Snapshot Aesthetic – Its purpose is the recording of meaningful moments and delights in its familial sharing. Snapshot aesthetics refers to the visual style and cultural significance that arises from casual, unplanned, and often spontaneous photography, emphasizing the ordinary moments of everyday life.
I will use snapshot images across my project, to capture natural and meaningful images, as well as matching my artist case study images, Nick Haymes.
Vernacular photography – An umbrella term used to distinguish fine art photographs from those made for a huge range of purposes, including commercial, scientific, forensic, governmental, and personal.
photoshoot 1
my first photoshoot took place at a party. This environment fit perfectly as i got a lot of my friends together, and as it was a party, followed a lot of the stereotypes so linked back to my project nicely. This photoshoot took place in october half term at my house for my 18th birthday.
Photoshoot 2
For my second photoshoot, instead of fitting stereotypes made by the older generation, i took pictures of my friends having genuine fun, outside and away from ‘bad influences’.
For this shoot, i wanted my pictures to reflect Sian Daveys work. I photographed my frieds in a ‘raw’ moment, meaning nothing was set up or staged, it was pure enjoyment of being with friends.
I also like how this shoot links with Nick Haymes work too, the simplicity speaks bigger than taking the picture itself.
Photoshoot 3
my last photoshoot was pictures taken at reading festival. i wanted to put these pictures in my work as i believe they really look in to what my project is based on, and along with other pictures, all create a theme and storyline.
DEADLINE: Essay Introduction-Pg 1 Draft MUST be handed in Monday 20 Jan 2024
DEADLINE: Final Essay MUST be handed in Fri 31 Jan 2025
Copy this essay plan into your own blog post, titled: Essay Draft:
Literary sources: Go to this blog post here: Theory: Literary Sources and copy relevant key texts relating to the subject of your essay and list in alphabetical order in your bibliography. In addition, find your own key texts in relation to artists selected for in-depth analysis in your essay and list these too. These texts could be interviews with the artist, or reviews/ critique’s written by others. See useful online sites/ sources here .
Research and identify 3-5 literary sources from a variety of media such as books, journal/magazines, internet, Youtube/video that relates to your personal study and artists references .
Begin to read essay, texts and interviews with your chosen artists as well as commentary from critics, historians and others.
It’s important that you show evidence of reading and draw upon different pints of view – not only your own.
Take notes when you’re reading…key words, concepts, passages, page number to be used for in-text referencing etc.
Essay Question
Think of a hypothesis and list possible essay questions
Below is a list of possible essay questions that may help you to formulate your own.
Some examples of Personal Study essays from previous students:
Essay Plan Make a plan that lists what you are going to write about in each paragraph – essay structure
Essay question: Can truth and realism be shown through photography.
Opening quote “Photography is the truth. The moment you capture it, you preserve the reality, but only for an instant.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Introduction (250-500 words): What is your area study? Which artists will you be analysing and why? Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Cindy Sherman. How will you be responding to their work and essay question?
Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to your area of study. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian.
Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
Bibliography: List all relevant sources used
Essay writing: Here is a link to another blog post which will provide you with guideline about how to structure each paragraph in your essay.
Now that you are beginning to write your Personal Study essay it seems appropriate to clarify the use AI. These principles is relevant for any for of writing that an A-level photography students is required to do, ie. essays, artists case studies, contextual studies, image analysis etc.
We (teachers) are assessing an individual students ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ so if it seems as if a piece of written work is inconsistent with the evidence you already have published on the blog, then some sort of viva voce (oral examination) would be good to ascertain if that work does represent that students’ ‘knowledge’ and ‘understanding’ of a topic. If not, then the usual guidelines around plagiarism need to apply – ie disqualification.
Ofqual, the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation that regulates qualifications, examinations and assessments in England are really clear about the use of ChatGTP to construct coursework. It’s basically a hard NO. Coupled with the fact that they use AI detection on work which appears to be plagiarised or fabricated by AI and can disqualify it. Synthesising arguments from research is an essential skill which is being tested in assessment objectives so to get an AI to do it is essentially cheating.
