieve when I took my images. These images, in my opinion, had more meaning behind them, with the help of my added research on the housing crisis and its’ relation to the area I was photographing. If I was to carry out this project and exam again, I would have done the same level of research before my previous photoshoot. This made the last photoshoot much more successful, and I think that if I had carried out the same level of research before ALL of my shoots, not just the last, the project would have been more successful.

Selections and Editing

Selections:

I selected my images using Lightroom classic. After importing my images, I put them into folders for each photoshoot. I then used p and x tools to select my favourite images – however, I did have to redo this process multiple times due to very similar images. Therefore, if I was to do my photoshoots again for this project, I would make sure to avoid very similar shots, as this was detrimental to my selection process and then my editing. Overall I think this selection process was effective but was too time-consuming so did mean I had less time for editing/creating my zine and final outcomes in the exam.

Editing:

I decided to edit in black and white in the end, but I had originally planned to do my collages, with some black and white and some in colour. Once I had moved away from this idea, I decided to not edit in colour, as I thought black and white images would help to bring out the strong lines and shapes in the architecture and buildings I was photographing, and highlight the strong monochromatic tones that were present in most of my images anyway.

Final Images

These images are the pictures I have selected as my best outcomes from the project – These will make up my physical outcomes, and also make up most of my zine as I showed and evaluated in my last blog post.

I chose this image as one of my final images due to the different tones within the image as well as the varying light and shadow. When I was shooting, the light was coming from the right, which can be seen in the image as the left side of the building is much brighter, contrasting with the right side which is much darker and moodier in tone. This creates a split tone effect in the image, as the split of light happens to fall just off the centre of the image. – This helps to balance the image compositionally. After reviewing all of my images, I would say this is one of my most successful images from this project, and in hindsight, I think this type of image worked better than others. If I was to redo this project I would take similar images to this of other buildings after seeing how successful this image was after my editing and final printing.

I chose this image as one of my final because of the strong lines and shape. The image is split up into three parts in a way: the lower part of the house, the flats to the right, and the upper bit of the house. There is strong repetition in the apartment building with rectangular windows. This contrasts with the lines in the house, as they are more triangular. This creates a natural partition in the image. Although I chose this image as one of my final ones, I do think that looking back I should have not edited with such high contrast levels, as I think this makes the image a little too dark.

This image is one of my favourites from this project. I am super happy with the angle from which it was taken, which creates strong leading lines next to the windows, and along the bit of the building which juts inwards. I think my editing in this image was successful, as I didn’t overdo the contrast – this was a little bit of an issue with some of my other images. I think the composition of this image is an aspect that makes it one of my favourites, as I utilised the rule of thirds to make sure the composition was balanced.

I chose this image as one of my best because of the sharp lines and high contrast between the building, sky, and features of the building. The building takes up most of the image, and even if the sky only features slightly to the right, the sharp line separating the two parts of the image is a key focal point. I think editing in black and white for this image was a good decision as it highlights the sharp lines and the highly shadowed windows.

I chose this photo for a few reasons: I like how each window shows a different life in the building. This feature of this photo is unique in my project, which I wanted to include. Furthermore, there is strong repetition in this image: the windows create a rigid pattern, however, this is broken up due to the angle at which the photo was taken, slightly tilted. Also, my use of cropping plays a part in this angle. Originally, this image was not cropped enough for the effect I wanted to achieve, so to put more focus on the individual windows I cropped the image inwards quite significantly. Looking back, I think this was a good decision as I think it gives the image further depth and stops the image from looking too flat.

This image is definitely one of my favourites from the Anthropocene project, so I decided to include it in my final prints. I think this image compositionally is really strong. This is helped by the way the overgrown garden frames the door of the house, and how these plants are seen in the foreground, midground and background of the image. I did use slight cropping in this image, as I think originally there were too many other parts of the house and apartment building in the background which made the composition too busy and distracted the eye from the door and garden which are the main parts of the image. I like this image also because at first glance, the house looks lived in, just a little overgrown. As you look closer, it is visible that the house is in fact empty, which I think is helped by the soft black and white editing (creating a feeling of emptiness in the image). I think my editing was really successful in this image, and if I was to do my editing again I would not change it.

This is my last final image from the Anthropocene project. I like the deadpan nature of this image, showing the true look of the environment I was photographing. I used slight cropping to the right of this image, to ensure it was only one house in the image – this helps the image to be more balanced compositionally. In hindsight, I do think my editing was too dark for this image – there are too many blacks in the fence and windows, and if I was to re-edit this photo again, I would turn the blacks and contrast down slightly.

Final Zine

Creating my zine: I found creating the zine a little difficult at first – I had never used AdobeInDesign before, and I found it a little tricky to navigate at first. However, after getting to grips with it I found it very useful – the two kinds of lines around an image meant I could crop and move my images smoothly – this tool made my spreads much better, as I could fine-tune which parts of an image were the focus of a spread.

(Final presentation shown and evaluated in my previous blog post)