Unit 1: Final Evaluation.
During the course of unit 1, I have researched and looked at a range of different artists with a variety of different styles and ideas to give me inspiration in my own work such as; Reynald Drouhin, Robert-Paul Jansen, Angela Easterling ,Daren Pearson and many more. For example Reynald Drouhin, largely influenced my work when researching one of my personal project themes of fragments. His work really stood out to me because his style was so simple and yet so effective in his work. He would simply use these amazing images he had taken of different landscapes, cut out a section in the centre of the image and rotated that single section. This is what sparked my whole idea for one of my final pieces for this personal project. I then began to make my own interpretations of his work, which then lead on to my final piece. Another very influential artist I looked at was Angela Easterling, I discovered her when researching my mock theme of food and drink and instantly loved her ideas and style of work. what first drew me to her work was that she is a camera-less photographer and also her very unique style. she creates chemigrams, using light sensitive paper to show the patterns inside the organic materials such as fruit and vegetables. I loved this idea of not just simply taking a picture of the fruit with a camera, but being able to show the amazing patterns within using only light. This then lead me to make my own interpretation of her style, which then gave me the idea of making photograms. The research I had previously made in techniques and processes also helped me as I had already researched and practised making my own photograms already.
Throughout unit 1, I have experimented and used a wide range of materials, techniques and processes. For example: Photograms, Cyanotypes, Chemigrams, Pinhole Photography, Light Painting and camera obscuras. Out of these I have most enjoyed Light painting. It was something I had never done before and found it the most interesting and compelling to create and experiment with. I also enjoyed making photograms, and so repeated this technique in my mock theme of food and drink, because after experimenting with many techniques I found this to be the most effective way of presenting my chosen theme. Also having previously used photoshop I was able to effectively edit and refine my images. Also a lot of my work was influenced by many artists styles and ideas. For example my images made in light painting where influence by the work of Harold Edgerton and Daren Pearson.
I investigated four different personal projects; Mobile Photography, Street Photography, Work Experience and Fragments. For our first personal project, Mobile Photography we began by taking images from around the school using ipods. This way we could experiment using the different apps available on the ipod and practise using them instead of a DSLR camera. We found the ipods to be much more accessible, which is an important aspect of Mobile photography being able to take a picture at the exact right moment, and also quicker to edit and share the pictures you had taken. However the main disadvantage is the lack of picture quality compared to the DSLR. We were then told to take our own sets of images outside of school and experiment more with these apps. I also then began to research different mobile photographers and this is when I discovered Robert-Paul Jansen. His work largely influence how and what I was taking pictures of as his style is largely based around the natural world. Also I found a very influential app called Andigraf. This is an app that allows you to edit, rotate and duplicate your images, and so I began to experiment a lot with this app and made a few pieces using this app to edit them.
For my second personal project (street Photography) we began by looking and researching lots of different street photographers and how they work, what influences them and what they believe to be a successful street photograph. This gave us a good, initial idea of what street photography is about and how we can develop our thinking and ideas due to these photographers experiences and advise. The street photographer Elliott Erwitt's work stood out to me above the others. All his images are made in black and white creating a very old fashioned style and the content within his images where usually quite unusual and abstract. One of his main themes throughout his work where dogs. He would take pictures of them in unusual, confusing and interesting places and doing interesting things. I think animals are a good theme for street photography because they are unable to understand what a camera does, unlike humans, who may not look unnatural when they are aware a picture is being taken of them. whereas a dog will still act natural and therefore the image taken is more effective. We then set four photo challenges to complete the first being, Ways Of Seeing. We where told to Take a look at examples of street photography styles and our challenge was to respond to these examples by creating images of are own that borrow these viewpoints, subjects and compositions. For example Over the shoulder shots, cropped images and walk on by. Our second challenge was, Diagonals. We where told that drama is created in pictures in lots of ways but using strong diagonal lines is one technique often used by street photographers, so we took a set of pictures with this diagonal theme. Our third challenge was, Rule Of Thirds. The idea was to compose your shot using the grid lines, the segments and the places where the lines cross to help you. Our final challenge was, Compare And Contrast. We where told to pick two different street photographers and compare the two photos taken by them, showing what is similar between them and what is different. These different challenges allowed us to develop our ideas and see the large range of styles and ideas that all street photographers have to contemplate in there work which influenced the images that I took.
For our third personal project I was able to documents my two weeks of work experience and talk about what we enjoyed, what we didn't enjoy and what we had learnt. It was important that the images I had taken reflected the positive and negative sides of the experience. When I was at my first work experience placement I was working for a few days as a hand model and was able to work with an amazing photographer and who also works in editing images for magazines. He showed me the different ways of editing an image and talked me through all of his equipment and lighting techniques, which I learnt a lot from.
