For this photoshoot, I will be going to a bonfire since its that time of year. The plan is to show couples, planned and unplanned. For the tableaux photo, I will take photos of my friend with his girlfriend, acting out an argument, then forgetting about it when the fireworks start. For the documentary style photos, I will be trying to capture natural reactions to the fireworks. This may turn out badly because its a low light environment and I don’t have a tripod to use, meaning motions blur may become an issue.

Here are some of the images I used, including why I used them and how I edited them:

Here I captured this photo as a documentary style, trying to give a nostalgic look by editing the colour grading, adding greener shadows and bluer highlights. In this image everyone is walking away from the camera, giving it a sort of melancholy feel.

This is another documentary style image, with the subject looking towards the bonfire. I made everything black and white except the fire, drawing more attention to where the subject is looking. Since you cannot see the subject, it makes the viewer wonder who they are and why they are looking at this fire.

Here I again tried to create a nostalgic feel with this tableaux style photo. I asked my friends to pose in front of the fireworks, making a well composed image, with the couple looking up to the fireworks.

Here are 2 images that I quite like, with one having the phone in focus and one with the fireworks, this documentary photo could show how people cant enjoy something without needing to take a photo or video of it. Its also a little bit ironic because I was also taking photos so I wasn’t really in the moment as well.

Here is another image I like, its a tableaux image of my friend group. I like the composition as almost every space in the image is filled with someone.

Photography is a way of seeking out what normally goes unnoticed, that can be seen as seeking for a photograph. Another way to look at photography is as a challenge, as usually they create the most interesting photos. Observing things, e.g. the ‘male gaze’ is another important feature to create be a good photographer.

Observe – “To notice or perceive (something) and register it as being significant.”

Seek – “Seek is the attempt or desire to obtain or achieve something.”

Challenge – “A challenge is something new and difficult which requires great effort and determination.”

I will be using these 3 definitions to form my ideas. Here is a little mind map to collect my ideas on what these definitions could me for photography.

I then created a mood board to gather my ideas together, allowing me to pick the best general ideas:

I like the idea of landscape photography, showing the beauty of nature. I also think I could do something with basketball as its been my biggest passion for many years, allowing me to get more creative with it.

Another Idea I have had is to show manhood and the hidden difficulties of it. I might, later on, find a way to relate this to basketball, giving it a more personal response. Here is a article about masculinity that I enjoyed reading and will likely use to help me with this project here. I might also be able to bring some old photos of my dad to show how manhood has changed.

I will be planning 2 photoshoots, one being type documentary/window photoshoot (realism/ factual/ public/ candid). The other being a tableaux/mirror photoshoot (romanticism/ fiction/ private/ staged).

Documentary

The first I think of when thinking of this word is our street photography work a year ago so I will be getting some inspiration from photographers that I have already analysed back then. This would work well as Its completely natural and there wont be any input from me to change the subjects. National geographic is another think that comes to mind when thinking of documentary photos, so I could show the destruction or beauty of our environment. Maybe match car traffic with the crops in field.

Tableaux

When thinking of Tableaux photos, I think of our masculinity vs femininity work. Since I have already explored this in depth I might go about exploring 2 other binary opposites. Another Idea I had was to stage some sort of setting or story, maybe a crime scene, or a drug deal, ext. Another Idea I had was to recreate some of the romanticism paintings using photography, this allows me to link to some masculinity vs femininity photographers. Another Idea I had was to represent a few different human emotions. I got a few of my ideas from here.

Here I am creating a list of things that I found interesting doing, and other studies I enjoyed doing:

Still Life And Formalism

Still life is a work of art that shows inanimate objects from the natural or man-made world. This typically including fruit and flowers and objects contrasting with others textures, such as bowls and glassware.​ For this project I looked at famous paintings to get an idea of what my photos should look like. I also analysed photographers like Paulette Tavormina, who created 17th century inspired still life photography. She lives and works in the chaotic city of New York, yet manages to capture stillness in her work. I also looked at a a series of photos by Mat Collishaw’s called ‘Last Meal on Death Row’. Here are some of there photos and my responses below:

Formalism is where where The Design, Composition and Lighting are dominant over Subject Matter. I think this contrasted nicely with the still life project as when taking photos using these ideas in mind, it creates a widely different result to the still life photos. Walker evens and his series on Beauties of the common tool was a famous piece of work that he published in 1955 and tries to capture the good, clear, ‘undesigned’ forms. This linked very closely to the ideologies of formalism, with is simple backgrounds and repetitive composition throughout the series. I also analysed photos from Darren Harvey-Regan, who was directly inspired by Walker evens, but had modern technology to improve the outcome. Below are some photos and my responses:

Environmental Portraits

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. Arnold Newman was the main inspiration for my photoshoots, he is known for his ability to thoughtfully capture the personalities of his subjects through their expressions and surroundings. While commonplace today, this technique was not widely used in the 1930s when Newman was learning his craft, pathing the new era of portrait photography. He would designing floor plans, equipment, schedules, and possible poses before the actual shoot even took place. Here are some of his Images and my responses to the overall topic:

My response

Studio Lighting and Headshots

Here I was getting to grips with the some common lighting methods, and some slightly more obscure ones. The main types of studio lighting consist of flash and continuous lighting, but they way you organise the lighting can create a massive impact on the final outcome. One lighting technique is called Rembrandt lighting, where a small triangle is cast under one of the eyes. Butterfly lighting is the next one and it shins a light directly towards the models face, above the camera. It creates a shadow under the nose and cheek bone that resembles a butterfly. Another one I looked at was Chiaruscuro (Italian for light dark), its a dramatic contrast between light and dark in the image. Here are my photos where I tried to replicate these lighting techniques in the studio:

A headshot photo is where the portrait photo is cropped somewhere in the middle torso – so that the focus is on your face. Bruce Gilden and his faces series was where he went very up and close to the subjects faces, capturing and amplifying all the imperfections lack of symmetry of people, making each person very different to each other as we are all individuals. Often times he subjects looked ‘Ugly’, causing a lot of criticism. Here are some of his photos:

I then explored different ways to edit headshots, using diamond cameo, photo-montage and multi-exposure:

Identity – masculinity vs femininity

This topic is all about capturing the inside of a subject, not the outside (e.g. there hair, eye colour, what clothes they re wearing). I tried to capture who they actually are, there identity. However, since this is a very broad topic, with many things I could explore, so I decided to focus on the binary opposites of masculinity vs femininity. I analysed 2 photographers, Cindy Sherman’s work is the multitude of identity stereotypes (like femininity) that have arisen throughout both the history of art and the history of advertising, cinema, and media. Sherman reveals and dismantles these stereotypes. her Untitled Film Project shows how females who play roles in moves are simply there for male pleasure. Claude Cahun was another photographer who defied conventional ideals of beauty and femininity with her shaven head and male attire, Claude Cahun is a perfect example of someone who pushed the boundaries of gender roles in a stereotypical society. Here are some photos from them:

Here are some of my photos that I took, which is my response to the topic of masculinity and femininity:

Landscape – Romanticism and the sublime, and New topographies

A Landscape photograph is one where it is aligned with the horizon line. The photo is wider than it is tall, to capture the vastness of a natural setting. Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) is an artistic and intellectual movement, characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of the past and nature. The Sublime defines art as that which alludes to an immeasurable greatness beyond comprehension. Ansel Adams often had both these features in his images. He is probably the most well known and important landscape photographer of the 20th century. He created many techniques (e.g. the zone system) to help create his vast and breath-taking images of national parks in California. Here are 2 photos by him:

Here are some of my photos that I got inspired by Adams to take:

The New Topographics represented a radical shift by redefining the subject of landscape photography as the built (as opposed to the natural) environment. As environmentalism took hold of the public conscience in the 1970s, The old landscape photography from people like Ansel Adams, which where heroic and displaced the power of nature, where rejected in favour of how human activity connects with the natural world, rather than separating it. Robert Adams was took very deadpan images of buildings contracting the natural world. Here are some of his photos:

My photos:

Anthropocene

anthropocene is defined as the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. Edward Burtynsky, born in 1955, is renowned for his continued investigation of the ‘indelible human signature’ of the planet, caused by are excessive destruction of the natural landscape, for resources, land, energy, dump sights and more. Here are some photos from Edward Burtynsky and my response to his ideology’s:

My photos:

Stephanie Jung

Stephanie Jung works as a freelance photographer, based in Germany. Her Photos are often multiple merged images, each slightly offset from each other. Stephanie Jung does this to create a sense of movement, matched with the busy environment. Here are some of her photos and my responses:

My photos:

Street photography – Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier Bresson harnessed the idea of the decisive moment, which is, with little planning, waiting for a moment which is interesting to capture. His photos set in motion a transformative wave that resonated throughout the photographic community. Here Are some photos from him:

I created a page spread of a trip to St.Malo I went on. I took some street photos before hand, then put them in InDesign to edit them and create a page spread of my trip.

