Photoshoot one
Photoshoot two
From my review and reflection I want to explore the theme of teenage life and ‘girlhood’ further exploring the idea of feminism. By exploring this It will show how our teenage years change and we explore new things and experience new things. To develop this project I will bring my camera to any social settings with my friends for example party’s, late night drives, getting ready with my friends and gatherings. By further exploring the idea of girl pictures by Justine Kurland and creating pictures of my friends at party’s and in social settings, shows how we are all growing up and making different decisions.
This will link to the theme of nostalgia as these years of our lives are the ones which shape our future and we will always remember these years for the rest of our lives. So by capturing these moments, people may be able to relate to the images or when I’m older I can look back and the images.
My images will be a mixture of staged and capturing the moment. By having some staged images this means I can take pictures of things which I might miss out when taking them in the moment. I wish to present my series of images in a photo book in a way which tells a story which people can understand without any text or context and read a story through pictures.
Environmental portraits
In this project we explored taking images of people working in their place of work. I chose to take images of my dad, he works as a marine engineer. I took pictures of him working on an engine in his workshop, which creates an image of him working but also a portrait at the same time.
Masculinity Vs Femininity
Masculinity describes the degree to which society focus on assertiveness and achievement. When in contrary, femininity describes the focus of society to quality-of-life issues, such as caring for others, group solidarity and helping the less fortunate are valued. In other words, society still recognizes a gap between male and female values. This dimension is frequently viewed as taboo in highly masculine societies
Taking inspiration from Kurland we went out to the cliff paths on the north coast. We found an area of flowers and grass to try and recreate her girl pictures. We found an area of flowers on the cliff paths, similar to her work. We also found an old fort with a bridge which created some nice pictures.
In our images we aimed to get as many pictures which show the castles architecture and capture the grand designs. We captured things such as the cannons, archways, bridges and other important factors of the castle.
The Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive (SJPA) contains over 125,000 items dating from the mid-1840s to the present day. It is the Island’s principal collection of nineteenth and early twentieth-century photography and reflects a rich history generated from our geographical and cultural position between Britain and France, two nations that were prominent in developing the medium.
This is an example of t=some of the archives they have created/ collected.
Patrick spoke to us as about Jerseys photo archive and why it is so important to the island. We have photo archives to look back at historical places and to reflex on how these places have changed over the years. These archives are well looked after to be kept in good conditions for many many years. We looked at some of the archives of Elizabeth castle from before the war to see how it has changed over the years.
The castle was built on an island known as The Islet, the first protective measures were installed in the mid-16th century. Construction of the castle began in 1594. The first iteration of the castle was completed in the early 17th century, with further developments made in the following years. It served as a fortress and defensive and was occupied by different forces over the years. Today it is now a popular tourist attraction.
Map of Castle
English civil war
The castle was first used in a military context during the English Civil War in the 17th century. The Prince of Wales visited the castle in 1646 and again, but now as Charles II in September 1649, staying in the Governor’s House, having been proclaimed King by governor Sir George Carteret, despite the abolition of the monarchy in England , in February 1649. In 1651, a windmill was constructed half-way between Fort Charles and the Lower Ward. In the same year, the Parliamentarian forces landed in Jersey and bombarded the castle with mortars. The destruction of the medieval Abbey church in the heart of the castle complex which had been used as the storehouse for ammunition and provisions forced Carteret to surrender on 15 December 1651 after being besieged for seven weeks. Jersey was held by Parliamentarians for the next nine years until the restoration of the monarchy
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.
After doing some research and gathering facts about the castle, I want to base our film off the architecture of the castle, including things like the walls, archways, the different layers of the castle and so on. This interests me as although it may just look like basic walls and buildings, they have way more history behind them. I think this will make a good film.
Chris Marker, (1921-2012) was a French filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor and multi-media artist who has been challenging moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his complex queries about time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet. Marker’s La Jetée is one of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made, a tale of time travel. What makes the film interesting for the purposes of this discussion, is that while in editing terms it uses the language of cinema to construct its narrative effect, it is composed entirely of still images showing images from the featureless dark of the underground caverns of future Paris, to the intensely detailed views across the ruined city, and the juxtaposition of destroyed buildings with the spire of the Eiffel Tower.
What is the point of La Jetee?
From a philosophical point of view, La Jetee is an existentialist tale of doomed existence, inevitability, and predetermined death. And what better way to express this idea than by using lifeless photographs to tell the story of a life that is only perceived as such?
