INTRODUCTION
Over the summer, I was instructed to take many photos, and I took a huge amount of photos over that period of time. This has helped me narrow down to some extent what I am interested in pursuing in my personal investigation. Portraiture is the genre of photography I enjoy most, and have the most experience in, so I am naturally drawn to photograph people around me and specific subjects. However as you will see in a series of photos I have selected from over my summer, I enjoy taking photos of landscapes and streets. For my investigation, I will attempt to find a way to combine these genres, but first I have noticed that I lack footage of the process behind my images, perhaps video, which I am already aiming to improve on, would be a perfect way to have the viewer see my work on a more personal level.
My summer, in a random order
The photos I took away from the summer were varied and have made me eager to try to capture movement in images and experiment with video, I made videos out of the photos I took over summer and linked them below.
Three videos I made with my photos from the summer.
I made short videos (reels/tiktoks) with a combination of videos from my phone with the images I took, and synced it with music. All three are different styles and formats and my aim was different for all three, in the second one I focused especially on a story like progression through my day. I want to get better at telling a story using images, in a non storyboard manner, by exploring my creativity, and taking inspiration from other photographers and my surroundings and experiences.
Notting Hill carnival
During Notting Hill Carnival, I had recently discovered Jamel Shabbazz’s work, and I found it fascinating how different culture changes over time, and therefore how valuable photos which encapsulate the culture of one time are, e.g. Shabbazz’s photo in Fig. 6 of hip hop culture in the 1980’s. I believe it is partly a photographer’s duty to preserve the culture they see around them in photography, whether it be stylized or not aimed to capture the energy I saw around me, similarly to how Jamel did.
Photography quotes which relate to my personal investigation
“For me, capturing what I feel with my body is more important than the technicalities of photography”
- Daido Moriyama
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
- Dorothea Lange
“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”
- Richard Avedon
- Daido Moriyama
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
- Dorothea Lange
“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”
- Richard Avedon
In class questions
What is it within your photography that you are really interested in?
Photography is an art which
What is it about your project that you want to know?
-How to tell a story in a unique and immersive way with photography whilst leaving an impression on the viewer without making it seem like a storyboard but rather a feeling the photography and subject matter provokes.
-How social/media interacts with different types of visual media.
What is it you want to document?
-People and their surroundings, the city and lights and my own abilities as a photographer.
How much do you want to document what you see?
-I regularly see things I want to document however not 100% of the time, depending on my mood or what device I have access to in the moment.
What do you want to share with the viewer?
-A visually striking image which is open for interpretation but has a universal feeling it invokes.
What do you want the viewer to experience?
-A feeling that leaves an impression on them and inspires them to take their own photos with their own style.
What kinds of emotion/experience do you want the viewer to have?
-Interest and excitement, inspiration.
Have you documented in great detail a photographer or groups of photographers that have also photographed similar theme/story/subject?
-I have documented photographers using images to express their distinctive style and goal for a photograph, e.g. gakuyen, billy dee and many more.
What were your findings within their work?
-That they are all unique and have a certain "vibe" or feeling, and are clearly separate and more interesting to some other photographers.
Photography is an art which
What is it about your project that you want to know?
-How to tell a story in a unique and immersive way with photography whilst leaving an impression on the viewer without making it seem like a storyboard but rather a feeling the photography and subject matter provokes.
-How social/media interacts with different types of visual media.
What is it you want to document?
-People and their surroundings, the city and lights and my own abilities as a photographer.
How much do you want to document what you see?
-I regularly see things I want to document however not 100% of the time, depending on my mood or what device I have access to in the moment.
What do you want to share with the viewer?
-A visually striking image which is open for interpretation but has a universal feeling it invokes.
What do you want the viewer to experience?
-A feeling that leaves an impression on them and inspires them to take their own photos with their own style.
What kinds of emotion/experience do you want the viewer to have?
-Interest and excitement, inspiration.
Have you documented in great detail a photographer or groups of photographers that have also photographed similar theme/story/subject?
-I have documented photographers using images to express their distinctive style and goal for a photograph, e.g. gakuyen, billy dee and many more.
What were your findings within their work?
-That they are all unique and have a certain "vibe" or feeling, and are clearly separate and more interesting to some other photographers.
Billy Dinh
I find Billy Dinh's photos inspiring as they resemble Saul leiter's street photography however on a more global scale, as his photos are from many different countries.
Gakuyen
I find Gakuyen's photography to be the perfect blend of modern photography and video and film, reflecting the film photography scene of japan.
3D GIF
During my investigation, I found that a particular style of photography caught my eye, which is the making of 3d gifs out of still images, this is something I had previously tried in the past but was not good at so I decided to give it another try. I managed to create a gif out of 4 images by shooting them in a specific way and creating a 6-frame timeline in photoshop after framing and lining them up to a specific point, after that, I imported the images to premier pro, and edited the sequence into a gif with a 3d effect.
Experimenting with still photography
Through this photoshoot, I found it was very simple to make a 3D gif and turn these stills into a 3D GIF. I chose to give it a semi busy background with one person in the background to emphasise the movement.
Experimenting with lighting, colour and movement
I have realised that not only the style of visual presentation influences how people see images on social media, e.g. the combination in video and photo, but the temperature of the image also influences this, I have seen that in popular city photographers in urban areas tend to lean to either warm images or cold images, and that amateur photographers on these sites tend to copy the heavy blue theme of photographers who photograph at night, whereas the majority of people who casually use social media and take images with their phones are more attracted to warm shades in photos, and photographers eventually of course develop their own styles, which in general, are warmer tones or changed based on the particular image and what edit is relevant to it.
