#research_summary

[elisharice-bapa-blog]

Research Summary- Street Photography

Visual Research

At the beginning of the project I was inspired by a lecture on the modern citizen and street, looking at the relationship between the people and their surroundings. Initially I wanted to portray your every day 21st century, modern cosmopolitan. I took great interest in the work of Duane Michals, particularly his series of images know as ‘chance meetings’, which highlights the somewhat conflicting ideas of the intimacy and alienation between people, which is present on the street. However, with having difficulty trying to recreate this somewhat obvious concept I decided to change my direction. I started to look at some of the photographs taken by the ‘Masters’ of street photography: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, Walker Evans and seeing how they approached the genre. From this I learned that I wanted to take a more documentary method and actually connect with an area, keep returning and photographing the same places learning more about the environment with each photograph. This then led me Portobello Road where I was greatly interested in the community feeling in the area and the communication between the people, which I focused on capturing throughout my shoots there.

 Production

For my first shoot my desire was to capture the isolation and alienation portrayed on the streets. I thought the best way of doing this would be to capture people doing the same things but not communicating with each other or looking up from their mobile phones. For this I thought it would be best to use a slightly longer lens then the standard 55mm in order to still remain inconspicuous but also achieve a closer view of my subject, therefore not distracting them by being seen with a camera pointing at them thus still enabling me to capture candid moments.  However, I seemed to have experienced a technical fault during this shoot as many of my photographs came out over exposed even though the light meter in the camera read as correctly exposed, therefore rendering the negatives unusable to print.  After this mishap I decided I didn’t want to continue the concept of isolation as the photographs I did take weren’t very interesting to me at the time, So I changed my approach and decided to take a more documentary method of shooting, photographing the same area twice (Portobello Road Market) learning more about the area and the people occupying it each time I went. Sometimes after taking someone’s photograph I might approach them after and engage in general conversation enabling me to portray the area correctly in my images to how the atmosphere amongst the people felt.                                                            

 Evaluation

As my initial idea collapsed after the first shoot it took a little while to figure out what direction I was going to take for this project. However, after I discovered how I liked to photograph the street, by using full frames and more often than not a shallow depth of field it was easier to know how I wanted to represent a certain environment. As I returned to Portobello road I think it took the focus away from just capturing markets and more reflecting the societal feeling in a particular area. During this particular project I experienced a lot of difficulties when working with film. Although not my first time I made some very rookie mistakes such either checking the exposure or the focus was correct but never both a lot of the time which meant many of the negatives were left unusable. Due to the fact that it took me so long to develop a second theme I feel this project may come across immature, or that my final prints have been rather rushed together. I do feel as if I had more time explore this project I would continue on visiting Portobello Road market and developing a better sense for the place in my images. I would have liked to have a final set that gave the viewer the impression they were walking through the middle of the market place, capturing the true essence of the environment. Although I do feel as if my chosen final prints do give this impression to a certain degree, with move time this could have been a well thought out set of images truthfully describing an area after I had gotten to know it.

[elisharice-bapa-blog]

Research Summary- Landscapes

Visual Research

Initially I had no real idea as to how I was going to approach the brief of Landscapes. This resulted in my research being very broad, looking at how different photographers, such as Gabriele Basilico, Paul Strand, and Rut Blees Luxemburg have approached Landscapes- each very different. From looking at such a broad range of approaches I found that I preferred images that made you think a little about what you were looking at and the context behind that, rather than just banal photographs of photogenic surroundings.

After reading ‘Thoughts on Landscapes’ by Frank Gohlke I took a more defined approach to the brief. Gohlke wrote that the best landscapes “propose the possibility of an intimate connection with a world to which we have access only through our eyes”. From this I realised I didn’t want to capture landscapes for what they are- banal, lifeless scenes, I wanted to be more abstract in the way I photograph, using my camera as an eye into another world- one we wouldn’t ordinarily see. This meant that I had to take an entirely different approach to what I had started with, focusing on capturing the ordinary in unique ‘unseen’ ways. For this approach I took inspiration from the likes of Edward Weston and Man Ray, looking at images where they took the ordinary and transformed it into something unrecognisable to its nature form. It was this that led to the development of the title of my project- ‘New World’.

 Production

The first two shoots I shot were definitely more exploratory than the proceeding shoots. This is due to the fact that I had no clear direction as to where I wanted to take this brief, resulting in me collecting an array of widely different landscape photographs with no real sense of cohesion. However, what this did allow me to do was identify how I didn’t like photographing landscapes. From this I leaned that I prefer not to shoot wide frames and like to focus on one area of detail in an image, making that the focal point. I also found that I favoured photographing at night because I like the way different places are lit and it’s better lighting to capture reflections and lights against different surfaces creating a more visually complex image. From shoots three and onwards, a structure begins to appear within my work and a more defined approach to the brief emerges.

It is here that the research I preformed really starts to impact my work, looking at the world with a more abstract, defined eye.

I decided I only wanted to photograph architecture and was going to use a zoom lens in order to take the building out of the context of its surroundings, focusing purely on the shapes and lines created within the frame. In doing this I created a new way of looking at the world, photographing ordinary buildings in unique ways giving the viewer a distorted and abstract interpretation of the everyday. It was this movement into a more abstract methodology that framed the theme of my work and in selecting my final images I looked for photographs that suggested something different to their natural state. Due to this I have finished with quite a futuristic, ‘new world’ style, body of work.

 Evaluation

Throughout this project I really feel as if the way I approached this brief has developed and grown into a fully-fledged concept and theme. At the beginning I faced problems with the method I wanted to take towards this brief, so initially this resulted in my first few shoots looking incoherent with no form or direction. It was the research I did that really framed the ideas behind this project; specifically Frank Gohlke’s ‘Thoughts on Landscapes’ really inspired and spurred this project on into the development of a clear theme.

I chose to title my theme ‘New World’, inspired by the likes of Man Ray and Edward Weston, I wanted to take the everyday and transform it into something unrecognisable from it’s true form. My subjects were buildings, focusing on modern architecture with lots of glass and metal, this resulted in quite a cold futuristic undertone to a lot of my images, strengthening my theme.

In addition to this I had to really think about what I wanted to capture in the frame. Following quite an abstract approach my shots were normally zoomed in with the objective of focusing in on a small section of a building. The aim of this was to extract the building from its existing environment, removing all known context and just looking at the image in terms of the lines and shapes created within the frame. I think this is clearly demonstrated in the final images I have chosen.

My main issue with this project, once I had decided on a theme, was with the method in which I shot the images. Many of my photographs are quite incoherent as some were shot with a wider angle and others were zoomed all the way in. To improve on this I might consider using a prime lens to avoid the temptation of framing a shot with the zoom. Overall I feel as if I have successfully combated the challenges I faced with this brief and am happy with the final result.