Environmental Portraits

I mostly enjoyed creating the images of Environmental Portraits whilst learning photography because of the techniques that I had to use in order to create good images. Environmental portraits are images of someone in their environment, specifically a portrait of them with the context of what they are doing or where they work behind them. You can learn from doing a project like this because of how you have to frame your image for a better effective image, which will allow you to convey more of the environment’s context. The backgrounds used in environmental portraits are more to show the symbol of someone’s working environment, for example:

A mechanic in his environment of a workshop having a break which can show a lot about a person. Their lifestyle is put on display and depending on what is in the image and what the persons expressions are, it could symbolise a stressful lifestyle/environment or any context the image is trying to show.

A couple images iv taken in this area I enjoyed creating because what is nice about this subject area is that it is all situational in where and when you take the image, you could be anywhere and be in a perfect position to take an environmental image for example one of my images:

Which I had taken with no intention to even use but turned out to be one of my best images in this area. It relates to nostalgia to me because of the times and situation the image was taken at and where the setting is, which to me was a time that I remember in a positive, enjoyable way.

Urban Photography

Urban photography can be created in different ways in photography, sometimes landscapes, close up any many other different ways, its very fluid to how you create your urban images.

Urban images are created in areas like cities or a village or places where there is a compacted and commercial area where people live or come visit. This could be for example New York, London, Jersey in town etc. Unlike Environmental portrait images which are mostly fond of the use of black and white images, Urban images like to be taken with a lot of vibrant colours with unique settings, and uses a lot of different shapes and lighting.

Urban photography is in its best element when there is a lot of movement going on and a people with a quick paste of life because it captures a scene and the context of what goes on in people lives living in urban areas in the cities. Whilst editing these images it is best when using a lot of contrast and vibrancy in the images. This area of photography is closely resembled to street photography because of its looks and methods of how it is made, it creates its own aesthetic. Although some of the images are created to look good and have a good feeling to them, some of the images in Urban photography are created to symbolise something, for example a run down abandoned building that sits in the area that no one uses but people know it is there.

It is close to nostalgia because of the feel that the images create which is very vibrant and the aesthetic makes you think about your “childhood” as a kid or even a teenager, which is how you might of been, running in the streets finding things to do and having fun with the resources of the urban area you live in.

How do archives function as repositories of knowledge?

Archives function like a human brain through holding information, and us selecting where the information goes, but can only hold things that have happened in the past and what is currently occurring in the present moment. They hold information through peoples activities or organisations which they have done, they are mainly seen as records of something, for example, an image, or a poem, even letters of important or even non-important information. archives are more the gran scheme of things which hold the information, they are not the information themselves, they are designed to only hold the information and can be in large quantities. Archives are digital, and physical, most commonly they are physical because in the past there wasn’t anything “digital” and they can be better looked after. Société Jersiaise are a facility which do all this but specifically about Jersey and its historical context. They where founded during 1873 by 3 islanders who where interested on the antiques and languages the island held, which grew the facilities a lot and allowed for information to be held much better. They even have people that have been taking images over the years of the island every day to show people for the future what society looks like currently and how people acted in every day life, even what it looked like. We learn a lot from doing things like this, as it shows a timeline of how society has grown or when it has crashed. To better understand it, archives are things like apps which you may log into or just use, even what you watch, as these things hold information about you and track what you do which is sort of like an archive, but also like building blocks, as the more you use the apps the more things it knows about you and the more it stores about you like an archive. And now knowledge is power.

Here is a link to our film: The Three Canons

Chris Marker was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia and film essayist with his best known piece being La Jatee created in 1962. He has had some good credibility because of his abilities in his creative, and analysis aspects.

Mark was almost an ominous man, frequently refusing to do interviews or talking too much about his work. People have even debated on where he was even born, but it is known that he had joined the French resistance during WWII, and later in his life joined the United States Air Force. This was speculated as a lie but was later proven by Chris Marker’s journalism after the war, working for a number of companies in journalism, writing about political commentaries, poems, and film reviews. This led him to travel the world doing photography and journalism, eventually publishing his first novel. “His elusiveness was a tool for creation. It furnished him with freedom”. Clearly Mark was not a person for fame, as he didn’t give many interviews, which allowed him to peruse Directing and film making with a clear head, as it says he went with freedom.

