We were giving the theme for this project as 'The Power of Silence' which at first left me feeling unsure of what I wanted to do for the outcome. We were told that our outcomes for this project would consist of 4 final photographs.We only had two weeks for this project which I wasn't very happy about considering that I am a beginner in photography and it took me about a week and a half to feel comfortable using a DSLR camera. I interpreted the project brief that there wasn't a right or wrong answer, and it was mostly down to interpretation. I was really looking forward to using a camera in a more professional way that I have done previously. In the past I have only borrowed DSLR cameras for short periods of time and not thought much about what I was doing, so I was keen to receive tips and feedback on what I was doing.
I looked particularly into the work of Walker Evans as he has focused a lot on abandoned houses and I was really interested on looking into the idea of abandonment within the idea of the power of silence. However I wanted to make it more nature based rather than architectural based. I found that the power of silence was largely down to interpretation, and one persons' silence would be another persons' noise. I didn't want to create anything that obviously showed silence, but at the same time I wanted people to see the link. I thought the idea of abandonment easily showed silence. Since I didn't want to follow in Evans' ideas within architechtual abandonment, I thought that abandonment within nature was a good fit to the brief that we were given and it also wasn't obvious. I learned throughout the project that aswell as taking a good photo it in the end comes down to editing. Rarely will you take a photo where the lighting, saturation, exposure, and colour balance is all perfect and you don't have to change anything. I took it upon myself to clue up on photoshop and Lightroom via tutorials on lynda.com. This helped a lot and I think that without doing this it would have taken me a lot longer to edit my photos.
I began this project by creating a mind map which outlined all my ideas which would demonstrate the power of silence. This first step helped a lot as it made things a lot more clear and made sure that I wouldn't forget any of the ideas that were in my head. After I had a handful of ideas on paper I went out and took lots of photographs that demonstrated my ideas. I displayed these photographs on contact sheets using a tool in Adobe Lightroom so that they could be easily viewed without taking up lots of pages in my sketchbook. I then went ahead and chose a few photos to take forward and edited them. Finally I came up with a final set of four that I displayed A2 to present. Producing contact sheets allowed me to easily pick out the photos that didn't fit in the colour scheme or in a set. I think that this was a significant trail that I carried out and I am very happy that I did it. I did think that my final four photos, although worked really well as part of a set, they might be too similar. I didn't have enough time to go right back to the editing stage to pick and edit more photos to include my set, so I am going to update this project in the very near future and produce different sets, and see what works best. I was at one point told that my photos were too cool toned and that I should focus on adding some realistic colours back into my work. However I disagreed. I did reedit the photos as instructed however I still wasn't convinced that the photos looked better. There was a reason for why my photos were so cool toned, I thought that it represented silence well and that it also gave more of a surreal, mysterious and abandoned feel to it. I thought that when they were displayed with a more realistic colour scheme it took away the story behind it and simply showed an overgrown garden. After reediting I decided that I would stick to what I originally thought and keep my photos cool toned.
I learnt of a new method when shooting and it's called the 'rule of three'. This basically splits the frame into three sections. If you think about the rule of three while shooting your photo will more than likely turn out a lot more pleasing on the eye.
During the film portion of the LBM project I became very uninspired in the topic of 'The Power of Silence'. I have never thought about going into film as a career and I still have this view. I found it incredibly difficult to come up with a unique response to the brief that nobody else had thought of. Luckily I was surrounded by some inspired people that gave me ideas in how I could go about making a short film. My response to the brief can be viewed here.
I like to think that I am a very organised person and that I demonstrate this in my work. However I also think that this can limit my work. Due to me being quite organised I make sure that everything fits on one page, this means either not including certain things on the page or including too much that isn't necessary. I think I definitely need to work on this as it means that flow and continuity are lost in my work.
I began this project by creating a mind map which outlined all my ideas which would demonstrate the power of silence. This first step helped a lot as it made things a lot more clear and made sure that I wouldn't forget any of the ideas that were in my head. After I had a handful of ideas on paper I went out and took lots of photographs that demonstrated my ideas. I displayed these photographs on contact sheets using a tool in Adobe Lightroom so that they could be easily viewed without taking up lots of pages in my sketchbook. I then went ahead and chose a few photos to take forward and edited them. Finally I came up with a final set of four that I displayed A2 to present. Producing contact sheets allowed me to easily pick out the photos that didn't fit in the colour scheme or in a set. I think that this was a significant trail that I carried out and I am very happy that I did it. I did think that my final four photos, although worked really well as part of a set, they might be too similar. I didn't have enough time to go right back to the editing stage to pick and edit more photos to include my set, so I am going to update this project in the very near future and produce different sets, and see what works best. I was at one point told that my photos were too cool toned and that I should focus on adding some realistic colours back into my work. However I disagreed. I did reedit the photos as instructed however I still wasn't convinced that the photos looked better. There was a reason for why my photos were so cool toned, I thought that it represented silence well and that it also gave more of a surreal, mysterious and abandoned feel to it. I thought that when they were displayed with a more realistic colour scheme it took away the story behind it and simply showed an overgrown garden. After reediting I decided that I would stick to what I originally thought and keep my photos cool toned.
I learnt of a new method when shooting and it's called the 'rule of three'. This basically splits the frame into three sections. If you think about the rule of three while shooting your photo will more than likely turn out a lot more pleasing on the eye.
During the film portion of the LBM project I became very uninspired in the topic of 'The Power of Silence'. I have never thought about going into film as a career and I still have this view. I found it incredibly difficult to come up with a unique response to the brief that nobody else had thought of. Luckily I was surrounded by some inspired people that gave me ideas in how I could go about making a short film. My response to the brief can be viewed here.
I like to think that I am a very organised person and that I demonstrate this in my work. However I also think that this can limit my work. Due to me being quite organised I make sure that everything fits on one page, this means either not including certain things on the page or including too much that isn't necessary. I think I definitely need to work on this as it means that flow and continuity are lost in my work.
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