Overall I am very happy with my final images and photobook from this project and feel that it works as a nice conclusion for my time on the photography course. This project allowed me to explore more abstract concepts and imagery, taking inspiration from photographers like Eggleston and Kawauchi, and allowing me to further experiment with light and colour.

I decided to compare my image to this one by Eggleston because of their similar subjects, both being images of trees. Eggleston’s image is a bit darker and focuses on the yellow tones of the image, and how they contrast the lighter grey background. My image’s leaves are much darker and greener while the background is much lighter creating more contrast. I also adjusted the hue of the wood to make it warmer against the leaves and background. While there were ways I could have taken more inspiration from Eggleston’s editing style, I wanted to allow myself to make creative decisions of my own as well to create a body of work that is coherent across my artist references.

For my next image I chose to compare similar images between me and Kawauchi. Kawauchi’s image is much lighter and monochromatic, showing the silhouette of a building through a window covered in raindrops, it is simple yet effective, creating an emotive image with quite a simple composition. My image uses the condensation of one of the enclosures in the reptile house at the zoo, and shows some lines where the water has run and disturbed the droplets. I increased the saturation of the colours to try to add another layer of visual interest beyond just the texture on the glass.

Finally I decided to compare my image with one of Yu’s because of the use of reflections. In her image, the reflection is very detailed and cool toned, contrasting with the warm lighting through the window. It is an intriguing image and very visually pleasing with her use of colour and composition. My image uses less contrasting colours and the reflection is not as clear because of how bright it is, and I possibly could have achieved a closer look by moving closer to the glass. Despite this I am still very happy with my images overall and feel that they display a lot of techniques both in and out of the camera.

Some of my best images from across the entire project. I feel that I was successful in exploring the idea of more abstract photography through light and colour, even if I did stray a little from the exact styles of my artist references. I also could have been on more shoots to have more variety in my images but I am happy with what I did end up taking and editing, as these images encouraged me be more creative and experimental with them.

After my images had been printed out, I began mounting them up based on my plans.

I started with these three images, trimming them down and sticking them to foam board to create a simple display. Unfortunately the colours came out a little differently in the print, especially the middle image of the green bottles as all of the images appear more yellow-green than green-blue.

I then began working on my 6 image window mount. This was difficult to make because of the detailed measuring needed to create a successful display. It took me a while to figure out but I am very happy with the final display. Unfortunately when placing my images inside, two of them got switched by accident but it does not effect the final version too badly.

While I was originally going to create this display as a window mount, I changed my mind when it was time to assemble, instead placing on foam and then putting it against the black background. I feel that this is more effective as there is a higher contrast between the plain background and the detailed abstract images. This change is also partially because I was having difficulties placing three A4 images on one piece of paper in a pleasant layout.

I also made another triptych that was unplanned, I decided to pick two images with similar colours and juxtapose them against an image with contrasting colours.

Overall I am very happy with my final image displays, despite the slight colour change in the prints, I feel that they show off my photographic style used in this project quite well and make interesting displays.

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.

After giving it some thought, I settled on the name Chroma for my photobook, it refers to the purity or intensity of a colour, which I feel works well for my final layout.

I uploaded my photobook onto Blurb to be printed, it can be previewed here.

Chroma

Overall I am very happy with my final layout, however I would have liked to add more images as this version is very small. I had 77 potential images I wanted to use but only used 24 of them in the final version. If I were to do this project again I would want to take more images so I had more high quality material to use in the book. Despite this I feel that I was successful in this project in exploring colour and light in a unique and abstract way, and it is very different compared to my previous project which mostly used old archival images.

During the exam I decided to go back to my Photobook to work on the final layout as well as decide on the front and back cover design and a name.

I struggled to decide on what I wanted to use for my front cover, and narrowed it down to three options.

I decided to take screenshots of each and compare how well I felt they looked as covers. In my opinion 1 and 3 were my best options but I still was not entirely sure.

I decided to open up Photoshop and to see what it would look like if I tried to overlay them. I experimented with the layer types, order and opacity but eventually settled on using the Lighten layer mode at almost full opacity. I liked how this combined the image colours while still keeping most of the details.

After being satisfied with the cover design, I then moved on to coming up with ideas for the title, as well as experimenting with font choices.

I looked up words associated with light and colour to see if I could find anything interesting-

• Afterglow– a glow remaining (as in the sky after sunsets) where a light has disappeared. : a pleasant feeling that lingers after something is done, experienced, or achieved.
• Chroma– purity or intensity of colour.
• Spectral– of or like a ghost. / Of or concerning spectra or the spectrum.
• Aurora– a natural electrical phenomenon characterized by the appearance of streamers of reddish or greenish light in the sky, especially near the northern or southern magnetic pole. / The dawn.
• Radiant– sending out light; shining or glowing brightly.

I found a font that I liked and typed out each potential title to see how they would look. I liked the simple layout of just the white text and no other writing. I experimented with having the text in capital letters but I preferred it with lowercase letters.

I then moved on to experimenting with the colour of the pages inside the book. By default they are white but I thought it would be worth seeing how page spreads would look like with a variety of options.

I liked the white and off white the most so decided to compare the two a little more.