For those interested here is a document from JCQ (Joint Council for Qualifications outlining the current rules that govern student’s use of AI. Also, here in the following link to the Ofqual Guide for Schools and Colleges 2025 there is a paragraph about teachers using AI as the means to mark student work. It is under the subheading ‘During Assessments and Marking’.
How to use AI responsibly: If using AI is essential for your learning, follow these set of principles:
Reference if AI/ ChatGPT has been used like any other literary or academic source. For essay, this means adding in-text reference and list it in the Bibliography.
Reference what text prompt has been used and when, including date you generated content.
Demonstrate how you have used AI to inform your own knowledge and understanding.
Save screenshot of the questions you asked and the answers you got. For essay, this means adding a screen grab from AI/ChatGP tool and list it in Appendices at the end of essay (after Bibliography)
DEADLINE: Essay introduction MUST be published on blog Friday 10 January 2025
DEADLINE: Final Essay MUST be handed in Fri 31 Jan 2025
ESSAY: In the Spring term will be spending 1 lesson a week, normally Wednesdays on writing and developing your essay. However, you will need to be working on it independently outside of lesson time.
Objective:Criteria from the Syllabus
Be aware of some of the methods employed by critics and historians within the history of art and photography.
Demonstrate a sound understanding of your chosen area of study with appropriate use of critical vocabulary. – use for image analysis
Investigate a wide range of work and sources
Develop a personal and critical inquiry.
How to start: Copy this essay plan into your own blog post, titled: Essay Draft:
Literary sources: Go to this blog post here: Theory: Literary Sources and copy relevant key texts relating to the subject of your essay and list in alphabetical order in your bibliography. In addition, find your own key texts in relation to artists selected for in-depth analysis in your essay and list these too. These texts could be interviews with the artist, or reviews/ critique’s written by others. See useful online sites/ sources here .
Research and identify 3-5 literary sources from a variety of media such as books, journal/magazines, internet, Youtube/video that relates to your personal study and artists references .
Begin to read essay, texts and interviews with your chosen artists as well as commentary from critics, historians and others.
It’s important that you show evidence of reading and draw upon different pints of view – not only your own.
Take notes when you’re reading…key words, concepts, passages, page number to be used for in-text referencing etc.
Bibliography
List all the sources that you have identified above as literary sources. Where there are two or more works by one author in the same year distinguish them as 1988a, 1988b etc. Arrange literature in alphabetical order by author, or where no author is named, by the name of the museum or other organisation which produced the text. Apart from listing literature you must also list all other sources in alphabetical order e.g. websites/online sources, Youtube/ DVD/TV.
Quotation and Referencing:
Why should you reference?
To add academic support for your work
To support or disprove your argument
To show evidence of reading
To help readers locate your sources
To show respect for other people’s work
To avoid plagiarism
To achieve higher marks
What should you reference?
Anything that is based on a piece of information or idea that is not entirely your own.
That includes, direct quotes, paraphrasing or summarising of an idea, theory or concept, definitions, images, tables, graphs, maps or anything else obtained from a source
How should you reference?
Use Harvard System of Referencing…see Powerpoint: harvard system of referencing for further details on how to use it.
https://vimeo.com/223710862
Here is an full guide on how to use Harvard System of Referencing including online sources, such as websites etc.
Essay Question
Think of a hypothesis and list possible essay questions
Below is a list of possible essay questions that may help you to formulate your own.
Some examples of Personal Study essays from previous students:
Essay Plan Make a plan that lists what you are going to write about in each paragraph. Further help can be found here essay structure or see link here The Royal Literay Fund
Essay question:
Opening quote:
‘To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed.’ (Sontag 1977:4)
Introduction (250-500 words): What is your area study? Which artists will you be analysing and why? How will you be responding to their work and essay question?