For my final personal project I chose fragments as my theme. This personal project stood out to me as we where able to create anything surrounding this theme. And because of this I made a large amount of final pieces and experimented a lot with the influence of many photographers. I liked the freedom we where given with his theme and how we could make our own interpretation of fragments .For example when we where first set this task I began by literally fragmenting images using photoshop and then editing them. For my final piece I initially wanted to create something minimalistic and simple, like Reynald Drouhin. I used pinterest a lot to document my ideas through images that I liked and sometimes wanted to recreate. I used the natural world as a main theme of my images which I would then fragment and edit in photoshop. I wanted to create he perfect image that I had been thinking of. So, to do so I made multiple images in this style to make sure my final piece would be as perfect as I could make it. By the end of the task I began making a final piece by fragmenting time, a different way of looking at fragmentation. I took sets of images of the same object or place over a period of time and then edited them using photoshop. This was my favourite part of this theme because at the beginning I didn't realise all the different ways you could interpret fragmentation and so most of my work was very similar. I thought that once I found a certain style I should just stick to it, but by changing the way I thought about it allowed me to create something completely different. For me this personal project was the most successful, because I enjoyed it an engaged the most with it and made a lot of positive outcomes.
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Throughout unit 1, I have experimented and used a wide range of materials, techniques and processes. For example: Photograms, Cyanotypes, Chemigrams, Pinhole Photography, Light Painting and camera obscuras. Out of these I have most enjoyed Light painting. It was something I had never done before and found it the most interesting and compelling to create and experiment with. I also enjoyed making photograms, and so repeated this technique in my mock theme of food and drink, because after experimenting with many techniques I found this to be the most effective way of presenting my chosen theme. Also having previously used photoshop I was able to effectively edit and refine my images. Also a lot of my work was influenced by many artists styles and ideas. For example my images made in light painting where influence by the work of Harold Edgerton and Daren Pearson.
I investigated four different personal projects; Mobile Photography, Street Photography, Work Experience and Fragments. For our first personal project, Mobile Photography we began by taking images from around the school using ipods. This way we could experiment using the different apps available on the ipod and practise using them instead of a DSLR camera. We found the ipods to be much more accessible, which is an important aspect of Mobile photography being able to take a picture at the exact right moment, and also quicker to edit and share the pictures you had taken. However the main disadvantage is the lack of picture quality compared to the DSLR. We were then told to take our own sets of images outside of school and experiment more with these apps. I also then began to research different mobile photographers and this is when I discovered Robert-Paul Jansen. His work largely influence how and what I was taking pictures of as his style is largely based around the natural world. Also I found a very influential app called Andigraf. This is an app that allows you to edit, rotate and duplicate your images, and so I began to experiment a lot with this app and made a few pieces using this app to edit them.
For my second personal project (street Photography) we began by looking and researching lots of different street photographers and how they work, what influences them and what they believe to be a successful street photograph. This gave us a good, initial idea of what street photography is about and how we can develop our thinking and ideas due to these photographers experiences and advise. The street photographer Elliott Erwitt's work stood out to me above the others. All his images are made in black and white creating a very old fashioned style and the content within his images where usually quite unusual and abstract. One of his main themes throughout his work where dogs. He would take pictures of them in unusual, confusing and interesting places and doing interesting things. I think animals are a good theme for street photography because they are unable to understand what a camera does, unlike humans, who may not look unnatural when they are aware a picture is being taken of them. whereas a dog will still act natural and therefore the image taken is more effective. We then set four photo challenges to complete the first being, Ways Of Seeing. We where told to Take a look at examples of street photography styles and our challenge was to respond to these examples by creating images of are own that borrow these viewpoints, subjects and compositions. For example Over the shoulder shots, cropped images and walk on by. Our second challenge was, Diagonals. We where told that drama is created in pictures in lots of ways but using strong diagonal lines is one technique often used by street photographers, so we took a set of pictures with this diagonal theme. Our third challenge was, Rule Of Thirds. The idea was to compose your shot using the grid lines, the segments and the places where the lines cross to help you. Our final challenge was, Compare And Contrast. We where told to pick two different street photographers and compare the two photos taken by them, showing what is similar between them and what is different. These different challenges allowed us to develop our ideas and see the large range of styles and ideas that all street photographers have to contemplate in there work which influenced the images that I took.
For our third personal project I was able to documents my two weeks of work experience and talk about what we enjoyed, what we didn't enjoy and what we had learnt. It was important that the images I had taken reflected the positive and negative sides of the experience. When I was at my first work experience placement I was working for a few days as a hand model and was able to work with an amazing photographer and who also works in editing images for magazines. He showed me the different ways of editing an image and talked me through all of his equipment and lighting techniques, which I learnt a lot from.
For my final personal project I chose fragments as my theme. This personal project stood out to me as we where able to create anything surrounding this theme. And because of this I made a large amount of final pieces and experimented a lot with the influence of many photographers. I liked the freedom we where given with his theme and how we could make our own interpretation of fragments .For example when we where first set this task I began by literally fragmenting images using photoshop and then editing them. For my final piece I initially wanted to create something minimalistic and simple, like Reynald Drouhin. I used pinterest a lot to document my ideas through images that I liked and sometimes wanted to recreate. I used the natural world as a main theme of my images which I would then fragment and edit in photoshop. I wanted to create he perfect image that I had been thinking of. So, to do so I made multiple images in this style to make sure my final piece would be as perfect as I could make it. By the end of the task I began making a final piece by fragmenting time, a different way of looking at fragmentation. I took sets of images of the same object or place over a period of time and then edited them using photoshop. This was my favourite part of this theme because at the beginning I didn't realise all the different ways you could interpret fragmentation and so most of my work was very similar. I thought that once I found a certain style I should just stick to it, but by changing the way I thought about it allowed me to create something completely different. For me this personal project was the most successful, because I enjoyed it an engaged the most with it and made a lot of positive outcomes.
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