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parks and gardens
05: Parks and gardens
Parks and gardens have provided a rich source of inspiration for photographers throughout history. For her photobook Taken from Memory, Sheron Rupp observed people in their own gardens, often surrounded by personal belongings. Eugene Atget repeatedly visited the park in St. Cloud to record the landscape and architectural features at sunrise. In the documentary photograph Playground with three girls by Chris Killip, children climb on play equipment, which contrasts with the large industrial buildings seen in the background. Investigate appropriate sources and produce your own response to Parks and gardens.
Parks and Gardens
Parks and gardens is the theme that stood out to me the most out of the exam paper and to be honest when I skimmed through and spotted it I kinda knew already it would be my chosen theme for my last project. I would say the reason I chose it is because of the personal relation I have to it, thinking back to when i was younger all I can remember was playing football in my garden pretending I was in a stadium and ridding bikes to the parks with all my neighbours and messing about, and I say "when i was younger" however often I still find myself doing the same thing, riding to the park with my mates late and nights and messing around. Thinking about it now a park is pretty much a garden, just shared and a lot bigger, I say this because when I was younger and used to live at my Nan's house half the week I used to always go the park as she only had a balcony however it didn't feel any different, in fact the only thing about it different was that I didn't have to knock next door and shamefully tell them I kicked the ball in their garden.
For this project I would like to go full out and try new things and think of new ideas that I've never tried before. The first idea that I thought of when I chose this project is taking photos of my friends, I've never really took photos of my friends for some reason during the course of studying photography which looking back is a big surprise to me considering how much time I spend with them, quite often I go to the park with my friends, mostly late at night as well which I think will make better photographs and help me experiment with light more. I want to try both natural and set up photos of my friends, although I think natural will be better I still want to try set up because it could be interesting and I will definitely do a comparison between them. I'm going to focus on parks in south east London and probably small parks, I mean ones with just a bit of concrete and a small park, not massive fancy parks with ponds, miles of grass and statues, this sis because I prefer the aesthetic of them and I'm used to them.
Threshold Concept
I believe that threshold #2 will be most impactful for me in this project and probably the one that I will try and have to perfect most, this is because I feel like a large majority of my photographs this year will be taken in the dark and therefore I'm going to have to master capturing light and creating the main subject in my photos with the source of light. Light is a key part in a photograph and can change a photo as a whole, when light is part of a photo is creates a new subject and your eyes are torn towards it naturally, I also want to use this to create unnoticed focuses in the dark, for example have a key source of light however when people look a my photos I want them to notice something outside of the light and make them have a second think about the photograph and me engaged towards the dark.
The first photo
I took this photo during the half term when I was out with some friends, it was quite random, I was just strolling around with some friends and I looked at the scenery and thought it would be a good photo and a perfect example of what photos I want to capture during this project. I like everything about this photo, I think everything comes along well in this photo, coming form the bins to the graffiti behind the car and the black and white contrast in the photo, my favourite detail in the photo is probably the contrast between light and dark because at first you just focus on the light on the building at the front you are engaged by the colour of the bins and the red paint, however after a while you notice the further houses in the background, they're hidden in the dark and the chimneys are almost like shadows. The photo was also taken on a phone that's why the quality isn't really up to scratch and a bit blurry. People might not think this is related to parks and gardens however it is the outside porch of a house which to me counts as a garden and kind of more a garden then a backyard one due to the fact that I spent most of my childhood kicking ball outside my porch with all my friends.
Artist Research
Sophie T Lvoff
Sophie F Lvoff Is an American photographer who is mostly known for their romantic and medium colour format photographs. The photos above are from of one her projects called "nothing is stirring", Sophie decided for this project that she wanted to focus on light of trees at night time, Sophie used to drive around the North East just to find the brightest lights in the sky so she could find a perfect photograph. When looking through the suggested photographers, Sophie's website stood out to me the most because of the photos, I really like these photos and was first very intrigued if they were maybe photoshopped due to the colour of the sky in a few of them, however it turns out her photos are actually natural which surprised me and has intrigued me into how I can recreate similar types of photos to these in the future for my project. I will definitely try and replicate similar photos to these in my project and this has gave me a good sense of what to photograph for gardens as when I firs chose this it was mostly the theme of parks that stood out to me.