Introduction

Photography started with many years ago with a camera obscura, and using this camera obscura we began creating different ways of capturing the light. Some of the first ways where the Daguerreotype and Calotype process. The Daguerreotype process required a perfectly reflective silver plated copper, almost like a mirror, to capture the light. The Calotype process used a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride and exposed to light in a camera obscura, which is basically a small window into the real world, creating a negative image (the Daguerreotype process also used a camera obscura). So the idea of windows and mirrors in practical photography have been around for hundreds of years. However, as cameras become more common with a larger and larger catalogue of images, there became a pattern which most images followed, with some images being more subjective and romantic (a term used to show the indispensable presence of its maker in the picture), and others being more documentary like and objective. These ideas relate to mirrors and windows respectively. However, using the ideas of how a camera works, with view finder, or the window into the camera, and how the photographers view is almost always reflected onto the photo, means its hard to find an image that fits into one category.

Mirror

This image by Cristina-de-Middel is clearly very staged and manipulated. Its one photo in a collection by her to rebuild some a little Zambian story about astronauts, you can learn more here. It is of a person, with homemade clothing walking like there are on the moon almost. The background contrasts the subject in a way that makes it look edited (with the background being dark and rocky and the subject having colourful native clothing on), further enhancing this manipulated look. The covered up face with the helmet adds a sense of curiosity to the image as we don’t know who is under it. Its also a tableau as it has a model positioned by the photographer, reflecting there views on the scene. This also links to John Szarkowski’s quote about mirror in photography, “reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it”, as she added her own twist to the original Zambian story. However Jed Pearl’s review on Szarkowski’s thesis opposes this view of a clear ‘mirrored’ image of the artist, as all of photography by its very nature can create a inclusive acceptance of fact and objective structure, yet the choosing of images and the facts to show for them is the romantic/mirrored part of a photograph. In my opinion, I think Szarkowski’s thesis is the most correct as he believes all photographs are on a continuous axis but most lean towards one side. So with this image, the romanticism side is obvious with the planned shots and the modifications of the original story of the Zambian astronaut, but the fact that there was an original story leans the axis slightly less towards the staged side and towards the factual side.

Window

This picture was taken in 1969 by the Garry Winogrand in Los Angeles, in public. He is a famous street photographer so already the photographer cannot add his own input to the subjects in the photo, only the subjects can change from the photographer being there. For example, the three women that are in the light may notice the camera and make themself appear better. This already makes this image more of a truthful, and natural image, and removing the romanticism from the image, contrasting the tableau image above. The person on the left, with his curved back, contrasting the straight lines of the lights and buildings, further emphases the truthful nature of this image. The photographer can, however, add input to the composition of the photo, like how he tilted the camera to create more diagonals in his images, adding more dynamism and drama, as well as cropping images to remove some of the truth, to create an image that matches the photographers desire. in Szarkowski’s thesis realist is ‘generous and inclusive acceptance of fact, objective structure, and the logic of process and system’, however, this image can never be a realist image by those standards as its already subjective by the photographers modification on the composition of the image. In Jed Pearl’s review of Szarkowski’s thesis, he states that his thesis, ‘gives little value to photography’s a priori status as a realist activity’. I agree with this point as with this photo, its objectively unedited and natural, making it a documentary photo, instead of a tableau, where as Szarkowski believe there is not a definitive line between those two categories.

@t-little14

So, How can photographs be both mirrors and Windows of the world, I believe its because we cannot draw a line between the mirror photographs and the window photographs. Above I said that drawing a line between a documentary and tableau photo makes sense. This is because those words cannot be subjective otherwise they would be pointless to use. However, when it comes to mirror and window photographs, like Szarkowski said, its very hard to leave one photo in one category as even with documentary photos, its hard to not reflect some of the photographers visions (consciously or unconsciously) onto the final photo. I disagree with Pearl’s review, which was that no photos can be mirrors as, by nature, they are a window into the world, because of the fact that the photographers visions will always be reflected onto the photo. The opposing concepts of objectivity and subjectivity with windows and mirrors both features displayed in almost aspects of a photo, as I have explained above with two images. Even with the the image being more ‘Window’ like or ‘Mirror’ like, I have shown that it will still display aspects that oppose its original ‘designated’ category.

