Raluca Babos Photography

I'm a photography student at London South Bank University. I have currently been studying photography since the age of 13. This blog will document my work as well show extensive research and examples of my portfolio. Website: ralucababosphotography.com Facebook: Raluca Babos Photography All Photos © Raluca Babos

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Budget - £1000

Our budget is very large considering we did not need any materials to produce the work. Macie emailed a few companies and these were the quotes we gave received from them:

Genesis:

A3 5mm + £21.60 (per print)

A4 5mm + £14.40 (per print)

From this we saw straight away that our budget would not cover these costs, therefore we had a look at some other places. As we are printing so many images, we understand even other companies may not be able to provide a low enough price in order for our budget to cover the costs.

Metro was also out of our budget. After thinking this through we though. Yes. It is much faster and easier mounting somewhere else and we just bring the images, however it is all very expensive and we cannot afford this therefore we will be mounting and printing the images ourselves in university which will be much cheaper. To print at the university this would cost us £6 per square meter with mounting which is much more reasonable, however this will require a lot of time and percision working.

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Group discussions and decisions

After looking threw the images the previous week, we have decided that we needed more portraits, therefore we went to shoot some more portraits in areas that we haven’t yet captures. Our whole group came together and we placed all the images we had into one folder. At first it seemed as though we had too many.

The fist thing we did is decide how big we want to print the images. We have decided on 3 sizes and 2 formats. Our sizes for our final images at 10x8,A4 and A3 and we are printing some of the images as their original format, yet selected others will be cropped into a squares. After we decided our sizes we went through all the photographs and selected which ones we will put into each folder to be printed a certain size. This folder is on google drive to ensure than anyone can have access to them when it comes to test prints.

We kept a Raw folder as some of the images need re-editing. I have looked through the photographs and edited the ones that needed editing that evening and added them onto the google drive folders, to ensure they are ready for printing.

After selecting all the images we have decided to exclude some due to quality factors such as being out of focus or unshaped. We want to make sure our images are very good quality especially for when we will ring them. After realising that we actually don't have enough images. I have decided to take some more images the next day mainly consisting traces. I receive a message from one of the girls i previously photographed inviting me to First love church which happens in the university with many LSBU students attending. She said this would also be  great opportunity to take some more portraits. She was right. I remember having photographs representing the muslim religion, however this was a great opportunity to show the variety of cultures as well as religious beliefs. Last Thursday I joined them and took a couple of portraits representing Christianity as well as the variety of student societies.

The images above are in a separate folder which also need to be discussed as a group which sizes we will be printing them as and which images will be included.

Below are all the images we have chosen for the 3 different size prints excluding the new photographs taken which you can see above.

10 x 8

A4

A3

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Genesis Imaging

Visiting Genesis Imaging has given us an insight on how the prints are made as well as provided us with examples of types of prints that can be made. There were many varieties of prints which we would need to discuss as a group in order to decide on what we will print our final images on.

Whilst at the lab, we were mainly drawn to foamex mounting, which is light as well as provides that 3D aspect which we were looking for in order for the images to stand out from the wall. Images can be printed directly onto foamex with thickness ranging at 2,3 and 5mm. We are very keen on this idea, however they could not provide us with a price quote on the day, therefore we will be required to email them with the dimensions four our prints as well as the amount off print sin order for them to be able to send us an accurate quote.

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Easter Break

Over Eater we have decided to allocate most of this time to catch up with personal work and other projects, however we printed a few more images and discussed options for printing weather or not we want the images mounted or printed in the form of wallpaper, however we have decided to wait before making the decisions knowing that we will be visiting Genesis print lab after eater. Therefore we can make further discussions and arrangements once we see the prints ourselves  Over easter I also took the time to edit some of the images by correcting exposure and colour balance as well as any cropping and other minor changes.

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Heloise Bergman

One of Heloise Bergman’s projects is called The Dying Art (of smoking) which was to commemorate the 10 year anniversary of banning smoking advertising. Bergman is also against smoking herself as she mentions, all the research she did on smoking out her off. For this project Bergman created an installation recording of everyone outside smoking and captured how the way one person holds a cigarette can provide information about the smokers personality. This was projected inside an exhibition, bringing the people outdoors inside, making them part of the exhibition.

Heloise Bergman’s current project is called Ta Moko - Modern Maori Warriors. Ta Mako means tattoo in the native language of New Zeland. This project captures the culture of Maori and represents their constant fight to keep their tribe and protect their history. In the project, she explores the new culture of the Maori and photographs them showing their cultural identity against a white background as you can see below.

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Display Ideas

I have decided to try out a style of grid, so we have an idea of what it would look like. However, I think this would work very well if we print the images smaller and arrange them as a group on a wall with bluetack, where we can re arrange the images as we would like, until we are happy with the results.

