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Final Evaluation - The Future

For this project we were given two briefs from two different clients. One brief was The Devon and Wildlife Trust, and the other was Regen Southwest. At first I wasn’t sure which brief to go with as they both had similar concepts but were both different, and in the end I went with Devon Wildlife Trust.

At the beginning of the project we all had to brainstorm ideas as to what we could do for this brief, and the first idea I had was to do some research. Soon I found a few artists that my tutor and I also had looked at together and soon came up with my final idea. The idea of my shoot was to photograph each piece of recycling I had collected over the space of two weeks and compare it to how much rubbish I had collected in the same time. My final image came out okay but I would have photographed the last image I took with more consideration as the message behind it is good but as a visual image I feel it could be improved on.

Greenwashing - Contextual Studies

Greenwashing is the practise of making an ‘unsubstantiated’ od ‘misleading’ claim about the environmental benefits of a product, service, technology or company practise. Greenwashing can make a company appear to be more environmentally friendly than it really is, such as ‘Coca Cola’ or ‘Windows’.

Often lots of electrical companies such as Windows or Apple are very Greenwashed companies. In 2010 the ‘IPad’ was known as the most Greenwashed product, as it was completely un recyclable as it has a built-in battery, that cannot be removed. As it contains a batter, in which contains chemical energy, is non biodegradable and therefor does not recycle.

Many companies False advertise and lie about what they are selling to make the buyer feel good about their products. But in actual fact the company mostly don’t care about what they are selling you as long as they make a profit.

Subvertising is a type of advertising but bringing the other side of the story to the public. It’s basically just everything that companies deny to the public but is genuinely true. A popular website that advertises and is truthful is https://www.climategames.net/en/home in which advertises the truth to the public through defending nature and showing the changes of the Greenwashed companies actions/truth.

Final Pieces for Devon Wildlife Trust. 2D Evaluation.

I feel like my final images turned out completely different to how I first planned, but at the same time they have also worked out but on a personal level as the rubbish used to demonstrate and advertise in these images are my own. I set out a rule in my house that nobody was to throw the bins out like we would normally do once a week. I collected my recycling over the space of two weeks and my normal rubbish bin in my bedroom for the same time, to conduct an experiment that showed me just how much I personally throw away in my normal bin that could of easily been put in the recycling. By doing this project I have noticed that I can make a personal change in what I put in my bins.

As you can see there is a massive difference in how much rubbish I have collected compared to the recycling, which is shameful and a real eye opener. The point of my images is to make people realise how much waste they are producing and how they can prevent this kind of destruction to the earth by choosing the right bins to put things in.

Final Piece Idea / Planning for 3D Final Image

My final piece idea is to have taken pictures of all the rubbish I have collected in my recycling bin over the space of two weeks and my normal rubbish bin for two weeks. As you’ll be able to tell there is a whole pile of rubbish compared to the small amount of recycling I have collected, and this in everyday lives is a normal aspect. We all put things in our normal bins because then we know it is out of our way, yet we are to lazy to put things that we could also reuse or recycle in the right bins!

This kind of lazy behaviour is a good example of plastic wastage, as some things in the normal rubbish bin could have been recycled and prevented being thrown into a landfill or even the sea, therefor damaging the oceans and the land we call home. I feel my pieces of work come under the Devon Wildlife Trust brief, as they represent Terrestrial pollution and Plastic pollution.

For the images I wish to take, I will have to keep the same lighting from the set up I will create in my room, at the same dim lighting at all times as for my editing part of the project will be a collage of all the pieces of rubbish together.

Contact Sheet

Here is my contact sheet of all the images I have taken for my final image, for this project. As you can see they have quite a dark effect due to the lighting I used for the atmosphere of these images. I took my inspiration for this final piece idea from Keith Arnatt, as I liked how he used a dark effect on his images.

Keith Arnatt - 3D Artist Research

Arnatt created a project back in the 1980′s about photographing wasted food and rubbish from a local tip. Some images contain wasted food such as bread, ham and potatoes. He also used some things that he randomly found in the skip such as a pillow and quite often plastic bags.

He constructed these by almost not touching them, and leaving them as he found them as his intentions were not to create a new picture of the rubbish but to show the viewer how he found them. But in some images he had moved around odd pieces and created backgrounds to contrast the bits of waste he had found.

Arnatt simply took the images at the skip and did not use digital but only film and natural daylight. He created and constructed these beautiful images using only rubbish, to promote how much waste we produce when actually we could save that. This was back in the 80′s, and is still a problem to this day and even bigger at that.

I like how he has made these images so soft and appealing even though the items used were actually not as nice as he has made them appear. I will be taking some of Arnatt’s ideas into consideration for my final piece.

sukiphotography

My 4D unit showreel.

mcletchie-photography-blog

Peer Review 4D Showreel - Suki Renbourn’s Work.