John Szarkowshi’s expedition ‘windows and mirrors’, held in New York, since the 1960s, categorised the work that reflected a portrait of the artist who made it (mirror) and work that largely sough to see outside themselves (window).

Szarkowski is fond of creating categories. In the anthology The Photographer’s Eye, published in 1966, he described five “characteristics and problems that have seemed inherent in the medium.” Now, in Mirrors and Windows, he presents a binary theory of photography as art: an evolution from public to private concerns and at the same time a potential toward either self-expression or exploration in the unique sensibility of each photographer

Mirrors

As already explained, a mirror is basically a staged or personal image that matches the photographers vision. words that associate with mirrors include: tableaux, subjective, romanticism, fiction, staged, personal, reflective, internal, manipulated, biased.

The photo I got given to analyse was, as I decided, a mirror photo:

I think this is a mirror photo as it seems incredibly unlikely to happen naturally, from the boy using the flash in the day, to the good composition in the photo. It also just gives off a ‘staged’ feel. Here are some other examples of mirror photography:

Windows

Think of a window photo as the polar opposite of mirrors, with words like documentary, objective, realism, candid, public, external, truthful, straight, optical, unbiased to describe photos in that category. its basically an image that was not modified by the photographer. This is very uncommon so most images are usually a mix between the two categories, but still leaning towards one side. Its also uncommon to see an image that perfectly matches the photographers vision, making it slightly more window like. Here are some examples of window photography:

A quote about mirrors and windows in photography:

“The two creative motives that have been contrasted here are not discrete. Ultimately each of the pictures in this book is part of a single, complex, plastic tradition. Since the early days of that tradition, an interior debate has contested issues parallel to those illustrated here. The prejudices and inclinations expressed by the pictures in this book suggest positions that are familiar from older disputes. In terms of the best photography of a half-century ago, one might say that Alfred Stieglitz is the patron of the first half of this book and Eugène Atget of the second. In either case, what artist could want a more distinguished sponsor? The distance between them is to be measured not in terms of the relative force or originality of their work, but in terms of their conceptions of what a photograph is: is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?” 
— John Szarkowski, 1978

Here Szarkowski considers Alfred Stieglitz as a leading figure in the “photography as a mirror” function, and
Eugène Atget as a leading figure in the “photography as a window” function:

Through the theoretical separation that the mirror/window bipolarity produces, and the questions that arise regarding the ways in which a work can be a mirror of the photographer, a problem emerges concerning the relationship of the self with the mirror: how to conceive of the relationship between what is seen of the self and what the self is in its totality, as well as between the “Ego” and the “I take a photograph”. This major question can be tackled through some related ones, such as those concerning the concepts of the “truth of the photographer” (to what extent does the person who photographs enters some synchronous -to their personality- qualities, beliefs and preferences in the image) and of the “truth of photography” (what constitutes a photographic image?).

Below are some screenshots of the gallery presenting my photos from the photoshoots taken in the St Helier harbour. I laded them out in controlled order with photos containing wide open spaces having a larger frame than close up photos. I also grouped similar images together to make the viewing less confusing.

Evaluation of the whole topic:

the topic of Jerseys marine life was initially quite interesting to me as I have now lived on this island for over 7 years and I’m always interested in learning new things about the island. The Jersey marines was particularly interesting because it my dad has always been into fishing and I often join him, so learning about the interesting and often overlooked history of jersey cod trading was fun to learn about. Using the Jersey Archives as a research tool helped me massively to find out what was going on from over 300 years ago to now in Jersey. It helped me answer many questions about Jerseys history, like sources of income, common jobs, ext.

For the first photoshoot we went around the the St Helier harbour with 2 tour guides, one being the old captain of the marine which one of my final images has him as the subject:

I like this image as Its almost a capsule into the past, with no new items in the frame. It also has a lot of context to it, with him being the old captain of the harbour. The geometric background also complements the subject nicely, as well as drawing the eye towards the captain. His happy expression passes onto the viewer, making this a very enjoyable photos, while also making the past seem fun and exciting as well.

I have a few other photos that I like from the first photoshoot which I explain in previous blog posts.

For the second photoshoot, our school gave us a tour around the maritime museum which was a very interesting experience, as all my research was now viewable, with old boats, paddles, fishing requirement and so much more, all used to help create the rich history of Jerseys marine industries. Here is a photo from the museum:

As you can see it was packed with history, making it a valuable place for my research and understanding of the Jersey marine history. For example did you know that in the 19th century Jersey was one of the largest producer’s of boats in the British Isles. This was partly due to its very cheap tax rates and its large labour work force.