La jatee

Marker became international after creating this short film which was made as a photomontage using up to 800 images that Chris had taken throughout the 26 counties he had been to over the years. The film is about a post-nuclear experiment in time travel, where a survivor is obsessed over distant and disconnected memories about a pier with the image being a mysterious woman and a mans death. The scientists in the “time travel” choose this survivor for their studies. The man travel back in time to contact the mysterious woman, but ends up discovering that the mans death at the pier was his own. This is supposed to reflect the fragility of memory and how possible it is to become destroyed and distorted.

Elizabeth castle was in construction during the 16th century during the same time the cannon was introduced as an affective form of defence especially for jersey. It was built in order to protect the shores of the island and especially the harbours. The castle was names “Elizabeth Castle” because of the Elizabeth being the queen at the time.

Battle of Jersey

The battle of Jersey took place January 6th, 1781 due to the Anglo-French war and American Revolution war being unsuccessful to invade the island in order to protect American and French shipping. The island had been occupied by British privateers who would disrupt important shipping for the French, which caused the French governor at the time to interfere.

The French decided to attack with 2,000 French men, but a storm had caused only 1,200 to arrive in jersey. The French surprisingly landed unexpectedly with 800 of them landing at La Roque, due to the fact that the guards deciding to leave their post to go drinking, and the other 400 troops had landed on the rocks where they concluded they where completely lost, and 200 troops landing the next morning (due to the storm). The French managed to invade undetected and captured the governor and made him sign a letter which meant he had to surrender Elizabeth castle. Once they arrived at Elizabeth castle the occupants there, didn’t care that he had signed the surrender because he was a prisoner and decided to open fire on the French.

The battle lasted nearly 15 minutes, and happened at the royal square, with the British winning due to having more utilities and soldiers. After the war the British had captured 600 soldiers including the 200 French that landed the next morning.

Film Idea (documentary)

We are going to use the battle of jersey in our own film and create a documentary on what had happened and the events leading up to the event and even what had happened. We are going to include different sounds that we will record whilst we are there. and Include context on the painting of “the death of major Pierson”.

The front cover I wanted to include the a homeless mans dog, who was almost looking at where his owner sleeps but he isn’t there, which would attract the reader, but also how the image is strong with contrast and has subject.

here I used a double page spread to show the publicity of some of the local areas, and how it shows many tourists. Even in the second one There where locals and Travelers, with some smoking and relaxing in the sun, and tourists walking around and eating enjoying their time.

I used the same here because of the angles I got from getting these photographs, but also the contrast of action and relaxation.

These images included a lot of character in the way where it uses couples enjoying themselves and a man smoking with some expression.

And lastly I used the homeless man and his dog lastly to also show the poverty in St.Malo.

Homeless dog without its owner as the front (and back) cover to attract attention with a title of “City Of St.Malo”.

Double spread of tourists and locals getting food from what looks to be a small business.

2 images. One being foreign tourists who looks to be trying figure out where they are and cool down from the sun. The other image consists of people eating at a restaurant with a couple passing by. I chose this layout because I thought it looked good, unique.

These images are similar as it is of the same restaurant, but I wanted to capture people eating from a low angle and the activity of the restaurant, but also wanted to capture an image of people walking by and making the exposure time longer to create a blurry effect, whilst the people sitting down look normal.

Normal double page spread of an image of a small restaurant with passing people, and added a boarder to make the whole zine look even.

I liked this layout because it involves two couples young and old, gives a good contrast in the images, and shows them enjoying their time at St.Malo.

I wanted this image to be double page spread just because of how funny and cool this guy looks, and it shows the variety of people who visit or even live in St.Malo.

I chose this for the last image to also show the poverty that lives in St.Malo, and how its not all good, there are always areas in places which have this. And there is a dog.

My Zine is going to involve my 11 best images I had taken in St.Malo, which I’ve edited to create a more vintage look, which includes good contrast and shapes with what’s in the image.

Iv taken slight inspiration of the images presented to us by the last year 13’s who created their own, and even ones Mr.Toft had bought in for us to see.

Zines are quite easy to create and to do, people say there are no rules to creating a zine so in my opinion the most eye catching one will be the best. Which is why I want to have a homeless man’s spot with a dog on a chain, to catch eyes but also its a dog.

For the concept of my zine I want to build it off of the limited 11 images that I want to use and create a timeline from them, with maybe a little story which could be interpreted in any way. For example: it would start out with the most recent image I had taken at St.Malo after getting off of the boat:

which would be this image, as it shows how active St.Malo is for locals and tourism, and it would progress from there.

My “Narrative” would be more up to interpretation of the images that people see with some captions suggesting what they are looking at in the first place. Like an image of a couple looking at the view:

people in their own interpretation of my images could see the progress of me going around the town and seeing the things that I saw, I think this is good because opinions on the town can be bias so just showing people the things I saw and want to show, gives it more realism.

