Below is a mood board of photography/photos which interests me and can give me paths to go down for my personal study.
Landscapes was one of my favourite topics we did in photography because I really enjoy taking photos of Vistas (views) of the land as I find it visually appealing to look at. There are also lots of creative paths as you could go down and take photos of such as, urban landscapes which could link to Urbanisation and the Topographics, or natural landscapes which could go down the route of Romanticism and the Sublime.
The new topographics was also a topic I enjoyed. I think it was because I enjoyed photographing things which wouldn’t commonly be photographed, as well as the urban and industrial elements of it which I find interesting. Below are some of my favourite photos from the photoshoots I did.
Anthropocene was a great topic we did in photography as it helped me see the impact humans are having on the planet including the small things which usually go unnoticed. Below are my favourite photos I took.
Mirrors and windows was a photography exhibition consisting of 127 photos at the museum of modern art in New York 1978, created by John Szarkowski. The exhibition was created because Szarkowski wanted to categorise photos into two categories.
Mirrors: are photos which mirror the photographer’s feelings/what they are trying to portray.
Windows: are photos which act a window for the viewer so they can view an image which is documented as what the photo actually is in reality.
Szarkowski described the exhibition as “a fundamental dichotomy in contemporary photography between those who think of photography as a means of self-expression and those who think of it as a method of exploration.“
This photo could be seen as a mirror because it is staged and the photo is taken in the view of the photographer, Nan Goldin, and is of people he knows.
This photo is an example of a window as it is just a photo of a landscape by Ansel Adams the photo documents the landscape and it is what it is shown. As it is all subjective it could be a bit of a mirror image as Ansel Adams had a passion for Yosemite national park and he could be trying to portray his passion for the landscape and scenery of the park by taking this photo to show his view of the park.
I started with experimenting with a front cover for my zine I wanted the colour scheme of my zine to be blue and white because it reminds me of the sea
for my first page I wanted to do a comparison of the harbour a long time ago vs today I started by creating the layout with placeholder shapes.
I started by designing the layout of four images and then chose the four I wanted. I ended up swapping the top right image to the one in the screenshot above, from one I took of the new quay, as I wanted the page to look more vibrant and the original photo looked out of place.
For the back cover I originally wanted to have an image of the old harbour, however it sadly didn’t look right, I couldn’t position it correctly so it looked good and there was too much blank space. I ended up starting again and using a different image this time a portrait image which would fit better which I also wanted to use on the zine. Overall I am much happier with how it turned out and think it looks a lot better than before.
Thankfully I could use the image more appropriately as a double page spread because I needed another two pages because I had 18 pages and I needed 20 so it would print without any blank pages. Because the image is a panorama it is wider that a standard landscape image so it was a lot better having it stretched out across two pages.
STORY: What is your story?
Describe in:
NARRATIVE: How will you tell your story?
I printed out the photos I wanted to use for my zine and created a rough layout to help me decide what photos to use and where they will go in my zine. It really helped when I was creating my actual zine as I knew roughly what and were my photos will go.
Me and Tama Walked around the Old harbour, the English & French harbours and the Albert pier, taking a total of 263 photos along the way.
Below are the photos I flagged as pick because I felt like these images stood out more compared to my other photos. It also made it easier to add colour labels to help me select my beat images. The photos with the blue colour label being environmental/portraits and and purple having more of a topographical approach.
After a lot of time and consideration I narrowed it down to eleven photos which I felt were the most interesting and related to the St. Helier harbour. Now I am going to begin the editing process
I edited all my best images. Below are the ones I edited the most and experimented with. The other images I did minor adjustments such as cropping and slight changes to the colour or tone as they didn’t need much and I didn’t want to overedit them.
For this photo I change it to black and white to experiment to see if it suited the photo and it did so I kept it like that.
For this edit, I cropped the photo to make it more centred and did some selective colour on the yellow and blues. I also increased their vibrancy because as when I was editing this photo those colours stood out.
The first thing I did when editing was to crop and level my image. Afterwards I slightly increased the contrast which made the pier look better and more darker and I decreased the temperature of the image which gives it a blue tone which quite I like.
Overall I found the first photoshoot I did at the St. Helier harbour was successful, it would have been nice if the sun was out a bit more, however I am pleased with how I captured the harbour life.
Out of all my images I would probably say this one is my best, it was a really hard choice to make because I love all of my best images however this photo with the toy dog is quite unique as you wouldn’t expect this at the harbour and it puts a fun spin on the photo of the harbour room.
the photo was taken at the end of the albert pier in a small room where a harbour worker/master would have once sat. The photo is black and white and contains no colour, the photo also fully uses natural light provided by the two windows which creates a nice shadow on the table. The toy dog is in the centre of the image as it is the main subject and takes the place of where a harbour worker would have once sat, it also gives the centre of the image a softer texture, compared to the rough walls and solid desk. The photo contains a wide tonal rage with dark black areas of the shadows and light white areas where there is a lot of light, there is also a wide range of different shades of grey which is due to the contrast of all the levels of light.
Photography turns the ordinary into the extraordinary…
Meudon is a photo of a street with a bridge in the background taken by André Kertész. After he took the photo he went back and took another photo of it but this time there was a steam train going over the bridge and people on the street and the photo was more interesting than the first one.
The camera obscura is a natural phenomenon where rays of light entering a completely dark room form an upside down image of the outside of the room on the opposite side of the room the light is coming from. This technique has been used for thousands of years to trace images way before photography was invented in 1839 making it the starting point on the concept of photography.