Pg 1 (500 words): Historical/ theoretical context within art, photography and visual culture relevant to your area of study. Make links to art movements/ isms and some of the methods employed by critics and historian.
Pg 2 (500 words): Analyse first artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Pg 3 (500 words): Analyse second artist/photographer in relation to your essay question. Present and evaluate your own images and responses.
Conclusion (250-500 words): Draw parallels, explore differences/ similarities between artists/photographers and that of your own work that you have produced
Bibliography: List all relevant sources used
Sontag, S. (1977). ‘In Plato’s Cave’ in On Photography. London: Penguin Books.
Use of AI / ChatGPT – go to this blog post here for guidelines.
Key Terminology: Here is a link to a glossary of key words, glossary of photographic processes, glossary of art movements and genres, and linking words and phrases.
Essay writing: Here is a link to another blog post which will provide you with guideline and more details about how to structure each paragraph in your essay.
Begin to write a paragraph (250-500 words) answering the following questions below.
You got 45 mins to write and upload to the blog!
Draft Introduction (250-500 words). Think about an opening that will draw your reader in e.g. you can re-formulate the essay question. You should include in your introduction an outline of your intention of your study, e.g. what area of photography, or subject-matter are you exploring? Which artists/ photographers are you going to investigate/ analyse/ interpret? Why does this subject/ work interest you? What are you trying to prove/challenge, argument/ counter-argument? What historical or theoretical context is the work situated within? Include at least 1 or 2 quotes for or against. What links are there with your previous studies, if any? How has this subject and chosen artists/ photographers inspired your own images/ responses? How will your work develop? What camera skills, photographic techniques or processes have you experimented with, or are you going to experiment with?
Wolfgang Tillmans is an influential contemporary German photographer. He began his career photographing nightclubs roughly three decades ago. Known since the early 1990s for his photographs of young people in their social environment – clubs, gay pride parades, warehouse parties.
Tillmans was initially known for his seemingly casual, sometimes snapshot-like portraits of friends and other youth in his immediate surroundings and scene. Tillmans was considered the “documentarian of his generation, especially that of the London club and gay scenes. Half of his work is staged, with the artist choosing the clothes and the location, as well as setting his models up in their positions.
Mood board
This mood board of Wolfgang Tillmans club images are the types of images that I would like to take in my own photoshoots.
Image Analysis
I have chosen this image to analyse this image of a woman with a mans hands in her hair. This image stood out to me because it was a lot closer up to someone and more focussed on one person instead of a group of people like lots of his other images. The main focus of the image is the woman and the hands in her hair, the arm is the brightest thing in the image making it catch your eye then the background is very dark. The image was taken in a club, which could be a tense upbeat place, but the woman looks like she is calm, the hands in her hair could be adding to the relaxing feeling. This is the most interesting factor of the image as it makes you wonder why she looks calm, it could be that the man is someone she trusts or loves or she could be drunk/on drugs.
For this photoshoot, I went into the studio and took some close up headshots of a girl. I made sure to capture her from a variety of different angels by getting her to face different directions. I also placed a light source directly in front of her face to make sure the images would be well lit and the camera would pick up every detail on her face. Once I had finished taking my pictures, I imported them into Lightroom and began the narrowing it down process. This involved me giving each image either a white flag or black flag then giving a rating out of 5 to all the images I had previously given a white flag to. I then adjusted the exposure, contrast, blacks, whites and shadows of the images. Then I exported them into a folder which I could then open up in photoshop.
To begin my editing process, I first chose the image I wanted to have in the background as my vague guide to where I should place the cut outs which would make a different, distorted face. I then cut out only the model from the image using the object selection tool and placed her on a blank piece of white paper as Brno Del Zou’s images are typically on white backgrounds but my background before was grey.
