Henry Hargreaves

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Comparison –

I think that my work reflects Henry Hargreaves influence well within my photos, this is because they both use the hand of another person who is going through a book that has a message which it wants to show to their audience. It also uses the brighter colours and bold works in my book too, which Hargreaves work has but not as intense as his photograph of the book doesn’t have as much writing. I prefer having more writing as it creates a story from the book about feminism which I used and people will want to read it as the title of the chapter is bold and eye-catching.

Evaluation –

I am happy with my final pictures and how they turned out in the style of Henry Hargreaves because I enjoyed working in his style of photography, because it let me experiment and learn how to use the idea of identity in an interesting way where you don’t need to have a persons face, or a full body picture of them as you can use a part of the body instead, like a hand because they are able to signify who someone may be just by looking at them and then with the influence of the book that they are reading it can reveal a lot to you about a person which you may not have known, which was how to influence others yet also keep it light-hearted and not emotionally deep which can happen.

Claude Cahun

Comparison –

I think that my work shares some similarities to Claude Cahun’s work because I have changed the photos into black and white, similar to their style as I like how it adds a dramatic effect to the picture as it makes the picture feel as if it is creating an emotional and meaningful message in what they are trying to highlight to their audience. I also like how in my work I use objects such as books, places, surroundings, etc to show who I am as a person whereas Cahun uses their self instead because I think that it reveals much more about a person instead because you are able to find out their opinions/views/perceptions/etc of what they do in their everyday lives.

Evaluation –

Throughout this project, I have taken into consideration of how Claude Cahun uses photography in their own style throughout their work which I can then put into my own, in a personal way. I think that this has been successfully conveyed as you are able to see a connection between our photos as they both create authentic and genuine messages in different yet similar ways how we want to be perceived as a person.

SET #1

VIOLENCE + RESTRAINT

SET #2

TORN

SET #3

DOWN THE LINE

PHOTOSHOP GALLERY DISPLAY

JIM GOLDBERG IMAGE ANALYSIS #1

This is a photo taken from Goldberg’s collection Raised By Wolves, a series of images of teenagers on the streets of California. He documented their emotions and battle with taboo subjects such as addiction or abuse – the series focused particularly on two young runaways, Tweeky Dave and Echo, who met each other and were interviewed by Goldberg on multiple occasions. I took inspiration from Goldberg from the bold way he presented identity and showed the reality of what life is like through the eyes of people – particuarly youths dealing with trauma.

The image is taken in black and white, with a stark black square around the subjects arm, highlighting what seems to be a bruise or scar. It immediately directs the viewers eye to the injury without noticing anything else. The models emotion seems to be that of discomfort judging by the look on her face as she is not making eye contact and instead staring off into the distance. The photo appears to be taken in natural lighting, perhaps outside in the middle of the day. The holes and dents in the walls gives a wider idea of the setting and the meaning behind the image.

JIM GOLDBERG IMAGE ANALYSIS #2

These photos are from the collection Ruby Every Fall – this series captures growing up through the eyes of parents and the individuals identity through the years. What caught my eye about this series was the different layouts – some big some small some with multiple photos.

This group of photos presents identity through different aspects – the drawing of the girl highlights childhood emotion through the distressed look on her face versus the photo of her walking to school looking happy shows contrast between the photo and how they are laid out.

BOB GRUEN IMAGE ANALYSIS

As mentioned in previous posts, Gruen is famous for photographing multiple celebrities, predominantly throughout the 70’s and 80’s e.g Led Zeppelin and John Lennon. The reason I was drawn to his work was mostly for his photos of musicians from the rock scene as my whole theme is centered around music, but also the way he takes the photos, like the one above.

The image above is of Tina Turner, taken at a concert in 1970. Although this is one image, it was taken with a slow shutter speed throughout one second, so Gruen managed to capture Turner moving in a way that when an image is taken, it presents as a multiple exposure. The photo itself is in black and white, illuminated by the stage lights in the back.

I experimented with this background making photomontages in the style of Raoul Hausmann.

I started by removing the background and then adding images onto it.

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These were a mix of images I took or found off the internet. I focused on Philippine newspapers from the time.

I also used it as a background for some of the photos I took and edited

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I used my grandads old belongings for this, like his golf scores and passport.

