Medium Format

These are some images done with a medium format camera. The medium format camera is a larger film camera then the normal everyday film camera. It takes alot more time and effort to use these cameras but the images come out beautiful. By using medium format it allows you to blow up the images and make them huge without losing the quality of the details.

I really like these images because you can really see the detail in the image. Though these don't look as good as the real thing as they were scanned in but face on you can see all the little detail on each one. I also like this technique because you can really personalise it and even if you choose to enlarge it you don't lose all the detail. The only thing that i found hard was because of the time of year it was really bright in the day so it took a while to set it all up and focus it for the image but i think the effort was worth while. 

This image reminds me of secret garden. The way the door is poking out of the hedge with the ivy reaching across the door looks really magical. I tried to get the angle to look as though the door was reaching out for the sun and the light. also wanted to make the door look a little wonky as though its out of a story book. I think that if i could improve this image then i would do some dodging and burning on the leaves to make them not so bright at the bottom so the sun looks likes its coming from one point.



This is my favourite image of the three. The image is of a house covered by ivy not far from where i took the first image. It looks like an old house and with the black and white film i think it really exaggerated that aspect. I like the way the ivy looks like it is crawling around the building and trying to taker over it and i think it almost looks like rain. if i could improve the image tyhen i think i would have done some dodging in the brick work to try and get some more detail in the building.





Landscape

This is my Landscape. I found a small garden that had a real inventive look. It looked as though people had been throwing cds out of the window and they have landed in the soil. I think it looks really good as its not only creative by unusual. Though it was hard to take alot of good photos i managed to get a few that i liked. I had alot of fun on Photoshop using loads of diffrent tools to make it look as though it was an older photo and make it also have a slight surreal edge to it. i used his photo shoot to experiment with different techniques on photoshop. If i could imporved the image i think i would have used a better camera as the image is a little pixely and hasn't got as much detail as i would have liked. The other thing i would have liked to have done it on a day that wasn't so bright as it cant that i had to spend a lot of time editing to make it less bright. 



PhotoMontage - 'Borrowed Images'

Whether you would call this photography or not but i was really inspired by John Stezaker's idea of borrowed images. John Stezaker much like Uta Barth really challenges what is photography. Some people would argue whether he really is a photographer as he takes images that people had already taken and then puts them together then takes a photo of them.

John Stezaker was born 1949 in England. he is most famous for his photo montage style in photography. He used photos from all different mediums to find his photos including books, magazines and postcards. usually mixing 2 famous people together to make a hybrid icon. Though he also experiment with things and people, lining up peoples faces with water falls or mountains. I think that the way that he links them together is really clever and creates a really interesting types of photography.

For this shoot i wanted to try a recreate his way of mixing two faces together. i used all diffrent mediums looking for mages online , books and magazines to try and get the same effect as he achieved.  The best medium i found to make these sorts of images was the fashion and beauty magazines as it meant that you could find large faces that you could mix together. I looked through various images and got faces that matched together and making them go together so they created almost a strange, alien looking face. I had loads of fun creating these image though doing the images from magazines meant that i spent a long time going through all different types of magazines to find ones the matched up but here is my favourite one. I really like this image because it almost looks like it should go together but it doesn't. If i could improve this image i would have tried to use a man and a women to create the humorous effect that he does.

I took the image of the real thing and then editted it in black and white so that it fitted more with his style of work so it had the same vintage look of 'Borrowed Images'. I think this makes the images look as though they should go together and less like two separate images. 

Mixed Genre

This was one of the most intresting shoots I have done. I wanted to get some images thast were a mixture between landscape and abstract. i went out to the pretty landscapes where i lived and took a few images. In all the images I hid something that didnt belong there which gave it the surreal effect. When i went out the light wasn't good it was getting dark which means if i used the flash the images looked too tacky and if i didn't it was really dull. This meant that after the images were done and i was looking back over them i realised that they weren't really good.

When I looked back at the images I wasnt happy with them. Because of the light there were only a few that I was happy with. But when I went back and looked at the images I had previously not considered drew my eye to. The images were blurred but had a fine art quality to them which made them look like paintings. I really like them o think tbhey have a really intresting look to them. I think they really draw your eye and make you wonder what they are of and thought they fitted the idea better then the origianl image.



'Lost Things'

 

 

These images are from a set called 'Lost Things'. I had loads of fun hunting around trying to find diffent things that people had lost and taking pictures to them. I wanted the viewer to wonder why thet are there and who they belong to. I found all sorts of random things but these are my favourite of the ones i took. I think i will definatly be adding to them though if i see any more.



Personal Portrait

 

 

This is one of my self directed tasks.For this task I wanted to do a selection of natural portaits. I wanted to catch people unaware and unplanned. By doing this it meant that people didnt have time to make themselves look how they want. I took images of the local people who i thought looked intresting or nice. I changed them to black and white so that it would have a more documentry feel to them.

