#4imag001w.1

[julietacionco-blog]

Titarenko’s work ‘City of Shadows’ is one of the first series of photographs that captured my attention as I was doing my A Level in photography. I used his work to inspire me while creating one of my latest projects in which I used a slow shutter speed and the streets as my main assets. 

I enjoy his work mainly because of the reason behind it. ‘City of Shadows’ is a metaphorical title that implies that the city of St. Petersburg where he took those images was populated by shadows; which in reality are just blurry people. 

He also emphasizes the events occurring in that moment such as the collapse of the Soviet Union with his pictures as he shows a much darker side of these people and the place they are in by making his pictures cold and gloomy. The shadows are there, you can see people’s hands but then they just vanish. They are present, but also absent; there is the presence of a physical being or what is left of it, but there is also an absence of joy, spirit and life. 

[ferndenyerwestminster]

Evaluation

Monday 7th January 2018

Overall, I believe the project has been a success because it has pushed me technically and the final outcomes are similar to what I had originally envisioned. 

Technically the project was a great challenge, I had the experience of completely changing the way I shot. I had to do this to accommodate lighting and the flashgun but I do think it was worth it. It was difficult to adjust to working with a tripod on images I thought I would be shooting free hand and ‘on the go’. This really made me think about what I actually wanted in the project and what I personally thought would be interesting to capture on camera. 

I was worried that the final prints were ‘perfect’, they did look as though they had high saturation but I think this worked with the project overall. The moments I recorded aren’t perfect, so why should they be recorded as perfect?  

The final selection worked well together and I managed to have at least 16 prints. 

[elsaruffieux]

Display and Critics

Today we had to show our work to the other group working on absence and presence and we had to give feedback on each others’ work.

While I was looking at my work exposed on the wall, it almost made me think of the whole table itself (at the party). Rachel said that it would have been interesting to print my images without any borders and place them really close to each other which I think is a great idea. For my next project, I’ll try to lay my print on the floor or the wall and look at it more carefully, asking other people’s point of view before the final hand in, it is always really helpful. I have been told about a sort of dark side to a party that was supposed to be fun (like probably any party) and I think, in a way, it was my own presence in it. I think it was the idea that I had to clean it up later that wasn’t making me the most joyful person on earth. It was an effect that was intended and it was probably due to the harsh artificial light coming from the ceiling and the fact that I under processed the film to begin with but, I quite like it, it makes it a bit more personal to me.

I was also told that the few photographs taken from above where a bit more attractive to the eyes, which I agree.

[georgiagradyphotography]

Other Shoots

Luckily being the time of year there is plenty of Christmas lights about, I also visited funky cocktail bars, china town, Leicester square and gaming shops. 

[elsaruffieux]

Final Evaluation

[georgiagradyphotography]

Inspiration

http://reddotsnapper.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-bright-lights-and-windows.html

I’m not entirely sure who the photographer is but I definitely want my project to head in this kind of direction. Looking at the lights bouncing off peoples faces, to do this I will need to have a high ISO and really open up the aperture. 

[georgiagradyphotography]

My First Shoot

As it was my first shoot I didn’t want to have a specific idea, I was wondered around Wembley for a couple of hours and see what quite my eye. As I went out before sunset I caught both daylight and darkness. 

From this contact sheet I really started to focus in on portraiture and how lights, especially neon lights, illuminate the face. As shown my the Superdry sign.  

[georgiagradyphotography]

Ideas for Shoots

After doing some research I came across a page that had may people send in their image of old photos in front of the same location the photos taken. 

This is an example of one. They all start with - Dear Photograph, and then the person will continue on to exsplain what the meaning is behind the image. 10 years ago this girls Dad taught her how to ride a bike on her driveway. He recently upgraded her and taught her how to drive a car on the same driveway -Emily

http://dearphotograph.com/page/3

I also found a couple of Time slice photographs by Dan Marker-Moore. 

He would make a time lapse photograph and then when editing take a small slice from each image and put them all together