This is Suki’s showreel for our project in 4D. I really like Suki’s take on the briefing for this task as it is completely different to my own but it is still a part of this project. I like how it is simple and that the music fits with the purpose of the images, such as being in a theatre you would tend to listen to a live band, and this music is very uplifting and almost curious to see what else in the the building these images were shot in.

I feel if Suki was to need improving on this moving image then she should maybe add in some text or to give herself credit on the video itself as if somebody that was unaware of the task was to view it they would not know who to applaud.

4D Showreel. 4D Evaluation.

This part of our project was to create a 4D piece of moving image. We had a tutorial on how to use iMovie, and then our task was to create a moving image with a meaning. I chose to use some images I took a few months back in the summer, and made a 30 second video of these images once I had edited them.

In iMovie I learnt how to create a video using the PDF file on moodle. On this file was a step by step instructed guidance of how to use the software. After skimming through this information I then started to create my video. I chose a theme of ‘scrapbook’ as I felt it matched my theme of the video or at least I could work with it.

Then I continued to create and add more images to the video, learning how to add in sound and how to fade the images and make them merge into transitioning. I also added text to this video and used ‘www.bensound.com’ to add music as using my own choice of sound could be copy write.

I really like the end result of my 4D moving image as I feel it all ties in together really well with my choice of music and the theme. I also really enjoyed using iMovie and will defiantly consider using this style of presentation in my final piece for this project.

HDR photography

We have had a tutorial on HDR photography, mainly used for detail of images such as buildings or city scope. I have chosen to use my example of HDR by using this image of an art piece of wall in the local park.

To process this image you must use three different exposures, one slightly lighter, the other slightly darker and then the original image at the correct exposure from the single image and then process all three images in Photomatix. This then creates a HDR image that you can then process and develop in the software yourself.

The top image is my processed HDR image and the bottom image is the original.

Studio Work

Last week we went into the studio and shot some more images of the rubbish collected from the beach the previous day. The point of this shoot was to use the MACRO lense in the studio with the equipment in there to get as much detail out of the rubbish that we could.

I chose a silver background because I knew it would tie in the silvers on the rubbish, it also highlighted the brassiness of the can too. We used the studio lights and a snoot on those lights to give more of a focal point on the rubbish. After changing around the rubbish on the table and also the positioning of the lights I finally got two shots that I am happy with as I feel there is more depth in the images with the use of the equipment.

3D Planning

For this part of the project at first I had no idea what to do with all of the rubbish the class had brought into the studio. We started to mess around with some of the pieces and then found the tyres. We then came up with the idea of constructing them and building up on them to create this little tower of tyres. I didn’t like the dull sand on the tyres so while in photoshop I decided to change the Hue and Saturation of the sand and created lots of different colours to make the sculpture more interesting and appealing to look at. I also found this makes the sculptures look more believable and now what they really are. I took some of the inspiration from my artist research, and constructed this in a similar way to Keith Arnett.

Beach Cleanup Rubbish Shoot. 3D Evaluation.

For this project, we have been pitched two ideas and tasks from two individual company’s to come up with different images to do with the environment. As a start to the tasks to be able to get an educational idea of where the tasks are coming from, as a class we went to Mount Edgcombe to do a beach clean, to see how much rubbish is actually washed up on the beaches locally. Unfortunately due to personal reasons I could not attend this beach clean.

The class brought back a lot of rubbish from the beach which I think shocked us all, but as a result, we made 3D images out of this.

I used tires from the dockyards and with the help of my tutor we created this statue out of them that looked quite modern. Obviously the sand was very dull and moist, so in photoshop I decided to jazz them up and create a theme of colourful tires, to show that the rubbish from the beach doesn’t always have to be gross if you put your mind to it.

Freedom of Speech

Does everybody have the right to freedom of speech is a tricky question to ask, because of the limits you have with what you say, even if you think its right.

During our lesson we discussed some American Politics with our class, and finding out different opinions of the matter and if any of them were right or simply socially unacceptable. But we will never know what is acceptable and what isn’t as everything we say is our ‘right’ to talk about. Where is the limit to being right and wrong with speaking our minds? Well if everyone has a right to speak their mind why is there so much world conflict when it comes to leaders? Because so many people have completely different opinions on the way society should be and its virtually impossible to let everybody have a say of their own personal opinion unless its the same as the people running for president, in which i don’t agree with.

So if people want freedom of speech they have to be careful with how they word it as it may be offensive, but are we aloud to offend?

Semiotics - Contextual Studies

Semiotics are the study of signs, such as hazard or symbolic signs that we interpret and work out what they mean for ourselves. It also includes paintings, photography, drawings, words, sounds and body language.