This is my favourite photograph out of this project, I'm interesting in the different aspects and colouring of the photo, I'm fascinated by how Sophie used flash and captured the whole photo with light, I think there could be a possibility that the photo is edited due to the colour of the building in the background, the photo is almost like something you would see in a horror film, with a sort of scary red house covered by the branches and leaves. I think this is a very well composed photo by Sophie, I believe she used the branches in a very effective way to add some sort of discarded vibe to the photo, the branches hide the background of the photo and as a viewer it's almost like you want to see the rest of photo and the back story, I think Sophie composed the photo like this on purpose and wanted a reaction on mystery form her audience and I believe she has pulled this off perfectly. personally I would say that without these branches you would have a completely different view on the photo. This seems like a great location for a photograph, although I can't tell where the photo is taken, my judgment form this photo would be some sort of church in the woods with a few barns around it, something you'd see in a horror movie.
Chris Killip
Christopher Killip was an photographer who was a professor at Harvard University of visual and environmental studies , these are three of the six photo's taken for Killip's project "Playground with three girls", these photos are taken in Huddersfield in 1973, They were taken after Killip received an Arts Council commission to photograph Huddersfield. Killip's goals in photography were to build relationships and bring the community together. I really like these photos, I like the old look and even the area looks like a good place to photograph, I would say that in these three photographs above you can tell that the area isn't so looked after and it's quite discarded due to the look of the flats and how dirty they look and how the park only has two things to play on. For my next step in my project I want to also focus on photographing on small local parks, even if it's just a few small swings outside a park that's still something, I also want to try and capture a good background in my photos, so day for example I take photos of the local garden in a block of flats I also want to include the flats.
Out of this project, I 'd say this photo is the eon that catches my eye, I think this is a great collection of photographs of playgrounds, however it isn't the usual park most people would think to photograph, I really like this photo because it shows any park or garden can be your favourite. My first instinct was that it reminded me of me and my cousins playing outside my nan's council flats, I think people tend to think flats don't have gardens but all the greenery outside is their garden to and people have to make the most out of what they got. This is just a park outside some council flats, with some kids outside messing around, a lot of people think a garden has to be all decorated and done up however this photos shows that just a bit of greenery can be a children's park where they create their adventures and personally I believe that this was the artists message by taking the photographs and he has perfectly displayed that. The location of this photo is some flats in Huddersfield near the sea side, I think the angle of the of photo was taken really thoughtfully, using the flats in the background to keep the dark the dominant side of the photo, giving the photo a another main subject.
Ryan Harding
Ryan Harding is a British filmmaker and photographer based in London and Shanghai in China. This project is called "Old People in Parks", it is about celebrating old people still being apart of a community, socialise and exercising together without a care in the world. I'm really interesting in this project and believe it's a great and unique idea, I really like the the photos as they are out of the ordinary, there are many crazy and funny, crazy poses and I can imagine Harding had a great time taking these photos. This has made me think about doing similar photos and creating a similar project like this with my friends, maybe I could call it young people in parks, doing weird poses, I think I would really enjoy it and it would be a good experience with my friends, I am yet to photograph my friends and I think this would a great way to start and ease myself and my friends into it. As I've said before parks and gardens mainly have a close connection to me because of all the time I have spent with my friends in these places and therefore I feel it is only right to photograph my friends. I'm going to take photos this week of my friends a our local park where we always going late at night and do whatever, I'm going to try and aim for it to be at night however they could be busy so it may end up being early.
Photoshoots
This is my first photo shoot for this project, I decided late at night around midnight to just go to my local park for 10-15 minutes and just experiment with flash and get some photos just to properly start the project. I quite like these photos and I definitely feel more comfortable with using the flash and capturing light in the dark, although i wouldn't really say i'm quite there it's still a step forward then what I was before. I would say my favourite photos are the one of the red and yellow springs chairs, I like these ones because there is a clear main focus due to where the light is shown and it kinda reminds me of like a spooky scene in a horror movie shot in a playground. There is also a photograph of the seesaw however it is really dark and you cannot really tell what is it without looking deep into the photo, this photo definitely had potential in my eyes and i tried getting right amount of light with the flash to focus on the seesaw however it didn't work out but it's my local park and when I get more of the grasp of using the camera flash and photographing at night I'll definitely definitely photograph here again.
These photos were shortly taken after I went to the park, at the park I struggled capturing light and I feel like everything in the park was quite distanced which is pretty unusual and therefore I could not get any photos with a proper main subject in an inclosed place where there was a background and good light. Therefore I went to my garden as theres a light which would help me and theres stuff I can photograph wherever I look, it was still my first photoshoot and it was more of just a play around and getting used to it. I like these photos quite a lot and I think its something to do with the colours, I would definitely say the colours of objects such as the plant pots, bins and even doors stand out more due to the flash and there's just something about these I really like but at this moment I can't put a finger on it but I think i'll figure it out during the project taking photos when I realise what it is that is missing. I'll definitely photograph here again as it takes two seconds and I think maybe I'll try it without the flash but maybe earlier in the evening to see the comparison to what the photos look like compared to these ones.