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Steffi Klenz

Steffi Klenz has a passion for photographing buildings and architectural  photography. Klenz showed us a few images that inspire her which are:

Hugo Schmolz 'Cathedral of Cologne' 1930

Isle Bing 'Eiffel Tower with thermometer' 1932

Stanly Heaps 'St Johns wood station' 1939

Unknown Photographer, Le Corbusier, villa savoye 1931

Laszio Moholy - Nagy, photogram 1928

Lassie Moholy - Nogy light play

Quote from Steffi Klenz - "In order to capture speciality, you don't need to have buildings"

Her advice for when photographing architecture is to always be careful when photographing lines. In her  book she arranges the images to describe her life. Near the end the images show sadness to represent the divorce of her parents.

Untitled 2015-2016 from the series Beun

This image above is one of my favourites from her work. I think she is very creative with her work and captures ordinary images in an unordinary way that you wouldn't think of. The image above is stinking in the way the line breaks up the image and the contrast to make the photograph unique and different.

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Further Project Development

This week, I too the time to walk around the university and take a few more photographs of traces as well as portraits. There are many more photographs that I have taken, however they need to be selected which ones we will use as well as they need to be edited. However, below are just a few examples of the photographs I have taken this week.

For the development I have looked at different areas  of the university and tried to explore different ways of photographing student traces as well as photographing the students with backgrounds around campus that would be recognised by students.

On one of my last posts I will include a collage of all the photographs taken.

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Dafna Talmar

Dafna Talmar’s work was based a lot on film photography. Talmar discussed with us information about one of her projects called Constructed Landscapes, which she has created in 2009. Up until 2009, Talmar only photographed in indoor spaces. Dafna Talmer travelled a lot from a young age. She was born in Israel, bough up in Venezuela and lives in London. Its also good to note that her sister lives in the USa as she took all these locations with her when she started shooting landscapes. She had all these negatives from all these places which she was frustrated what to do with them, so she decided to turn her frustration into art. She revisited the places on her negatives in order to take more photographs and place the photos together to make collages made of negatives.  Dafna Talmar currently teaches photography as well as practices the art herself.

I feel that Dafna taller has opened my eyes to look at old work and create something new of it without worrying if any mistakes are made. She is a great inspiration ad I was fascinated by her collages and how breathtaking they were. I really admire her style of work and how she created this project so personal by revisiting the locations she was brought up in, in order to create a masterpiece.

Facts about Dafna Talmar:

Her work is very staged and constructed.

She won the photo fusion select bursary award (2013)

All her collages are hand made to contact with the mechanical process of photography.

When her hand slips, Talmar embraces her mistakes.

The titles of her images are made of codes  so that she can identify the image.

She did an Instagram takeover for the photographers gallery.

She opened her fist studio together with her college friend Lucy Laverne in 2008 called Studio10Darkroom_victoriahouse

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Researching work by Richard Hamilton

“the artist does have a specific kind of eye, an attitude that will direct the image in an entirely personal way.” – Hamilton

I researched work by Richard Hamilton for ideas on how we should present our work and I came across an exhibition at the Tate called room 16 which was presented in the form of a grid with polaroids. This inspired us to present our photographs in the form of a grid on a whole wall and have polaroids cover the entire wall. Emma has tested this idea and has made some of the portraits taken into polaroids as examples for us to look at and test the idea.

Emma had a look at different types of printing the polaroids and what would look the most natural. She also printed a few of the photos out with the polaroid border to have a look at and we  came to a conclusion that the colour of the boarder blends in too much considering the photos are also black and white. In the polaroids are a few new photographs I took for the project.

I had a look at 3 different options. The first option was to print the image and just cut it out leaving enough space for it to have a polaroid border. The second idea was to just cut them as squares and the third idea was to use a company which I have used before to print each image as they would precisely cut the images for as little as 60p each.

After speaking to Daniel and Simon, they were not very keen on the polaroid idea therefore emma tried a different way of printing which is similar to polaroids , however it is slightly different.

However, after seeing this option we have all came to a conclusion to drop the polaroid idea, however still stick to arranging the images in some sort of a grid form.

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Wolfgang Tillmans

We decided it would be a good idea to visit the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition as his work is very similar to our project by combining portraits and other everyday and unusual object. His compositions are very interesting and his work is very detailed to capture things we wouldn't normally observe ourselves. I though his work was very inspiring and influential for our group project and has definitely inspired me to be more creative went capturing the trace for our commissioned work. Below are a few images from the exhibition I found influential:

The exhibition opened our eyes to the possibilities of combining different factors such as portraits with everyday objects in our traces of students.

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Visiting the design museum

We made a visit to the design museum to look at the Fear and Love: Reactions to a complex world which include creations by creative and innovative designers and creative. Below are some photographs I took of my favourite creations from the exhibition.