Donovan Wylie-

Donovan Wylie is an Irish photographer from Northern Ireland, based in Belfast. His work chronicles what he calls “the concept of vision as power in the architecture of contemporary conflict”

Tish Murtha-

Patricia Anne “Tish” Murtha was a British social documentary photographer best known for documenting marginalised communities, social realism and working class life in Newcastle upon Tyne

Mike Brodie-

Mike Brodie, also known as the “Polaroid Kid” or “Polaroid Kidd”, is an American photographer. From 2004 to 2008, Brodie freight hopped across the US, photographing people he encountered, largely train-hoppers, vagabonds, squatters and hobos.

Gregory Crewdson-

Gregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn in 1962. Crewdson is recognized for his elaborately staged scenes of small town American life. His photographs have dramatic and cinematic qualities, and he often has an extensive support crew on site for proper staging and lighting.

Theo Gosselin-

This is by blog post for my photography mock exam. For this mock my focus was to explore my identity through my families heritage on Jersey. I explored information into my ancestors back to my great grandparents on my mums side who were farmers before during and after the German occupation.

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These are my best images from my Photoshoots

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Now that I have finished selecting and developing my images I am going to import them into Adobe Photoshop where I am going to experiment using Kensuke Koike’s style with my own images. Kensuke Koike is one of the photographers I selected for inspiration in this project as I really like his method of taking two people and combining them together. i feel that this links in with my theme as two people coming together and combining their lives is how families are built.

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Method 1

Firstly, I ensured my models face was central in the image. this was vital to ensure that the editing would be symmetrical.

Next I made the image black and white to fin in with Kensuke Koike’s style

This is where I began transforming the image. I used the elliptical marquee tool to create a circle 200pxls smaller each time starting at 2100pxls. I rotated each circle 20 degrees clockwise each time.

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My image next to Kensuke Koike’s

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Method 2

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To create this image in the style of Kensuke Koike I first made the image black and white in order to properly capture the style. i then duplicated the background and imported an image of a night sky and placed it behind my background copy. I used the elliptical marquee tool to move the faces of my models revealing the background image.

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I intend to experiment using printed images and a scalpel as this is how Kensuke Koike creates his images.

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These pictures are some I created using the old fission method of prints and cutting them using a Stanley knife to cut and paste my images in different arrangements. This is how Kensuke Koike creates his images. I re-digitalised these images. I imported them into Lightroom in order to crop them and edit the tones to give a more old fashioned look.

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I have done some editing in the style of Claude Cahun’s multi-exposure shots.

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These are the images I took inspiration from when creating my multi exposure shots.

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Comparison to reference artist

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I took inspiration from Kensuke Koike’s photographs in order to create images of a similar style. The image on the right is one of Kensuke Koike’s photographs and the image on the left is an image I created using the same style as inspired by Kensuke Koike. I think I managed to create an image that highly resembles Kensuke Koike’s work. However to improve my work next time u would ensure that my image has a focal point as Koike’s does. I believe that although I am happy with my work it would improve my final outcome.

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Evaluation

This is my final evaluation of my photography mock exam 2022

Overall, I believe that this mock exam has gone well. I have worked hard to complete all the tasks required and completed each one to the best of my ability in the time provided. However my work does have room for improvement in some areas.

What Went Well ?

Firstly, the photographs I took for this project linked in well to my theme and worked well with the style of Kensuke Koike and Claude Cahun. I was greatly inspired by Claude Cahun and the time she worked which is the reason I decided to link my work to history. Additionally during my development and editing process I feel I captured the style of my reference artists and matched their intent the have in their work in mine. I think that my edits using the old fashioned method was a success even though the quality was not to the highest standard I feel that the idea worked out and that the physical copies in addition to the digital copies gives some variety to my project. In addition to evaluating Kensuke Koike I also evaluated Claude Cahun of which i think relates closely to my project. My edits in the style of Claude Cahun i feel went well however I felt more inspired by Koike’s work as i get the impression of combination and mixing people and lives which is largely what my project was based on.

What could be improved ?

My pictures could have been of a higher quality however due to the images being of old photographs and the original quality being low it would be impassive to make them HD. I also feel as though I could have taken more photos in order to give my images more variety. i feel as though my images that i manipulated using the old fashioned method could have been neater and reassembled better. I feel like even though my edits in the style of Claude Cahun went well i could have created more edits in her style.

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My Final Images

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My best Images

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SET #1:

VIOLENCE + RESTRAINT

I took these images of my friend Leon who started pretending to punch my camera, while he was doing this I managed to take 2 pictures of him in action with flash.

In response to these 2 images I decided to create a set titled “VIOLENCE + RESTRAINT” where I chose the middle picture as a tense hand against someone’s side which massively contrasts against the “violent” images.