I feel that the pure white has a bigger contrast with the images than the off white, giving the two very different effects. While it was interesting to experiment with, I decided that I wanted to use the pure white, because it draws more attention to the colours in the images.

Updated Draft (still undecided on name)-

I decided to print out an array of my images from this project in a range of sizes, in order to display them in an interesting way. I started by resizing my best images onto A3, A4, and A5 canvases to be sent off to be printed.

I then decided to use photoshop to experiment with the order in which I would display this images, based on their new sizes.

For example I had selected these three images to be printed A3 so I thought it would make the most sense to have them displayed together, likely on foamboard. I decided to group these images together because they are all rather detailed and have a variety of shades of green within them. I placed them equally far apart in Photoshop and used a drop shadow layer to make them look a little bit more 3D.

I decided to make a second layout idea with six images placed inside of a window mount. Each image is printed in A5 so I thought placing a collection of smaller images together would make an interesting composition. I placed the images in this order due to their colouring, shapes, and subject matter, like placing the images of birds in the two centre spaces. If I did assemble this in real life, I would use black foam board, allowing the white on the other side to contrast that and the image. I replicated this effect in Photoshop to see how effective this would be.

Another layout idea using some of my A4 images in a window mount. I picked these images because of the blur caused by their slow shutter speed.

Since I was also making a photobook, I thought it best that I have a reduced number of prints compared to how many I would normally make, so I would have enough time to assemble them to a quality I was happy with.

After colour coding and rating my images from my shoots, I began experimenting with placing them within the book’s layout.

For my second draft I decided to do the colour order in reverse, starting with the purples instead of the reds. For this version I also kept every image as a small square with no variation, reminiscent of Kawauchi’s photobook. I like this style a lot, as it makes every image’s importance feel equal. I was still unsure after making this version so decided to make another draft with a completely different order.

I also tried to group images together based on shape, as seen in this example where both images have similar colours in similar places.

Overall I was mostly happy with this draft layout, and left the decision of the final design up to me during the exam.

For my final project I decided that I would like to make a photobook alongside prints of my final images. I felt like a photobook would allow me take more inspiration from Kawauchi’s work, and that placing my images in a book would give them a new unique way to be interpreted based on their order and placement.

I tried to keep this in mind when selecting my images for the book, trying to focus on using images with interesting colours and light, taking inspiration from my artist references throughout the project.

For example, unlike in Kawauchi’s, Eggleston’s photobook uses a variety of image sizes and shapes, giving some more variety.

Both of my inspiration books are relatively large, to show all of the detail within each image, so I kept this in mind when designing my own photobook. Neither had a focus on a clear narrative, instead focusing on showcasing an array of abstract images, leaving it to the viewer to interpret the meaning of them.

I decided to use Lightroom’s image selection process to mark my images as different colours, based off of what I felt were the main colours within each individual image. I also decided to use the star rating system to decide which images I wanted to use the most so I knew what I wanted to focus on in my photobook.

Before starting to assemble my book, I decided on the specifications I wanted to use, including size and paper type.

I decided to use a large square book like I did for the last exam, I liked the size and general feel as I felt it could show my images very well. I also picked to have a hardcover image wrap instead of a dust jacket as I just generally prefer the look, and it is the style used for Kawauchi and Eggleston’s books.

I decided that when I started assembling my photobook that I should make multiple draft versions with differing compositions, allowing me to find the best possible layout.

From October 2022, I began an internship working at the Société Jersiaise photographic archives, a local charity dedicated to preserving Jersey’s photographic history, assisting in digitising their collection of photographs from a variety of eras and photographers.

They had an extensive collection of autochrome images which show Jersey’s contributions to the photographic world.

While working, I was tasked with helping to digitise a collection of colour film slides, documenting the fauna and flora of the island. These images were taken by Roger and Margaret Long, and blur the lines between science and art, with vivid colours and and interesting subject matters. These had an influence on my work throughout this project, inspiring me to branch out into more abstract and colourful imagery.

I decided to use Photoshop to experimentally edit my images from these shoots, I decided to overlay images using the blending modes within the program as well as using the same kaleidoscopic editing technique I have developed earlier in the course, duplicating a part of the image and reflecting it, creating a repeating pattern.

I edited these images using a variety of blending modes, giving me a lot of variation in their final look and how combined the two images I overlaid became. My first image uses the Saturation blending mode, creating some very unique colours for the image underneath it. My second experiment used the Colour blending mode, which ended up giving it a softer and less vibrant appearance. My final overlay experiment used the Hard Light blending mode, saturating the colours but in a less extreme way than the first image, it also shows the image being overlaid the most clearly.

These are my second set of experiments, this time created by duplicating a part of the image and reflecting it to create these repeating patterns. The become quite abstract the more they are repeated and as they become smaller, and I find these compositions quite unique. These images remind me of some Surrealist paintings which utilise strange dreamlike imagery in their works, distorting the usual appearance of subjects, using biomorphic shapes and spontaneity.

Using photoshop, I used chromatic aberration to distort the colours of my images and make them look really unique. It is a simple process that creates very striking images.

In photography, chromatic aberration is an often unwanted effect caused by issues with lenses inside digital cameras, often created lines of unwanted colour along the edge of objects. This is an interesting phenomenon and I wanted to experiment with creating this effect manually.