Gill was born in Bristol in 1971 he had an interest in photography from a young age and collecting pond life to look at under his microscope. Stephen Gill combined conceptual and documentative photography a lot of it focusing on his local side of east end London.
Stephen gills ‘talking to ants’ series was created in East London between 2009-2013 he collected objects and litter from his local east london surroundings and put them inside the film chamber of his camera exposing the image and the materials inside and the image outside simultaneously creating what he called “incamera photograms”. The contents in the camera being underexposed making striking lines contrasting the over exposed background. The composition was left up to chance as he could not adjust the items once in the camera – alot of gills photography imploys an aspect on chance as seen with his work ‘The pillar’ where he use a censor on the camera that took pictures without him being there using it to capture images of birds.
“photography is often about control. I want to loose control.”
The assortment of objects at the forefront placed inside the camera create flat dark lines with straight and harsh edges contrasting against brighter almost overexposed naturally lit background. The colours used in the background are neutral green and earth tones whilst the plastics are often bright unnatural colours.
I edited these images in both photoshop and lightroom, using tools such as the smudge tool and changing the hues of different colours in the image to create these images, manipulating the images to look better and more like the artists in lightroom and later layering the images in photoshop. I lowered the opacity of the layers on top, creating these multiple exposure photos. For some images, I conjoined different yet similar images, and for some I layered the same photo on top of another (one version being edited, for example by using the smudge tool, differently to the other).
Here are some images I took in the L’Etacq area. Unfortunately there was a hail and rain shower whilst I was out and this has affected the lens in many of these which does render them quite useless. However I am happy with the way that the sky looks in these images because it is exactly what I wanted to represent over the fields to create the ominous effect.
These are the images I took for the more natural aspect of my project – at Greve de Lecq woodland. The weather was exactly what I was looking for, fortunately, with high visibility and cold sunshine. Additionally, due to the time of day and height of the sun in the sky, the images have the effect of being near to darkness – as though there is still sun, yes, but it will soon be gone. This therefore makes these images very effective symbolically for their purpose. I am happy with quite a few of these images but I think any of them that include evidence of a path will not be suitable as they do not represent the kind of untouched landscape I wanted to photograph. I think for the majority of my natural images I am going to use older ones as I was not able to make it to many locations during this short spell of clear weather.
My favourite photos from these two shoots are shown below;
as I said in my photoshoot plan that I would be taking my photos for the mock I took the photos on my phone and I will send them to my computer by email. above this text is the location I took the photos for reference I mostly took photos around the industrial area. under this text are some photos I took around the industrial area.
most of these photos I will use in editing and only some for my final images.
The following images I edited in Adobe Lightroom Classic. I edited to try and replicate Rosenthal’s work. To make the background more of a black colour than charcoal I reduced the exposure, however to keep the vibrant colours from the objects I increased the contrast. I slightly minimalised the highlight due to the lighting being so strong however you can see in the third edit there is still a glare from the lighting.
Edit three I may not use for my project, due to the harsh lighting lines however I can still try to minimalize it in photoshop. Currently for my Anthropocene project I will to a triptych. I will choose my best three images and print them out. Furthermore to have more of a visual effect the photo placed in the middle will be printed A3 and the other A4.
For my photoshoot, I went to a local building site as i believe, especially in Jersey, the building of properties greatly effects the environment and life within the area.
I was not able to take as many images as i would’ve liked to since i had limited time and did not want to disrupt people who were working but I believe the images i captures gives the viewer a real sense of the scale of architecture in jersey and how constant construction may affect the future of its islanders.
My action plan is to go to a building site too take a look at the wastage of material and other aspects that may affect the environment, and to take images that give the viewer an inside perspective of what overpopulation and over construction has on the environment
I would like to get pictures of the different types of wastage from wooden panels to metal wires and so on.
I am a big fan of Alessandro Zanonis work and i believe his work with Anthropocene greatly inspires me and fuels my idea of photographing the over construction in todays cities. His use of quite eerie areas and landscapes which adds a dramatic tone to all his his images.
His Background
After attending the Liceo Artistico and the graphic design degree at European Design Institute in Milan, He began his profession working on printing, publishing, web and interaction design. in the second part of 2016, He was in China for two artist residencies where he made extensive reports on the city of Wuhan, on the development of the cities of Inner Mongolia and the slow disappearing of some urban villages in Shenzhen and Shanghai.
The use of symmetry in this piece allows the viewer to see how small and tight together living spaces are in cities with not enough space
His images often use very torn apart landscapes showing the poverty and effect of countries with overpopulation such as China
While creating my mood board, I searched for photographs of cars that relate to the theme as I knew this would be more realistic and achievable.
This is one of the images that ended up on my moodboard.
Realistically, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to recreate this image exactly as It isn’t very common for there to be a dumping ground of old, damaged cars. So, instead I decided to experiment with toy cars instead. I started off taking photographs in the studio. With a black backdrop.
Studio Results
However, these don’t resemble the original image very much. This is how I decided to photograph the cars in my garden as the original image is taken in what appears to be a field.