When arranging my images on photoshop I also thought about the size of my images, the 2 “violent” images are landscape while the middle “restraint” image is square-shaped, I have chosen this so it symbolises how violence takes up more room in society and commands more attention while restraint often goes unnoticed.

This is my favourite set of images as I am really interested in the history of punk and grunge, whether it be musical history or the entire ethos of the movement itself which was spurred on by “punk idols” such as Sid Vicious of The Sex Pistols and Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees. This set really reminds me of the punk mindset which was often taken to extremities such as violence.

I made all the images black and white to mimic the style of Francesca Woodman as she rarely shot in colour, this artistic decision was also made as all the images were quite inconsistent in colour which didn’t fit visually. I followed this rule for all of my sets of images.

I feel as if I successfully showed the emotions and sense of identity I wanted to display with this set of images, however as this was my first set to edit and photoshop it made me realise some problems with arrangement on photoshop where it was incredibly difficult to evenly align images with different dimensions.

SET#2:

TORN

These images were taken of myself on self-timer with flash, I wanted to explore teenage attitudes to sex and sexuality. I named this set “TORN” to imply a sense of torn feelings towards sex and sexuality while also displaying the literal images of torn tights.

This set massively reminds me of Francesca Woodman’s work as I wanted to keep the main subject’s face concealed- which is a massive theme in Woodman’s work.

The middle image on the left page of the book was also a massive inspiration (displays an image of someone taking off their shirt) as it really displays the exact sense I wanted to tackle in this set so I created my own version of this single image.

In this set of images I feel as if my inspirations are very defined and have clear connections to my finished product which communicate a sense of identity to the viewer which is subjective and relatable.

SET #3:

DOWN THE LINE

My third and final set is titled “DOWN THE LINE” as I wanted to explore so-called “self-destructive” behaviours which can cause problems in the future (or “down the line”).

I really like these images as they are not pretty or professional, they have a more raw and “homemade” feeling to them which conveys a feeling of secrecy- where the viewers are intruding on hushed behaviours.

I didn’t have any clear inspirations for this set, one could say I was inspired by Corinne Day and Ryan McGinley’s sense of exploitation in natural images with their muses but my photography style in these images are very different from any of my inspirations as I took the images from a high perspective to give a sense of overlooking and intruding.

Final Images

(These are the images I included in the Zine)

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Comparison to Artist Reference

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As I deviated from my original plan of photomontages during the exam, my final outcomes turned out to be wildly different to that of Jesse Treece’s work, with only one image (or page from the Zine) roughly mimicking it. This page is arguably the most unusual/different compared to the other images shown in the Zine as it is simply a picture of the moon, however the placement of the moon could very loosely resemble photo montaging.

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The Finished Zine

Notes:

– In the Zine (on page 6) I used segments from a poem I wrote when I was around 11 years old for the text , which describes a dream-like scene of a beach.

– The title: ‘Dreaming of Yore’ was used because a lot of the photographs in the Zine are of places from my past/childhood.

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Other Ways of Presenting my Final Images:

Virtual Gallery Presentation

Here I used an image of an empty art/photography gallery which I edited on photoshop to include some of my Final Images. I used the ‘drop shadow’ and ‘stroke’ to make the images look like they were actually hung.

Window Mount

On photoshop I made a window mount using a black background and some of my Final Images. I used the ‘Drop Shadow’ and ‘Stroke’ blending options to make it seem more realistic.

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Evaluation

Overall, I think the project worked out well in the end, despite the slight detour in what I was making, however there is definitely room for improvement in my planning stages. While I was taking images for the project, I specifically tried to be general so I would have had a lot of material to work with which, looking back now, only made things harder, however with this knowledge I will be able to plan a future photomontage project more effectively. I think ordering the images I took in a sequence to create storytelling was more effective than creating a photomontage.

What went Well:
Over the course of the exam, I learnt how to create a Zine which gave me a better understanding of how I can put my images in a sequence and what techniques I can use while doing so, which I can perhaps use in later projects. I think I now have a clearer idea of how I should be taking my photographs, with a greater focus on what I had planned.

What I can Improve on:
I can definitely improve on my planning of the project and what I was making, I should have been more specific with what I was photographing and why, which would have allowed me to produce images of a higher-quality that linked together better. Next time I will come up with a more detailed plan and take more focussed images that link to that plan better, I will also make my final outcomes closer to the work of my artist study.

