For this project the theme was encounters, experiences and meetings. I thought of various different ideas to do with this theme. For example family events, crowds, conflict, relationships and growing up. After thinking about the different ideas, I decided to explore the theme of war and past time experiences.
Within our overall project I worked on another theme of life cycles. I explored the work of Bill Viola and Andy Goldsworthy as their work related well. I liked the way Bill Viola made a film expressing the three stages of life. Andy Goldsworthy's work focused on using the natural surroundings and natural tools to create his work. Following my own ideas of on life cycle, I shot a film roll of gravestones. I think that gravestones depict the idea of life cycle well as at the end of a life is death. I chose my two best photographs then mounted them onto foam board and entered them into the Rotary Club Photography competition.
For the project encounters, experiences and meetings I explored war and past time experiences through going to the Imperial War Museum and looking at my family history and relatives. I looked at the works of Don McCullin, a photographer. His photographs were exhibited in an exhibition in the Imperial War Museum. I love how he captured the moments within the various war and conflict scenes. As I could not experiment with my own Don McCullin inspired photographs I looked at other artists that I could show experimentation for. Rankin was one of the artists that I explored with my own experimentation of his rankin 'destroy' work. I took photos of myself expressing different emotions then 'destroyed' them in various ways. I experimented with cutting into my photos and adding objects and backgrounds for the images. I then used my experimentations in photoshop to explore different ways of 'destroying' my images.
I looked at the work of Maurizio Anzeri as his work linked well to mine as he involved old vintage photographs in his work. His style was sewing over the faces of the different people. Before I experimented with sewing into my photos I thought I would find it quite daunting to edit and change the faces of my family. After sewing into my photographs my thoughts of sewing into them changed, I found it interesting and experimental to see the effect it had on the photos. To explore my theme of war and past time experiences I experimented on photoshop with 'ageing' my photographs. I added different effects until I was happy with the outcome. For my final piece I was originally going to make a memorabilia box including different photos and records from the war such as medal certificates and death records and objects from my family such as old dolls. After thinking of how to present my idea I decided to have a mounted sheet of photographs and records with the attachment of a box containing various different objects. I am happy with my final outcome as I think it is presented better than my original idea. I would like to explore the theme of war and past time experiences through a range of different idea and may bring elements of it to new themes and ideas.
Evaluation
This project involved exploring the theme of 'light'. I considered the different ways light can be used, different sources of light and how it can be represented. I started by looking at the work of Pablo Picasso, Bill Brandt and Patrick Rochon. Picasso's work inspired me to create my own light drawings. Picasso would use the light and direct it towards the camera to create different drawings. I decided to experiment with creating my own like Picasso's.
I used the software called glow doodle to experiment with light drawings. It was done interactively using a webcam. I thought of two ways of experimenting with light in glow doodle. The first was pointing the light source directly at the camera to draw the image. The second was by pointing the light source away from the camera and towards an object at different angles.
I then light drawings using a digital camera. I set the digital camera to the light tripod setting, this allowed me to take an image on a slow shutter speed. Even though the shutter was only open for a few seconds, that was enough time to draw some images and patterns. I took my idea further by using two torches that were covered in tissue paper, this made the images appear in different colours. Using some of the images I had created I edited them in Photoshop. I overlayed 3 images, 2 being the wings and the other being a halo. The outcome of my experiment was an angel.
I used software such as photo shop to create light paintings. I found it hard to do them at first as I was not that familiar with some of the techniques in Photoshop. However as I created more of them I found it easy to do all the steps. In my opinion I think that they don't look realistic or look like light drawings but I do understand that they have the same effect.
I explored different forms of light such as synthetic lighting being torches and lasers, and natural lighting such as sunlight, natural fires. I took some of my own photos of sparklers, sunlight through tress, settled snow in an early morning and candlelight.
Using and SLR camera I took some still life pictures. The objects were bits and bobs that has reflective surfaces. I changed the angle of the light so that the light reflected off different objects in different ways. I liked experimenting with the light and positioning of the objects to create a range of images.
I found researching the different types of lighting such as soft lighting, hard lighting and back lighting, helped me as I now have an understanding of the different types of lighting and how it can improve my techniques and skills.
