Menu
personal investigation part 1: the photo book
Experiments
In todays lesson we talked about mirrors and windows, we looked at photos from students website and had to choose which photos were either mirrors or windows, in this lesson i came to a realization of what I think is a mirror or a window and it has definitely changed my perception of photos and It will make me aware in the future when taking photos. I chose the photo closet to the mirror post-it note because the angle is how someone would look at the mirror and the way the photo is taken up very close isn't a view you would normally see from a window and I also think the reflection of the bubblegum is like a mirror. the photo I chose closest to window reminds me of a window because it just reminds me of a window view you would see because fall the sunlight and shadows pointing down to the people who are just naturally being themselves.
For this task you have two sets of photos ad a dice, when you get the numbers you take however many photos off you got on the dice and with the two sets of photos you should have two photographs which create a diptychs and afterwards we also choose our own diptychs out of the selection of photographs we are given. I enjoyed this task because it made me realize most photos actually link together in someway, because even in the random selection I feel like some of them were completely opposite but somehow it still felt right, maybe even if it is completely opposite that's what makes it right because then there's two sides of the photo and it makes the diptych bold.
In this lesson we experimented by taking photo's for each word on the list, I would say that this was a very good and refreshing experiment, I say this because when you actually read a word out loud and think about it it makes you think about how what you need in a photograph to link to it or he word or action, I think an experiment like this would have been better to do outside however it made it more challenging as you only have limited access to where you can take the photograph it helped me think outside the box a lot more. This would be very interesting and also a lot harder to do without people, people definitely help you exploit the word a lot more however it would still be interesting to see the outcomes of recreating these without involving people.
Artist Research
I really like this exhibition because there are so many different photos with different scenes, people and different environments and Swarkowski managed to capture it all into one project and he presented mirrors and windows into everyones normal day life without forcing the people into perfect positions or angles, he just done it al naturally and personally I don't think he knew if it was a mirror or window when he was taking the photos, I believe he just captured the moment while he could and decided later on which category it would be in .When I look at these photos from the exhibition it makes me realise the difference the between what people would first think when they would think of a mirrors and windows photoshoot and what a photographers eye would imagine and I also think there is a massive difference of what a mirrors and windows photoshoot would look like nowadays and back then. My favourite photo out of these is the second one on the left, I like this photo because it is a window photo, however it is very close up for a mirror photo and none of the people in the photo notice they are been photographed and -- mirrors and windows at museam of modern art
Personally I would say that the photos that Jiro takes in photograph of a photograph series don't really have a genre, if there was a genre I would say that it would be whatever the photograph in the photograph is of. All these photos have things in common such as they are all a photograph of a photograph , they are taken by the same photographer, they are all in black ad white and the final thing which I think relates them the most is that they are all window mirrors, this is because they are all taken in a perspective that you would see out of a window. The hands holding the photos are Jiro's as he hired a professional photographer to take the photos for him. The photographs are taken in quite plain places, where there isn't much excitement in the background and it's quite boring. These photos are kind of like mirrors because it is two photos that don't necessarily relate but they are two photographs which reflects something. Also the photograph of the family in the park might be his family and that is a mirror photo because it reflects his personal life. Knowing these photos are taken by a professional photographer doesn't really change my perspective because they were all Jiro's ideas and maybe he wanted a professional photographer to take it because they would come out better quality and personally I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
This book is about horse race betting, each page is a picture of a betting receipt screwed up in all different shapes and sizes, the reason they are screwed up is not because of to make it unique, it is because people screw receipts up when they lose their bet and that links to the title of series of disappointments, so this book is full of betting receipts that have lost. The first thing I noticed about this book is the front cover and it looks like what a horse racer wears which I think is a very good idea by Gill, I also like the fact that at the bottom of every page it says the horses name and how much he betted, these are small good details and he didn't not go over the top with the book he kept it simple which I like. Stephen gill series of disappointments
|
My next step for photography will be take a derive, a derive is where you travel to somewhere random and wherever you land you have to explore and take photographs there, for example you can get on any random train or bus and and before think about how many stops there are and choose a number and pick there number before the journey starts and then get off and take photos. I think this a great idea because visiting somewhere new means you have. anew fresh sight and you can just photograph anything that captures your eyes.
Photoshoots
For my Derive project we had to go on either a a train or bus to somewhere random and take photographs of anything that captures my eye. I decided to take the 108 to Stratford, I decided to do this because it is a bus that I often take but have never taken till the very end and I also don't think I have been to Stratford before. The things that I noticed was a lot of Stratford was it was a lot of tall buildings and graffiti, I liked the buildings in Stratford because they are all similar and I just like the aesthetic of it, I like the collection of photos because they all are all kind of similar and relate and I also like the idea of getting on a random bus and taking photos. If I were to do this again I would probably bring an actual camera and check the weather before because it started raining. The bottom row of photos are in Bermondsey when I was in the car stuck in traffic, I would of taken more photos there but my phone died so I didn't really get the chance.
This is my second derive, For this derive I went on a dog walk and I let the dog take the lead and I just followed her, I figured this would be a good way to make a derive because the dog has full control of where I am going, so even for my last derive I had the choice of walking into where I would find appealing however this time I had to follow the route of my dog, I done this because I knew the place quite well and I wanted to find a way to make it into a derive and I did. A lot of these photos are discarded pieces and graffiti on the wall, this naturally happened during the photoshoot but this could be something I could focus on in the future.
Remaking Robert Parkinson's pictures
Copying the style of Jiro Takamatsu
These are the photos I took when we were asked to take photos similar to Laura El-Tantawy, the phots are meant replicate us in school, personally I found this very difficult because I couldn't really find any photos that presented me in school. The photos I came out with don't really present me except the ones of my friends. My favorite phot is the one of the chess board, this is because the boys jumper matches the color of the chess board and I really like the angle of it and I think it just came out really well.
|
This project was about taking photos of something or somewhere that you don't normally photograph, I chose a market and straight away Lewisham market popped into my head because it is somewhere very local to me and it is somewhere where I have surprisingly never taken photos even though it is a very vibrant and unique place to take photos. At first I wasn't sure that the market owners would let me take photos and it turns out a lot of them were quite nice and let me take photos, some of them didn't but most of them did. I found myself just snapping away and not really thinking too deep about the photo and I am very pleased with the outcome and this is definitely one of my favorite photoshoots because I to the rest of my website but I don't know why.
If i were to retake this photoshoot I would redo it and take photos of when I'm with my friends because I feel like that would be my preferable type of photos because it more represents me and what I want to do and I also feel like I would enjoy that more and I would be more in the mood of doing that instead of photographing random buildings that don't really interest me.
The photographer included text in this book by adding pages of text from newspapers or books, the text is bold and in a big font which takes up the screen, the photographer probably does this because it attracts more attention to the text so people will read it because normally if there is small text in a photo book then people just skim through it. The way the text is big and bold makes it unusual because it makes the text a main subject and not some little side piece to the photographs. I like this book because it shows different perspectives of India and it shows the everyday life of different people.