We also took more photos of the harbour after the museum, which I am very pleased about, as I tried many photography techniques like taking photos at unexpected angles, using various camera settings like a long exposure time to create a blurred effect, and more.

After the two photoshoots I am very pleased with my final images, each being very unique and having a lot of context to them.

Here is my first mock up of my zine design, using inspiration from my printed pictures:

I then tried adding some text to or next to images to add more context to them, making them more interesting for people looking at the zine. I also rearranged some photos here:

I also tried making the margins from 12.7mm to 7mm so the photos fill up more of the page. I think it looks more clean and better now:

Now I have a free page that needs filling. To do this I’m going to find some photos that will complement well with the current images in the zine:

I also changed the name to:

I tried a funky design in photoshop to use for my title but I think it looks better to just use ordinary text:

The print:

After printing, using booklet settings, I collected the pages and folded them neatly using a bone folder and put them together in order. The I stapled the spine of the zine and trimmed the edges. Here is are some images from the final product:

Evaluation

Overall I am very happy with the final zine. It has many photos in without looking too busy as I has some pages with less images. The photos I chose also brings the viewer through a little story as they explore the harbour with my zine, without missing much as most of the harbour is included. However I do think I could add more ‘story’ elements instead of headers on some of my pages. It turned out very similarly to my mock up designs which I am pleased about, with the improvements further enhancing the zine. The zine also helped my present my best images in the order and format (e.g. the size) that I want, which would naturally improve the images.

To select Images. I looked through the Images I have already rated on lightroom:

Then chose 16 unique Images that I can use to tell a story. I tried to include some busy Images which have wide and detailed shots. As well as including some simpler images to complement them and to add a negative space effect to the little magazine. I also wanted to include a lot of images with human subjects as they are usually the most interesting.

Here are the Images I decided to chose:

I might decide later to swap out the 4th image so I can put these to images next to each other as I think they contrast each other nicely:

I then printed out the 16 images I decided I want to use, cut them up and laded them out so I can decide which order they are placed and how they are placed in the zine:

I used other zines that you can see above my images to give me inspiration for the layout. I think for the steam clock I might add a few more photos to that page to create a topology of the steam clock.

I Then stuck the images inside a mock up zine with tape to see how it would look like. The size of the images will change later on as I will re-design them inside InDesign:

I took these photos a week after I took the first ones, on the 18th of September. This time the sea was a lower tide, As well as being more sunny. We went around the maritime museum for the first 1-2 hours of our trip. Then after lunch we went around the harbour, but to different areas of the piers around. I focused more on portrait photography this time since I already have many photos of the piers, as photos with people normally tell more of a story.

here are some local fishermen who I asked for some photos. I would like to of positioned my camera more to the right so the man on the left wont be cut off by the pole. However I do think the composition is nice as there is not much negative space (as most areas have a face in), and the pole can be a leading line towards the right person. The right person also has a lot of character in his face so it helps add more story to the photo. To edit I added a black and white filter, and changed the contrast slightly. I also cropped it a little bit.

I like this photo because the bad boys paddle contrasts the subject on the left who seems a bit nervous.

This photo was taken inside a shell fish area, It was very dark and had containers with different shell fish in each.

Here is a montage of 3 images (plus 1 large image), each of buildings around the harbour. I chose these photos to be next to each other since each building is very large, showing the scale of the harbour in jersey. For editing I bumped up the saturation and contrast slightly, while adjusting the blacks and whites to make each image a similar style.

here are some photos from the maritime museum. Unfortunately a lot of my photos came out full of noise because I needed to increase the ISO to above 2000 since it was very dark.

Here is some photos of a worker changing the chains along the sea floor. I edited it so the neon green safety jacket would be the only object with saturation. This method of selective saturation can reduce the busyness of an image and allow the subject to be more obvious.

I tried again but with this dock workers shoes and it looks a bit naff. I will increase the workers exposure so he doesn’t blend into the background more, I will also try cropping the image to reduce background noise and to make the subject larger.

This looks a bit better in my opinion but still not the best.

Here is are 4 images that I edited with these settings:

These are all quite similar images In my opinion. They all don’t has an obvious main subject, meaning the eyes don’t have an obvious place to rest, making it more chaotic. They are also different in some ways as well, the first image and second image have a foreground and background where as the third and forth image is mostly all background.

Here is a one off image I took through a little gap in curb. It has good composition and reminds me of picture cards that you get while on holiday.