During this photoshoot, I had a specific theme in mind for both the indoor and outdoor settings. Outside, I was searching for natural lighting and colours to add depth to my the portraits and compliment the model's clothing, I found blue lights, green lights and different strong lighting from many different sources, in the neon coloured lighting, that was from shop lights and signs. I also found strong lighting in a backstreet where we used a chair to pose the subject strategically around the lighting and capture the intended photos. This was all planned and organised, however there is chance involved due to the nature of photographing in a non-controlled environment. In the tube station photos, I intended to give my photos a green tint in post processing, and photographed them accordingly, by framing the tube in the image. I also shot GIFs during the entire photoshoot.
stills, 3D gifs, and video
In these videos, I combined footage taken from the entire photoshoot and aimed to show the thought process/bts of the approach I took to the photoshoot.
A changing digital landscape
If you've logged in to any social media platform recently, you might have noticed video content within the first 10 seconds. This is because video content typically performs best with most algorithms, based on the fact it captures a viewer's attention for longer. This shift has led me to create more videos and implement them in my work, sure enough, on Instagram and tiktok I have received significantly more views, I have noticed that the contrast between stills and video creates an even more immersive.
La haine ( Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)
La Haine is a
The cinematography of la Haine is very experimental, many of the shots follow the characters in long takes, and this has inspired many of my shot choices and framing for portrait shoots.
CONTRAST
Rough surfaces and soft surfaces, large buildings and small people, long videos and still images, positive and negative emotions, these are the contrasts I am investigating, the way these thing coexist with one another to create a balance, or imbalance?
I recently did a photoshoot in the Barbican, my initial aim was to create a piece of media that combined photos, 3D GIFS and video from my camera, and I consider the shoot a success, after a the long period of time editing and refining this, I started to see that not only were the visual mediums contrasting, but everything in frame was contrasting, the Barbican being a huge, brutalist building made of rough concrete, and the models/subjects being tiny in comparison, with clothes which contrasted each-other but all sharing the same quality of being soft clothes, contrasting the grey Barbican.
The process
Software used: Lightroom, Photoshop, Premiere Pro
The way I made the GIF is relatively simple, however is extensive. The first step was to take 4 photos panning sideways vertically, then to edit all my photos in Lighroom to have the look I wanted. After this I imported the 4 frames into Photoshop and line them up to a central point of every photo, adjust the rotation and any overlapping, and then cropping them all to the same dimensions. After this I created a timeline of 6 frames in photoshop, where I created a video, however they still needed to be blended so I added them into Premiere Pro, where I changed the time interpolation to "optical flow" to make all the frames blend. After trimming the frames, nesting and duplicating the footage, I reversed the duplicate and adjusted the speed of the sequence.
Then after making around 6 GIFS, video from my camera and stills, I combined bout three of those GIFs with all the other mediums, edited them into a video synced with music, and posted it on Instagram and TikTok
Then after making around 6 GIFS, video from my camera and stills, I combined bout three of those GIFs with all the other mediums, edited them into a video synced with music, and posted it on Instagram and TikTok
Daido Moriyama
Daido Moriyama is a Japanese street photographer best known for his confrontational, black-and-white images depicting the contrast of traditional values and modern society in postwar Japan. Notable for his rejection of technical precision in favour of the grainy and high-contrast images produced by a compact camera, the artist captures a diaristic experience of wandering city streets. The way he photographs is possibly what I hope to learn from most. "Take photographs – of anything and everything, whatever catches your eye. Don't pause to think. That's the advice I give people.” Snapshot photography is all about capturing the natural movement and expression of whatever you are photographing – the subject – in that particular moment.
Urban contrast - everyone’s on a mission part 1
The work of photographer Daido Moriyama, particularly PROVOKE and Shinjuku, has helped me question what makes a “good” photograph (something new, deeper, more personal) and reflect on my own practice. In everyone's in a mission, I am aiming to explore my creativity and take photos in the moment, when I took these photos, I was on my own with my camera in the city, and I am aiming to show that in these photos.
Everyone's on a mission part 2
In this photoshoot, my aim was to photograph movement and people like part 1, and include both obvious scenes which most people see, and less obvious scenes, a key theme I have noticed I am drawn to is windows, I love the reflection of light and shapes and the glow it gives the highlights in my photos, for example, the photo looking up the office has blooming highlights and very dark shadow, making it easy for the viewer to make out the outline of the man in the office, I believe that the windows make the image pop more in a subtle way.
EVERYONE'S ON A MISSION - FINAL PIECE - COLLAGE
I have chosen a very wide 1x8 collage format in order to create a piece of work that the viewer looks at for a long period of time, and to be able to fit as many photos and videos in as possible. To add depth and detail, I downloaded a pack of 'tape' to include in my collage, and give the impression that video and photos being taped together, and add contrast. In order to build a collage containing both video and images, I first have to make it out of images, then using guide lines I placed, cut it out into 8 separate images, from there I can continue in premiere pro and add in moving image.
Still Collage stage
These are the 8 sections from my collage without video, I am aiming to add video to the blank spaces of my collage, however I may choose to add still images instead as I would like to present it as a slideshow, so it will be moving anyway.
Planned & Unplanned
Although I took these photos after I began my final piece, they have a lot in common with the theme of my investigation, the contrast between the studio and the snow, the posing and the candid photos, and the overall difference in mine and the models' attitude to photography in both locations, has a lot to do with how contrasting both scenes are, and how different planned portraiture and unplanned portraiture can be.
Everyone's on a mission final stills
This is the finished collage for 'Everyone's on A Mission', For my final piece I am going to create a video of my collage, and project it on a wall as well as have it as an online video. This is because I would like the viewer to have a slideshow experience of the collage to slowly reveal parts.