I then selected 7 other images that I wanted to use to get different parts of her face from different directions. I opened one of these images and used the rectangular marquee tool to create a box over the facial feature I wanted to use eg lips. I then dragged this cut out onto the full face image and adjusted it using ctrl t. Once I was happy with its placement I opened up a different image and repeated the process once again but with a different facial feature. When taking the images in the studio, I zoomed the camera into the model more in certain photographs so I could really capture a specific part of her face. This allowed for the random enlarged features seen in Brno’s work to be replicated in mine. Once I had completely reconstructed her face, I then decided to add a drop shadow to all of the cut outs to give my images some more depth and emphasise the idea that it was a face many out of lots of different images.
Finally, I experimented with the use of black and white. I created some images where the whole image was black and white as seen in Brno Del Zou’s work, but also created some where only certain boxes were black and white whilst the others remained in colour.
This is the work from Brno Del Zou that originally inspired my idea for the photoshoot.
Final outcomes:
Overall, I like how this idea came out as I managed to closely resemble the work of Brno Del Zou whilst also adding my own twist on his idea. However, I may attempt to do this idea again but with a different model as I have used the same one quite a lot and I want to expand on the idea of identity in young people not just one person.
Second Attempt:
For this second photoshoot, I used photographs of another model I had previously taken in order to get different people in my project and therefore different identities as before it only consisted of one person. I completed the same process as described above to create my final image.
Final outcomes:
I like how these pieces came out as I also used images where she was smiling and then looking sad in order to portray the many emotions one may feel when trying to discover who they are and discuss the complexity of being human simultaneously. However, I would like to further this idea even more by using multiple people to make one face as I think this would portray how there’s such a vast amount of people in the world, each with their own unique identities.
These are all my final edits, my story was coming together and I figured how I wanted to do it, well ish still need some thinking time, but I was likely how my images were turning out, I changed how I wrote on the images though, as I wrote down what I wanted on the images, then I took a photo of it then I deleted the white background and made it transparent to then drag it and place it on an image.
I only had 20 minutes to take some photos with tony (the model in these photos), so I only managed to take a few of my ideas. His room is full of colour which really adds to the basketball theme, as well as his endless shoes and basketball Jerseys. The brown carpet does ruin the colour sometimes, so I might edit the photos showing carpet in black and white. I asked him to look annoyed and sad, to show more emotion in my photos. I played around with the angle of the shot multiple times since basketball is a very dynamic sport, and an easy way to add this dynamic effect is to take photos with weird and unusual camera angles. For the camera settings, most of the photos where set to auto, with flash since I didn’t have enough time to mess around with the settings. However, I think this made it look more home made and real, as if a family member was taking photos of him.
Here I asked tony to get a few of his basketball shoes out and place them around his head, where he then places his arm on his face, looking disappointed and annoyed. He chose his favourite shoes which ended up being the most colourful which make the image more vibrant and exciting, contrasting his facial expressions. This adds to the story of him being an over obsessed basketball player, as the colourful image adds to the basketball theme, and the disappointed facial expressions adds to his obsession with basketball, never being satisfied with himself.
Here I asked my friend to get some of his old plushies out for the photoshoot. I asked him to look a bit insecure when playing NBA 2K (a basketball game which is the most popular in the basketball community). You normally need to play the game with other players but if you look closely he is playing by himself, adding to his isolation from his basketball team mates. The plushies next to him could also add to this loneliness and isolation, especially since its taking up most of the bed, leaving him scrunched up towards the left side of the bed.
Here is my first attempted edit of a Paul M Smith style photograph, using photoshop to add layers onto one photo. I had to manually add some shadows as well using the brush tool which don’t look too realistic in my opinion. I also blurred the layers that are further away and adjusted the lighting similarly to this. Before I imported the photos into photoshop, I made sure they are similarly edited (by copying one edit and adjusting the exposure to match). I think editing like this adds more effect as the whole composition is filled by the same subject, bringing more attention to what he is actually doing. It also adds the time dimension into my photos as you can see him changing what he is doing over time in one photo. It fits in with the whole story of this project as well since he is shown to be working on himself, by himself which portrays a sense of loneliness.
Here’s my second attempt with a different set of photos, I tried adding shadows on the tony behind the tony:
