Here I have a presentation of my virtual gallery. I really liked how these images turned out as I believe they were able to present exactly what I was trying to portray with both my area of study and the theme of “complex”. I wanted to articulate a complex looking exterior of Berlin, showing off all the graffiti and bunkers and buildings and also the interior of them, but I was also wanting to capture a complex meaning behind the images as well in the sense that the majority of these photographs taken were clear indications about the war and the aftermath of the event itself. I wanted to showcase what Berlin looks like nowadays in the modern reality as to present the growth of the city and society.

I like the way I placed my images together as I believe I arranged them in a sense that makes sense and allowing for each image to compliment each other nicely. I didn’t want to pair up loads of harsh images together so I placed in some softer ones with lighter tones as to break it up slightly.

Process behind making the virtual gallery

For my virtual gallery, I started off by selecting an empty of an empty gallery from the internet and opened it up in photoshop. Once I did this I inserted the images I wanted to display together and arranged them in an order that I liked the most. Once I arranged them

Adding a drop shadow to my images:

Here I have shown the process behind how to add a drop shadow to my images. Including a drop shadow makes the image appear more 3D and like it is actually framed within a gallery.

Image Selection

Below I have created a gallery with some of the images I will be using throughout my photobook, this is show all of the different kind of photographs I will be using in my book. I have chosen to use landscapes images (which include flowers, roads and trees), portrait images (of my dog and brother) and a few images from inside my house, including my room and living area. These are from the 2 different photoshoot I conducted, however I didn’t have any successful photographs of my dad to include in this project and this is why he is not featured in my book.

I did struggle with the lack of images I had, as I only selected 30 to use, and only used 18 in my photobook, this was because some of my images just did not link together (too random to link to my project) or were not of high enough quality to be featured in my book, this meant that I hard to consider the layout of my photobook a lot more, as many images were not the correct tones to be placed next to each other.

Photobook Specification: Throughout my photobook I will be exploring how the strength of me and my brother’s relationship has growth overtime, and how our parents separating has made us closer, this photobook is very important to me and I would like this to be the best work I have produced so far. I like how this project is so personal to me and how this is so different from my coursework projects.

Process

To create my photobook, I created a collection in Lightroom, which after clicking the ‘Book’ button allows for this setup below to appear, this allows for images that are in your final images collection to simply be dragged up into the spaces, there are also functions which allow for boarders to be larger to appear at all, and for also double page spread to be created, which is best for short and wide images.

The meaning behind the title ‘Fountain Lane’ is the fact that this is the main road me and my brother used to use frequently to walk to my dads house. This provides the first sight of the book with more meaning, and will make some people ask more questions regarding the relevance of the book title.

Whilst designing my photobook, I had to create a lot of creative decisions, mostly regarding my images and which would look best next to each other. This meant that the tones within the image had to be similar, for example a yellow toned image could not sit next to a monochromatic one. Overall. I really liked the designing my photobook process as it allowed for me to look through all of my images and establish which of them were the best outcomes I had ever created, this is because this was our final chance to show all the types of work we could produce, this is the reason why I decided to experiment with portraiture; to take a risk with this final/ personal study. In my opinion, not a large amount of my portraits turned out to be really good, however, I did enjoy doing something different to landscapes and showcasing that any kind of photography can be successful.

I have tried to create balance within my photobook through using multiple double page spreads, these are normally formatted with the most successful shots from the photoshoots, and I think this action shot above is one of the best I took throughout my second photoshoot. I have placed the image so that when the book comes, the only missing part (because of the fold in the middle of the book) will be the some of the top end of the stick. The problem with many double page spreads is that the middle section of the image is missed out because of the fold in the page, and this can hinder the successfulness of some of the best photos taken in shoots, I really like my photobook overall and believe that it is my best work.

Experimentation with Colour

Below I have changed the background of some pages of my photobook, this is an attempt to create more uniqueness throughout my photobook, in the end I may decide that all backgrounds look better with a white background, however I would like to take time to experiment in order to make sure that my photobook is the most advanced it can get.

My aim when selecting blue here was to match with the blue background, however, I think this wasn’t very successful as the blue just blends in with the sky on the right side. Additionally, in my opinion blue is too much of a harsh colour to put as a background.

To match with the tree on the right hand side, I thought that green would be the best colour to match with the original image, I do like the green I just think its a bit too much for the photobook as I can appear quite bright.

For these pages, I have selected the colour purple as on the right there is an image of my mums flowers, and to link to this I decided that purple was the best idea as this is her favourite colour too. I really like how it matches somewhat with the flowers themselves, however it doesn’t match with the left hand side photograph.

Analysis: The pink colour background above, in my opinion, is my only successful outcome of using colour backgrounds out of every colour I have experimented with, this is because it matches the best with the image on the left itself. For my future photobook I will be only using white pages as I think this helps keeps the balances throughout my whole project.

MOCK UP

Evaluation:

Overall I am happy with the outcome of my Final photography project, The main theme of the project was Simple / complex photography. My aim was to take Photographs of architecture and street photography in London, capturing the busy city. I took photos in several locations including Covent garden, Regent street, Oxford street and Piccadilly circus. In total I took 256 photos and used Lightroom classic to pick photos I want to edit and discard the other photos that I felt had no potential to be in my photo book as they came out blurry or weren’t as good as the rest. After selecting the Images I wanted to be used I then went on to do some basic editing on Lightroom classic and grouped them as ‘coloured photos’ , ‘Black and white photos’ and ‘film photos’ which I wanted those photos too seem like they were taken on a disposable film camera to see weather or not I would use them in the photo book and I liked the outcome of them so I put them in two pages. Then I decided to make a mock of my photo book on Lightroom classic to decide the layout of it.

My main source of inspiration for this project was Saul Leiter, a renowned American photographer and painter who was instrumental in establishing the New York School of Photography in the 1940s and ’50s. His striking images of city life in New York served as a guiding force as I set out to capture the essence of London’s urban landscape.

Over the course of the project, I took a total of 256 photos, carefully selecting the most promising ones to be featured in my photo book. Using Lightroom Classic, I refined my selection by editing each image and organizing them into categories such as ‘coloured photos,’ ‘black and white photos,’ and ‘film photos.’ I even experimented with creating images in black and white while retaining a single object’s colour as a focal point, such as the iconic red buses that traverse London’s streets.

After finalising my selection and arranging them in a mock-up of my photo book on Lightroom Classic, I am pleased with the overall layout and design. Through this project, I not only developed my technical skills but also discovered new ways to see and capture the world around me.

These are a handful of images that i edited using lightroom.

My favorite edits-

These are my favourite edits as i feel they portray my artists well and match their way of photographing. I like the lighting as it compliments the main feature of the image. The use of black and white in some of these distracts the colouring of the image and focuses mainly on the object and posing.

After finishing all of my images, I decided to make a virtual gallery, placing my images on a scale I would not usually be able to achieve. This was simple and easy to do using an online program called Artsteps.

thought about how my images worked together, and alternated between triptychs, diptychs and single images. I grouped images up based on their colours and composition in order to create an interesting layout.

Overall I am very happy with my virtual gallery and feel that it shows off my images really well, without some of the distortions from the real life prints. Perhaps I could have added more but due to time constraints I felt it would be best to focus on mounting up my physical prints.

For my first photoshoot I took photographs around areas of St. Helier, from a bus journey . The weather during this photoshoot was cloudy and went from midday to afternoon t. I believe the time of day and the weather made these photos come out very effective, and contrasted well with the subjects I was photographing.

From photoshoot 1 I captured 100 photographs, I used the pick, reject flagging system on Adobe Lightroom to select my favourite images. From using this system I came up with 50 images which were my favourite from this photoshoot.

i then narrowed them down more using the star rating giving my best 5 stars which i would edit

i then used colour filtering to pick out which ones i would use in a sequence for final prints

i decided to brighten them up changing exposure, contrast and the black and whites to try create more vibrancy in the image

overall i was pretty happy with how this first photoshoot turn’t out a lot of my images came out in not the best quality but will help me to improve them for my next photoshoot but still managed to get some i liked out of so overall was a good photoshoot for me

I have chosen too create a tryptic for these 3 images as together, they create movement. I experimented on photoshop to make mock-ups too see whether the images look better on a black or a white mount. I have decided I am going to go with the black card simply because I feel the images look much more detailed, however on the white card, I feel certain aspects of the imaged became muted due to the clash of the white sheet in the photos as well as the light grey skin complexion. On the black card the white sheet contrasts the black background nicely and allows us to be able to see the finer details within the images such as: the shadows of her back.

Like I did previously, I made mock ups of these images on both black and white window mounts. I have decided to chose the black mount because the images are of a deep and dark ominous road. I have chosen to do this on a window mount because it creates more physical depth for the images similar to how the images seem as if the road goes on forever, the window mount creates a sort of opening to the image transporting you into the road as if it was a portal.

I have decided to use these 2 images together to create the illusion of a deconstructed body. I have chosen a black background to contrast the heavily white/ light aspects of the images that could become muted on white backing.

Below is my final selection of images which has equated to four images, for these images I have been thinking of how to display the physical prints of them- I do not want to take away from the image by using a frame so when displaying these images I am going to stick them onto foamboard. The images have been printed in A3 size so I want just something subtle so the images stand out where they are being displayed.

FINAL PRINTS

DISPLAY

I think for my display on foamboard I am going to keep the two images on the left as a pair and have the other two as separate images.

VIRTUAL GALLERY

I did not intend my images to be displayed in a gallery, so instead of a virtual gallery I feel my images would be more suited as advertisements, film posters or billboards. On photoshop I experimented with viewing my images as billboards.