Joseph Nicéphore was originally interested in lithography which is a form of printmaking but eventually went on to try and to capture photos. It is unknown when but after years of experimenting with different chemicals he wrote a letter to his sister in law in around 1816 which suggested that he managed to capture small images on paper coated in silver chloride however the images he created were negatives. He describe the process as “The discovery I have made and which I call Heliography, consists in reproducing spontaneously, by the action of light, with gradations of tints from black to white, the images received in the camera obscura.”
The oldest surviving photograph by him, and the first ever photograph that exists, is called View from the Window at Le Gras, and was taken around 1822-1827. This breakthrough lead him to partner up with Louis Daguerre in helping to create Daguerreotype.
The Daguerreotype was the first commercially available photographic processes invented by Louis Daguerre in august 1839, which allowed images to be physically saved. The process was long and tedious which involved polishing silver plated copper until its surface was like a mirror while treating it with chemicals so the metal became light sensitive. Afterwards you would put in in a camera obscura box and then treat it with more chemicals, the proses was expensive and very time consuming, however with it being the first way to commercially take physical photos and was a massive milestone in the history of photography.
Robert Cornelius was the first person ever to take a ‘selfie’ (self portrait) in 1839 using the Daguerreotype, just months after it was invented. It was not an easy task as Robert Cornelius had to determine that the lighting, in his families garden, where he took the self portrait, was good enough and then stand motionless in front of the camera for around 10-15 minutes for the cameras exposure to take him in.
Henry Fox Talbot was also a major founder of photography and invented the Calotype in 1840, an improvement of the Daguerreotype, which was a technique of putting photographic paper in a camera obscura box, which would produce an invisible negative image which when put in a chemical solution in a dark room would produce a negative image which could be used to produce clones of an image. This process was an extreme improvement to the Daguerreotype as it allowed images to have a shorter exposure time as it would usually take ages to take a photograph due to the exposure needed, It also meant photographs could be printed on paper instead of metal and you could make multiple copies of the image.
When Julia was 48 she got gifted a camera by her daughter which was the beginning of her photographic legacy. She began taking photographic portraits of people, in 1864 she took a photograph of a 9 year old girl which became her first successful image and that year she ended up being elected to the photographic society of London, making her a member. Her photographic technique of taking soft focus portraits was criticized at the time however those photos have paved the way for modern portrait photography and are now highly valued. She described photography as: “The camera has become to me, a living thing, with voice, memory and a creative vigour.”
Henry Mullins was a professional portrait photographer who started his career in London in the 1840s and moved to Jersey in 1848 because it was cheaper to produce photos here. While he lived in jersey he took over 9,800 of portrait photos of Islanders in his photography studio in the Royal square, St. Helier.
What was the involvement of Jersey mariners in the Canadian cod-fisheries and the Transatlantic carrying trade?
In the 15th Centaury, Newfoundland in Canada was discovered. the waters around it contained lots of cod which was great for fishermen.
In the 16th centaury tens of thousands of fishermen were traveling across the ocean to fish for all this cod including fishermen from the Jersey and channel islands. by the late 16th Centaury The governor of jersey stated that “islanders were saved from starvation by the arrival of a cargo of fish from the colony”
Fact: One Jersey islander who obtained a licence to sail to Newfoundland from the government to fish for the people of jersey was fined 300 crowns after he sold the fish to the people of St. Malo instead.
By the 17th centaury where trade routes were being set up with the rest of Europe, America and Canada, fishermen had set up bases on the coast of Gaspé, Canada. This is where they would salt the cod so it would be preserved till they got back to their countries.
Which ports did Jersey ships sail to and trade with?
Jersey ships sailed and traded with St. Servan (now part of St. Malo) in France as well as St. peter port in Guernsey and Hengistbury Head in Dorset, UK.
During the cod trade Jersey ships traded with the Caribbean and Honduras, as well as Europe, especially catholic countries such as Portugal, Spain and Italy as Catholics eat fish on Fridays so there was a high demand in these countries for fish.
What type of goods did Jersey merchants exchange for cod-fish?
In Mediterranean countries cod was of high demand so cod was traded for: wine, brandy, dried fruit, citrus fruits and salt. There was also a demand in Brazil where the cod was traded for coffee and sugar.
To what extent, has the island of Jersey benefitted from its constitutional relationship with Britain and the legacies of colonialism based on a slave plantation economy during the first Industrial Revolution (1760-1840)?
In summary Jersey benefited economically from the slave trade due Jersey men who had businesses involving the trade and ship masters whose boats were used to capture slaves.
First I started by creating the layout for my spread by using placeholder text for the text areas as well as starting to fill in the images such as the establishing shots. I also created the Headline and chose an appropriate font for it.
For this I added the text in and the photos. I might change some of the photos to see if I can improve. but for now I’m going to experiment with the background.
For this one I experimented by making the background the French flag as St. Malo is located in France. I did this because I wanted to experiment with having a simple colour background instead of an image which I will try doing next.
for this I got one of the photos and put it as the background. The text was hard to read because the background is also in black and white but I lowered the transparency a bit and it looks better and makes the text a bit easier to read.
I wanted to experiment with adding colour, so I took the orange colour from the boat in the bottom left and used it as part of the colour scheme.
I stared by adding a small orange text stroke to the text and then went a step further by changing the frame/boarder around my photos to the orange colour as well. Overall I am pleased with how it turned out.
For this version I changed the photo to one of a street in St. Malo I took.
Personally I prefer the previous image as this one of the street doesn’t look as good because the stone texture in the previous version looks better as the background on my page spread, compared to this photo as the background.
Out of all the designs I feel like these ones are the best outcomes. I replaced the image of the boat on the first two page spreads to make it fit the theme of the images and designs. Overall I am really happy with how it all turned out.