This photoshoot was taken in Westcombe park, it was a response to Chris Killip however I wanted to switch it up a bit, in Killip's photos there tends to be a lot of plane scenery, one of my favourite thing about his phots is the background, when researching photographers for parks and gardens a lot of them tend to zoom in and have one main focus, however in the case of Killip's photos he includes the backgrounds of buildings and beyond the photos, I prefer this and it adds a lot more focus in a photograph. I decided to take photographs here because it is a quiet and old looking place and local flat gardens are something I would definitely like to explore, the estate was built in 1963, it was originally practice for the Barbican estate in London, this explains the abstract look of the flats, the flats have always caught me eye due to the difference between them and the rest of the houses in the area, the houses around are very fancy and you can tell they are expensive, however this estate is juts in the middle of it all and you can tell it is an old building as it structure and patterns of the flats and the estate and also the fact that they do not look as looked after as the rest of the houses around them. I really like these photos, I particularly like the angles of which I have took these photos, I tried capturing different angles so I could potentially experiment with the photo's and maybe make them 3D with cardboard and just to experiment. I think the fact that I made these back and white also adds an extra affect on the photo where there is a great, bold contrast between the dark and light side of the photos, as the up close buildings and objects stand out more creating a more eye capturing focus of the photo, however when looking at the photo after while you notice the other light ide background of the photo and you become interesting in the buildings in the background.
This photoshoot was taken in my friends shed in the garden, it's just of my friends messing around and chilling, I personally really like these photos, it was actually my first time experimenting with photographing people and I would definitely love to do it again, this photoshoot is very different to my other experiments however I still like it, people may look at this and argue whether this is to do with parks and gardens, however it was my friends garden shed and therefore it links with gardens, the chosen project is also meant to link with you personally and this displays it at it's finest, me and my friends just chilling in the garden shed at night in the half term. I think these photo's a great, I think a key aspect about these photo's that interested me is the lighting of the photo's, the camera gave the photo's a sort of bright orange lighting in response to how dark it was in the shed, this definitely was by chance and it worked out really well for the photos, I would also say it made my friends become more of a main focus within the photo's. Angles definitely was something that I had to think about when taking these photos, as I haven't really photographed people I didn't really know what angles to take the photos from , therefore I had to experiment and get into grasp of which were the best angles without trying to get my friends faces with the camera as wanted the photos to be natural. I think to develop and refine on this would be to try and replicate photos to a similar styles of Ryan Harding's "Old people in parks" and try replicate it with young people in parks and try set up photos, I think it would be a very interesting test for myself.
This was a quick photoshoot taken of my family relaxing in the garden, my family decided to go outside for 20 minutes or so, therefore I decided to take advantage of that and capture some photos, this was more of an experiment with the camera and just finding out what interests me in my garden and how I could develop on that in future photoshoots, composition played a big part in these photographs, it seems to me when photographing people timing and composition are key factors within the photoshoots, it's like you have to just wait for the right movement and moment, I have a vision in my head of what I want and then I just wait, although I could just tell them what to do I want to capture natural moments and test myself with vision to improve in the future. This for me was just a little experiment and in the moment saw it as something that I could put on my website.
Photoshoot number 6, this was my sixth photoshoot during this exam and potentially my favourite. I really like these photos, I took time which each photo and thought about colour patterns and what goes with what in each photos and how can I present these photos in a way that everything blends together. I started at the park, I've photographed this park before at night and decided to take photos in the day to have a comparison, this was perfect weather, it had just finished raining meaning everything was a bit damp meaning colours of objects were darker and it also meant I could get up close images of rides at the park and the rain drops coming off them creating different focuses off the image and creating the bigger image in the back of the photo less of something to concentrate and think about. I captured up close and distanced photos of the park, up close photos was something that I hadn't done as much this year compared to togethers and I feel like at the park with slides and obstacles courses was the perfect place to do it. further on I decided to photograph a little garden like park not so far away form the original park, here I got some great photos, I think the colour ways worked really well and I used to trees and branches to hide buildings, objects and graffiti to make the viewer feel he feeling of wanting to see the photo as a whole and to make the viewer think further then just looking at a photo. I think colour ways were perfect in the photos, I worked well linking colours between the moss on the walls leaving that green fade blending it with the leaves and graffiti. I would definitely say a few favourites from this years project came from this photoshoot.