After my experimentations with photomontages, I concluded that my original idea was not as strong at conveying a message/question as I thought it would be. I looked to ordering my images into a sequence and try to tell a story, after looking over my images by printing them out and ordering them, I thought a Zine would be an effective way of ordering them.

Zine Case Study

A Zine is a small (A4 – A5) booklet in the style of a magazine containing usually images and text, due to their size they can be mass-produced if desired. Zines are made to tell a visual story with the photographs/text that it contains and the links that bind them. Techniques or relationships typically seen in a sequence or grid (or other examples of a collection of images) such as Juxtaposition, repetition or other details can also be seen in a Zine, however the viewer would have to turn a page, allowing the photographer to use that knowledge (of what image they will see first) to their advantage.

Jersey’s ED.EM (or Éditions Emile) is an example of a Zine, each containing images from The Société Jersiaise Archive, that is published around 3 times a year, each with different themes from different collections.

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Editing

These are the images I selected as my best. Here I show the original and after-editing versions of each image.

Here, I simply increased the ‘shadows’ and ‘blacks’ sliders to make the shadows less dense, while keeping the sky roughly the same colour, making the overall image look softer.

I did not make massive changes to this image, however I increased the contrast slightly, making the dark side of the pole darker.

For this image I reduced the contrast and made it slightly cooler, giving it a softer look overall.

Here, I reduced the exposure of the sky by using the ‘Graduated Filter’ tool on Adobe Lightroom. I also made the overall image slightly darker by reducing the highlights and increasing the contrast.

I made this image slightly cooler to make the tarmac stand out more from the green/yellow in the background. I also increase the contrast to make the shadows denser.

For this image I increased the contrast to make the shadow more dense, I also lowered the saturation of the image slightly to further make it stand out.

I didn’t change this image too much, however I did make the exposure slightly lighter in order to match the other moon image (below).

For this image I made the exposure slightly lighter and reduced the shadows to give the trees more detail.

I simply made this image black and white to allow the lighter parts of the image (such as my face) to contrast more with the darker parts (my hair).

Here, I adjusted the ‘horizon’ of the desk. I also increased the contrast to make the TV screen stand out more.

I simply made this image black and white to match the other portrait image.

Here, I made the image slightly warmer and slightly increased the exposure.

I simply made this image slightly lighter to emphasise the difference between the light and dark parts of this image.

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Experimentation

First, I made a mock-up example of a 16-page zine by folding 4 A4 pieces of paper in half and stacking them, then numbering the pages, placing the images on the pages that they could go on, lastly, I noted the specifics of each image (such as whether the image is full/double page, etc…).

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Then I remade that mock-up on Adobe InDesign so I could get a better/clearer idea of what the zine would look like, with the correct sizes of images being used.

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Layout Experimentations

On InDesign, I experimented with some ways of how I could present the images in the Zine.

Here, I left a small gap on the right of a double full page spread image which can be used to link to the next page with the colours of the background, or to simply place text or another image.

Here, I did the same as before, but on the bottom of the double page, giving text that could be placed there a more traditional caption look.

This experiment was to see how an image (with boarders on the top and bottom) would look in the centre of a double page, this gives the image more space (making it the main focus of a page) and allows text to be placed if desired. The warping of the image due to how it is placed in the gutter can also be used to physically manipulate an image.

Here I experimented with splitting an image within a box and placing it on opposite ends of a double page spread, giving the image a more abstract look.

This experiment was to see how I can create links between the images on one page, then link those images to the page adjacent to it.

Editing

To start my editing process, I went through all my images and used the ‘Pick’ and ‘Reject’ buttons to select what I thought are the best images.

Next, I went through my ‘Picked’ images and ranked them by giving them a number of stars out of 5, with 5 being the images I will use, and 1 the images I will not.

After, I went through my images again and assigned them a colour, with red being the images I won’t use, yellow and green being the ones I may use and blue being the ones I will use.

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Experimentation

For this image I was experimenting with how I would place myself and the objects, while also dabbling a little into layer blending options.

For this experiment I wanted to explore how I can place the portrait and the object photographs together by cutting parts off of the portrait (the legs) and by using different blending options for the object.

Here, I was experimenting with how I could connect the object photographs to the landscape photographs, while also testing how layer blending options affected the portrait image.

This is where I started to approach my ideas in a less ‘chaotic’ way. Here I wanted to see how ordering my images over a background would look.

Here I experimented with how many images I should use to overlay, as well as seeing how much of the background should be visible.