  

Sannah Kvist

Sannah Kvist is a freelance photogrpher based in Gothenburg in Stockholm. She is one of the strangest photographers I have ever seen. Her photography, experically the collection 'all i own', is all about exploring consumerism and possetions. The collection is all about All I Own is really intresting set of images. She got people, that were all born in the 80s, to put everything they own into the corner of a room and create a sculpture. Once they had done this she would take a picture and its almost like she is documenting their life in one photo as eveything they love and have meaning to them was just there exposed. This is definatly an example where context matters for the photo as without knowing about all of it you would of just seen it as a bit of a strange a crazy portait but is so much more then that.

http://sannahkvist.se/

'Things'

 

 

This is my shoot I did in the Studio yesterday with Lucy Williams with the theme 'Things'. What I wanted to do was create a shoot that was really simple but beautiful. I chose Lucy as her hair is so long and such a nice colour it really stands out against her skin. It took a little while to get used to the studio again as havent used it since before summer but after we got the hang of it we got some really beautiful images

 

I think the shoot went really well because the photos I took came out exactly as I wanted them. It wasnt too obvious what the theme was as I wanted people to think about it, almost like subjective photography. I also think it went really well when we used the darker background because this drew attention to lucys pale features and bold hair.

 

I think that if I could improve then I would of done some fashion style ones as this is also a mix of portraiture but I think this adds to the character of the photos.

 

 

 

 

Claire Martin

 

 

Claire Martin is currently my favourite photographer of all time. Claire began her career studying as a social worker but changed to photography when she realised people could be effected through this medium too.  She’s most well known for her photos from the set ‘’Vancouver’s Down East Side’’ where she took pictures of the people that live there. Down East Side is one of the worst urban slums in North America, the city is ironically known as ‘’the worlds most liveable’’. She focused on looking at people in extreme poverty that find it really hard to survive.

 

I really love the realness that is in her photos. Its not faked or staged and i think this makes the images even more shocking then they already are. Her photos arent too over the top either which gives her work a way of saying there is nothing i could do to make it worse then it already is.

 

check it out: http://clairemartinphotography.com/#

 

http://clairemartinphotography.com/

 



Messing with Photoshop

 

This lesson we have been messing around with photoshop. Photoshop is a great tool you can make the picture whatever you want it to and can make it however you like. I have used photoshop before but was having a play with all the difftrent tools to compare to the original image so i could see the effects of the diffrent tools

 



 

Original image: This is the original image. it was taken as part of a documentry photogrpahy. without any editting to it its abit of a boring image with no real key interest point its quite a simple image.

 

Curves: this image i used a tool called curves. this is one of the most used tools of photoshop. it allows you to make the colours in the image stand out more as well as exagerate the images light and shadows

 

Filter: this is also a really good tool for making your photo have a diffrent edge to it. This effect is caused by Gradient map which makes it black and white. Though its still a pretty dull image its made it slightly more intresting by adding the filters. 

 

Dodging and Burning: This is one of my favourite tools to use on photoshop. This allows you to almost paint light and shadow onto your image. this means that you can exagerate features on your blog so that they stand out more.

 

 

Hue and Saturation: This image has had the saturation turned down. What this has done has made it colder as its drained the brightness away from the colours. I think that this can look really good on photos, expecially fashion, but i dont think it suits this image.

 

Invert: This tool i really dont like, though on some photos it can be really interesting, I think on this one it ruins the image. it can be useful when you do landscapes as a few more adjustments and it can look like there is snow everywhere. But in this photo its not suitable

 

 

Levels: This tool is very similar to curves but can do more drastic changed to the image. i like this tool as it can really make an image unrecognisable from the original. I think it has done this photo good as its almost given it a retro 50s feel about it and i think with a bit more editting it could look really good.

 

Layering: This is an tool which allows you to layer the images on top of each other. This can be really intresting and if you blend them together you can get the two diffrent meanings. so i have used my original image and borrowed one of a man fishing so it can create quite a meaningful image.

 

 

 

 

 

 



Blending Photographers Together

For this task we had to mix two photographers together and get a collection of final images that have taken a little away from both of the photographers. I was paired with Lucy Williamson and we had Walker Evens (famous for the portraits during the great depression) and Berenice Abbott (famous for the beautiful landscapes of New York).

We decided to look at both of their work on buildings and architecture. While Walker Evens looked more at the brands and signs, Berenice Abbott looked at the structure and architecture of them. baring this in mind we went around the old shops in Exeter and took photos of the places that haven't changed in years to give it the same effect then also turning the images black and white to create the look of film as a finishing touch

and this is what we came up with:

Genre

 

 

The new topic we are looking at in photography is Genre. At first I thought it would be really easy but as we studied further into it realised that it's far from it. There are all diffrent types of genre withing photography such as; nature, landscape, portrait, fashion, self portrait, documentry, social documentry and loads more. Context is one of the main things that effect genre. Its not always what is in the picture but what it means, for example i could think it fits one catagory and when i read about it infact it has more meaning so belongs to diffrent one. As humans we like to put things into their boxes and have a catagory for everything.. this is where genre comes in.

 

 

My thoughts on Genre:

 

"Genre covers a broad amount of catagories that link together to help us organise and order"