Another display of final images I may do is creating a small zine, one which would go in a DVD case containing the information for a film or in a CD case where there are song lists – my zine design is in my next blog post accessible here.

shoot 1-

My first shoot was inspired by both artists, using both of their techniques, with different framings, location, poses.

shoot 2-

My second shoot i have a wider variety of people to be able to link in with my project.

In order to help create my photobook, I hope to gain a better understanding of how they are created by researching another photobook. I created a photobook in my personal study project, in that project I studied a book by Troy Paiva. For this project I will study a book made by Raymond Meeks called: Halfstory Halflife. While the subject matter and general aesthetic of the book is different to what I envision my book will look like, I think this book executes its story very well in its presentation.

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1. Research and deconstructing photobook:

Starting with the title of the book: Halfstory Halflife, my interpretation of this idea of something being half-story/half-life, especially an image (or collection of images), is something that represents real events in someone’s life, without any filter or staging, which is what I think this photobook clearly represents in the majority of its images, a lot of them being personal, in-the-moment shots. The Half-story part comes from the fact that Meeks has sequenced these images into a book and arranged them with other images of the area.

The front cover of the book gives the impression of a hazy image, like a memory or idea. The cover is wholly a blue shade, further linking with the idea of details of an event being forgotten or altered in someone’s mind. It also reminds me of an old photographic process, such as a calotype, with the way it lacks much contrast.

All of the images in this book are black and white, giving many of the images a far more dramatic aesthetic. Some of the images depict a trip in the woods with a group of young people, jumping into a lake, the lake is never directly shown and is only seen as pure black. Other images are images of nature and some urban locations around them, practically all of the images involve nature of some sort. The vast majority of the images are portrait oriented, with only a few landscapes, no formal/traditional portraits. The images being black and white also remind me of old photographs of memories of youth and such, which I think works effectively with the snapshot style of a lot of the images.

My interpretation of the story of this book is that it is a representation of youth and memories, with a group of youths going for a trip lake-jumping in the woods. The story includes snapshot like images of the group of people, perhaps representing the fleeting nature of memories and time (which photography captures easily), while the more formal/traditional images of the locations could be used to provide a contrast to those snapshots, and perhaps representing how the earth (a location/area) does not change (or is lost like memories) as easily.

The book includes text written by Meeks and a poem excerpt by C.D. Wright, the text is largely emotional and directed at a group of people whom he mentions at the end of the book (likely the ones depicted in the book).

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2. Physical Analysis:

Book in hand: The book has a rough texture, which nicely mirrors the front cover’s slightly grainy, faded appearance. Despite being a softcover, the book feels very solid and secure due to the thickness of the book, as well as the paper used.

Paper and ink: The paper is consistent throughout the entire book. The book uses matte paper, making the pages less shiny, which I think works nicely with the style of the images as well as the front cover. The paper’s colour is white, offering a nice contrast to the large amount of black seen in Meeks’ images.

Format, size and orientation: The book has roughly 150 pages in total. It uses a portrait orientation, allowing for the predominantly portrait oriented images to fit nicely on a singular page spread. The book is not exactly A4, as it has slightly more width and less height than an A4 piece of paper.

Binding, soft/hard cover. The book is soft cover and has no dust jacket, however it does have cover flaps on the front and back cover pages. It uses a perfect binding.

Cover: The cover has an image printed on it, the colours of the image having been altered to be only a light blue. The image also has had most of its contrast taken out of it, which is what gives it that faded look. It likely uses a type of card as the material, it feels rough, which adds to the faded and slightly grainy look of the image printed on it,

Title: The title (to me) is both literal and metaphorical. As said above, the literal interpretation of the title represents the nature of the book itself representing both a real event and the story (Meeks’ perspective) of the event. The title is laid out in very small, white text with each word (‘Halfstory’, ‘Halflife’, ‘Raymond Meeks’) being on a different part of the page at different alignments

Narrative: As said above, the story is told using both snapshot images of a group of youths likely near a lake, and more formal/traditional images of the surrounding area.

Structure and architecture: The images are mostly laid out as a portrait on one page of a page spread, with the other mostly being blank (however there are a few double-page spreads and two images on each page of a page spread). All of the images are in black and white. The vast majority of images incorporate nature into them, either as the primary focus, or part of the environment the people are in.

Design and layout: All of the images have some form of border on them, none of the images bleed off of the page, except for a few landscape images that bleed onto the adjacent page. There are no inserts on any of the pages. There are only a maximum of two images on a page spread at a time, some having none.

Editing and sequencing: Some of the page spreads, such as the one shown above, juxtaposes a natural image with an image of a person. All the images being black and white (as well as the majority of the images being portrait) allows them to conform to a consistent style. There are far less landscape shots of an area than there are snapshots of people, Meeks likely using them as a contrast to the snapshot images.

Images and text: The book uses very limited text, only being seen on the front/back cover, spine, first and last pages on the book.