Hypothesis:Photography and Truth: Can a photograph lie?

Opening quote: to set the scene choose an appropriate quote from key texts or source that you have read and understood. Or select something Will Lakeman said in class discussion around ethics using AI in photography.

Introduction (250 words): Describe how photography from its invention as a new technology in 1839 was viewed as a threat to traditional artforms such as painting and drawing. Provide an overview of why photography (like all other art forms) is an illusion and a representation of reality (reflect on your essay earlier on the Origin of Photography). Explain what AI is as a new technology, and how it is already part of lives, give examples (Google, speech recognition, generative AI etc). Discuss both human and societal benefits and potential dangers of AI, again use examples such as Geoffrey Linton resigning from Google to bring awareness, or Sam Altman’s (CEO of OpenAI) being questioned by USA congress. Select one quote by either Linton or Altman and comment (either for or against). Introduce the two images that you have chosen as examples of the above.

“to collect photographs is to collect the world”, this quote references to collecting experiences and places in the world in a file as a whole, which in my interpretation is the internet, which gives access to almost everyone what is in this world, however it can be used to deceive people. Photography was a new invention founded in 1839 and was a celebration for some but a threat to others. Most people viewed photography as a break through, something that could be mastered as an art form, but it also threatened artists like painters, and peoples views on art. Although as time went on and photography became more popular, which could start making people money, it started to dive into negative areas of photography’s intention, for example “what made a good photography” which also means what photograph can make money became a strategy game for some photographers. People would stage certain photographs when good technology wasn’t round, and would create an image with those aspects in the way they wanted, and would make a “fake” photograph, so people who saw this would call this an illusion of reality because it wasn’t an image of what it was in the first instant, it was rather an image of how they wanted it to be. Now as technology grew so did photography and images ability to be completely altered. Artists had the ability to completely change what an image looked like, almost make up a whole new image, by removing and adding anything they wanted. This is completely altering reality now, by slightly manipulating an image, in context could put someone anyway for fake murder, or even create a perfect, beautiful image, the question of every image would start to be if it was real or not, or how real was the image. This became a bigger problem within the past 10 years now, such as photoshop and certain image editors, which with enough skill could create anything people wanted. But what is even worse is the invention of AI for photography, which could create any image in the world by using just text that you prompt the AI to do. This could be done even overlaying existing images or images you want the AI to edit. This invention created hands free photography, with no effort, its potential became scary for some people. Others like Geoffrey Linton who worked for google, who was a big part of AI and its ability’s had resigned in order to spread the awareness because of its creation, and that was for its creation in general, not just because of what it can do to photographs.

In the first image I have chosen “Roger Fenton, Valley of the Shadow of Death, April 23, 1855” it shows the aftermath of a war in Ukraine in 1855 at a deserted area of the battle field. in the image it seems to have used cannon balls and tracks used by vehicles. his image looks to be a landscape image to capture the hell of war, it uses techniques of lines and shapes and the placements of the materials work well. Although this image was a good representation of what the photographer was trying to capture, it was apparently said to be stages within some areas of the image. People had found an exact same image but except the cannon balls on the road where not along the road, some of them where in the ditches, and in the image shown at the top of this blog, there are cannon balls scattered all over the tracks. People say he done this to create more of an effect of what happened, and how he was capturing the violence of war. I find it interesting how there are no other figures in the image, and how it shows how docile death is.

In the second image I have chosen “Jeff Wall, Approach, 2014.“, this is because I like how it is something which you need to read about to fully understand its meaning behind it. This image shows a middle-ages black woman wrapped in a blanket , with an empty shopping trolley and some cardboard boxes. To any regular person seeing this image it shows an image of a dolcelatte person staring at a wall, with the image itself being in black and white. It is said (https://jeff-wall-contemporary-artist.tumblr.com/post/145276076751/approach-2014-this-a-piece-from-walls-latest) that this image depicts a variety of incidents revolving around themes of domesticity, property, separateness, territory and identity, which is interesting when u look at the image, as homelessness seems to be mainly between them through territory and who the owner’s of what areas. It also makes you think what made this person become homeless, drugs? Domesticity? Government? The image raises lots of questions but says a lot at the same time. (https://journals.openedition.org/ideas/5233?lang=en) It is said that “wall” (the photographer who took the image) took this image as a way for people to reflect on the world, like its politics, and what is has become, or for him to even spread the awareness of homelessness. He says that an image like this questions reality, mainly in photography to question what an authentic image is, and how real is it.