Emily Pearson @emilypearsonviscom22 - Tumblr Blog

Process Book Printing & Binding

This is my final process book design printed and hot glue perfect bound. These are some of the pages inside including my spread with inserted contact sheets. I really like how the coloured edges make the side of the book look rainbow as you flick through.

Final Piece

This is my final photographed piece for the Concepts Of Visual Language brief. I managed to cut some clear vinyl for the type on my front cover to give it a gloss lamination effect and make it easier to read. Overall, I am really happy with the final outcome as the design printed to a fairly high standard, although I feel it would be better if the cover was on thicker card stock to give the book a more sturdy structure to stand up. I really enjoy how the book can be pulled out and arranged in different ways standing up, as this would make it great for exhibition or display on a table.

Concertina Cover

This is my cover design and prototype with the new cover. The cover is made from gaussian blurred versions of the images included in my concertina. The covers have corresponding colours for both sides of the concertina and the inside cover provides a nice back drop for the photographs. I like how the cover has a warm and cool side to reflect the environment and mood in the photographs. I used the same typeface for my front covers as I did in the timeline, I like how the typewriter look conveys a personal feel like a letter or postcard. I made this transparent which gives the appearance of looking through a fogged window, in contrast to the clean and focused images in the concertinas.

Final Crit Presentation

These are the slides that I created for the final crit presentation to explain my project research, ideas and outcome.

Prototype Layout

Here, I prototyped a new layout and form for my project. Based on my tutor feedback, I kept the layout on the simpler side so that the content of the photographs would shine through. I made this new prototype inspired by a combination of the dos-a-dos book binding method, and the concertina layout. I really liked the continuity of the layout and images that I could create with the concertina layout, but I was looking for ways to contain this in some form of cover or slip case. The dos-a dos form is perfect for this as it allows me to separate the two sides of the journey with custom front covers, as well as making the book sit nicely to display on a table. I changed the layout of the concertina inside so that the photographs had no white space between them and it shows a continuous, unbroken journey across the pages.

Side 2 Edited Photos

Side 1 Edited Photos

Editing Photos Night Time

Before Edit on Lightroom

After Edit on Lightroom

After Gradient Mapping

I have used a mixture of Lightroom and Procreate to edit my photographs. My editing choices borrow ideas about colour and lighting from ‘Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs of Places’ by Henry Carroll. Exposure is an important tool to be used in order to manipulate the emotions or connotations behind a photograph, as written by Carroll: ‘The psychological effect of underexposing results in a sense of questioning unease’. The same can be true with overexposure, ‘overexposing carries with it a sense of revelation’. Whilst my daytime photo edits have a warm, dream-like quality, some of my nighttime photos are more shadowy and ambiguous. The lack of visual information in some of the photos creates a sense of foreboding and the unknown that mirrors my own personal feelings about walking the journey in the dark. This is in contrast to how I feel about the journey in the day, this is reflected in my editing choices.

I have created two sets of photo edits where the places photographed are the same, but the emotions in them are polar opposite. This is furthered by the contrasting warm yellow and cool blue gradient mapping used across the two image sets.

Layout Prototypes

After my photoshoot, I made a layout prototype of the concertina with the images I took. I selected some of the best unedited images from my contact sheets that I felt best told the story of the journey I took to and from the beach/pier. I created my first layout design fitting the images to a grid and using the timeline and location/time labels at the bottom. The concertina is double sided with each leg of the journey on either side.

Above, is another layout idea that I had for the images and type to be more dynamic and less sequential as I thought it could portray the twists and turns in the journey more. I also had the idea to include a panoramic image at some point in the concertina to show the whole environment through my perspective and make it more immersive. However, in feedback Sally was more keen on the first layout idea as it was more organised and the second idea could become confusing or break up the continuity of the journey my photographs were documenting.

Photoshoot Contact Sheets Part 2

I made contact sheets of all my photos from the shoot and annotated which ones I like/dislike and any edits I might make.

Photoshoot Contact Sheets Part 1

I made contact sheets of all my photos from the shoot and annotated which ones I like/dislike and any edits I might make.

Photoshoot Plan

Above, are some photo and analysis examples from the book that inspired me, particularly in the night-time part of my shoot.

I planned a route for my photoshoot that is personal to me that I do often and have many memories and emotions attached. I want to photograph the journey between somewhere near my student house, and the beach. I would like it to be an exploration of the concept of transition in its many different forms, such as geographical, emotional and day-to-night. The journey is a liminal space or state for me where I may be physically in between destinations, but also mentally. I was inspired to do this by my primary research into the emotions around journeys and liminal spaces. Some of the adjectives that people had used to describe places familiar to me made me want to explore this further. Before taking photos, I gathered a few ideas from ‘Read This If You Want to Take Great Photographs of Places’ by Henry Carroll. He states in the book that when taking photographs, the ‘what’, ‘when’, and ‘how’ are important. ‘What kind of places stir your ideas or emotions?’ ‘When would you want to photograph them?’ ‘How do you want to photograph them?’ I considered these variables whilst out on my photoshoot.

First Layout and Form Prototype

Book Forms

To inspire the form and layout of my project, I explored some of the artist books in the AUB library and some other examples from the internet such as Big Jump Press (top left) and the concertina style (bottom left). I think that the dos-a-dos style binding the top right is a really interesting format to maybe show two stories or journeys. I really liked the flip book I found in the library (bottom right) as it has two different animations depending on which side you flip it. I think that it is interesting to experiment with how form can change or aid the message that a piece of work is trying to portray.

Internet Opinion

I posted the same photos to a liminal spaces subreddit to ask for user’s opinions and advice. This gives me a different perception as the people who commented on my post are likely not from Bournemouth, and are seeing the images without the context of the location. A lot of the commenters had a vastly different perception of the images to those who answered the class survey, see the comparison of adjectives. The words they used to describe the photos include cosy, eerily welcoming, safe, comforting, awe struck, and sense of anxiety.

Primary Research- Survey

I wanted to learn more about how other people perceive journeys in Bournemouth and how they interact with that liminal space. I sent out a survey to the class to find this out and see how they felt about a few photographs that I had taken of liminal spaces around Bournemouth.

See above the responses I had to some of the questions, whilst more than half said they liked walking around Bournemouth, most also said they would avoid walking through subways and alleyways. Most people also said that they use some form of distraction or entertainment on journeys such as listening to music or playing on their phone. This tells me that people are sometimes uncomfortable or feel they need other forms of entertainment to make journeys enjoyable.

These are some of my own photographs that I took around Bournemouth that I asked the survey participants to describe. They used words such as dark, eerie, suffocating, scary, mysterious, peaceful, gloomy, intriguing and unknown.

Liminality in Art and Photography

To inspire my project, I have been looking at the work of a variety of photographers and artists to see how the themes of liminality, transition and the everyday are depicted by them. Artists such as John Register (top left) and Ferdinanda Florence (top right) capture empty, people-less spaces and the stillness that happens in these ‘non-spaces’. Photographers such as Rinko Kawauchi (bottom left) and Todd Hido (bottom right) attempt to elevate everyday places into something more through their work. Kawauchi’s photograph is simply of a road, but the way she uses overexposure to create an alluring bright portal and dappled sunlight across the road elevates the meaning of the location to be something more, it becomes symbolic and emotional. Hido shows the transformative qualities of dusk on the homes and suburbs he photographs, when the light is low and an ominous glow emanates from windows. I am interested in how Kawauchi and Hido have used lighting and the time of day to manipulate the mood and message of their photography.

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Emily Pearson