Tuesday 18 March 2014

Post of the Day (18/03/13)

My aims for today were to go out and shoot some more photographs and complete my research for William Eggleston and Martin Parr, I have shot some more photographs and I'm about to do my William Eggleston research but I don't think I will have time to do my Martin Parr research so I will do that tomorrow. I was disappointed I only managed to get three photographs on my shoot today especially due to the fact I walked so far but I'm happy with the tree I did get. 
Tomorrow I plan on going into the city and shooting some more photographs still being quite broad because at the moment I'm struggling to find an interesting subject to photograph so I will experiment until I find something I want to develop further, hopefully by researching more photographers and going more places I will find something and come up with some interesting ideas.    

Todays Shoot (Building Facade Faces)

Today I decided to walk around the city and try and find more faces in objects and buildings and photograph them carrying on from the photographs I had taken last week. I tried to show how the subliminal faces in the buildings show emotion but there is no life behind them just shape.Today I shot digital as I needed to zoom into the buildings so I used my 24-120mm lens. I walked down the Bridgewater Canal up Deansgate then to Northern Quarter and back, I walked for a long time not finding anything then near Deansgate I found a square staircase the winds towards the top, I shot the staircase looking up from bottom to top with the top of the staircase in the center. The staircase didn't have anything to do with what I was aiming to photograph but it was very photogenic and had an interesting form. I walked through Northern Quarter not finding anything then back near Oxford Rd I found two compositions that were very interesting. 


This photograph was taken near Oxford Rd and contains what appears to be a face with the dark windows making up the eyes and the entrance representing a mouth. The windows are very reflective so it looks like its eyes are welling up giving the photograph a sad aesthetic. I'm aiming to show that you don't have to be a living creature to have a living aesthetic but unlike a living create it has no feelings and contains no life. I cropped the original photograph significantly so the photograph only contains the face cropping out everything that didn't contribute to it, I also straightened the photograph making sure the vertical lines were perfect. I learned from my conversation with Alan that you need to keep the viewers eye inside the composition so I cropped it tight just focusing on the bare essential piece of the facade. 


The building facade contains another face however shows a different emotion then the previous photograph. The face looks sad due to its down sloping windows that represent a mouth but the face also looks angry due to the black window frame that look like sharp teeth. Like the last photograph I cropped and straightened the composition so its parallel with the side of the frame. 



I edited the photographs in Photoshop cutting out the facial features so you can see which parts of the facade contribute to the face, I left the background white and then filled it red just to experiment with colour. I like the aesthetic of the photographs and they have an interesting idea behind them but I don't feel that they are strong enough to develop so now I'm going to explore onto something different but maybe still focus so shape.

Post of the Day (17/03/13)

My plan for today was to talk to Alan in the morning the scan my negatives then go into the city and shoot then work on my blog posts for the rest of the day. I learned a lot from my conversation with Alan this morning, we went over my last reflective journal as I need to improve my research. He told me that it needs to be less formal and show my initial thoughts on photographs and make notes on the photographs rather than set the writing out in a completely formal way. I also told him about the work I had done for this project so far and he told me that I need to make the work very individual and not shoot obvious ideas but you have to struggle to come up with new individual ideas. I found the conversation to be a huge help in my practice and getting me inspired to shoot. After that I scanned my negatives then went out to shoot with a few friends walking from Uni to the Etihad Stadium in East Manchester. I only took 2 photographs during the shoot but all I was focused on re-visiting a shoot last week when I was trying to find facial structures in the street, I found a facial shape on the front of a boat on the canal and a building facade. I'm shooting black and white 35mm film and want to get a few more photos for this idea then move onto something new. 

Tomorrow I plan on doing research for William Eggleston and Martin Parr as these are two photographers who shoot everyday society but heighten it using composition colour and printing techniques. I also want to go into the city and shoot more photographs. 

Last Week Shoot(s)

One interesting thing I found was a small structure someone had built to house ducks by the canal then about 10 meters around the corner I found some boxes under a bridge that looked like homeless people would sleep on. I thought it was interesting that people were doing something to make sure ducks had a home whereas homeless people are left to their own devises. I wanted to get a duck in the photograph so it was obvious what the structure was for so I waited for a duck to appear then because I didn't have any food on me at the time I started throwing rocks into the canal so the duck would enter the composition I had chosen then waited for it to turn towards the camera.