Experiments
in this project one of my goals was to start experimenting more, even if it's just something small in class and therefore i decided to make something out of my first photoshoot, I looked at the tallis a level site and I thought it would be a good idea to make zines. Firstly I chose the photos I wanted in the zine and the main one I wanted the a the back of the zine, after choosing I printed them out on sugar paper and read through the instructions on the weebly website I tried making the first one, I struggled a bit with the first one but after that I got the hang of it and proceeded to make two more with different colour sugar paper which definitely made it more interesting, personally I preferred the green one because the way the green in the garden matches it and even dark and green suits in my opinion. I'm very happy with the outcome of these and happy that I've experimented early and therefore i will definitely pursue experimenting with my photographs regularly. I chose to do this because because it was a quick experiment that I could do in class but also because I felt like these types of photos belonged in a photo book, like because there always a focus on light in majority of the photo so when you flick to a photo like that it really engages you and they would look better all laid out next to each other in a sequence that made sense.
This Friday I decided to experiment with projecting my photos and recording it, it's something that can easily be done in class and I'm surprised I haven't done it before so therefore I decided to try it out on Friday. I only used the photos form my first photoshoot and I would still say it turned out well, I used an old camera to record and it definitely made the film look a lot more old/vintage which blended perfectly with the dark photos, the tripod broke as well which is the reason why the filming can be quite wobbly at times. After i recorded this i was thinking of ways to develop it and therefore I decided I wanted a background noise to it and I thought the perfect sound would be just basic sounds at night at the park, just a quiet background noise, I found the noise on a website called free sound, it took me quite a while to find a sound to fit the video but I would say the chosen sound suits the video. Originally I wanted to choose an actual song for a second background noise but I couldn't so therefore I choose a lofi sound that blends well with the first background noise. To develop on this I think after I get more photos I'll do this again however next time with more projectors flickering multiple photos overlaying each other at once. I chose to display the photos form a projector because I think there's a lot to see and focus on and therefore these photos should not be hidden, I think the sound also made the photos quite tense and also gave the viewer and attachment from the photo.
This experiment was created from the photographs I took at Vanbrugh park estate, originally I was going to create hand made photo book of these photos, I was overlaid them other each other on the printer in black and white and they came out really good with a very abstract look, I tried mixing the more plain photos of the houses and the more up close ones to create something cool, a few came out good and then I started mixing them up randomly by chance, the results were great however I was looking at the photos I noticed maybe the the photo book wasn't the right thing to do, I felt like it would have hidden the photos and the photos have something about them were they need to be laid out clearly and viewers need to have the whole perspective to see the photos as a whole. Therefore in todays lesson I decided to project the photo's, however used the overlaid photos to stick on the projector, I felt like this was a good way of displaying which photo's I overlaid with which. While experimenting I also used the threshold chance, I used this by picking random print outs and sticking them onto the projector before choosing the photo, personally I think there was a good outcome with this experiment, I feel like when looking at each photo there is not really a main focus which I particularly like and also the tone of the photos changed when projecting them and it makes the photos seem like they were taken on film. To develop and refine I'm going to experiment more with this photoshoot and also try to develop when it comes to projecting by using multiple projectors and overlay the photos to maybe create some sort of video as a final piece rather then just having multiple photos and no end result.
This experiment is a dark and light comparison, a few weeks ago I took my first photoshoot at my local park, I was just experimenting with flash and how to capture good photos at night, the photoshoot wasn't great and therefore I said to myself I wanted to try and capture photo's of this park in the day to see the comparison and what would differentiate, after taking the second photoshoot I realised a lot about the differences and how my perspective changed from dark to light. I would say the main difference is that in the dark I tended to capture more up close photos, you can't see all the background buildings like you can see in the light photos, therefore I feel like the photos in the dark are more bold have a stand out point as the light is focused one thing, on the other hand the photos in the day there's a lot more to the photos then just a few rides in or swings in the park. I took chose to do this experiment because I wanted to see how my perspective of the location would change and what would stand out to me more, personally I prefer the photographs taken at night, I think to refine and develop on this I'm going to take photos at the location again at night, the first time it was just really an experiment at to try and learn how to use flash, next time I want to see what stands out to me and how they photos will differentiate to the first photoshoot.