For my personal study, I think I want to explore nostalgia and childhood, growing up by the beach and other memories I am fond of. I want to look at archived photos of me as a child, and possibly recreate them in a nostalgic sense.
This idea matters to me because it is nice to reflect on the past, and the comforting sense nostalgia gives. In my childhood I spent a large amount of time at St Ouens beach and it would be exciting to return to my childhood memories through photographs. The nostalgic theme is also drawn into the process of taking the images, not only seeing the final product.
I will begin my project by finding archived images from the beach, and some other memories because I want to experiment with a few locations and memories to see which create the best story and composition. I might edit some of the images to look more archived, e.g. add film filters, grain, black and white, intensify the colours to make them look old. I will then visit the sites multiple times at different points in the day to get different lighting, areas and be inspired by new things each time.
My first thought is to produce a photobook, that tells a story in an ‘order’. I want to experiment with different layouts and opacities to create interesting compositions, rather than just the images presented on their own. I also would use the photobook to create a theme colour that ties in with the nostalgic sense e.g. pinks or golden yellows.
I am interpreting the theme of nostalgia by reflecting on my past and idealising it. Through my work I might try and portray the feelings of being a teenager living in society today, and show the pressures or body image, social media, and more. This could juxtapose with the ‘happier’ childhood archives. I am unsure if I will create a more negative look on teenage life, or if I will show a positive side. I will develop my ideas as I take the images and work out the best outcomes. Some artists that I have found and will take inspiration from are Rinko Kawauchi, William Eggleston, Maxi Magnano, Julia Kurland and Marco Kahold. I will shoot places and people as my main subjects and possibly some objects in the studio such as childhood bears or toys. I might take some photos of myself to show the change, but from a low perspective to emphasise my growth from childhood. Most of my images will be outside due to the fact that natural lighting will play a key role in my images, as I love the golden haze in the sky that winter sunsets create. My images will hold the aesthetic look, but some might be staged to create the Julia Kurland images. I would like to use some text in my book because I think it adds to the sense of nostalgia. I would probably use my handwriting and scan it, with the content being how I feel about the childhood, or writing that I did as a child. I could use a combination to show the change.
Kahold’s use of handwriting
example of Kaholds work with writing
For editing, I am going to use Lightroom Classic for my basic edits, then further my editing in Photoshop. This will make a difference because without further editing in Photoshop, I won’t be able to create the nostalgic hazy look, or add anything into the shot. I might experiment with AI or inserting other shapes to add a childish sense to the photos.
This week I am going to take some initial photos to help me start off my project, even if I don’t end up using them, it will help lead me toward better ideas.
‘Seeing Maxi Magnano’s works is like going on a trip on your own to a place you have never been before — exploration on solitude and a reflection on how we inhabit spaces, how we make them ours. On today’s interview, he shares with us how he started, what motivates him and how he found his remarkable artist voice.’
I have discovered the work of Magnano through research into nostalgic photographer online. He uses lighting and ambiance to create the nostalgic effect on his images, giving them a sense of warmth that links to the ‘good old days’ comfort nostalgia brings.
Maxi Magnano is an Argentinean photographer who took up photography at the age of 25. He began by shooting as a hobby using a digital camera, he developed a passion for it and began focusing on photography as a full-time career. Expanding his portfolio, Magnano wanted to capture feelings of melancholy and nostalgia. He typically avoids human subjects and focuses on everyday settings. This produces a sense of solitude and an ominous sense. He uses light and shadow as a key factor to attain the sense of life in the atmosphere.
Marco Kahold
I have also discovered the photographer Marco Kahold, who has recently created a book named ‘The Theory Of Intimacy’. He is a German photographer who enjoys travelling the world and capturing the ’emotional Zeitgeist’, whilst growing his ideas and discovering new aesthetics.
I was drawn to his photography because his images hold the hazy and golden look that I want to re-create in my image.
Over year twelve and thirteen I have covered many topics such as Nostalgia, Anthropocene, Home, Feminity/ Masculinity/ Identity and more. From these shoots I am going to revisit my favourite ones to help direct me towards a final idea for my personal study. I found some of these shoots more powerful than other ones, such as feminity, rural landscape photography, and long exposure portraits. I enjoyed the other shoots, but these three were my favourite, with my best outcomes. I also enjoyed my year twelve summer task ‘My Jersey’.
Rural Landscape
These were my best outcomes from this project:
My favourite part of this project was the pressure to capture light and shadows in the limited time given by nature, due to the fact the light was disappearing and changing. I might use some rural landscape photography in my personal study photoshoot to give a sense of surrounding in my personal life.
Feminity
This shoot wasn’t my strongest shoot, however I really like focusing on feminity as a subject because it is a big issue today that needs to be seen. Using photography to emphasise this issue is a really creative technique and I enjoyed the process of trying to show the power of females through Francesca Woodman’s inspiration.
Francesca’s Work
My Final Outcomes
I might consider feminity as a theme for my personal study, however if I was going to choose it I would combine it with my personal life and how feminity is shown through my past, and growing up as a female in a nostalgic sense.
Long Exposure Portraits
I experimented with Rembrandt and butterfly lighting in year twelve, and then moved onto long exposure photos with different colour gels for lights. These outcomes are also some of my favourite photos from the year. I really enjoyed the process of adjusting the shutter and achieving a balanced aperture and ISO to get the movement in the photo. These are some of the images:
I don’t think I would use this in my personal study, however going back and reviewing them gives me the opportunity to consider it.
Overall
Looking back on my old shoots and techniques I learnt, I revisited my ‘Nostalgia’ blog post. I find the positive mood given from nostalgia interesting and I like the idea of using it in my personal study.
A section of my blog post states ‘The personalities, possibilities, and events of the past are seen as a longing when associated with nostalgia, specifically the idea of “good old days”. People typically view the future more negatively , in contrast to the past as a more favourable thought. This is called diclinism when applied to one’s beliefs about society/ institution. It’s been expressed as “a trick of the mind” and as emotional approach to find comfort when the present day is dull.‘ I think revisiting the past with archived images from my childhood, then juxtaposing them with present day images could create a good piece. I might also photograph certain objects from my past that create nostalgia, and places that hold memories.
Overall, I think our film turned out better than we expected because we introduced new ideas along the way. The creative process of making a film brought new ideas to mind, such as getting someone to read out the letter as extra audio. Not only did this add to the film, but gave context to why there was a letter scrolling, and the purpose of our film. With a cinematic genre, we made sure to film landscapes that matched the theme and were appealing to the eye.
Learning how to use Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Audition was quite interesting and is another useful skill for the future. It wasn’t an easy process; there were moments when it felt long and challenging. However, with perseverance, we managed to create a final outcome that we’re proud of.
I don’t think I’ll be rushing to create another film for personal study anytime soon, but I’ve definitely gained a better understanding of what goes into making one. I found the process quite long and difficult, requiring a lot of time and effort to get things right. However, I have enjoyed learning the complexities of filmmaking and persevering to create a final outcome that worked. This experience has helped me see the creativity and teamwork involved in filmmaking.
Hannah used Adobe Audition to edit our sounds. To create our audio, she used a mixture of sounds gathered from our Elizabeth Castle trip. She also used sounds Sam recorded who is an audio producer that helped us learn how to use Adobe Audition.
When selecting the sounds to incorporate into the multitrack, she carefully considered the visuals that would accompany them to ensure a harmonious match. For instance, for the sea image, she incorporated a seagull sound effect provided by Sam. Prior to integrating the sounds into the multitrack, she individually edited them on the ‘waveform.’ This editing stage allowed her to trim the audio, enhance its clarity, and apply effects like echo
Waveform
She had to filter each sound to make sure they were ‘clean’. This involved removing and eliminating the background noises which she was able to do by using the ‘parametric equaliser’. Once she had edited each sound, she added them in to to the multitrack.
The process for editing the film and putting the clips in order so they could tell a story took quite a long time. I had never used Adobe Premier Pro before so it was a challenge to get to know the basics of editing. However, once I understood how the app worked, it became easier. I started off by selecting the best clips and images, considering the composition, mise-en-scene, lighting, focus, and stability of the image. Before I put still images into the app I had to size them in Lightroom Classic to fit the film size that Premiere requires. Once I had put all my clips and images in the order I wanted I edited the lighting and colour (shown in my previous blog post ‘EDITING STILL/ MOVING IMAGES FOR OUR FILM’). Some of the clips were shaky because they were hand held, so to fix this I used ‘warp stabiliser’ to analyse the video and make it more stable. I had to be careful with how much was on the cli, because too much would cause an unrealistic movement.
I then moved onto achieving putting the letter we chose from the Jersey Archives over the film.
Putting the letter over the film was challenging, but I figured out how to achieve it so it would scroll down the film.
I chose the starting point and marked it, then the finishing point on the ‘positioning’ section. I selected this for the amount of time I wanted the image on the screen, the shorter it was on the faster it would scroll so I lengthened the clip to make the scroll slower. I also had to keep in mind that the letter will be read out, so it had to scroll at reading pace.
After I got the speed right, and the first two pages of the letter that we chose in, I moved onto fading each clip into each other. I chose to do this after inserting the letter because the fades could effect how the opacity is presented. I used the basic fade by enlarging the clip, marking two points, and dragging the fade down.
For the Title I went into photoshop and cropped the letter to get ‘Dearest Patricia’. In Premier I put Blend Mode as ‘Multiply’ to remove the yellow background. I then used ‘dip to white/ black’ to fade it in and out.
For the end credits I used one of Premier’s premade designs to credit who directed, filmed sound, edited clips, sound and who was the voice of the letter.
Still Images: I wanted to make sure we had a variety of colour/ black and white images in our film to capture the colours and also represent the change from the past to the present. I made sure to give the black and white images a lot of depth because the letter is going to be scrolling over the images, so they needed to have a lot of darks and lights to stay distinct. I used AdobeLightroom Classic to edit these.
The lighting was quite dull on the day due to the weather, so it was hard to edit the coloured images whilst keeping interesting tones. I added warmth to them because it complimented the grey sky and the colour of the castle.
I would say this image isn’t the best, due to the fact the infrastructure is in the background, juxtaposing to the story set in the 1940s that we are telling. I think I will crop it more for the film. This also gave me knowledge for next time, learning to try different angles to avoid this issue.
I like the light in these images. I wanted to keep them fairly natural because the sunlight caught on the rustic tones in the room, causing the image to look like it was set in the time of Elizabeth Castle’s peak.
Editing video
For editing the videos, I changed the settings to ‘colour’ to get basic editing tools. I tried to focus on attaining the right light and colour throughout the video.
I mainly focused on the ‘Basic correction’ to achieve this because I didn’t want the videos to look over edited. I was also aware that we would have the archived letter over the images, and needed them to be basic enough for the handwriting to be easily read.
We searched through the Jersey Archives Catalogue to find an appropriate poem/ letter from the Second World War because Elizabeth Castle was used in the war. Originally, we weren’t going to use any archival material because we wanted to base our film off factual history, however we decided to make a more cinematic film. We thought including information about the war form a letter would be a more creative and cinematic way of showing how Elizabeth castle was involved in the war.
We chose a letter written from Elina Hellyer, née Teele, to Patricia from her aunt of ‘Rockwood’, Mont Cochon. The letter contains news of the liberation of Jersey, the family and life under the German Occupation. We accessed the letter on the Jersey Heritage website. We are going to include it by placing it over our film, in a low opacity. It will scroll down so the viewer can read it as the film is presented. I am going to get my grandmother to read out part of the letter to add to the film because it will add to the sense of nostalgia, as if Elina Hellyer could be reading out her letter in present time.