Sometimes we see a sign or object and think of something that relates to the it, but isn’t what it literally is or means. Most of the time this occurs when we see symbols. A symbol has a certain relation between its physical form and the way it is expressed. The person who is viewing this symbol can either recognise its meaning through previous experience. Spoken or written words are also symbols, and every symbol has a name or a meaning to it that the interpreter can recognise.

Subcultures and Stereotypes- Contextual Studies.

The definition of identity: the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.

Subcultures are a very common and normal cults in society, such as 1950′s the ‘Teenager’ was invented as a stereotype, and Teddy boys and girls became a big trend with names and subcultures for all kinds of teenagers. The film Grease is a good example of these subcultures. Music was commonly known as punk/rock and roll/swing.

1970′s-80′s was all about punk rock and hippies, as in this era was the Vietnam war, trying to make peace with everybody was the hippies, that wore flared trousers, flowers, wacky hair styles and also massive platform shoes, making them their own subculture that was followed by many. There was also punk rock, lots of more crazy wacky hairstyles, and driving in lowered customised cars, that tried to cause hassle but never meant wrong.

In the 1980s, the teenagers of punk rock became bored and wanted to make it more cool and common and introduce glam rock. By 1981, this trend resulted in the development of a group whose preferred music was synthesiser electro-pop. This resulted in slightly campy and visually there was a gender questioning vibe to the subculture. Clothing became more vibrant and glittery, lots of latex and varied materials.

The 1990′s was the Grunge era, involving nirvana and mudhoney and lots of dirty clothing! Grunge is still a subculture in the 21st century but it also has been modernised with the new bands and music in todays society.

Late 1990′s-2000′s was the years of the spice girls, and blue! Lots of blonde hair tips and short denim. It was also a big year for R&B music, which brought in so many different subcultures and followings.

The image at the top is an image by David LaChapelle, a photographer and film maker, this is an image taken by him for his 2005 documentary dance film based in the early 1990′s.

Ben Hopper’s ‘Natural Beauty’. Gender in Photography.

Hopper got the idea for this project by one of the most common stigmatized beauty standards for women, body hair and in his case armpit hair.

He asked the girls to be completley natual wth him so he could really focus on the subject of body hair and desexualising. He thought that classic black-and-white would look and represent the idea best as well as women with minimal-to-no makeup and simple white strappy tops, he created images that feel both bold and meaningful. All the portraits feature women in poses that show off their body hair, but what Hopper did is make the subjects purposefully sexualized by wearing a see-through white top and making direct eye contact with the camera. By revealing one of the most feminine and arousing body parts in combination with a stereotypically masculine features, Hopper makes the viewer think about confronting the truth about beauty ideals.

Rion Sabean - Men’s Up! Gender in Photography.

“Why is it sexual for a female to pose one way, and not sexual for a male? Why is it considered more comical or unsettling for males to act the more socially defined feminine?”

Rion Sabean got the inspiration for this shoot from a genuine love for pin up culture, and the question of why can a female pose in a specific way and it be sexualised, but a man can’t? So he asked a group of heavily masculine men to be as they were at work but then got them to pose in female sexualised poses that are classed as sexy, but when men do it it’s not sexy. He stared off by drawing these images first to get an idea of how they’d look, and researching classic poses, to add a comical feel to the photographs but also making the viewer question the meaning behind it.

Religious Iconography - Contextual Studies

Meaning: the visual images and symbols used in a work of art or the study or interpretation of religion, a series of portraits or illustrations.

A few examples of concepts of religious iconography are Mosques in Iran, that don’t agree with a figure of God and instead have religious geometry which is incredibly beautiful and colourful. They use this art form in their Mosques as it was once said in religion “by which man is brought into communication and participation with the powers of heaven.” Therefor meaning that it is meant to be powerful and represent symbolism of their God instead of a human figure.

Other views of this would be Madonna’s music video ‘like a prayer’ in which plays on Catholic views, of when she was brought up. ‘While a black man is arrested for the murder, Madonna hides in a church for safety seeking strength to go forth as a witness. The clip depicts Catholic symbols such as stigmata, Ku Klux Klan-style cross burning, and a dream about kissing a black saint.’ These are all symbols of religious iconography in a music video, showing that there is different ways of getting across religious views.

The images at the top are by a photographer called David LaChapelle, who has made famous images of Kurt Cobain’s death in an iconic religious way, representing his cause of death around his, and himself as the focus of the image by playing Jesus Christ and this plays a lot on religious iconography. There is also the image of the last supper, with the iconic Jesus Christ at the center of the table with lots of coloured and varied people around him as if to represent the change of the centuries.

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