Inside InDesign I used the layout to position my images in a way which looks neat and well put together. By creating a box to whatever size you wish, then selecting the edited image you have chosen and place it in the box. After placing the images in the boxes you can adjust them and make the fit in nicely.
“To collect photographs is to collect the world.”
When photography was invented in 1839, it was viewed by some people as a threat to traditional art forms such as painting or drawing. This is because photography was seen as a new technology that could produce images more quickly and accurately than traditional methods. Some artists felt that photography was not a true art form because it did not require the same level of skill and creativity as painting and drawing. Photography is often seen as a medium that portrays an objective reality showing the truth of a situation. Yet the subject, framing and composition of a photograph are all shaped by the subjective choices of the photographer. In other words, every photograph tells a story about the version of reality it is portraying. Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Specific applications of AI include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition and machine vision. AI can offer many benefits, such as improving efficiency, accuracy, accessibility, and quality of life. However, AI also poses some risks, such as displacing jobs, invading privacy, creating bias, and undermining human dignity.
“A picture captures a moment, not a lifetime. A picture, once taken, is filed in the past – cherish the memories but do not dwell on them. Go create new moments worth capturing!”
In the past before digital age photography has been manipulated by using darkrooms. A darkroom is used to process photographic film, make prints and carry out other associated tasks. It is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of light-sensitive photographic materials, including film and photographic paper. Darkrooms have been used since the inception of photography in the early 19th century. Darkrooms have many various manifestations, from the elaborate space used by Ansel Adams[1] to a retooled ambulance wagon used by Timothy H. O’Sullivan.[2] From the initial development of the film to the creation of prints, the darkroom process allows complete control over the medium. The image below is of a train with workers on the front driving past the Taj Mahal taken by Steve McCurry. At first glance this image seems to be normal image of workers on a train, but taking a closer at the image many may say that the image ‘is too good to be true”. The fact that the train is in perfect position in front of one of the most famous buildings in the world doesn’t seem that it has been captured in the ‘moment’. By doing some more research we may be able to say that this image was set up and it may have taken a few takes to get the ‘perfect’ image. On the other hand some will say that the image shows the Taj Mahal and its environment. The conflict between the serenity of the Taj Mahal in the background with the smoky chaos of the steam engine in the front. This contrast is highlighted strongly due to both of these subjects achieving a similar amount of real estate in the photograph.There is also a big color and features contrast between the graceful white architecture of the Taj Mahal and the unsightly features of the steam engine. In my own opinion i like the image think it shows contrast in the country and can also relate to many other countries, but i do think the image is staged as its a very rare and ‘perfect’ image to capture.
Steve McCurry, Taj Mahal and train in Agra, 1983
In our day and age photography has been altered over hundreds of years photography has changed and advanced from photographic film to mobile uploads on apps such as Instagram and snapchat. Pictures have transformed from a black and white pixelated film into colourful, vibrant, clear image of anything your eyes capture. Photography can even be generated on things like photoshop without a camera. These can be generated by describing and writing prompts to AI technology. For example on ‘dream studio’ you enter what you would like it to create, it will take what you have searched and put it all together to create an image. This will create whatever you tell it to, even if it is impossible for this to occur, for example ‘A fish riding a bike’ this almost impossible for this to happen. In the image below which has been generated by AI the man in the image is trying to get past the police to get somewhere. The image below looks almost like a real image and some people will say that this creates a false information about situations or people. ‘Focus, looks at the rise of generative artificial intelligences capable of producing fake images worthy of real photographs, a phenomenon that poses new challenges to the fight against misinformation.’ This is from a local news report saying that AI is creating misinformation, which could be damaging to photographers as they may think that AI technology is taking over their jobs. I personally think that AI technology takes away the uniqueness of taking an image, the effort put into taking a photograph on a camera has a different skill to creating an image on an AI software.
False image generated by photographer David Fathi via Midjourney showing Emmanuel Macron in contact with police officers. Credit: David Fathi / Midjourney
Can photography lie? I think that photography can lie. Photographs can lie by manipulating images to make them appear different from the original. In both of my image examples the images have been manipulated or staged, if you didn’t do further research into the image you would not know you are being lied too. This can be seen in modern day AI and historical photography, so it has not just stemmed from modern photography. Examples of historical photography been altered could be things such as retouching with ink or paint or using a darkroom. I personally think AI is a creative way to explore photography and allows people to access places or locations they may not be able to reach. I also think that it can help people to create dreams of theirs in these AI software spaces. On the other hand it can also be damaging to people jobs, for examples if we can create images on AI then we do not need the photographers to take images.