This installation is called Fibre Market and was produced by Christen Meindertsma. I really enjoyed how this installation was exceuted and the representation of change in fashion by showing how the clothes we recycle preserve their fibres and can be re used for future clothing. The amount that there is captures just how quickly we dispose of our clothing and how much material is wasted. This installation influences a more sustainable future by bringing attention to the amount of waste we produce.

These sculptures are called Vespers and were created by Neri Oxman, the director of Meditated Matter. These death masks come in 3 series. The first series represents the persons character, the second series is capturing the weather's final breath and the final series is designed with bacteria which helps the body degrade after death. The way these mask were created are very inspiring. The details make it very clear what is happening in each series and it is a wonderful way of overcoming fear of death and shows the beauty and potential for new life.

Finally, This is Mimus created by Madeline Gannon. She is a robot  who has a curiosity for life. This installation was created to view robots as a companion  species and therefore has cancers in the ceilings which allows her to investigate anyone she finds interesting. I found this very intelligent the way it was created and it definitely opens your mind to robots being used for companion in the future and how our everyday appliances could even be improved to respond to us.

There were many fantastic pieces of work at the exhibitors, however the above 3 were my personal favourite.

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Project Development and New ideas

After last weeks first test shots, we wanted to capture a few more traces that would not put the university under bad light. We also decided to start photographing students around the university and see how the images look together.

These are some of the first portraits I took. Our aim was to capture the students in the university environment which would distinguish them as being LSBU students rather than any random strangers. Next, Tom took some traces of his own which looked great and worked very well with the portraits. Below are a few examples of the traces he shot:

When we looked at these, we  that the traces can be photographed in a better way in which would capture traces of students avoiding the litter and mess and capturing community and the sense that the university is always occupied by students even when they are not there.

Kyle and Macie also came up with some new ideas. Kyle was thinking of photographing students in their rooms to show and identify what represents each students while keeping it personal with the object surrounding them in their room to represent who they are. On the other hand Macie had an idea to make a collage of peoples faces and create one big portrait out of many faces. Both of these are great ideas which we may test in order to see how they work and look.

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Victoria Browne / Paula Roush - Photobooks

Victoria Browne is from Essex but has been brough up in London. She set up a publishing studio after studying at the art academy in London bridge. Artists submit their work though an application and Browne chooses her favourite candidates to be published in her book.Victoria Browne thinks that phonebooks are a great way for photographer to represent themselves. She regularly works with international students from Norway and admires people who bind books 50 times themselves as it takes a very long time and she is impressed by the effort that goes in.

Victoria Browne mentioned - “You have an incredible mind for phonebooks which comes under a smart culture”

Calyde represents 35-40 books each year and if they become very popular they will represent them for another year.

References: Dita Pepe, Wo-men editions, Jezebel, JJ Major, Tectonic, Johan Rosenmunth, ABC collective, SPBH: Self publish and be happy.

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First Test Shots

The first test shots we did are some traces. Tom, Emma and I took a wide variety of photographs capturing traces of students. When we looked at them as a group we noticed that this was something we could carry out as an idea and that it worked really well. However we were a little skeptical as the first photos we took looks as if we were portraying the university in a bad way. However we decided to keep going with this idea and develop it more as Simon also agreed it was a strong idea.

Here are a few examples of traces I took this week:

These were our group shots which Kyle took. Once we saw these we realise that it was far too cliche and didn't seem to artistic, therefore we decided to discuss this further in our next meeting in how we will develop this idea or come up with another idea as were still feeling skeptical about photographing traces, depending on how the photographs progress and what new ideas we can come up with photographing the traces without making the university look bad.

Kyle also came up with the idea to photograph students in their homes and accommodations in order to capture something personal about individual students. This is another possible idea we will carry out and take test shots for.

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Group discussion about our first ideas

Today we met with the rest of the group and discussed our first ideas. Everyone really liked the idea of the group photograph to capture the student body. However we came up with a few more ideas. Tom was also taking some photographs around the university. When he showed us the photographs he took, one stood out to me straight away which was a photograph of a handprint on the lift! That made me think about capturing the students in a way which was not so obvious such as capturing traces students leave behind. this would represent the student body in a less cliche way.  These are our two strongest ideas in which we have decided to test shoot and see how it would look like. We will be doing this on Monday as it will give us enough time to gather a group pf students in order to test our idea as well as look for traces to photograph until then.

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Contemporary Photography Commisions Our Brief - Student Body

This week we have received our brief for the contemporary photography commissions project. Our Brief is The student body. We sat down in our group and came up with some draft ideas. For our main idea I was very inspired with Simon Terril's crowd theory images and cam up with the idea to create a large scale group image including 150 students to represent the 150 years of Southbank University. Another idea that Sky came up with is to photograph each door of the university and make a time-lapse  or overlapped images with the different doors to the different buildings. We started off with these two ideas as our group was not all there in the meeting so we wrote everything down and made a plan to meet with our group in the next week to discuss details of our idea further.