‘Our mission is to produce and facilitate research on the Island’s history, culture, language and environment; and to share that knowledge with the widest possible audience for the benefit of our island community.’ Founded in 1873, by only a small group of Islanders, the Société Jersiaise holds around 35,000 historical images. Although it started with a small number of people interested in the study of history, language and antiques of Jersey, it soon grew a larger membership, and the historical documents were published. Their main record of their activities in the Bulletin Annual in 1875. In 1893 the museum became permanent and moved to 9 Pier Road. Now looked after and owned by Jersey Heritage, the collection is still growing. Their main mission is to make the Islands history available for people to see and admire, researching its history. They achieve their mission to research the Island’s history through their active sections, research collections, community outreach and collaborations with the local heritage partners. They have been making long term studies possible since 1873 with their volunteer sections that produce the raw data. They specialise from archaeology to zoology. What can we learn from Jersey looking at pictures of the past? Holding a substantial amount of bibliographic, cartographic, photographic and research collections, the Société uses these as a sort of ‘long-term memory’ to supply an important resource showing the value of community through the heritage and archives. The archives are also a way to show the Island’s identity and environment and how it has developed through the years, holding a rich knowledge of the history and past Islanders. The Jersey archives create the personal question of what archives do we, as current Islanders and people, keep to preserve our history. Contemporary archives can vary from text messages, to digital images, to social media posts. They all hold a sense of history and knowledge about ourselves, however they do not have the same value as physical archives created with a purpose to inform the future generations about the past. The transformation in the change of photography is colossal. Comparing present day to even 50 years ago, a large difference can be seen. Images used to be taken with no knowledge of the outcome, developed, and then stored in boxes or picture frames to be admired personally. Now anyone can take an image, edit it, and post it publicly. I find this leaves less room for admiration of so-called archives these days, and the new generations are losing the knowledge and care that comes with looking after images. This could cause problems in the future for the Société Jersiaise.
Henry Mullins was an important figure in the first generation of Jersey photographers during the nineteenth century due to the fact that he managed to create thousands of portraits of Islanders from 1848 to 1873. He had a studio in the Royal Square that was very successful. His success was assisted by the circle of photographic pioneers at the Royal Polytechnic Institute, Regent Street, London. In 1841, the first photographic studio in Europe arrived there. His profession was first recorded in Edinburgh, 1843, before moving to Guernsey then deciding to live in Jersey a year later in 1848. His work presents mainly the upper class because of the price it was to take an image. His most well-known work is Cartes De Visite containing 9600 images, typically in sets of 16. It cost around 10d 6d to have these images taken. These images are now stored in the Société Jersiaise. Mullins was known for being favoured by officers of the Royal Militia Island of Jersey. It was typical for these officers to have their portraits taken, including their families such as wives and children. These images present the fashion in the mid- 1800s for long hair, moustaches and large beards. Some may say that it is difficult to depict a difference between some of the men due to the styling of these images. Mullin’s images offer us knowledge about the classes and how photography was used in the 1800s. Being archives stored in the Société Jersiaise, it allows us to analyse and discover Jersey’s past, and even compare it to present day. Archives such as these are more than an interesting portrait to look at, but are a part of Jersey’s history, giving Islanders knowledge into their heritage. After Henry Mullin’s passed away, over 20,000 negatives were given to the Société Jersiaise, allowing his collection of archives to be even richer.
Capt C de Quetteville
Mullin’s used the calotype method for his image making, as it said in an advert in the Jersey Times, ‘Instruction given in the Calotype, Energiatype, or photographic processes, and proficiency guaranteed for a fee of five guineas”.’
The calotype was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1841. Although it was surpassed in the 1850s by the collodion glass negative, for its time it was an adequate invention. The process used a paper negative, creating a print with a softer, less sharp image than the daguerreotype. However, because a negative is produced, it was possible to make many copies afterward. The fabric of the paper was contained in the image, rather than on the surface, meaning the paper fibers tended to show through on the prints. This can be seen in the example image above, created by Henry Mullins. This was typical in his work because the calotype’s image results were a lower quality print. Mullins’ collection of images like this provides a good amount of information about the people of Jersey in the 1800s, and their families. Although the images are mostly basic head and shoulder images, you can see the relation between individuals in the collection. There is a pattern of split shadow lighting on the portraits, showing that lighting was used to aid photography at the time, whilst informing us about Mullins style of image taking.
Example of split shadow lighting
Overall, learning about the importance of archives has broadened my perception about images from the past. It is shown to clearly be important for informing this generation, and future ones to come, about the social structures of Jersey’s different groups. This can be presented through the fact that photography was for the wealthy in the 1800s, proven through Henry Mullin’s collection of images of Jersey’s hierarchy, like officers. The fact that mostly only the affluent officers could afford for their wives and children to have portraits emphasises this. Exploring archives has inspired me to look at a variety of photographers that are not just contemporary and alive today. It has given me the ideas to look at more archived images, and present nostalgia through a more historic view, such as Ansel Adams or Alfred Stieglitz, and experiment with their lighting and shooting styles.
